Page 27 of Star-Crossed
Cy Forrester “ran” from a handful of kids, catching the smallest beneath his arm and swinging him around in circles. His tousled ebony hair fell over his broad forehead and a playful smile split his full lips.
The children squealed in delight and scampered back toward him, chasing his big frame across the lawn.
He jogged more than he ran, adopting an uneven gait that made it easy for the little ones to keep up and “catch” him.
I’m for sure ovulating,she thought, feeling her entire body come alive beneath her light cotton dress. There was no other explanation for it.
She didn’t evenlikekids, usually. They were unpredictable and prone to vast quantities of excreta from every single one of their orifices.
Just…no.
And yet…
His capacity to roll around on the ground at play with children in the most unselfconscious of ways touched something in her. Something deeper than sexual.
Fucking biology and its stupid biological clock making bullshit. She was just in the prime baby-making season of her life, that was all. And her traitorous hormones got one whiff of this genetically gifted umber god and decided to dump every sex-demanding chemical directly into her bloodstream.
Well, she decided, she’d just have to counter those chemicals the old-fashioned way.
Day drinking.
Cy paused and looked up just then, finding her staring like a dick-addled THOT.
Their eyes locked, sending a lightning-hot shock through her spine.
His eyes were wide and his mouth was open with surprise at first, jaw slackened with panting breaths as he registered the dress. He blinked twice, standing like an oak tree as two persistent and wiggly crotch goblins tried to wrestle him to the ground.
He raised his hand in an almost hesitant wave.
Their gazes held for a few seconds too long, and Lyra did everything she could to suppress the warmth spreading through her chest as her heart rate quickened.
Managing a polite nod in his direction, she smoothed the skirt of her sundress and strode over to join Vee and Myrtle, hoping she appeared more composed than she felt.
“Gemma!” Marty greeted her warmly, standing to pull a chair out from under the table he shared with Vee, Myrtle, and his oldest daughter, Sheriff Kikisoblu “Kiki” Forrester. A woman with frizzy blonde hair that Lyra recognized as Cady Bloomquist’s mom, Sheila, sat at his elbow and tossed Lyra an incredibly welcoming smile.
“How’s things at the shop?” Marty asked.
Kiki spoke up before anyone else could correct him. “That’s Lyra, Dad. Gemma is the one who brings by art sets for the kids and looks like a walking Wes Anderson movie.”
Lyra laughed at that, noting that a breeze stole the notes of mirth and tossed them in the direction she was very carefullynotlooking right now.
“Oh,” Marty said with a sheepish grin. “Sorry. Never seen you out of a suit and your hair in that style my late wife used to call a headache ponytail.”
Lyra fought the urge to smooth the hair she’d blown out to fall loose to the middle of her back as she accepted the seat.
“Thought that today was a good day to let my proverbial hair down,” she said before draining the rest of her mimosa from her flute.
Better slow down…She drove herself here, and Townsend Harbor wasn’t big enough for Uber or Lyft. Old Ricky Crawford owned a taxi, but if she remembered correctly, it smelled like body odor and twenty years of driving drunk people home.
Though Lyra did her best not to look, her gaze was inevitably drawn back to Cy. He had rolled up the sleeves of his button-down shirt, revealing tanned, muscular forearms.
Not fucking fair.
“Lyra is running the new-age shop next to Gemma’s Bazaar Girls while she’s recovering from dating that douche-weasel she brought to your daughter’s wedding,” Myrtle explained to Sheila, who was nursing a bottled iced tea with a metal straw in a way that screamedsober.
Lyra didn’t know much about the woman—not enough to be embarrassed, anyhow. Gemma and Cady had been besties since junior high, when Cady had come to live with her aunt after Sheila’s latest drug-related incarceration.
Now, it seemed, the woman had cleaned up her act and was putting her life, and her relationship with her daughter, back together.
