Page 43 of Take My Hand

I turned my phone screen to Maya. “This is my Maddy.”

She looked at the screen and then her fingers gently prised it from mine. “She’s beautiful.” Smiling, she tapped at the screen and zoomed in on the picture. “She looks like you around the mouth. It’s the pouty lip thing.” Maya looked up at me and grinned.

That made my chest swell because mostly she was Andy, her mum. I also liked that Maya had obviously been studying my lips.

She looked up at me. “Do you have any others?”

I chuckled. “Hundreds, just swipe.”

Maya spent the next couple of minutes looking at pictures of Maddy, oohing and aahing at the baby and toddler ones, and commenting on her beauty as she got to the teenage ones. Eventually, she passed the phone back to me.

“That boy has definitely kissed her, and if he hasn’t, then he’s a nice boy who’ll treat her well.”

“Is that what you think, he’s a good one if he hasn’t tried to kiss her yet?”

She nodded and relaxed back into her seat. “I do.”

“What does that say about me then? I kissed you.” I leaned forward, my forearms on the table. “Are you saying I’m not a nice boy?”

She studied me and then also leaned forward, adopting the same position, our faces inches from each other. I was so close that I could see the tiny whisky coloured flecks in her green eyes and how her long eyelashes curled up. How smooth and perfect her skin was.

“No, I don’t think you are.” She licked her lips, her voice a deep, sultry tone.

Watching her watching me, it made me want things. Things that I didn’t think either of us were ready for, because I didn’t want it to be some sort of brief fling between us. She was worth more than a few bunk ups, plus if I rushed things with her then she might get the wrong impression of what I wanted.

“However,” Maya continued, rousing me from my thoughts, “I never said I liked nice boys.”

I grinned and reached for her hand, linking our fingers together. “I can be nice, very nice, in fact, for the right person. Besides, nice is such an inadequate word for what I could be.”

Dragging in a shaky breath, she nodded. “That’s good to know because, to be honest, I’m so sick and tired of the not-nice men.”

A shadow passed over her face, and it was clear there was a painful memory behind her words. When she exhaled slowly, like she was letting go of something, I knew for certain that we were most definitely not going to be a brief fling. I liked this woman a lot, and for the first time in ever, I wanted her to like me, too.

“So,” I said, reaching up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, “how about after this we do something else?”

She narrowed her eyes on me. “Like what?”

As much as I wanted to ask her if we could go back to her house, I wouldn’t. “I don’t know bowling, cinema, shopping, a walk?”

Her nose wrinkled and she shuddered. “Ugh, not shopping. I hate it.”

“That’s a relief.” I blew out a breath and smiled. “I hate it, too.”

“Yet, you’d have gone for me?”

“Told you, I’m nice.” I winked at her and was rewarded with a beautiful, bright smile. “So, if not shopping, what?”

Her shoulders shrugged up to her ears as she asked tentatively, “Could we go bowling? I haven’t been since I was a teenager.”

“Good for me. Although,” I said with a groan, “I’m not sure I like the idea of wearing those shit shoes.”

“I promise not to take any pictures of you wearing them.” She giggled and the sound went straight to parts of my body that I shouldn’t have been thinking about.

“Okay, bowling it is.” I looked around and caught the attention of the waiter, indicating for the bill. “And lunch is on me.”

“No, I’ll?—”

“Maya, it’s just me being nice, so no arguments.”

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