“Need your affirmative,” Lance clipped.
“My affirmative?” I repeated.
Great, I’d gone from talking about my underwear and his muscles to just repeating everything he said.
Granted, I wasn’t fluent in badass speak. Pig Latin, yes. My son’s imaginary language he created before he spoke real words, totally. But hot guy speak? Nope.
“That you’ll sit your ass in this car, doors locked, wait for me, then leave,” he expanded, sounding seriously pissed at my lack of fluency in his language.
“Oh, ten four rubber ducky,” I replied, doing a little salute.
Kill. Me. Now.
Something ticked in his jaw, probably utter annoyance that he was stuck with a woman who seemed like she was experiencing some kind of brain injury that made her act like a total dork.
He held onto my eyes and my sanity for a moment longer before he stepped back and closed the door.
I exhaled.
But he was still standing there, waiting for something.
Oh, the locks.
Only when I did lock them did he walk away.
“I got him,” a voice said from behind me.
I jumped because although I’d heard, seen and drooled over him pulling up behind me in my driveway, illuminated by the streetlights, I didn’t expect him to be right behind me, close enough for his breath to tickle my neck.
I hadn’t expected him to move from the bike. He didn’t seem like he enjoyed my company and since my son was unconscious, it was just me.
He was meant to be ‘surveillance’. I didn’t know what the heck that meant, I’d watched cop shows. Wasn’t that just sitting in an Escalade eating snacks?
But he didn’t have an Escalade, he had a Harley and no way a man who looked like that binged on any kind of processed snacks.
Or maybe he did, he could just have a monster metabolism.
So that’s what I did, sat in my driveway thinking about what Lance snacked on while staring at him sitting on the bike. That was until I realized exactly what I was doing and the fact that Lance was watching me and likely wondering what in the fresh hell I was doing sitting here staring while my son was in the back, head in that unnatural and uncomfortable looking position all kids adopted when they fell asleep in cars.
That’s when I jumped out of the car, scolding myself for making my son sleep with his chin touching his chest, possibly damaging his little neck and sitting in a cheap car seat while I perved at a man I had no chance with and no business perving at.
And somewhere in my journey around the car where I forced myself not to look in his direction, he’d managed to get off his bike, walk up my driveway and stand behind me just before I was about to lift Nathan and take him inside.
I turned, taking in Lance covered in shadows. He was wearing a leather jacket.
I was not allowed to notice or think about how frickin’ hot he looked in that leather jacket.
“You don’t have to,” I said, my voice lowered only slightly because Nathan could sleep through a small pipe bomb going off. “I’m used to it.”
“Didn’t ask if you were used to it, said I got him.”
The words were harsh, just like his profile. His presence.
Was I really gonna let a guy that spoke with that harshness, embody that harshness, carry my son in his arms into my frickin’ house?
I stepped aside.
Apparently I was.
I was officially a terrible fucking mother.
But my heart melted at the tender and gentle way he picked up my son, somehow natural.
With a tight throat, I closed the door for him, starting to dig for my house keys from my purse and walked toward the house.
“Do you want coffee? Tea? Water? Grape Kool-Aid? I’m sorry, I don’t have beer, or bourbon, or whisky, or any kind of tough guy drink. Or any alcohol at all, really,” I babbled, not quite sure to do with myself standing awkwardly in the middle of my living room with the hottest guy to ever exist standing right in front of me.
I wished I had alcohol in the house. I needed it. But I couldn’t even afford the cheap wine for another two days. Whoever said that they didn’t drink being a single mother was a liar or a frickin’ saint.
I needed something to dull the edges, and the cheapest red at the supermarket didn’t exactly go down smooth but it worked well enough.
Karen and Eliza were always ‘accidentally’ buying my favorite red when they only drank white.
It embarrassed me, but I also accepted it. Because I wasn’t going to let the wine go to waste and I knew that Karen and Eliza had good hearts and wanted to help.
Lance just shook his head to my offer.
Shit.
“What about a snack?” I offered, immediately regretting it thinking of the lack of anything that would be acceptable in my pantry to serve to an Adonis. “I mean, I mostly have kid stuff, but I can make you peanut butter crackers. Nathan loves them. His friends do too. Not that I’m saying that you’re anything like a bunch of five-year-old boys but everyone likes peanut butter, right? It’s protein.”