Fall Into Temptation (Blue Moon Book #2)(8)

“He was. He died five years ago.”

“Still miss him.” It wasn’t a question, but an acknowledgement.

“Every day,” Beckett nodded. It was true. There wasn’t a day that went by without his thoughts turning to John Pierce.

“And your mother?” Gianna asked.

Beckett felt the familiar warring emotions of love and frustration that bubbled to the surface every time he thought of his mother the past few months.

“She’s great,” he said, keeping it at that.

They turned down another tree-lined street where the streetlights were spaced further apart. “Do you live on this street?” he asked her, frowning.

Gianna nodded and smiled. “I do. It’s such a great neighborhood.”

“I know. It’s my neighborhood.”

“Well, this is me.” Gianna stopped on the sidewalk, her eyes sparkling.

“This isn’t you. This is me. I live here,” Beckett argued. The realization hit him as the words came out of his mouth.

“Hi, neighbor,” Gianna said, cocking her head to the side.

“You’re my new tenant.” He was a dumbass. A complete and total dumbass and Gianna had the pleasure of witnessing his idiocy over and over again.

She nodded. “I knew you’d figure it out eventually.”

He had literally walked her to his own doorstep before realizing it. He was slipping. Yoga must have destroyed his brain.

“Ellery took care of the paperwork and your check while I was out of the country,” he said, slowly piecing it all together.

“She did. She’s a pretty amazing asset, by the way,” Gianna said.

“She is.” And his amazing asset had probably assumed he introduced himself to his new tenant when he came home. In fact, if he hadn’t been daydreaming about the redhead before him he probably would have heard Ellery telling him Gianna was his tenant. Her “good fit” comment suddenly made a lot more sense.

“How long have you known?” he winced.

Gianna looked like she was enjoying herself. “Since you introduced yourself at the ribbon-cutting. What kind of tenant would I be if I didn’t know my own landlord’s name?”

Shit.

“You’re my tenant.” He said it again as the implication settled. It didn’t matter how attractive he found Gianna Decker. They had a professional relationship that must be maintained.

“This is —”

“Complicated,” she finished for him. “You’re lucky, Mr. Pierce, that I’ve sworn off complications and mistakes. Because, otherwise, I would have found you irresistible.”

“Irresistible how?” Beckett asked before he thought better of it.

Gianna stood on her tiptoes and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. “Thanks for walking me home, Beckett.”

She turned away from him and followed the walkway around the side of his house to the backyard.

Beckett touched his cheek and frowned after her. It was the second time she had kissed him and he wasn’t going to lie. It wasn’t enough.



“What’s with the dopey grin?” Evan demanded when Gia let herself in the front door.

“I don’t have a dopey grin. I have a self-satisfied grin. That’s totally different,” she corrected him.

“Whatever,” he sighed, and went back to his homework at the dining table.

“How’s it going?” Gia asked, settling in next to him.

He shrugged his shoulders and frowned at the book in front of him.

“What do you think about school here so far?” Gia opened her water bottle and drank deeply.

Evan shrugged again. “It’s okay, I guess.”

“Is it a lot different?”

“There’s a girl in my class named Oceana,” Evan said, refreshing the screen of his tablet. He scrolled through some pictures and opened one. “This is her.”

Gia peered at Oceana’s school photo on the screen. In any other town in America, the perky little blonde would have been a cheerleader. In Blue Moon, she wore a hand-crocheted vest and lived on a sheep farm.

“This town is weird,” Evan announced.

“I agree. Weird good or weird bad?”

“Mostly weird good. I guess. Like the teachers don’t make us sit too long and stuff. They make us take stretching breaks, kind of like your classes. But the lunches are weird bad. At my old school we had pizza and nachos and stuff. Here they have this quinoa casserole crap.”

Gia swallowed a laugh. “Maybe we should look at packing your lunch a couple days a week?”

Evan nodded. “I think that would be for the best.”

“Your dad call tonight?” Gia asked, taking another drink of water.

“Nope.”

She automatically squashed the annoyance and the desire to make an excuse for Evan’s father. She and Paul had worked out a call schedule that promised the kids reliable, consistent communication with their father so he could stay up on what was happening with them.

And as was typical with her ex-husband, he continued to flake out on them, blissfully unaware of the damage that his inconsistency and lack-of-presence did to their little family.

Gia changed the subject. “How was Rora for you tonight?”

“She was good. She only made me watch two episodes of that dumb whiny cartoon.”