Crazy for Loving You: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy(41)

I follow, only to get treated to the sight of him pulling off his T-shirt.

“Whoa, baby, that is epic,” I breathe.

He starts and turns around, and hello, even better.

“Do you have any concept of personal space?”

“Not really. That artwork is amazing. Phuket? Or Bora-Bora?” Amongst all the ink on his chest, I move to touch the beach bungalow-and-mountain landscape on one pec between a mermaid masthead over his shoulder and what appears to be an intricate string of thorns and roses curving around his shoulder blade, but he swats my hand away.

“Go away.”

“I’ll show you mine if you tell me.”

“I don’t want to see your ass.”

I chuckle. “Aww, you know I have an ass on my ass! Westley Jaeger, have you been googling me?”

“I’m changing my pants.”

“Do you have a tattoo on your ass too?”

“Don’t say ass in front of the baby. Actually, you shouldn’t cuss in front of the baby at all. They’re very impressionable. And go away.”

He’s right. I should go away. If I tell myself we can be friends who keep in touch after Remy’s guardianship is no longer in question, I’m lying, because I can’t be friends with a hard-bodied, competent, half-cranky, half-resigned, all-saving-my-ass former military man, because he’s too fucking attractive for me to just be friends with.

I know I don’t need feelings about him.

Just help. Preferably with a side of mutual respect, since I know a thing or two firsthand about the awkwardness of having parents who hate each other, though hopefully all the legal baloney will be over with long before Remy can remember any of this.

But West doesn’t like me, which is the other barrier to me being friends with him.

And that’s probably my fault. “So what’s the story with you and Becca? You like her, but you wouldn’t look at her yesterday. Don’t think a few little shrimp made me blind. I mean, it did, for about thirty minutes when I couldn’t open my eyes, but before that.”

He turns his back to me and drops his pants, white briefs and all, and my mouth goes dry.

He does not, in fact, have any tattoos on his ass.

But he does have two solid marble orbs that end in tree trunk thighs that could probably squat my entire house.

In my lifetime, I’ve seen a healthy share of asses. Athlete asses. Movie star asses. Asses from every continent on earth, of all shapes, sizes, and colors.

I could build an ass museum with all the asses I’ve seen.

But West Jaeger’s ass tops them all.

The thick muscly types don’t usually do it for me—I’ve been in more of a mood for the slender starving rock star type lately—but I want to bend over and take a bite of one of those cheeks, and then trace every inch with both my tongue and my fingers.

Even more than all the ink on his back, his bare ass is pure erotic artwork.

That he’s covering with board shorts.

I whimper.

He pulls a fresh white T-shirt over his dark, disheveled hair, and the tattoo disappears too.

But I know it’s there.

And I won’t forget anytime soon.

This is not good for my sanity. I shake my head as he bends over, grabs his dirty clothes, and places them carefully in a laundry hamper beneath the short row of folded and ironed jeans and T-shirts hanging on the lone rod in the closet.

He irons his jeans.

I’m simultaneously turned on and appalled, and I’m highly uncomfortable with both reactions.

“Going for a swim?” I manage to say nearly normally.

He grabs his phone off the end table in the sitting room and walks out without answering me.

Remy gurgles and coos.

“Agreed,” I tell him. “We like hanging out with West, don’t we?”

Remy smiles.

God, he’s adorable.

It’s seriously hard to believe he’s a product of Julienne and Rafe.

“Wait up,” I call to West. “I need your opinion on whether the new speaker system for baby music should go in this nursery, or in the one closer to my bedroom. Or if I should just get a second one.”

“Do you know why I gave you a schedule last night?”

Yay! He’s talking to me again. “Because you can’t shake your time in the military?”

“Because I need space from you if I’m going to stay here long enough for you to get full, uncontested custody of the baby.”

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I say quietly. “I’m not hounding you about Becca because I want to be an ass. I just want to understand. You’re doing me a huge favor, and I can’t do you huge favors back if I don’t know you well enough to know what kind of favors you like.”

He studies me for a moment. “Thank you,” he says gruffly before turning back down the hall.

Such a grumpy bear. He’s so damn adorable. “It sucks that Julienne put you in this position, because you seem like one of the good guys who’d be a super amazing role model for Remy in a world where they’re hard to find. Maybe we should get married.”

That stops him short in the middle of the hallway, with the early evening light shafting through the arched windows and illuminating him like an avenging beach angel.

Oh, shi—shirt.