Page 48 of His Best Friend's Baby

“You scared him,” Julia explained needlessly.

“Great.” He rested his head against the back of the chair. “I’ve always wanted a career in the circus, frightening kids.”

“You’re…you’re bleeding,” Julia said and, slowly, so as to keep his brain from sliding out his mouth, Jesse lifted his head. “Your nose.” She pointed uselessly at her own lovely nose.

He touched the back of his hand to his pained nostrils and his hand came away red and wet.

“Here.” A handful of tissue appeared under his chin. “I’ve got a diaper, too, if that—”

He snatched the tissues, careful to not touch her with his messy hands. “Thanks,” he muttered. “Hopefully the Huggies won’t be necessary.” His lip curved at that ridiculous image. He’d really look scary with a diaper stuck to his nose. He heard her soft chuckle and his body went tense, hard. He’d tasted her last night in that terrible, wonderful dream and that taste, salty and hot, tipped his tongue and filled his fuzzy brain with a biting want. He did what he could to clean himself up with the tissues.

He heard the rattle of a toy and Julia whispered, “Here you go, buddy. It’s yummy.”

Julia gave her son a small pinch of a brownie. Soon, frosting covered the boy’s face and hands, but his smile was wide. Jesse felt himself smile back.

“He looks like Mitch,” he said stupidly, and the happy little scene in front of him shattered as though he’d taken a sledgehammer to it.

“That’s what everyone says.” Julia’s own smile disappeared. She stood and Ben sat on the floor, playing with a toy train and licking frosting off his cheeks. “I think he looks like himself.”

She tilted her head as if testing her assessment and then she looked up at Jesse, skewering him with her blue, blue eyes.

That look—that level gaze that somehow saw all the cheap things he’d ever done and then forgave him for them in the same instant—reduced him to something so elemental, so simple, so forgotten, he didn’t know how to handle it.

He looked down at his bloodied hands, at the ruined tissues.

“Here,” she murmured. Laughter like sugar dusted her voice. “You missed some.”

Before he could stop her, before he even knew what she intended, she stood beside his chair and licked her thumb and used it to clean a spot on his chin and neck.

“You should go to the hospital, or something.”

He didn’t answer, just stared, like some kind of green boy in front of his first woman, at the soft sweet swell of her breasts against her pink T-shirt. Her fingers brushed his flesh, grazed the corner of his lips, his whiskers, the erotically sensitive skin of his neck.

He went hard in a painful heartbeat.

“Thanks.” He stood, brushing away her hand. “Uh…what are you doing here?”

She swallowed, looking uncomfortable, and if there were ever a moment to rid himself of her, this was it. He could turn her kindness to ice in one moment. One terrible word aimed right at her tender heart. He looked at Julia’s bowed head and the boy playing at her feet and knew he didn’t have any more pretending left. He wasn’t going to kick her out. He wanted her here.

The quicksand was rising and if she pushed the slightest bit, looked too long, stood too close, what would happen? Where would his weakness lead him? He didn’t care anymore.

Before his eyes, she squared her shoulders and looked him straight on. She seemed to grow taller. The air changed and Jesse’s sense of danger went on high alert.

Julia was here on a mission. And he feared that mission was him.

“There are some things I’d like to talk to you about,” she said.

“I said everything I needed to say yesterday,” he told her, using the last of his bravado.

“Good.” She grinned. “Then you won’t interrupt while I talk.”

This was it. The moment he’d been running from since she’d shown up on his porch. Well, he was just too damn tired to fight it.

His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t had solid food in far too many hours.

“Can we do this in the kitchen?” he asked, wanting to have something to do during this conversation. A distraction from his desire.

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