Love Me (Take a Chance #2)(17)
Author: Diane Alberts

Then again, he wasn’t sure he was ready to even think about being a father figure, either.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and gripped her shoulder gently. “I’m an idiot.”

She smiled weakly. “No. You just bit off more than you could chew. At least now you’ve got your excuse.”

“Excuse?”

“You know. Why it wouldn’t work.” She wrapped her arms around herself. A defensive barrier—against him. “So you can walk away with a clean conscience now.”

She had the future all figured out already—including his reaction to her news. With any other woman, she would have been right. But for some unknown reason, Brianna wasn’t just any woman. He couldn’t walk away from her so easily. She felt too damned good in his arms to let her go. “You think I’ll give up that easily?”

“I saw the look on your face when you realized I have kids. It was the look of a man with his head in the noose. Let me tighten the rope for you and make it a little easier. I’m thirty-two and a single mom with a lot of baggage. Zach’s thirteen and miserable. Katelyn’s six and thinks she’s twenty. Cody is eight, lives in his own world, and thinks Transformers are real.”

Thirteen? So she’d had her first when she was only nineteen?

He never really envisioned himself with kids. Never even pictured a family of his own. And the idea of dating someone with kids had never even crossed his mind. He never would have considered getting involved with a woman who had children. Not because he didn’t like kids. He did.

It was his own f**ked-up mentality that kept him away. Did he want to be responsible for turning some kid into a raving lunatic who didn’t know how to trust anyone? Did he want to make another person feel the same insecurities he felt? Hell no.

But this was Brianna. She was watching him with her big eyes, biting her lip as she waited for his reply, and he couldn’t say good-bye yet. The idea of walking away and never getting to kiss her lips again clawed at his insides like some hidden monster, refusing to let go.

Kids or not, he wanted to be with her. Wanted to explore the new feelings she brought out in him.

“I don’t know what look I had on my face. Probably a man who felt like he’d just been punched in the nuts for being an ass to a widow.” He closed the distance between them, tilting her chin up so he could see her pretty eyes. “But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t give up easily.”

She wouldn’t look at him. He couldn’t look away from her. “You are a fascinating man, Thomas, but I think it’s best if we let this go.”

“Why? Because you have kids?” He gestured at the play set hunched in the grass like a little gingerbread house. “I’ll keep my distance until you decide that I’m ready to meet them. If that ever happens.”

“It’s not that!”

“Then what is it?”

“I’m scared.” She blew out a breath that caused her hair to flutter. “Scared to let you in.”

He got that more than she would ever know. She terrified the hell out of him. “I’m scared, too.”

She looked up at him in surprise. “Then what do you propose we do?”

“Maybe nothing. Do you actually want to do something?”

“Maybe.”

He growled. “I don’t want a maybe, Brianna. I want to know if you’re going to give us a chance to figure out what we have or if you’re going to send me away before we can even find out if we would work.”

She stared up at him, her eyes wide and wary, but he refused to look away. “Fine,” she finally said, her lashes lowering. “Yes. Let’s do this.”

He released her chin and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “All right, then. Let’s go on a real date. Are you available tonight?”

She smiled. “We can go out. I have a ‘get out of jail free’ card tonight.”

“The babysitter?”

“My sister. Kiersten.”

Kiersten was currently leaning in the now-open doorway of the house, watching them with thinly veiled amusement. She looked much like Brianna but with an impish streak. Thomas waved; she waved back with a wink.

“Is she your only sister?”

“Yeah, but I have a brother, too. Mike.”

“I have a sister.” He brushed his fingers down her arm. “Now that we know each other a little better…I can’t think of a better time than now for date one-point-five than the present.”

“I’ll be right back.”

“Hurry up,” he said, his tone teasing and light. “If you don’t, I just might decide to hold another pair of your shoes hostage.”

“I still haven’t gotten the first pair back.”

“You’re welcome to come up to my room to get them.”

She gave him a searching look, then smiled, rose on her toes, and kissed his cheek before walking away, back up to the house. Thomas glanced back to his rental truck. If he were smart, he’d run right now before he made a mess of this.

But he wasn’t running.

He wanted Brianna with a hunger that even the specter of her dead husband couldn’t diminish. That was a large void to fill, stepping into the empty absence her husband had left behind. He wasn’t sure he was up to the task. Hell, he didn’t even know what to do with kids.

He focused on the gentle sway of her hips. It wasn’t until she disappeared inside that he saw the teen boy glowering down at him from an upstairs window.

Great. He’d just been caught ogling the boy’s mother. Thomas forced a smile and waved. He was rewarded by a middle finger and the sight of the boy’s back.

He remembered those days. He hadn’t had a mother to protect from men like him, but he’d had a sister who liked boys from the wrong side of the tracks. Maybe the boy just needed a gentle hand, a male role model in his life. A role model Thomas wasn’t sure he knew how to be, and…and…

…and that? That was the boy’s bare ass in the window.

They were off to a wonderful start.

Chapter Eight

Over the top of Brianna’s menu, Thomas looked much too calm. Much too confident. He should be running for the hills. He should be the nervous one, yet here she was sweating into her boots and scrunching her toes in her damp socks. Dating again, even so many years after Michael’s death, was like trying to remember a foreign language she hadn’t used in decades. Open her mouth, and nothing but gibberish would spill out.