“What do you think they’re up to?” Audrey asked as she put her book back in her purse.
He shrugged as he put his hands in his pockets. He did that a lot around Audrey to stop himself from reaching out and brushing a stray hair back behind her ear, or cupping her face just to feel the softness of her creamy skin…
Josh cleared his throat as he shook his head, trying to stop the direction his mind was headed. “I have no idea. But I guess if you think about it, they are sort of experts on being single.”
“That’s true.” Audrey chuckled.
“Excuse me.”
Josh looked over his shoulder and saw Gladys Hines, who was in a wheelchair after her hip surgery, wheeling by.
He took a step forward so that she had plenty of room. When he did, he ended up about an inch away from Audrey who lifted her chin, tilting her head back so she could look at him since he was more than a foot taller than her.
Josh was six foot four and Audrey was only five foot two. She was petite in frame but had curves in all the right places. His mind flashed back to two summers ago when she’d worn a bikini because she’d lost a bet to Viv. He’d spent plenty of time imagining what her hourglass figure would look like if it wasn’t hidden behind her usual baggy clothes, but nothing could have prepared him for what the reality was. Her flat belly and tiny waist were accented by the flare of her generous hips and she’d had every guy down at the riverside drooling over themselves.
As he stared down into her amber gaze, he felt himself being pulled by an invisible force as his heart rate increased. He was lowering his head closer and closer to her, only stopping when he felt her breath on his face. That’s when he realized what he was about to do and he stopped up short. Instead of following through, he put his arms around her and gave her a hug and a quick kiss on the forehead. It had been his go to move whenever he got caught in the gravitational pull that only she had over him.
“I need to go find Nonna. It’s late. I need to get her home.”
Audrey grinned and nodded, but he could see the confusion in her hazel eyes at his abrupt departure. As he walked away from her, he wanted nothing more than to turn back and erase that confusion by telling her exactly how he felt about her and how it took every ounce of self-restraint he had not to kiss her full red ruby lips, but he couldn’t do that.
He would never risk what they had. It was too special, too important, and she just meant too much to him to take the chance of losing her. So, there would probably be a lot more forehead kisses in their future, and he was okay with that. He had to be.