Chapter 7

“Dad, this is the third place.” Robert groaned. “I’m tired, and I’m hungry.”

I flicked a glance at Lucas’s face. His frustration at not finding a store that could accommodate him for the short-notice tux rental was evident in his tired eyes and downturned mouth. His son’s whining wasn’t helping the situation.

“Let’s see what their turn-around time is, Bobby-Boy. Then we can take a break. Okay?”

His answer was a typical teen’s: he shrugged and slammed his hands into his jeans’ pockets.

“Come on.” I walked into the store with the two of them behind me.

I’d spent years following in Eileen’s wake whenever the shopping bug hit her. She would flit from store to store, pick out a bunch of items, try them on and evaluate how she looked, and then we’d move on to the next store until she found exactly what she wanted. Since she never knew what it was until she found it, I was familiar with the shopping frustration both these men were suffering through.

I went up to the cashier’s desk and asked if they would be able to have a tuxedo ready in the time frame we needed and was told it wouldn’t be a problem. When I pointed to Lucas, the cashier repeated his statement.

“We get last-minute rental requests all the time and for all body types,” he told us, waving a hand in the air as if it weren’t an issue at all. For the first time in an hour, Lucas’s shoulders relaxed.

The cashier brought us to a fitter who asked about the type of suit and cut we were looking for. Lucas deferred to me on this, thankfully, because I didn’t think his “something that won’t make me feel like a sausage” was the description they were looking for.

The fitter escorted Lucas into a room to take his measurements, and Robert followed me while I browsed around the store.

“Your dad wants you to get a suit for Cathy’s wedding,” I said while I rifled through the hundreds of choices on the retail racks. “Do you have any idea what you want? Dark colored? Light? Patterned?”

His answer was another shrug.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He shook his head and glanced down at his sneakered feet.

It was obvious Robert had no siblings, and sisters most of all, because if he had he would have known it wasn’t in our makeup to let a crappy mood go by unchecked. I’d dealt with all kinds of temperaments and grumpiness from my own sisters my entire life. A cranky fifteen-year-old was nothing.

Ignoring his noncommunicativeness, I pulled jackets in various cuts and colors from the rack, chatting nonstop as I did. I’d ask him a question, then answer it myself. After I held up a series of jackets against his torso, he finally snapped out of his petulance and started voicing his opinions on what I’d shown him. I gave myself a mental high five when we found a suit in his size we both liked.

“Go try it on,” I told him.

Just as he was about to enter the fitting room, his father emerged.

Lucas Alexander was a man born to wear a uniform. He’d filled out his army fatigues and dress uniforms to perfection, every inch of broad shoulder and narrow waist outlined. Each time I saw him in his police uniform my knees grew soft. But bedecked in a midnight black, double-breasted tuxedo waistcoat with a starched white shirt under it, a black bow tie, and straight-edged trousers with a front pleat so defined and sharp you could slice a piece of cheese on them, the man could have stepped off a bridal-fashion-show runway.

Those shoulders spanning a yard from pad to pad were held snug and drew over bulging biceps to taper to his trim waist.

My vision narrowed and tunneled so all I could see was him. I think I gasped, audibly, because both father and son gaped at me, questions on their faces.

“What do you think?” Lucas asked me as he glanced from me to his son and back again. “Is this what Cathy’s looking for?”

“You look good, Dad.”

He thanked his son, but his attention remained on me. “Maureen? What do you think?”

There was no way I could answer truthfully and not make a total fool of myself. I wanted to tell him he was the handsomest man I’d ever seen, that I wished the tux was for our wedding instead of my sister’s, and I wanted nothing more than to rip it off him and jump into his arms.

Yeah, I can imagine what would have happened if I’d said all this, and not one scenario ended without me being sent to a psychiatric ward for observation.

So, I kept my truths to myself and told him, “I agree with Robert. It looks good. Exactly what Cathy is going for.”

The fact my voice shook and sounded as if I needed an inhaler I hoped would go unnoticed.

“You sure?” Lucas cocked one eyebrow to his hairline.

“Yes. It’s formal enough for her idea of the wedding without being over the top. Mac has a waistcoat, too, so I think this choice is the best.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

Father and son disappeared into their prospective dressing rooms. Alone now, I fell into a cushioned chair and fanned myself. Thank God I’d seen Lucas in his tux before the wedding. I was going to be nervous enough as it was on the big day. If I’d gotten my first gander at him looking like an old-fashioned movie star from the 1930s come to life right before walking down the center of the church, I can be sure I would have tripped going up the aisle, my focus and every thought centered on the man.

Robert emerged from the dressing room first. He’d donned the trousers with his beat-up sneakers still on, and the jacket over his T-shirt. If the look he was going for was baby-rock-star wannabe, he’d met the requirements. I wanted to tell him how adorable he was but knew I’d embarrass him if I did.

“How does the fit feel?” I asked when he went to stand in front of the tri-mirror. “Not too tight? Not too loose anywhere?”

“It feels good. Like it fits, you know? Does it look okay?”

“It looks great, and you look good in it.”

Lucas walked out of the dressing room in time to hear me.

“Maureen’s right,” he said, going to stand behind his son so they both faced the mirror. “The pants need to be hemmed a bit, but it looks good on you. Do you like it?”

He shrugged as an answer. I called a fitter over, and he checked the fit personally, agreeing the pants needed to be shortened.

“They’re working on my tux now and said it would be ready in about an hour. Can you do the same for the pants so we can take both home with us?” Lucas asked.

He was told it was no problem. While Robert went to change, Lucas went to pay.

Once we were all done, Robert asked again about getting something to eat. “There’s a food court here,” he said. “We could grab something fast.”

“I don’t feel like fast food,” Lucas told him.

Robert went into hangry-teen mood again. I was all set to say it didn’t matter to me where we ate, but Lucas rolled over me.

“I don’t think you’re gonna die from hunger if we skip the food court and go someplace where we can sit down for a bit,” Lucas said, “and eat something a little more nutritious than chicken nuggets. Besides, Maureen did us a big favor by coming to help and offering her advice, so I’d like to treat her to someplace nicer than a fast-food taco stand.”

I started to say it wasn’t necessary, but Lucas shot me his penetrating glare, and I bit back the words.

“Agreed?” he asked, turning back to his son, when I kept silent.

The boy’s mood changed on a dime. He shot me a quick look, perked up a bit, and nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. Sorry.”

“Come on, then. Let’s go look for a sit-down place,” Lucas said.

For a late afternoon on a Thursday, the mall was packed, and we were forced to bob and weave between the crowds until we found a nice family-style restaurant. A smiling maître d’ escorted us to a table, gave us menus, and told us our server would be with us shortly.

As it happened, I sat between father and son, Lucas on my right, Robert across from him on my left.

“I’m starving,” Robert mumbled when he opened his menu.

I bumped his shoulder with my own. “You’re always starving,” I said, with a smile. “Just like your father. A walking appetite.”

“What does Fiona always say?” Lucas asked. “Apples and trees?”

I laughed. “That, and a million other things that hit it right on the head.”

After our middle-aged waitress arrived and took our orders, Lucas leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table.

“Thank you again for coming and helping us out,” he said. “I haven’t worn a tux since prom.” He chuckled. “The cut and the price have changed dramatically since then, that’s for sure.”

Robert snorted at his father’s words, then flushed scarlet.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

He lifted his head, glanced once at this father and then me, then dipped his chin again. “Nothing.”

“Oh, I think it was something.” I snuck a side eye at Lucas and grinned. “You’re trying to imagine your father at prom, aren’t you, and can’t quite picture it, can you, Bobby-Boy?”

Little grin lines popped up on his cheeks as he tried not to smile back.

“I’ll have you know I looked pretty damn good at my senior prom,” Lucas said, mild pique slipping through his tone. “I was even voted Prom King.”

“Dad.” Robert shook his head. “That’s so lame.”

I was barely able to keep my laugh at bay. “Chief of Police Lucas Alexander at eighteen. You should have seen him, Robert. Decked out in a blue velvet tux with a frilly baby-blue shirt and bow tie, his long hair slicked back like he jumped off a 1950s teen idol magazine, a pint of dime store cologne wafting from him.”

I lost the small thread of control I still had when Robert burst out laughing.

Lucas’s feeble “Hey!” of indignation made us laugh harder.

Our drinks arrived and while the waitress handed them out, Robert and I tried to control ourselves.

We did a pretty poor job of it.

“You didn’t really wear a velvet tux, did you?” Robert asked his father.

“I think I can hunt up Cathy’s prom pictures as proof. Colleen probably has them in the family albums at the house. I’ll ask her tomorrow.”

“Yes, I did, Robert, and you should know I rocked it. Why do you think the whole class voted me king?”

“Because everyone felt sorry for you, showing up in a velvet tux?”

Robert had taken a sip through his straw and, at my words, laughed so hard he choked, then spit out his soda when it went up his nose, the moisture raining down all over the table.

Unfortunately, this only made me laugh harder. I don’t know who Lucas gave the more stern warning glare to: his son or me.

“What did Mom wear?” Robert asked when he finally composed himself.

Lucas winced.

I answered for him. “He and your mom had broken up, so he took Shelly Bookerman, the biggest flirt in the class.” I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “Shelly had a huge crush on your dad and had been after him for all of high school to pay attention to her. Followed him whenever he was in the halls, always tried to sit near him in the lunchroom. Went to all the football games, home and away, to cheer him on. She must have thought she’d died and gone to Heaven—the real one—when you finally asked her out,” I added, addressing Lucas.

“Dad.”

Lord, was there anything worse than hearing a teenager’s voice filled with censure? Or funnier?

Lucas hadn’t heard him. Or if he had, he chose to ignore it, his attention focused solely on me.

“First of all, how do you even know that? You were, what? Ten, when I was a senior?”

“Nine, and how do you think I know? Cathy, of course.”

“I can’t see her discussing me with you when you were a kid.”

“She didn’t, not exactly. But she and Danny did all the time. You were the topic of their couch conversation on more than one occasion.”

“And you, what? Just happened to overhear them?”

“To be truthful, it was more Eileen than me. She was a major eavesdropper, especially with anything Cathy-related. But she always shared what she overhead.”

I grinned and took a long pull of my water. “Your dating life was a wicked hot topic to twin nine-year-old girls living in a house of women. Daddy didn’t count because he was at work so much. You and Danny were the brothers we didn’t have but so desperately wanted.”

“Brothers?” The same tone he’d used in my dayroom laced the word. I couldn’t tell if he was amused, annoyed, or just trying to imagine what having bothersome little sisters would have been like. Either way, the heat blasting my way was incredibly arousing. I lifted a shoulder and took another sip of my drink in a feeble attempt to cool down my raging insides.

“So you and Mom fought even back then?” Robert asked, shifting Lucas’s attention.

A weary breath blew from between his lips. “We were kids, son. We didn’t have a lot of control over our emotions. Neither one of us had ever been away from Heaven, and we imagined the world revolved around each of us. You know your mom. She gets…upset. Easily, about stuff.”

“What did you do to make her so upset she broke up with you before prom?”

He shook his head. “In all honesty, I don’t even remember.”

“He enlisted,” I said, “just a few weeks before prom and graduation.”

His eyes narrowed at me. To the question in them, I explained, “Remember? Both you and Danny signed up on the same day. Cathy cried but realized it was what Danny wanted. What he’d always dreamed of. Nora”—I flicked a glance at Robert than back to his father—“didn’t.”

Lucas closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. To Robert he said, “She hated that I’d joined the army. Told me if I wanted to go halfway around the world just to get myself blown up she didn’t want to see me anymore. Since I’d already bought the tickets…” He lifted his shoulder.

“Shelly Bookerman swooped in.” I chuckled at the expression on Lucas’s face. It didn’t take someone attuned to the nuances of facial tics to know he was remembering how she’d followed him from homeroom the morning after the news spread about him and Nora. Cathy, via Eileen, had laughed with Danny over how Shelly had been sympathetic about their parting of ways, and then said how much it would be a shame if Lucas went stag, or worse, not at all. Before he knew it, she’d invited herself to go along as his date.

“But you and Mom got back together eventually,” Robert said. “I mean, obviously. You must have realized how much you loved each other.”

I didn’t think Robert knew the real reason his parents had married, and I wasn’t about to elucidate him on the circumstances. It wasn’t my place, nor was it something I think Lucas realized I knew.

It had been Eileen, the master of snoopiness and font of overheard conversations, who’d told me, after listening to a phone call between Danny and Cathy. On home for a few weeks at Christmas one year, Lucas, Danny, and Cathy had gone bar hopping. Since this was Heaven, a town that only boasted three places you could actually call a bar, it hadn’t been unusual to run into several of their old friends.

Nora had been among them.

Whether alcohol-infused or simply one more time for old times’ sake before he shipped back out, Lucas and Nora had gone home to her apartment. Three months later, Lucas came back to town and the two of them were married at City Hall. Robert was born at the end of the summer.

Telling your teenaged son you’d done the honorable thing by marrying the high school sweetheart you’d impregnated wasn’t something, I felt, suitable for dinner conversation.

Lucas must have agreed, because to answer his son, he said, “I always loved your mom. Even with all the craziness and breakups we went through. I always will, because we got you out of the bargain. You were the best thing to come of our being married.”

“Dad.” Robert hung his head again and shook it, his neck flushing.

“Whatever happened between your mom and me, Rob, happened. Just know how much I love you.”

I swallowed and concentrated on my soda glass when tears threatened. Luckily, our food arrived and conversation suspended while it did.

While I cut my burger in half, Robert remained silent and motionless, his hands resting on the table on either side of his plate. Nanny is the queen at changing the temperature in awkward and emotional moments by inserting a humorous quip or making a bizarre statement to jolt people out of the moment.

I channeled her when I said, “Let this be a cautionary tale, Bobby-Boy, against renting a blue velvet tux for your own prom. Basic black is the way to go every time. Women drool over a man in a black, well-cut tuxedo. Trust me on this.”

When Robert lifted his head, a smile so like his father’s whipping across his face, I sent up a silent thank-you to Nanny. One glance at Lucas and my own smile wobbled.

His eyes had narrowed and gone half closed again, his head tilted a hair to the left and his mouth—dear God, his mouth! The seductive and secretive smirk pulling at his lips was almost my undoing. I stopped cutting my burger, the knife dropping from my hand to the plate with a resounding clang. My right leg began to bob under the table, a nervous tic from childhood whenever I knew I was about to be scolded, rearing itself.

“What?” I asked him.

He blinked, once, slowly and purposefully, those tiny dimples at the corner of his mouth deepening as his smirk grew to a one-sided grin. “Nothing. Eat, before that gets cold.” He pointed at my plate with his knife.

The rest of the meal moved smoothly with Lucas asking his son about his plans for his junior year in high school and regaling us with funny tales about some of the strangest arrests he’d made in our little town. When the waitress brought his receipt back after he’d paid, she smiled, thanked him for the tip, and as we got up to leave, said, “It’s so nice to see teenagers still go out to eat with their parents.” She laughed and added, “Mine didn’t want to have anything to do with me and my hubby once they turned fourteen. You have a lovely family. Enjoy the rest of your night.”

One glance at Robert and I could tell by the way he hung his head again, his shoulders drooping, he hadn’t been happy with the declaration. I didn’t dare look at Lucas as we walked, single file, out of the restaurant. My mind was a jumble of thoughts, my body thrumming with emotions. I kept them to myself as we walked back to the rental store.

While both men went to try on their altered items one more time to ensure everything was to specifications, I ambled about the store, lost in my thoughts, imagining a life where Lucas and I were married and Robert was truly my son.

And imagining was all I was ever going to do about it, I knew. Lucas may have loved me like a good friend, but there was nothing romantic about our relationship and never would be. I’d resigned myself to it long ago.

Back in the car with the garment bags stowed in the back, the three of us were fairly silent on the drive home. Even though I wanted to make light of what the waitress had said, I was nervous bringing the subject up. I didn’t want to cause Robert and Lucas any embarrassment. I wasn’t a wife, nor a mother, and certainly neither to these two.

It was almost seven thirty when Lucas pulled into the inn’s circular driveway.

“Well, that was a productive afternoon,” I said as I unbuckled my belt and forced a smile.

“I’ll walk you in.” Lucas put the car in park.

“There’s no need. I’m a big girl. I’ll see you both tomorrow.”

Sometimes I forget how stubborn this man is.

“Sit tight,” he told his son. His long legs beat me to the front door, which he pushed open and held for me.

Even though it was still early, the inn was quiet. I made my way back to the empty kitchen to find a note on the table from Sarah informing me all had gone well during the afternoon.

“Well, that’s good. No catastrophes while I was away.”

“Just proves what I was saying yesterday. You can take some time for yourself now and then, and the walls won’t come tumbling down if you do.”

I rolled my eyes and moved away from him. Before I could get far, he wove a hand around my arm and pulled me back.

“What? What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Why do you always ask that?” The hint of irritation in his voice showed in the lines furrowing his forehead.

“You mean aside from the fact you’re scowling at me right now?”

His skin instantly smoothed, and a calming breath blew through his lips.

Holding my gaze, he took a step closer and dropped his hand.

“Nothing is wrong,” he said, each word emphasized. “I wanted to thank you again for coming with me today. I know you had to rearrange a bunch of stuff to do so.”

I shrugged and tried to take a step back. When Lucas was this close, I had a difficult time keeping my emotions from galloping across my face. But the magnetic pull of his eyes held me in place.

“And you can’t know how much I appreciate it. Or how much I appreciate what you’ve done for Robert. The kid is so different whenever he’s around you. Less moody, more talkative. Today was the most I’ve heard him laugh since he got here. And it’s because of you. You make him…feel happy.”

My heart skipped in my chest.

“He laughed so much because he was picturing you in a velvet tuxedo,” I said to mask my pleasure at his words. I grinned up at him and added, “I’m gonna call Colleen tomorrow to see if she can hunt up those pictures so I can show him.”

He squinted down at me, and my knees got all kinds of wobbly.

“You’re not the only one around here who remembers proms gone by, you know.”

“What does that mean?”

He took a step closer, and I swear my body temperature went up a good ten degrees from sharing his natural heat.

“I have a vivid memory of you at seventeen wearing an extremely revealing dress resembling a slip more than a prom gown.”

A flash of the dress in question crossed the front of my mind. “At least it wasn’t a velvet tuxedo.”

He ignored the jibe. “I’d stopped by the house to speak to your sister, and you came down the stairs, all ready to be picked up by your date.”

“Tick Jones.” So named because he was the most annoying boy in our class, and when anyone even so much as glanced at him, he stuck like glue, happy to have a friend. Even if they were a friend in his mind only. I’d agreed to go with him because he was the only boy who asked me. Eileen, of course, had gotten several requests.

Lucas nodded. “You were wearing a pale purple dress with the thinnest of straps and a slit up the side almost to your ass. I told Cathy I was surprised your father was letting you out of the house in it. You didn’t look anywhere near seventeen.”

I’d loved the dress the minute I saw it in a store in Concord. Eileen had as well.

“My sister was wearing the same dress, you know. Hers was pink. Did you complain about how inappropriate you thought hers was to Cathy, too?”

He shook his head. “I never even noticed your sister. All I could see was…you.”

His voice dropped on the last word, and a hot bullet of desire dropped along my insides.

He cocked his head and asked, “Did Jones ever tell you what I said to him before you all left?”

“Said? N-no. I didn’t even know you’d spoken to him.”

“You went upstairs to grab your bag or something you’d forgotten. I cornered Jones and told him I remembered what it was like being a seventeen-year-old boy on prom night. Sneaking liquor or beers around the back of the high school gym. Maybe passing around a little weed. Some guys even have certain expectations of how the evening is gonna end. The expense of the tux rental, the limo, the corsage. It puts ideas into their head that’s cause, maybe even justification, for some kind of…payback from their date.”

I knew exactly what kind of payback he was referring to.

“Oh, good Lord, tell me you didn’t.”

His eyes went to half-mast, his lips curling at the corners in a predatory smirk. “Oh, I did. And I added if he didn’t return you to your house on time for the curfew your parents set, looking and smelling exactly the way you had when you left with him, he was gonna answer to me come the morning.”

Why I wasn’t angry at this Neanderthal behavior surprised me because I should have been. Lucas had been almost twenty-six then, had already completed two tours in the army, married Nora, and Robert was on the way. He was miles ahead of the boys in my high school in world experience.

And as a man now of the world, he’d felt it was his duty to protect someone he regarded as a little sister. I couldn’t be mad at him, but it did, however, explain certain things about prom night I’d mulled over afterward. Like how Tick, whose real name was John Alan, had his eyes glued to his watch all night long. In an era before cell phones were as common as colds, we’d never known the time without one. Tick had checked his watch from the moment we arrived at the gym and had rechecked it every few minutes thereafter. He’d stayed, as his horrible nickname implied, stuck to my side the entire night. He hadn’t even left me alone when I’d snuck off to the bathroom. He’d followed behind and waited for me outside the door. He’d neither interacted nor spoke to anyone else at our table, including my sister who could make an igneous rock talk back to her if she put her mind to it.

When the dance ended, a few people stated they were driving up to Eagle Rock to have an after party, drink, spend the night, and watch the sun rise. Tick had grabbed my hand and escorted me to the limo he’d rented. Eileen’s date wanted to go with the throng, but even though she was a rebel in many ways, she never blatantly disobeyed an edict from our father and ditched the after-party idea, hopping into my limo. Her date had gone on with the others.

Tick walked us both to the door, and after Eileen disappeared inside, I waited to see if he’d kiss me goodnight. He hadn’t, tossing me a quick “Thanks for going with me” over his shoulder while he ran back to the car.

Monday, and for the rest of high school, he’d look away whenever he saw me coming down the hallways.

“That poor boy.” I shook my head. “You put the fear of God into him for no reason. He was totally harmless.”

“Oh, there was plenty of reason, Maureen. Like I said, I remember what it was like being a seventeen-year-old. Raging hormones and sense of entitlement run rampant. Plus…”

“Plus what? You just wanted to act like a big, badass army ranger in front of a pitiful teenager? Assert your macho manliness? God, Lucas, I can’t believe you. John Alan Jones was never a threat to me or any teenage girl. He was gay. Everyone knew it, but since he wasn’t out yet, we all left it unsaid.”

He had the grace to look slightly abashed. In a heartbeat, that changed. “I didn’t do it for the reasons you think I did, Maureen.”

“Why then? Why torture a poor boy and make me feel even more inadequate? More lacking?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Tick was the only boy to ask me to prom. Remember the conversation we had yesterday about me being the boring twin? Well, despite what you think, I was. Eileen had guys falling over themselves to take her. I didn’t. Just when it looked like I’d have to either go alone and be mortified at being dateless or stay home, John Allan asked me. Do you have any idea how pathetic and unworthy I felt at seventeen? How I felt”—I flapped my hands in the air—“less than my sister or any of my friends?”

“Maureen—”

“No, Lucas, you had no right to say those things to him. I was more safe with John Allan Jones than I’d have been with any other boy in my class. It wasn’t your responsibility to make sure I was. I wasn’t your younger sister or a little girl or anything else you can dream up to justify needing your he-man protection. I’m still not.”

The silence following my angry tirade was thunderous.

My chest heaved, banging against my ribcage with every jagged breath I hauled in. The pulse at Lucas’s neck visibly slammed against his skin with the rapid beat of his heart, our gazes locked and holding. I couldn’t decide if he was angry and pissed off because I’d called him out on his overprotective, unnecessary behavior, or mad at himself for what he’d done.

“No, you’re not,” he whispered, darkly. “You’re certainly not my sister, and you’re not a little girl anymore. If you were, I couldn’t do this.”

Before I could ask what he meant, he cupped my cheeks in his palms and tilted my head upward. With his hot gaze locked onto mine, I knew he meant to kiss me.

Part of my brain screamed for him not to, arguing if he did it would change everything between us. I couldn’t allow this, had to fight it.

The other part commanded I shut the hell up and kiss him back like I’d been wanting to for a lifetime.

Funny—that voice sounded an awful lot like Nanny’s.

My pulse drummed in my ears and my vision tunneled in on his mouth right before he touched his lips to mine.

Lucas’s kiss was everything I’d always fantasized it would be: hard and commanding, yet silky smooth and seductive.

Any protests the logical part of my brain continued to bellow I simply disregarded. Powerless against the rush of emotions surging through me, I simply gave in and let Lucas take control.

The pads of his thumbs caressed my jaw as his mouth moved across mine, learning the contours, memorizing the feel. Tiny tingles, like champagne bubbles popping, burst over my mouth. A subtle shift and he tilted my head back. With a gentle swipe of his tongue, he slipped through my lips and mated with mine. Each intimate tug caused a raging river of erotic sensations to flow through me from head to curling toes. My panties grew tight, my lower body swelling against them, begging for relief, clamoring for it.

I slid my palms up the boulder hardness of his chest to curl around his neck and thread into the coarse, thick pelt of his hair. I stretched up on my toes, barely touching the ground with the tips while I pressed in tight against his body. A body thrumming with desire.

It was impossible to think. Impossible to move. I’d waited a lifetime to discover this man’s touch, yearned for it when I knew I shouldn’t.

His hands roamed down to cup my butt, palmed it through my jeans, and molded me even more against him. His chest wasn’t the only thing hard or throbbing.

The simple notion this man wanted me was overpowering, and I couldn’t prevent the moan of pleasure that broke from within me.

At the sound, Lucas stilled. The drum of both our hearts beating was audible in the quiet surrounding us.

Then, with torturous slowness, he moved back from the kiss, deliberately waiting to slide his hands from my backside until I stood surefooted.

Our gazes locked, held. There was an unfathomable question crossing his eyes.

His mouth was swollen and wet from kissing me, and when he swiped his tongue across his bottom lip, my eyes went wide. I dragged my fingers across my own lips, still able to taste him.

I backed away from him, stopping only when my hip hit the counter edge, still staring at him.

Lucas took a step toward me. “Maure—”

“Dad?”

He spun around to face Robert. The boy stood in the doorway, staring at the two of us, a look of bewilderment on his face.

“You coming, or what? I’ve been waiting, like, forever.”

“Yeah, son. Yeah.” He shook his head like a dog shucking water. “I was just talking to Maureen about…something.” He turned back to me. Swallowed. “We should go.”

I summoned up a smile for Robert, hoping it appeared natural.

“See you tomorrow morning, Bobby-Boy.”

He tossed me a quizzical eye flick and a nod.

With one last head bob at me, Lucas placed a hand on his son’s shoulder and walked him out.

It was as if he’d taken all the air, all the energy in the room, and me, with him.

When I was finally alone in my kitchen, I let out a slow, deep breath and slid down into one of my chairs, my legs finally giving out.

I dropped my head down onto the table and closed my eyes.