the house. “She likes to talk a big game about coming to visit, but she rarely does. The girls get worked up about her coming only to be disappointed when she bails.”
“Ah. That’s why you’ve set rules?”
“Yes. Someone has to.” He shakes his head, motioning me to join him as he heads back to the house. I pick up another box of pillows and he grabs the child-sized table.
My mind is reeling with questions as I follow him back across the lawn. Why, how, when, who? There’s a story here, but like all stories, it’ll have to be told at its own pace.
Ethan sets the child-sized table down with an exhale. “Damn it,” he mutters. “She’s not even here, and she’s still ruining this.”
“Don’t let her,” I tell him. That’s what I’d had to realize the last few months after the break-up with Ryan. I could let his actions haunt me and consume me and make my day miserable… or I could shut them out altogether.
His smile is slanted. “Truer words have never been spoken. Come on, I want you to see the inside.”
I climb up the ladder and peer inside the treehouse, the smell of fresh wood in my nostrils. More spacious than it looked, the treehouse is gorgeous, with carved details in the ceiling and a built-in bookcase alongside one wall.
“Yep, I’ll take it,” I say.
Ethan laughs. “Still not for sale.”
“I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.” Turning around, I stretch my arms out. “Come on. Hand me the chairs.”
Piece by piece, we decorate the interior, Ethan helping me as I hang up the lights. They fall in lovely draping lines from the ceiling and down around the eaves. When he connects them to the outdoor electricity system… well, it’s beautiful.
I sink down onto the heap of cushions we’ve built in one corner, right by the bookcase. “Haven and Evie will love it.”
“They’ll want to sleep out here tonight,” Ethan says, settling himself beside me. “I can already see us having the argument.”
I smile, reaching out to dislodge a piece of errant sawdust caught in his hair. “You win some, you lose some,” I murmur.
Ethan stills, shifting closer. “Do that again.”
“This?” I run my fingers through his hair, less careful now. It’s like coarse silk against my skin.
“Yes.”
It’s very easy to oblige. I lean against the wall and gently scrape my nails against his scalp.
Ethan groans. “Continue like this and I might actually let you move in here.”
“Do you allow pets?” I ask. “Because Toast needs a human keeper.”
“Not usually, but I’ll make an exception for you.” A muscular arm reaches out and settles across my legs, a hand coming to rest on my bare thigh.
Not once have I been so physically aware of a man—of where our bodies touch, of his physicality, of the very air that separates us.
“You are almost too good to be true,” he says.
“How so?”
“I tell you I can’t offer you anything, and instead of running, you just accept it. You make no demands. I’m trying to figure out your angle.”
“My angle?”
“Yes. Nobody can be this kind and smart, not to mention unbelievably hot.”
My laughter is shaky. Maybe Ethan notices that, because he turns, an eyebrow raised. “You don’t believe me?”
“I’ve been called many things, but not hot.”
His brow furrows. “What kind of morons have you dated?”
More shaky laughter. I can play it off with a joke, but he’d just spoken about his ex-wife, and here in the small space with him…
“Just the one,” I say. “He had his moronic moments, though.”
“The one?”
“Yes.”
Ethan’s hand on my thigh moves, smoothing up and down, even as he turns to face me fully. “Tell me.”
I put a hand on his chest and play with the buttons. The slide into sensuality is effortless, with both of us reclined here on the pillows. “We were together for a long time,” I say. “Six years.”
“Six years?” he murmurs. “I wasn’t even married that long.”
“No?”
“Three and a half,” he says. “But tell me more about you.”
I drop my head back into the soft pillows. There’s no way I can tell Ethan about how Ryan had walked out—about the words he’d spoken one morning over breakfast. Pass me the butter. Oh, and I’ve found someone else. “This wasn’t supposed to become feelings o’clock.”
Ethan’s hands settle around my waist. “And all because I had the audacity to call you hot,” he says. “It’s okay. I won’t do it again.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“I can use other words. Sexy, irresistible, a turn-on…”