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  Connor didn’t linger while I worked. He got started on the repairs for my truck and spent most of his time out in his garage. That was perfect because then I was able to work on a couple of surprises just for him, a couple of ways to thank him for driving me around all day and then allowing me to set up shop in his kitchen.

  He came in and washed up just as I was cleaning up close to midnight. My cakes were cooling, my honeypots were setting in the fridge and my Tigger tails were individually wrapped up and ready.

  “I made you something,” I said when he returned to the kitchen, drying his hands on a paper towel.

  I pushed an extra-large vanilla champagne cupcake toward him.

  “I only made the one cupcake, but cinnamon buns are chilling in the fridge. They’ll be ready to go in the oven in a couple hours.”

  The astonished look on his face was kind of cute.

  “You made this just for me?” he asked, glancing between me and the cupcake.

  “No. I made it for the other good lookin’ guy that drove me around all day and let me bake in his kitchen.”

  A small smile appeared on his face. “No one has ever baked for me before.”

  “Well, that's a shame,” I said, giving the cupcake an extra nudge in his direction. “Because this here will set the bar for every cupcake you’ll ever have that I didn’t make. You will be sad and disappointed in every other cupcake that ain’t mine from this day forward.”

  He chuckled as he picked it up. “Your incredible modesty is showing again.”

  “Shut up and take a bite already.”

  He winked at me. I watched eagerly as he took his first bite. The first time Caden had eaten my food came to my mind, and some of my bravado slipped. What if after all of my blustering, he only liked it and didn’t love it? What if I didn’t get to hear that orgasmic moan?

  It took a few seconds for Connor’s taste buds to register the cake and the champagne buttercream icing. Then his eyes widened, and a couple seconds later they fluttered and closed. A groan rumbled in his throat as his head fell back.

  With my cheeks heating up a little, I wondered if that was how it was for him when he had an orgasm. Did he groan like that? Did his eyes close and did his head fall back?

  He opened his eyes and stood up straight again and took another big bite.

  “Oh. My. God,” he groaned with a full mouth. “This is making my spine tingle. My mouth just had an orgasm. A foodgasm. A cakegasm.”

  Feeling elated with his reaction to my food, I laughed and passed him my bottle of water.

  “Please drink something before you choke on your cakegasm.”

  He took a quick drink of the water and went right back to the cupcake.

  “This is so delicious,” he continued, mouth full again. “It’s more than delicious. It’s…it’s…it’s like sex. Sex cake. That’s what you should call this. A sex cake.”

  I snorted. “You have sex cake frosting on your nose.”

  “Here?” He pointed to his cheek.

  “No. There.” I pointed to his nose.

  “Here?” He pointed to his other cheek.

  I giggled. “There!” My finger made a circling motion close to his nose.

  “Oh, I see. There!” He swiped some of the icing off the cupcake and dabbed it on my nose.

  I gasped. He chuckled, took another bite, and then grunted and closed his eyes again. When he opened them and found me still glaring at him, he laughed again.

  “I’m sorry. Do you want me to lick it off?” He moved toward me, and I backed away.

  “No!”

  “Come on. What’s a little lick between friends?” Connor asked, chasing me around the kitchen island. “I just want to lick the sex cake frosting off of your face.”

  “That sounds so wrong!” I called over my shoulder.

  He caught up to me on our second lap around the island. His arm circled my midsection, and he hauled me against the front of his body.

  “Connor, I swear, if you lick my damn face…” I didn’t finish, because I didn’t know what I would do if he did lick my face. Honestly, I barely knew what I was saying. I was breathless, and my heart was pounding, and the feeling of his hard body against mine made me feel a little dizzy.

  “Okay,” he murmured, his breath on my neck just below my ear. He seemed to be out of breath, too. “I won’t lick your face. But…”

  His beard brushed lightly against my neck, and I felt his lips close to my skin.

  “You better not get sex cake frosting in my hair,” I breathed.

  He laughed softly, and to my disappointment and relief, he released me.

  I turned around, but couldn’t look directly into his eyes. I knew my face must have been very red.

  “I’m going to wash my face and take a nap on your couch,” I said and began to move past him.

  “You can sleep in my bed if you want. I can take the couch.”

  An image of me rolling around in his bed, inhaling the scent of his body left behind on the sheets and pillows flashed through my head.

  I made myself meet his eyes somehow. “Um. No. It’s fine. I’ll take the couch. I don’t want to wake you up when I go back into the kitchen. Thank you anyway.”

  I turned away from him and hurried into the bathroom.

  When I came out a few minutes later, Connor was in the living room stoking the flames in the fireplace.

  “I put a couple of blankets and some pillows on the couch for you,” he said, as he put the poker back.

  I glanced at the couch. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in my bed?” he asked again.

  I bit my lip as I tried not to smile and he chuckled softly before correcting himself.

  “What I meant was, are you sure you don’t want to switch places? I can still take the couch, and you can still sleep in my bed. Alone.”

  “No, really, this is fine,” I insisted. “Like I said, I have to get up in a few hours, and I don’t want to wake you up. Thanks anyway.”

  He nodded, and then we both just stood there rather awkwardly for a minute, shifting from foot to foot.

  “Okay,” he said, finally. “I’m going to take a shower and go to bed. Do you want to take a shower?”

  I knew what he meant, but I just wanted to poke fun at him a little bit to ease the strange charged tension between us.

  “Are you saying that I stink?”

  “I just meant—you don’t—what I mean is—” he stammered.

  I laughed. “I know what you meant. First, you tried to get me into your bed, and now you’re trying to get me into your shower. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you brought me to your house to seduce me.”

  His ears turned a little pink, and he grinned. “Well, now that you’ve figured it out, there’s no more point in beating around the bush.”

  I giggled and put my fingers in my hair and began to undo my braid. “I really had a nice day with you, Connor. I didn’t think that I could have a nice day after the horrible day I had yesterday, but I did. Thank you.”

  He watched my fingers move through my hair, seemingly fascinated. “It was a nice day,” he agreed before shifting his eyes away from my hair and to my face. “I haven’t enjoyed myself that much in a very long time. I hope I get to spend more time with you in the future, Darla.”

  I blushed a little and nodded. “Me, too. Oh, and thanks for the shirt. I promise I’ll give it back.”

  He had leant me one of his flannel shirts to put on when I felt a little chilly earlier.

  “You wear it much better than I do,” he said, looking me over appreciatively and making me blush again.

  He took a few steps until he was standing right in front of me, and then kissed my cheek, not too far from the corner of my mouth.

  “Goodnight, Darla,” he whispered, and then he walked toward his bedroom, his feet moving quickly and with purpose.

  I fell asleep a little while later with his shir
t against my nose and his scent wrapped around me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  My sister loved her cake and the confectionaries I had made with it. I had barely got the cake into my brother’s house, assembled, and finishing touches added before McKenzie made her grand entrance. She cried when she saw the seafoam green and cream colored, three-tiered cake. She cried more when she read her favorite A.A. Milne quote: “I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen.”

  All of her favorite characters were there, made out of fondant earlier in the week when I was still in Philly. I hoped that they would hold up until it was time to cut the cake.

  A little while after the shower started, I noticed Perry’s truck pull up outside, and a few seconds later he and Connor hopped out. After dropping me and all the food off earlier, Connor and all the men of my family, plus the two or three other husbands that had arrived with their wives, had all left to go work on my truck. I was pretty sure that at least half of them would stand around and drink beer and toss in their two cents every now and then to be “helpful.” It was clear that none of them had wanted to stick around for the shower, not even Cort, and it was his wife and unborn baby.

  I slipped into the kitchen, clutching my cup of punch. Most of the women were having a deep discussion about childbirth, something I had no interest in. Connor came in silently through the back door a few seconds later.

  “Have you come to join in the discussion about umbilical cords and afterbirth?” I asked, keeping my voice down.

  “That does sound like a fascinating conversation, but no. While Perry is looking for a few things we need in the garage, I came in to steal food.”

  He took a few pretzels out of an open bag.

  I cocked an eyebrow. “My cinnamon buns weren’t enough for you this morning?”

  “I’m a man. I’m hungry all of the time. How is it going?”

  We both took a quick peek into the living room. McKenzie was glowing as she rubbed her pregnant belly, sitting in a decorated rocker chair at the front of the room like a queen.

  “She really liked the cake,” I murmured. “She cried.”

  “I don’t blame her. That cupcake last night and the cinnamon buns this morning almost made me cry.”

  I smiled tiredly. “I’m glad.”

  Connor moved closer and gently pushed a few strands of hair off my face. His fingers trailed down to the collar of another borrowed flannel shirt. The butterflies did a little dance in my belly.

  “You look tired,” he said. “Maybe later when you come to pick up your truck we can throw some more cinnamon buns in the oven, drink some spiked hot chocolate and watch a few episodes of Suddenly Susan.”

  I laughed softly. “I don’t know. I might feel like a third wheel with Brooke in the room.”

  “We can be in a room full of Brookes, and you’d be second to none,” Connor said candidly.

  Nervously, I ran my fingers through my hair and looked away. With a short laugh, I said, “Yeah, right.”

  I started to turn away from him, but with a gentle touch on my waist from his hand, I halted.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  Slowly, I turned my gaze back to his. Once our eyes locked, my whole body locked, too. I couldn’t look away if I tried. Couldn’t move. The laughter of the fifteen or so women in the other room couldn’t compete with the loud thumping of my heart.

  Connor’s other hand was in my hair as he raked his fingers through it. He inched closer to me until I was nearly pinned against the counter.

  “Darla,” he whispered, but I’ll never know what he was about to say.

  The doorknob began to turn on the door leading to the garage and Connor jumped back about a foot just as the door swung open and Perry poked his head in. His gaze shifted from me to Connor and back again, and then his eyes narrowed a little.

  “Shouldn’t you be in the other room with Kenzie?” he said, practically demanding that I do just that.

  Under normal circumstances, I would have told my brother to fuck off, but instead, I nodded vigorously.

  “Yep. I need to get back to the baby shower,” I said with too much enthusiasm. Then I scooted out of the kitchen, leaving the two men behind.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Later, after the shower was over and after everything was cleaned up, I stood in front of Perry’s house with Connor, my parents, and Perry. We had just helped Cort pack all of the baby gifts into his SUV before he took a tired McKenzie home. It was surprisingly mild out, considering the incoming storm.

  “You braided your hair,” Connor murmured to me while everyone else was wrapped up in another conversation.

  “It was getting in my way,” I whispered back.

  “I like it when it’s down.”

  I looked up and met his eyes, remembering how his fingers had combed through my hair a few hours earlier.

  “You and Cherry got everything you need to ride out the storm?” Mama asked, making me remember the other three people outside under the streetlamp with Connor and me.

  I grinned. “We got booze and ingredients for boozy brownies. We don’t need nothin’ else.”

  Connor and Perry seemed interested, but my dad only shook his head as he frowned.

  “Girl, when you goin’ to take life seriously?”

  My smile faltered, and I shrugged and tried to pretend nonchalance. “I’m twenty-three years old. I still have a couple of years before I have to take life seriously. Look at Perry. He’s almost thirty and has a wife and kids. He don’t take life seriously yet.”

  “That is an accurate statement,” Perry said easily and sipped his beer.

  I was about to make another joke at my brother’s expense, but the words slipped away when my dad spoke again.

  “Perry can pay his own damn bills and take care of his wife and kids,” he snapped. “He can be a dumbass all he wants as long as he got all that covered. You can’t even take care of yourself.”

  It was worse than a slap in the face. It was always worse than any kind of physical pain when my dad said things like that. I shouldn’t have been stunned, but I was. Before I could recover from the sudden verbal blow, Daddy pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and opened it up.

  “Connor, how much do I owe you for her truck?”

  That snapped me out of my stupor.

  “Darla doesn’t owe me anything for the truck,” Connor said firmly, frowning at my dad.

  Daddy stared at Connor as if he had just spoken another language.

  “What do you mean she don’t owe you nothing for the truck? You bought parts for it, and you put in most of the labor.”

  Connor folded his arms and nodded. “That’s true, I did, but you don’t owe me the money. Darla does.”

  Daddy chuckled and shook his head as he started pulling out bills. “Son, Darla ain’t got no money. She can’t pay you.”

  “Daddy, that’s enough,” I said sharply. “Nobody asked you for your damn money. Connor and me got it worked out. I don’t need you or anybody else to take care of me.”

  “Darla Rae,” my mom said, admonishing me. “You don’t need to talk to your daddy like that. He’s just trying to help you.”

  I pointed at my dad. “That ain’t help, Mama. That’s something else altogether. Connor, I’m ready. Bye, Perry,” I said to my brother, too angry to offer him any more than that quick goodbye.

  I walked away from my family and climbed into Connor’s truck and slammed the door. I watched through the tinted window as he and my dad exchanged some words. When my dad thrust a handful of cash at him, Connor put up his hands and shook his head. After a few more exchanges of words, my dad seemed to back down and finally put his wallet away.

  When Connor got into the truck, he gave my hand a sympathetic squeeze. I waited for him to offer me some useless advice, but he didn’t.

  “After a couple of cinnamon buns and a couple episodes of Suddenly Susan, all of our problems will be solved.”

  I tried not to smile,
but a little one snuck through anyway. “Are you telling me that Brooke Shields has the ability to heal the whole world?” I asked doubtfully.

  He nodded gravely as he started the truck. “It’s all in the eyebrows.”

  It wasn’t that funny, but I snorted with laughter anyway and was rewarded with Connor’s amazing smile.

  Even though I knew I had to get an early start, I wanted to spend a little more time with Connor. Cinnamon buns and nineties TV with him seemed much more appealing than sleep.

  “I’m exhausted, but I’m not sleepy. Do you know what I mean?” I said after I slid some of the buns into the oven a few minutes after we arrived at his house.

  “You need to unwind,” he said, putting a gentle hand on my shoulder. “You’ve been running full steam ahead since three in the morning, and you didn’t sleep much before that. You’re probably overly tired, and you’re definitely emotional right now. You just need to relax.”

  His hand slid across my shoulder to the back of my neck. When his thumb firmly pressed at my nape, my head automatically dropped. I sucked in a deep and ragged breath and let it out in an embarrassing moan.

  Connor chuckled softly behind me as his other hand joined in the work.

  “Dear lord, that feels good,” I breathed.

  I should have probably thanked him kindly and stepped away at that moment, but I didn’t. His hands and fingers were pressing into the spaces between my shoulder blades on each side. It felt too good.

  Last year Cherry and I had treated ourselves to a day at a spa. I’d had a massage for the first time. It had felt wonderful, but it hadn’t taken my breath away. It hadn’t made heat and goosebumps race across my skin. That man’s hands on my naked skin hadn’t affected me even half as much as Connor’s hands were as he touched me over my clothes.