Crazy for Loving You: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy(62)

But all he’s done is everything he never should’ve been asked to do.

I’ll make this up to him.

I will.

I’m Daisy Imogen fucking Carter-Kincaid. I can do anything.

Apparently except parent a baby by myself without trying to self-destruct.





Twenty-Seven





West



The rest of dinner is simultaneously more awkward than my failed date with Becca and almost as comfortable as a family picnic back home in Chicago, all while I do my fucking best to ignore that voice in my head whispering that there’s more to Daisy Carter-Kincaid than maybe even she knows.

And that I am truly in over my head.

“Movie dates or beach dates?” she asks.

“No,” I reply, which sends her into a fit of giggles that ends with her coughing and me going tense and then her pointing to the bread.

“More abomination sandwiches!” she orders.

“Maybe you should drink some water instead.” Bantering is so much easier than letting myself think about the panic in her voice when she thought she dropped the baby.

She’s got him.

She does.

She just needs the confidence to believe it, which is the last thing I ever would’ve thought someone like Daisy could need.

But it’s all making sense. Big on the outside to shield the scared on the inside.

“Quit being bossy and answer the questions,” she orders. “I’m profiling you so I know how to rebuild the pool house.”

“You don’t have to rebuild your pool house.”

“My pool house is my sanctuary. I go there when I’m tired of people, which, as I’m sure you can imagine, only rarely happens, but when it does, I need it. So I have to rebuild it so I don’t invade your space when you’re having private time with Mr. Pokey.”

See?

Awkward and comfortable.

All at the same time.

“You get tired of people?” I ask while I start making her another sandwich. On the second, I made the mistake of asking where she put all the food she was eating, and she grabbed her boobs, and I got a boner, which is another reason I’m happy to keep making her sandwiches.

It keeps the island between us as a boner-deterrent. And also to keep me from reaching for her to pull her into a hug, just because I think she needs it.

But she’s pretending she doesn’t, so I’ll pretend she doesn’t too.

She eyes me suspiciously, like she’s not sure she should say what’s on her mind, and then just blurts it all out. “I love chocolate milk, but even I can’t drink it thirty-six hours a day, fourteen days a week. And there are different brands of chocolate milk, and some I can drink more than others.”

“Huh. Would’ve pegged you for the tequila type over the chocolate milk type.”

“I chase my chocolate milk with tequila.”

“That’s disgusting. Carrot?”

I hold up a carrot stick, and she chucks her metal water bottle at me.

With the lid off.

I duck easily, because she has awful aim, but I still get splashed with a flying arc of liquid when the bottle clangs to the tile floor behind me. “Are you insane?”

She grins. “I didn’t have to miss. Maybe tomorrow for dinner, you should wear a white T-shirt.”

“Daisy…”

“I’ve been stifling myself for ten days for you. I think I’ve earned that one.”

I can’t really argue.

“In fact, I think I should get an inappropriate comment to you at least once a day,” she continues playfully. “If you weren’t so uptight, I could fully be myself. I’m censoring big-time here. So yes, you owe me one moment of being myself in an entire twenty-four-hour period.”

“That…makes unfortunate sense,” I concede, though it doesn’t feel like a concession, and I’m actually smiling to myself at the thought of everything she might come up with.

“When were you involved with that woman with kids again? Doesn’t Becca have kids? Is that your type?”

My shoulders hitch. “That wasn’t you censoring yourself. Again.”

“I’ll tell you why I only date foreign men if you tell me why you only date single mothers. Is it your swimmers? Did they all go belly-up? Accident in the Marines or something? Were you sick as a kid?”

I fold my arms over the wet spot on my T-shirt and try to glare at her, but it’s harder than it would’ve been before she choked.

She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Fine. I only date foreign men because my father is terrified of flying.”

“What?”

“Also because they don’t usually recognize me and they tolerate my romantic ADD so much better.”

“You’re making awful generalizations about people right now.”

“And it sounds so much more exotic to say I spent the weekend with a Greek god than it does to say I spent the weekend with a farmer in Iowa.”

She’s so full of shit. “If you’re not a big enough person to confess to having commitment issues, just say so.”

Her cheeks go bright pink, and there’s that overwhelming urge to hug her again. But it’s accompanied by a need to google a therapist for her.