Those two words swirled around her mind for a second. He thumbed her lip and pulled it out from under her top teeth.
“There will be a next time. I didn’t mean for it to be over so soon, but it’s been a while.”
“A while?” She regarded him with raised brows.
He let her go, lying back on the floor with his hands behind his head. She admired the strong line of his body, the muscles along his torso and abdomen, the way his cock, even at half-mast, hadn’t lost any of its appeal.
“Define a while.”
“Longer than a jiffy.” He winked.
“Har har.”
His eyes closed and she watched the firelight play on his long dark lashes. Was it true? Was this powerful, gorgeous man single? Was he lonely? She sure as hell had been. Even when she’d dated, she’d suffered from bouts of deep, unmoored loneliness. The senselessness of her being lonely here and Chase being lonely there resonated in her chest. What could’ve been...
Is better off left unexamined.
“I’m starving. Coffee didn’t cut it this morning.” She’d said it partially to keep from asking him if he’d been lonely, and mostly to keep from talking about “next time.” Ideas of “next time” made her hungry in an entirely different part of her anatomy.
“I like that smile.” He tapped the edge of her lips. “I must’ve done well.”
Was it her or had his Texas drawl taken hold again?
“Shameless begging for compliments will not get you any. But I will make you breakfast.” She moved to stand, but he caught her arm with one hand and gently pulled her down.
“Brunch. It’s almost eleven.”
“We don’t have brunch in Bigfork. It’s breakfast and sometimes we eat breakfast for dinner.”
“I remember.”
Those two words settled in the air, simple but heavy. Proof that he knew her. Proof that he hadn’t been a mirage. And what they’d just done together was proof that she hadn’t imagined how good the sex used to be—dare she say it’d been better?
“You made pancakes one night.” His smile was reminiscent, his gaze soft. “Slathered them in peanut butter and called it dinner.”
She smiled at the memory. “You thought I was crazy.”
“No.” He looked at her, his smile fading some. “I was crazy about you. You could have fed me anything on those pancakes and I’d have eaten them.”
“We were crazy.” She shook her head. The days they hadn’t spent in the lake or on the beach or outside soaking in the summer sun, he’d been in her apartment—both of them wedged onto her twin bed against one wall of her bedroom. “My roommate complained so much about the noise we made, she was relieved when I followed you back to Texas.”
“I remember that, too.” His smirk was one of pride. He’d always loved being complimented on his prowess.
“Well. I promise no peanut butter pancakes. And eggs are out since you don’t have them.” She wrinkled her nose. “How can you not like a cheesy omelet?”
His mouth turned down. “Yuck.”
“You sounded like my five-year-old niece just then.”
“I have one, too. My niece is—” Pride pulled his lips into a smile. “She’s amazing. So small and beautiful and...just amazing.”
“How old is she?”
“Eleven months and change. Her birthday’s on Christmas Day. We were in the middle of a family Christmas, complete with ugly sweaters when Zach’s wife, Penelope, went into labor. I’ll never forget Olivia’s wide eyes and tiny fingers. Worth waiting for hours in the hospital for her to arrive.”
“Pretty name.” Miriam returned his smile. “My sister-in-law endured seventeen hours of hard labor and I spent most of it camped out in the cafeteria or the waiting room absolutely dying to know if she’d had a boy or a girl.”
“She kept it from you.”