Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(88)

Now that they were testing the waters, he was sold. Charlie for good sounded great. She poured herself a glass of juice and came to the living room where he was watching… he didn’t know what. Some reality show about moonshine. He hadn’t really been paying attention.

She kicked off her shoes and settled on the couch next to him, curling her feet under her.

He dropped an arm around her and tugged; she molded to his side. He kissed the top of her head as she sipped from her glass and emitted a quiet hum of happiness.

Charlie for good. That was exactly what he wanted. Lyon didn’t seem to mind, either.

She was the only one who wasn’t all in.

Yet.


*


Charlie stayed over at Evan’s house the night before last, but last night opted to sleep in her own bed. Not because she wanted to but because she needed to get home and put in some serious hours on the work she’d been avoiding. After a simple dinner of burgers and potato chips, baked beans and coleslaw from Abundance Market—Abundance had the best coleslaw—and a Disney movie, Lyon had gone to bed and she’d followed Evan into his studio to kiss him good-bye and leave him to his painting.

But after the kiss, he didn’t get right to painting.

He did get right to turning her inside out with his tongue and his hands and a litany of words definitely not for the PG crowd.

She’d escaped—narrowly—but not before he pulled her onto his lap, slipped his fingers beneath her skirt, and put her in such a state that she walked back to her house—a walk she refused to let him accompany her for—on very, very loose knees.

Sometime around two a.m., Evan had come over to extract her from the couch in her office where she’d crashed, but had no such luck getting her to come back to his place. “Letting you have this one, Ace,” she remembered him saying before he left, “but this is the last one.”

So, last night. Her own bed.

True to his word, the next afternoon, he hadn’t let her be.

“Birthday party, Ace,” he’d reminded her as she frantically brushed her hair and slipped her feet into a pair of flats.

“I know! Sorry. I got busy.”

Busy doing more work on Guy and Mallory Houston’s wedding photos. It was the rainiest outdoor wedding Charlie had ever seen. She was able to snap pictures of soggy guests in the outdoor reception tent while it stormed, but the background wasn’t pretty. As a result she’d spent most of last night and today in Photoshop, replacing the drab white tent with shots of Evergreen Cove’s apple orchard she’d taken last year. To Charlie it seemed a little disingenuous, but Mallory was willing to pay extra for the backdrop swap.

School had started and it hadn’t taken long for Lyon to make friends, so when he was invited to a little boy’s birthday party, Charlie wasn’t surprised. It was an overnight, which Evan had jumped on, telling her, “Good for him to get away. And good for us. Another painting, Ace?”

She’d be lying if she said that suggestion hadn’t sent a drove of full-body chills dancing on her skin.

After four and a half hours of pi?ata-hitting, screaming seven-and eight-year-olds, and chattering with other moms at the party, Evan pulled the SUV to a stop at his house.

He let them inside and once there, reached for Charlie. She lifted her palms to his chest, her eyebrows raising in interest. In a pair of torn, well-worn, very sexy jeans, and a plain gray T-shirt, she’d admit, it was hard to take him to task about anything… except she hadn’t liked what she’d seen at the party.

He angled a glance down at her hand on his chest, stopping him from coming closer. “What’s this?”

Thoughts of Leslie O’Brian hit her front and center. She was the mom who had adhered herself to Evan’s side most of the party. Charlie wouldn’t say he’d flirted with the sexy redhead, but he hadn’t thwarted her, either.

Charlie knew this because she was very, very good friends with the party planner.

She and Sofie had hovered behind a chocolate-dipped fruit bouquet. Every once in a while Sofie would eat a piece and make a comment, like, “Do you think her boobs are real?” Or, “Evan must have the patience of a saint.”

Now, “Saint” Evan leaned in for a kiss. Charlie turned her head.

“Ace.”

He palmed her jaw gently, forcing her to acknowledge him. “Not letting you work tonight. We talked about this.”

“More like you decreed it.”

He grinned, not caring about her attitude. When he pulled her neck and kissed her, she decided to let him. And then she decided kissing him was a lot better than not kissing him. Still, there was the small matter of the woman at the party. Boundaries had definitely been crossed.

Therefore, when his mouth left hers, she said against his lips, “Leslie O’Brian.”

His eyebrows met over his nose.

“She spent the day hitting on you like it was her job.”

“And?”

“And?” she asked, her voice sliding a little too close to hysterical for her comfort. “And… and… I didn’t like it.”

He smiled again. “No?”

She fisted his T-shirt and stood on her tiptoes, touching her nose to his. “No.”

Rather than argue or defend himself, he crushed his lips into hers and thrust his tongue in her mouth.