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  “Since we’re doing the apology deal,” she went on, “I owe you one for putting you through that visit. I should have arranged for Monte to go with me. I didn’t know your history with Lou.” But then she shrugged. “Of course, then the kiss wouldn’t have happened, and I haven’t been able to muster up any regrets over that.”

  “You should muster up some.” Just like that, the relief and any trace of a smile were gone. “Lou didn’t lie when he said I beat the crap out of my father. It wasn’t a lie, either, that my folks left because of that beating.”

  “And how many beatings did you take from your dad?” she fired back. “Or did the gossip mill get that wrong?”

  “No. They didn’t get it wrong.” That was all he said for a long time, and Millie now had regrets. Not about the kiss but about poking at old wounds with this conversation. “My father was mean. He used his fists at lot.”

  Her heart ached for him and for the little boy who’d had to grow up with that. “Frankie never talks about it,” she said.

  He shook his head. “She was still pretty young when they left. Only seven. I was sixteen.”

  Since she knew how old Frankie was, Millie did the math. Joe was thirty-six. He’d been through a lot of grief during that time. A lot of happiness, too, she supposed since he had Dara.

  Millie didn’t say anything. She just stood there and let him sort out how much he wanted to tell her.

  “My father had been drinking that day,” Joe continued, “and I could tell he was aiming for a fight. And he got one. He punched my mother first, claiming she’d overcooked the supper. Frankie started crying, and the son of a bitch reached for her as if he was going to shove or hit her, too. That’s when I stopped him.”

  She reached across the island and touched his hand. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain it to me. I know what you did was right.”

  He looked up then, those amazing gray eyes meeting hers. “You have too much faith in me.”

  “Just the right amount.”

  She winked and because she wanted to see him smile again, she cursed. It worked, and it was good to see him smile. Millie considered asking him if he wanted to go into the living room so they could sit and chat, but the Ella research was in there. Besides, if Joe started walking, he might decide it was time to end this house call and leave.

  “I’ve been thinking about inviting Dara and you to dinner,” she threw out there to gauge his reaction. “Maybe making it a group thing by inviting Frankie, Tanner and Little T.”

  He stared at her. A long time. “The gossips will have a field day with that.”

  “Possibly.” Absolutely, she silently amended. “But I’d like to have you and Dara here. I’d like to spend some time with you. When you’re around, the edges don’t seem so sharp or dark.”

  He’d already opened his mouth, probably to tell her that just wasn’t a good idea, but he seemed to change his mind after hearing the last part.

  “I know about edges,” he said, and he slipped his thumb through the moisture on his beer bottle. “Dara would like coming for dinner. So would I. Actually, I’d like to do a lot of things with you.”

  Well, that sounded hopeful. However, the hope didn’t mesh with his expression. Joe looked very, very down.

  “I shouldn’t have come,” he continued. “I know I shouldn’t, but I’m here so I’ll man up and say that I don’t want to hurt you.” He looked at her now, his gaze drilling into her.

  “Is that something sexual?” she asked to try to lighten up his mood a little.

  “No. No,” he repeated after he scrubbed his hand over his face.

  So, the mood lightening had failed, and Millie decided to go ahead and spell it out for him. “You don’t want to hurt me because you can’t give me any promises, any commitments.”

  There was a small storm brewing in his eyes now. “I might not even be able to give you tomorrow.”

  Millie matched that staring storm with her own gaze as she walked around to his side of the island. “Tomorrows are overrated, Joe. I’ve learned the hard way that you have to make it through the night just to get to tomorrow.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “So, let’s focus on now, on this moment.”

  He frowned at her. “I’m not sure that’s good advice.”

  “Oh, it’s not,” she agreed with a chuckle. “It’s fueled by your amazing eyes and your equally amazing mouth. You’re on my bucket list.”

  He continued to frown, but the edges of his mouth were softening a bit. “Is that sexual?” he asked.

  Millie laughed. “It has the potential for sexual. You’re one hot guy, Joe. No denying that. But I don’t want to hurt you, either. That’s why we’ll take this slow. One moment at a time.”

  He set his beer aside and in the same motion slipped his arm around her waist. “A lot can happen in a single moment.”

  It could.

  And it did.

  She had a moment all right, a mind-blowing one, when he leaned in and kissed her. Oh, mercy. He could heat her up with just a single touch of his lips to hers. But she soon learned she didn’t have to settle for a single touch. Nope. Joe gave her the full monty of kisses. Deep, long and French.

  Millie fumbled around to get rid of her wineglass, and once she’d managed that, she went with her own version of a clothed full monty. She put her arms around him and melted into the kiss. He tasted like something she had craved all her life but had been denied. Well, he wasn’t denying her now.

  The need shot through the roof when he turned her, moving her back against the island, and Joe pressed himself against her. All in all, it was a very favorable arrangement, and her breasts especially appreciated it. When he gave her a well-placed bump with his groin, other parts also appreciated it.

  Too much.

  “Little T’s in the house,” she managed to say to remind him, and herself.

  As hot as the kiss was, Joe and she could end up naked on the floor, and she didn’t want her nephew walking in on that.

  With her breath gusting and her body burning, Millie stepped back and looked at him. Her mind was a hot haze right now. Just like the rest of her. And that made it hard to think.

  “Duct tape,” she finally said.

  Joe’s “Huh?” let her know that her solution probably wasn’t a good one. Or one that he readily understood.

  “Duct tape,” Millie repeated, and she hurried to Little T’s train wreck to retrieve the roll he’d left on the floor.

  Joe followed her, maybe thinking she’d either lost her mind or else was planning some sort of kinky sex game. It was neither of those things.

  “Think of it like a chastity belt,” she said. “We can’t have sex if we’re not naked in the right places. We can wind this around our jeans so we can’t get unzipped.”

  “Trust me,” he said. “Tape wouldn’t stop me.”

  Except he didn’t just say it. It came out as a smoky drawl. One that made her want to French-kiss him. Of course, at the moment pretty much anything he did or said would make her want to do that.

  He went to her, sliding his hand around the back of her neck and kissing her. Talk about a cure for dark places, bad moods and equally bad ideas about duct tape. When he pulled back this time, Millie had no doubts, none, that she’d just been kissed by a man who was fully aware of every erogenous zone in her body.

  “We’re not going to have sex,” he said. He drawled that, too, and Millie was hanging on to his words as if they were gold.

  Or orgasms.

  “We’re not?” she asked. Even with the lusty haze clouding her, she could still feel seriously disappointed. But she was also skeptical. That’s why she kissed him again, hoping the hot tide would take Joe under and convince him to change his mind.

  “No. I want to,” he quickly added. Cursing, her took her hand and dragged it down to the front of his j
eans so she could feel that proof. “I want to,” he repeated while he gritted his teeth. “But neither of us is ready for that.”

  Oh, she wanted to argue with him. She was ready all right. But Millie knew exactly what he meant. If he had regretted kissing her, then sex would send those regrets all the way to Pluto. It might do the same for her. Not guilt for herself and what she’d had with Royce but because she didn’t want to add any more grief to whatever Joe was feeling. She cared too much about him for that.

  “A month,” she muttered. “That’s how long it’s been since all of this started. You need time. I probably need time, too, but it’s hard to think with this between us.”

  Since her hand was still over his erection, she gave it a little squeeze and had the pleasure of hearing Joe growl out some very bad words. Words that had her smiling, and her smile, or maybe it was the squeeze, caused Joe’s mouth to come to hers again. There was still plenty of need in the kiss.

  Plenty.

  But he gently moved her hand from his zipper region and caught her shoulders. No doubt to anchor her in place. So that they couldn’t do the body-to-body thing while they were doing the mouth to mouth.

  Even though it was frustrating not to be able to touch him, Millie sank right in, taking everything that Joe and his amazing mouth were offering. And while he wasn’t offering sex, he was doling out some huge quantities of pleasure.

  “Frog poop must be green. It has to be,” she heard someone say.

  Little T.

  Millie jumped back from Joe as if he’d scalded her, and she whirled around to see her nephew walking out of the hall and toward them. His little bare feet barely made a sound on the floor, which was probably why Millie hadn’t heard him before he’d managed to get so close.

  But maybe he hadn’t seen Joe and her—

  “Daddy was right. You are kissing Uncle Joe,” Little T said, dashing her hopes of what he might or might not have seen. He yawned and scratched his pajama-covered butt. “If you’re done kissing, can you make pancakes now?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JOE STOOD IN front of his closet and cursed. He’d been staring at his so-called wardrobe for nearly ten minutes. That was proof he was losing it.

  No way should he be obsessing about what to wear to Millie’s for dinner. Heck, no way should he be going to Millie’s for dinner, period. But here he was in the middle of doing the first and within a half hour of doing the second.

  Still cursing, he snatched a blue shirt from the hanger, purposely not choosing anything that Ella had ever bought him. That eliminated about ninety percent of anything on hangers since the only things Joe ever bought himself were jeans, Ts and boots. Still, he hadn’t wanted to wear anything that would remind him of his late wife to a dinner with the woman he wanted to be his lover.

  Yeah, he was losing it all right.

  He yanked on the shirt, jeans and his good boots, and he “fixed” his hair by running his hands through it. He’d be damned if he would check it in the mirror. That would make this feel even more like a date than it already did. Thankfully though, this date wouldn’t be Millie and him solo. Dara, Little T, Tanner, Frankie and maybe their dates would also be there.

  Joe frowned at the thought of his nephew. Little T had probably blabbed about seeing Millie and him kiss, but Joe held out hope that the kid had forgotten. After all, it’d been four days since that kiss, and Joe hadn’t gotten a single text, call or visit from Frankie about it. If Frankie had been filled in on that particular tidbit of his so-called love life, she would have grilled Joe like a well-grilled trout.

  He went across the hall to see if Dara was ready, and he found her at her desk, typing on her laptop. Whatever she was writing had her complete attention.

  “We can cancel this dinner if you’re busy,” Joe offered.

  “No. I want to go.” She stopped typing and looked back at him. “I’m just finishing the story about Mom that I want to give Millie. It’s the one about when Mom fell in the creek when she was trying to get the little toy boat you’d made for me. She accidentally knocked you in the water, too. I like that one because she laughed a lot.”

  Ella had indeed laughed. Joe, not so much. But the memory of it made him smile now.

  “I also want to loan Millie my baby book so she can go through it,” Dara continued. She hit Print, and while the printer was chugging out the single sheet of paper, Dara took the book from her desk drawer. It was basically a photo album, and Ella had added handwritten notes to some of the pictures.

  Joe quit smiling. “You’re sure Millie will want to see that?”

  Dara made a perky uh-huh sound. “The book is mostly about me, but there are some fun stories in it, too. Millie can maybe use it in the research.” She gathered up the book, the paper and her phone. Then, she looked at him. “Millie doesn’t hate Mom. She said so. Do you hate Millie’s husband?”

  Joe considered some answers. Dismissed them and decided it was a good thing that he wouldn’t have to do any research on Royce Dayton. The Last Ride Society wouldn’t care much for one of their silver spoon deceased to be called a cheating sack of shit. Joe wouldn’t care much for it, either, since the label would also apply to Ella. And he wasn’t ready to go there just yet.

  “What if there was a different reason they were together in the wreck?” Dara asked when Joe didn’t answer her other question. Maybe she’d picked up on something in his expression, something to do with that lying sack label.

  Joe had tried to figure out the same damn thing. Like maybe Ella had had car trouble, and Royce had been just giving her a ride. But that theory got shot down when he’d found Ella’s car in the grocery store parking lot. It was running just fine so obviously she’d left it there and then Royce had picked her up.

  “What reason?” Joe asked her.

  Dara shrugged. “Maybe they were doing something like undercover work. You know, for the CIA or the Texas Rangers.”

  Obviously, his daughter had an active imagination. Or maybe Dara was just trying to hang on to anything that made sense. Anything that would allow her to keep that laughing, falling-in-the-creek image of her mother.

  “They could have maybe heard about a crime,” Dara went on, “and they were making themselves bait to draw out the criminal.”

  That was a good one, and if it gave his daughter any peace, then Joe hoped she’d hold on to it.

  Dara gave another shrug. “Or maybe Millie’s husband was going to buy some of Mom’s paintings so they were meeting to talk about that.”

  Joe went still. “What do you know about your mom’s paintings?”

  “I know that she sold some,” Dara readily admitted. “I saw her packaging them up and she said someone had bought them. There were three of them.”

  Probably the three in Once Upon a Time. “When was this?”

  Dara’s forehead bunched up while she was obviously giving that some thought. “I’m not sure, maybe a couple of months before she died.” Dara stopped, and her eyes went wide. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you. I was supposed to keep it a secret.”

  The stillness inside him vanished and in came the storm. Another damn secret. “Why weren’t you supposed to tell me?”

  “Because it was going to be a surprise.” Dara’s tone had taken on a dismissive “no big deal” edge, but she was clearly seeing how this was affecting him. It wasn’t a good kind of effect because Joe was sure he was scowling.

  “Mom was putting the money in an account, and once she got enough, she was going to tell you about it,” Dara continued. “I think she wanted to use it for a big vacation or something.”

  She’d added that last bit for his sake. To try to take away the sting of hearing that Ella had kept yet something else from him.

  “Anyway, you can probably find the account on her laptop,” Dara added. “I think it’s still in your man-shed.” She checked her ph
one. “But you’ll have to wait because it’s time for us to go. You should look at it though when we get back.”

  Oh, he would indeed do that. And if he found out it was Ella’s slush fund that she was using to buy stuff for her lover, then it’d finally be time for him to give her that label. It’d finally be time for him to move the hell on with his life.

  * * *

  MILLIE WAS NOW sorry that she’d been in such a hurry to move on with her life. Or rather she was sorry she’d chosen to do that moving on by hosting her first dinner since Royce’s death.

  In hindsight, she should have opted for something less hazardous. Maybe like juggling flaming balls or alligator wrestling.

  Actually, this dinner had some similarities to both of those things. Instead of juggling and wrestling though, she was trying to keep the very tense dinner conversation going. Little T was helping. In his own Little T way.

  “Elephant poop is gray. It has to be ’cause elephants are gray,” he declared while poking at the herbed potatoes on his plate. He’d already gone through the other colors of various animal waste despite Frankie’s warning for him to change the subject.

  Tanner was doling out some warnings, too. Nonverbal ones to Frankie who was shooting eye daggers at the stunning Skylar, who Tanner had bought as his dinner date. Skylar was either oblivious to Frankie’s bristling toward her or else she didn’t want to cause a scene by saying anything.

  That left Joe and Dara, who were seated directly across the table from Millie. Joe had seemingly hit his own personal mute button, but Dara was doing a good job of giving exaggerated eye rolls for Little T’s commentary. Also doing a good job at dinner conversation, too. She hadn’t mentioned her mother, something that Millie truly appreciated, but had instead gone on about how much fun they’d had on their shopping trip to San Antonio.

  “Millie bought this lipstick called Raunchy Rose,” Dara added with a chuckle.

  “Oh, I love that color,” Skylar exclaimed, and that was enough to cause Frankie to shoot the woman a glare. “I’ll bet it looks good on you, Millie.”