Heartless: A Small Town Single Dad Romance(20)

But it flustered me all the same. Sent gooseflesh out over my arms all the same. The simplest touch has taken up residence in my mind for no good reason.

I finish chewing and return Harvey’s smile, but it’s Cade’s dark eyes I feel on me from beside his dad. The similarities between them are insane. It’s like I can see how Cade will look in twenty some-odd years.

Which is to say, good.

“It’s been great. Luke and I have had a lot of fun. Haven’t we, Luke?” I tilt my head to gaze down at him. He insisted on sitting beside me, even though he hasn’t seen his dad since last night. We came up to the main house early and Cade met us here.

The little boy beams up at me. “Sure did.”

Cade scowls. It’s what he did when Luke moved across the table, away from him.

“The most fun!”

Harvey’s kind eyes turn back toward his grandson. “What have you been doing?”

Luke peers around the table, grinning at everyone. He’s the kind of kid who flourishes under attention rather than crumbles under it. And everyone is here. Both of Cade’s brothers, Rhett and Beau. Summer, of course. Even the hockey player, Jasper Gervais, who everyone loses their mind over—apparently, he grew up here on the ranch.

I’m just snoopy enough to wish I knew more about his story. Where his parents are and how he got to where he is. The fact he hasn’t said a damn word throughout dinner has me even more curious. He smiles at people from behind the brim of his team cap. Little smirks and winks. He seems nice

enough. He seems like he requires more investigation.

Beau, on the other hand, has barely stopped talking. Except for now. When Luke talks, everyone listens.

“We threw lettuce out the window while driving really fast down the back road!” For a kid who seemed suitably chastised a few days ago, he sure is hamming it up now.

“Goddamn. That sounds like fun.” Beau shakes his head and spears some lettuce, a look of nostalgia touching every feature.

My eyes snap to Cade’s, who is scowling at his brother. I absently wonder which scowl that is.

Irritated? Scolding?

Through the salad in his mouth, Beau adds, “I’m gonna do that with you when I get back from this deployment, Lukey. We’ll do watermelons instead.”

“Yes!” Luke shoots up in his seat, like he’s forgotten the conversation we had earlier this week.

“You sure as shit are not.” Cade pushes the salad around his plate even harder. Hard enough that the tines of his fork screech across his plate. This guy needs to work out some goddamn tension.

My mom would say he needs some good sex.

I’m not so sure she’d be wrong.

“Luke and I have had some good chats about food scarcity this week,” I pipe up to defuse the conversation. “That not everyone is as fortunate as he is. We dug out a garden and today we planted our lettuce seeds, didn’t we?”

He nods enthusiastically at me, and I’m relieved I wasn’t a total buzzkill. Five isn’t too young to hear some truths about the world, but I’m wondering if I overstepped.

When I peek over at Cade, though, his scowl is less irritated. Possibly an appreciative scowl?

I mean, fuck my life. How did I get to the point where I’m analyzing the way a man scowls at me?

Beau chuckles. “Well, you know. Boys will be b—”

“No,” I cut him off. Because that saying is straight trash, and years of bartending have given me plenty of time to see boys being boys. Which really is just boys being shitheads. “Boys will be gentlemen.” I point my fork at the big army Ken doll sitting across from me.

It’s then that I hear a huff of air in the otherwise dead silent dining room, and I almost drop my fork when I figure out it came from the least likely person.

Cade is still moving food around on his plate—like barbecue ribs require a fork or something—

but the corner of his mouth slants upward. The angle of his face and the darkness of his beard make it hard to see, so I squint a tad, jutting my chin at him to get a closer look. I’m not sure I can call it a smile.

An amused scowl?

The hockey player clears his throat, not hiding his amusement at all. “Well, Harvey, what have you been up to this week?”

He chuckles and wipes a weathered hand across his mustache. “Thanks for asking, son . . .”

I find myself glancing between him and Cade, wondering how Cade might look with a mustache.

A joke about free mustache rides pops into my head, and I blink rapidly to clear it.

I glance around the table to see if anyone noticed I was thinking about riding Cade’s face.

Thankfully, that would be impossible, and everyone has fixed their attention on the head of the family, who’s running down what he’s been up to this week while I’ve been thinking about how Cade’s beard and tongue would . . .

Then I feel it. The scowl. My eyes shift, and Cade is staring right at me, bulging arms crossed over his impossibly broad chest. Biceps straining against his signature black T-shirt. And my cheeks

heat for no good reason other than my body is a traitor and I’m probably ovulating.

I stare back at him across the table, refusing to look guilty. Trying to stretch my consciousness back to whatever the sweet patriarch of the family is talking about.

“ . . . Today I got to tidying up around the property a bit. There were leaves everywhere, so I gave the yard a good blow job.”