His smile fades, but the intensity in his eyes remains. “I was telling the truth today. I never hated you, Aria. Not even when I really wanted to.”
The backs of my eyes go unexpectedly stingy as I whisper, “I never hated you, either.”
His lips—his beautiful, sexy lips—curve in a kind smile. “Then it sounds like we’re on the same page.”
I nod, but as we load into the truck and Nash aims it back across town to his place, I can’t help but wonder what page that is exactly.
Are we friends now?
Friends who are pretending to be married to help each other out?
That seems like what Nash was saying, but the potential energy simmering in the air between us doesn’t feel friendly. It feels alive with awareness and longing and dangerous possibilities.
My skin hums for the entire drive and is still humming an hour later after Nash and I have finished putting up the crib, filling the bureau in his spare room with Felicity’s clothes, and setting up the baby’s toy boxes.
The entire time, I’m keenly aware of every glance Nash casts my way, every time our hands accidentally brush. By seven thirty, when I finally escape to the bathroom to give Felicity a quick bath and get her changed into her sleeper, I’m a nervous wreck all over again.
Once Felicity is tucked in, it won’t be long until it’s time for Nash and I to go to bed, too, and so far, I’ve only seen one other bedroom, with one king-sized bed in it.
It’s an inviting bedroom, large, but still cozy feeling, with coffee-colored walls and a burgundy bedspread with a gold fleur di les design that’s masculine, but not in a boring way. The rest of the house bears warm touches as well—flowered curtains, decorative pillows on the big green couch, and a frilly potted plant in one corner by the window. Nash’s place is cute all over, but it’s the kitchen that grabbed my attention when we walked in, and the kitchen I return to when Felicity is tucked into her crib, chewing on her bunny’s ear as she drifts off to sleep.
I wander through the living room into the combined, kitchen-and-dining space, getting a closer look at the artwork crowding the walls. The wooden slabs used as canvases are different colors, but all are faded and worn, making me think they were sourced from various old buildings. They’re cool by themselves, but it’s the mixed media paintings that call me over for a second look.
Each piece features a different local animal—owl, deer, rabbit, hawk—but with the body parts made up of a mixture of oil paint and pieces of old machinery. There are cogs, wheels, engine parts, and other things you might find in a junkyard combined with paint in muted reds and blues. The effect is stunning on the old wood, and the animals alien, but playful at the same time.
They’re unlike anything I’ve seen before, but still strangely familiar.
I’m inches away from a painting of an owl with mufflers for wings and bicycle spokes for eyes, trying to figure out how I might be familiar with the artist’s work, when Nash rumbles from behind me, “Just pulled those out of the garage a few weeks ago. My ex hated them.”
“Really? I love…” I turn, losing the ability to form words when I spot Nash dressed in nothing but a pair of black pajama pants resting low on his hips.
He said he was going to grab a shower while I bathed Felicity in the guest bath, but I hadn’t expected him to change into something so…comfortable.
For him, anyway. The sight of his bare chest—that powerful, beautifully muscled, perfectly dusted-with-golden-hair chest—is making me feel a lot of things, but comfort sure as heck isn’t one of them.
“Yeah, she said they gave her the creeps.” Nash wanders over to the fridge, grabbing a beer from inside and lifting it into the air between us. “You want one?’
“No, thanks. But the, um…the paintings. I like them. A lot,” I stammer as he twists the top off the beer and perches on a stool at the kitchen bar.
I glance up at the ceiling, then down at the floor, forcing my gaze to focus anywhere but on Nash’s body. Anywhere but his perfectly rounded pectoral muscles and concave stomach and that six pack that, based on my brief examination, looks closer to an eight-pack. The man is built like a professional athlete, with a body designed to perform.
I’m doing my best not to imagine his body “performing” in a bedroom setting when he says—“Thanks. I only started painting again a few years ago. I’m rusty.”—and my jaw drops all over again.
“They’re yours?” I blink as he nods. “Oh my god, Nash, they’re stunning. I love them.”
He shrugs, looking pleased and a little embarrassed. “They’re all right, but I still have a long way to go. You know how it is, you only see the places where you didn’t paint it the way it was in your head.”