Page 52 of Sunshine
My head jerks up, searching her expression for a sign that she’s teasing me, but the flush in her cheeks and her short shallow breaths don’t look like ridicule. They look like lust.
“Are you serious?” I ask.
“Very.” She takes a step closer and picks up my hand. “And I think,” she continues, “we’re in trouble.”
fifteen
Poppy
We’re in trouble. Somuch trouble. Because we didn’t just cross a line today. We blew straight past it. Literally. And I’m not sure there’s a way to walk it back.
I’m less sure that I want to.
But I’m certain I don’t have the willpower to even try.
By the time we return to the truck, Dylan needs to get back to the restaurant, so I run my errands alone. I pass the hours in a type of stunned haze, replaying the morning over and over like I might forget that I madeDylan Davenportcome in his pants. Why does that make me feel kind of powerful? And why was it so freaking hot?
I pick up Izzy from school and take her to her trumpet lesson. We call Dylan on the way, and Izzy chatters from the back seat while I drive, telling us all about her new school, potential friends, and possibly her first wobbly tooth. Bottom line: she’s happy.
Thank the freaking universe.
Today’s music class is Izzy’s third, and after I wave goodbye, I do the same thing I’ve done the last two weeks. I roam thecampus, feeling less like an intruder than I did the first time I was here, and lose myself in an entirely different unreality. One where I’m the kind of woman who can handle books and learning. Someone with the smarts she needs to come here every day and work toward something wonderful. The type of person who understands numbers and theories and walks out of here with a cap on her head, a diploma in her hand, and the confidence to run her own business. Build her own brand.
As impatient as I am to get back to Dylan, Izzy and I always go for milkshakes on Mondays, and a predictable routine helps with her anxiety. So, it’s just before six p.m. when we walk through the restaurant doors, nervous anticipation fluttering in my throat and stomach.
But then Dylan steps out of the kitchen and into the dining room, and I cover a choked-up laugh with one hand. Izzy looks up at me with a puzzled frown, and I nod toward her father. He’s wearing a tall, white chef’s hat instead of his usual scruffy man-bun-in-a-scrunchie, and I don’t know why it’s so funny—he actually looks kind of sexy—but I’m a child, and I find it humorous.
The restaurant is empty and not yet open for dinner, so Dylan spots us almost immediately. An amused smirk curls his mouth in a way that, after today, will always look dirty, and he crosses the room in a hurry to swing Izzy up in a hard hug.
“Hey, Little Bee! I missed you.”
She returns Dylan’s embrace with a short, sharp squeeze around his neck, then pokes at the soft cotton tower on his head. “Why are you wearing this?”
Dylan looks up as if he can see his own hat. “I lost my hair tie, and it was either this or a hair net, and I can’t pull that off. Why? Don’t you like it?”
Izzy shoots me a conspiratorial grin. “Poppy thinks it’s funny.”
“Does she?” Dylan’s glance warms me for only a second before it bounces away again, and he sets Izzy down with a love tap on her tush. “Why don’t you sit at our table while I organize dinner? There might even be a new set of pencils and an origami set waiting for you.”
“Oh, and a sticker book,” I add, giving Dylan a friendly but still highly amused smile. “Don’t forget the sticker book.”
Dylan fights a grin and tucks his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. There’s a charged buzz between us. An energy that could light up this entire restaurant.
“Right,” Dylan agrees. “And a sticker book. Oh, and a book about wild cats.”
Izzy’s expression gets brighter with each revelation, and her cheeks look about to burst when we get to the part about the book. Wild cats are her thing this week.
“Did you know that snow leopards are more closely related to tigers than other leopards?” she asks. “And they can’t roar, but they’ve got fur between the pads on their paws to protect them against the snow.”
She runs off before we can reply. Dylan and I watch her fly across the room, a tiny hurricane in navy tartan that falls on the stack of activities on her usual table.
“So.” Dylan turns toward me, and I don’t realize how close I’ve been standing until that one small movement puts us almost chest to chest. Suddenly I’m extra-aware of his body heat and the scent of his cologne, the way he towers over me, the hard plane of his chest, the ridged lines of his crossed forearms and the fine bones of his wrists and hands. “You don’t like the hat, huh?”
“The hat?” I pretend that he’s not turning my brain to mush and my veins into raging conduits of pure, burning need. “It looks kind of like a penis on your head.”
Dylan snorts and swipes at his hat, running his other hand through his flattened hair. “Better?”
“Much,” I fib because now I kind of prefer it on—and he knows it.
