Page 55 of Kiss Me Tonight

“Cross-check you out of the way?” I take the chair next to his, folding my legs beneath me so that I’m sitting cross-legged. “My boy did me proud.”

Laughter greets my ears, the sound deep and husky and, boy, if he only laughed more often . . . he’d need sticks to keep the women away. “Like mother, like son?”

I bat my eyelashes innocently, much the same way Topher did, and it does the trick.

More gravel-pitched laughter that does something funny to my insides. And does way more for me than the pretend Dominic DaSilva going to town on that website. I’m not sure what this says about me, besides the obvious: the real Dominic intrigues me more than he should.

“Why am I not surprised?” he muses, sounding not the least bit put out about my kid screwing him over. “You were way too eager to have me take him mini-golfing. I should have known you were up to no good.”

“I taught him everything he knows.”

“And you saidIhave a big ego.”

I shift forward, forearms propped up on my thighs. “Newsflash, Coach, youdohave a big ego.”

Letting out a low chuckle, Dominic shakes his head. Rubs a hand over his mouth like he’s determined to kill off his lingering smile.

“What?” I ask.

“Every time I think I’ve nailed you down, you surprise me all over again.”

It takes a lot of inner strength to ignore the more-than-obvious sexual euphemism in his words. At another time, in another world—in my dreams, if we’re being honest—I wouldn’t mind being nailed down by Dominic. Simply to scratch the itch, of course. Nothing more. Licking my lips, which suddenly feel dry, I murmur, “Is surprising you . . . is that a bad thing?”

“Nah.” Black eyes flit from my naked thighs and then up, up, up to my face. I squirm under his intense stare, and all but pluck at the hem of my shorts to tug them as far down as they can go. His stare makes me feel exposed in a way that standing naked in front of a crowd never could. “Predictability is overrated.”

Something in his tone piques my curiosity. It’s the bitterness, I realize a moment later. It drips like the most toxic poison, forming in the twist of his mouth and hardening the glint in his gaze.

I sit up a little straighter. “Do you really think that?”

Sharply, he averts his face. Stares out at the crystalline bay and the green island beyond it. This part of Mount Desert Island is tucked away from the Atlantic Ocean, which means the waters in London are usually warmer than in other parts of the state.

Has Dominic made use of his private pathway down to the beach yet? It’s just there, right over the four-foot hedge separating our small, individual courtyards.

Until this moment, I hadn’t really given much thought as to how intimately our backyards are positioned. All it would take is one crook of his finger to invite me onto his side of the property . . .

“Predictability kills ambition.”

I cut my attention away from the bay and revert it back to his face. “I don’t agree.”

I watch as his jaw clenches, then releases. Like he’s making a controlled effort to go here with me—to be vulnerable.

“Give yourself three months in my shoes, Levi. You’d see it, too.”

“Then take me there.” I don’t know what I’m suggesting, what exactly I’m inviting him to open up to me about. Feeling a pinch in my heart, I drop my bare feet to the patio, feeling the rough texture of the bricks graze my soles. “You want me to see it from your perspective? Then make me see.”

He spears his fingers through his thick hair.

Then twists on his chair, too, so that we’re facing each other. His legs, so much longer than my own, rest on the outside of mine. This close to him, it’s hard to miss the thickness of his throat, the soft fullness of his lips, the overall harshness of the rest of his features. Put together with the all-black ensemble, and Dominic DaSilva should be a man I run far, far away from.

Instead, I scoot my butt forward. Allow my feet to extend out under his chair, between theVof his legs. Get all up in his business because this . . . I want to hear this. I spent years living with a man I thought I knew, only to realize that I didn’t know him at all.

Didn’t know why he stopped wanting me in the bedroom.

Didn’t understand why he chose to spend his time with people who weren’t his family.

Could never piece together how a man who vowed to love me until the day he died suddenly made me feel like I was a hindrance to his long-term plans.

Rick made me feel like an extra in his life, and when he wasn’t making me feel like a secondary cast member, he simply made me feel miserable. Hopeless.Helpless.

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