Page 10 of Return to You

“You cooked, that means we clean right, Ricky?”

Without a word, Ricky closed his book and started gathering up the dishes.

Ricky had always been the quiet one but this was more than that. Kade knew it in his gut. He sliced a look over to Ali and saw the concern brimming in her light brown eyes as she stared at her nephew.

“We got this.” Kade tried to take the plates from her hands.

She held on to them with the grip of a spider monkey before finally releasing them. “Fine.”

She reached out and ruffled Ricky’s hair. “Thanks. You da man.”

Ricky grinned and took the plates into the kitchen.

Without even a glance in his direction, Ali turned and headed up the stairs. His eyes locked on the sway of her rounded hips. She was thinner than he was used to seeing her but she still had a world-class ass. An ass he’d been a fan of for far too long.

She was supposed to be like a sister to him, and she had been up until seven years ago. Patrick had wanted to do something special for his sister’s twenty-first birthday, so he’d asked Kade if he had any Vegas connections since he’d had several fights there, and if he did could he “hook her up.”

Kade hadn’t given it a second thought. He flew her and three of her friends out first class and put them up in the Sky Villa at the Palms. He hadn’t planned on babysitting them, but he wanted to stop by and make sure that they had everything they needed. So he’d taken a short flight out of LA where he lived, and gone to check on them. Her best friend, Jess, let him into the suite, thanking him profusely for his generosity. He’d asked where the birthday girl was and the next few moments played out in a dream-like sequence…

Jess pointed to the indoor lap pool. “She’s taking a dip before we go out. There’s a pool in our room!”

Jess’s squeal faded out as he turned and—in what felt like slow motion—Ali emerged from the water like a goddess. She wore a red string bikini that accented her pinup curves and Kade’s mouth watered so much that when he tried to swallow, he choked on his own spit.

Those life-changing few seconds were branded into his memory and his spank bank. It was a defining moment in his life. The moment his best friend’s little sister, the first person that had made him feel loved and valued, became the only woman that existed in the world to him. Instead of just dropping by he’d ended up spending the entire weekend with Ali and her friends. It had been under the guise of wanting them to have a good time, but the truth was he hadn’t wanted to let Ali out of his sight, and he hadn’t.

During the forty-eight hours he’d spent with her in Vegas a truth became glaringly obvious. He’d fallen in love with Ali. Head over heels, madly, deeply in love with Allison Walsh.

It wasn’t just because she’d made him choke when she’d gotten out of the pool. That might’ve sparked the fiery inferno that blazed in him for her, but—even though he had never acknowledged it—there had been a slow burn building in him since the day he’d shown up at her house after he wrecked his motorcycle.

She was breathtaking, choke-inducing hot, but it was more than that. Ali was brutally honest. She always seemed to have an opinion about how he was living his life and she never held back when she told him what he was doing wrong or how much of an ass she thought he was being. She was fiercely loyal and protective. She was fearless, funny, and his favorite person to hang out with and fight with. He never knew what was going to come out of her pretty mouth but he loved finding out.

After that weekend, Kade shortened his visits to his hometown because of those feelings for his best friend’s little sister. He’d felt guilty. Patrick and Ali had more than just a brother-sister bond. Patrick had raised her, even before their mom died. And Patrick knew just as much as Kade did, that he wasn’t good enough for Ali. Those two were the only family Kade had and he hadn’t wanted to fuck that up because he happened to be in love with her.

Seven years later, he was still trying to ignore his feelings for Allison Walsh. It hadn’t worked when he was thousands of miles away from her and he doubted living in the same house with her was going to make it any easier.

4

A motorcycle. Of course he still rode a motorcycle.

When Ali saw it parked in her driveway, she’d been tempted to kick it over. Before losing Patrick, the worst night of her life had been the one she’d spent thinking that Kade was dead. She’d made him promise never to scare her like that again. But here he was, still riding a bike.

He sat beside Ali in the passenger seat of her SUV and took up way more space than anyone had a right to take up. Not only his sheer mass, since his athletic, chiseled frame took up plenty of that. But she was referring to his essence. His being. His mannerisms. The way he breathed. The way he rolled his head to stretch his neck. The way he flexed his hands and made the veins on his forearms pop out like sexy homing beacons.

All of that was conspiring to cause her hormones to override her common sense that dictated she was not happy that Kade was back.

Ali noticed her hand shaking as she flipped the turn signal. Flexing her fingers around the steering wheel, she was determined not to let anyone see her reaction. She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that the twins could not be less interested in anything that was going on in the front seat. KJ was glued to his phone and Ricky had his book.

She turned her attention back to the road and focused on driving. The past couple of hours felt like she was in a dream she couldn’t wake up from, she just wasn’t sure if it was a nightmare or not…she was leaning toward nightmare.

Kade, who appeared oblivious to her internal turmoil, turned up the radio and started singing along to Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely”.

Yep, this was definitely a nightmare.

Not because he was a bad singer. Ali wished that was the case. But the cold hard truth was, Kade was musically gifted. And even during the years she’d managed to build up a tolerance to him, his voice had been her Achilles heel. He could also play the piano and the guitar, but there was a raspy quality in his singing voice that melted the panties off of any woman in earshot.

He came by it honestly. From what Ali had heard, his dad was a studio musician in Nashville for years and he’d played with the likes of Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks, Loretta Lynn, Kenny Rogers, and Reba McEntire. Kade never pursued music because the very last thing he wanted to be was anything even remotely like his father, and Ali didn’t blame him. Her life goal was to be nothing like her mother.

Tingles ran down her arm when Kade shifted toward her as he launched into the chorus. Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel as she desperately looked for parking and nabbed the first available spot. It was a few blocks away from the gym, but she didn’t care. She was suffering from arousal claustrophobia in the confined space. Plus, the entirety of downtown Whisper Lake consisted of four blocks of real estate that surrounded the lake. She could park anywhere and they’d still be in walking distance.

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