Don't Go Stealing My Heart - Kelly Siskind Page 0,21

you being an idiot?” She pointed a finger at her unamused face. “This is me minding.”

He pointed at his bland expression. “This is me not caring.”

She laughed. She should backtrack, make another joke. Veer far from this topic. She found herself doing the opposite. “I still give my father yearly birthday gifts through his email, and I send random messages to his account all year. As a diary of sorts.”

The odd ritual had begun at her first foster home. Impossibly lonely and scared, she’d written Clinton Abernathy. One message had become two. Two had rolled into thirty. Now she was a twenty-eight-year-old woman who emailed her dead dad.

“That’s beautiful,” he said, his tone more fascinated than pitying.

“Or just plain weird.” When she’d confessed the ritual to Lucien, he’d said it was wonderfully therapeutic and had encouraged her to keep at it. The habit made her feel odd.

Jack stepped closer, his voice dropping lower. “Beautiful.”

One word, spoken with ardent compassion. The heavy air continued unfurling around them, drawing them closer. Or maybe it was her need to lean toward him and touch him. Mess up his slim tie and gold jacket and run her fingers through his thick hair. Kiss his full lips.

She fought each urge. Making out with Jack wasn’t part of her plan. It wouldn’t hurt her strategy, per se. Getting closer to him meant getting closer to that painting. This was different, though. This kind of closeness was like driving along the edge of a cliff.

She leaned away. “Do you come here often?”

Now she was spewing moronic pick-up lines. Of course he came here often. His sanctuary was attached to his freaking house.

He either didn’t notice her idiocy or kindly let it slide. “Every night.”

“To feed the reptiles?”

“No. Marvin tends our family properties and comes here during the day, spends a couple of hours cleaning and feeding. Makes sure the environments are ideal.”

“So you just…what? Sit and read? Talk to them? Play solitaire?”

The corner of his lips tipped up. “I sing.”

Oh, Lord.

His new road sign should read: Beware of dreaminess, loss of self-control ahead.

“I want to hear you,” she said. She wanted to get lost in his voice. Forget for a moment she was using him to get to a painting.

“You want to hear me sing?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Obviously.”

He freed a pocketed hand and loosened his tie. Rosiness ascended his neck. Without a word, he pressed his fingertips to her eyelids and slid them closed. “Keep them shut,” he murmured.

Jack hadn’t intended to sing for Clementine, or to learn such intimate details about her past. He’d wanted time with her, to understand this woman who also owned a bearded dragon and seemed torn between flirting with him and running away.

He’d gotten more than he’d bargained for.

A woman who emailed a deceased parent was as complex as they came. It hinted at a deep-seated loneliness and explained some of her hesitation with him, if only a fraction. He wanted more, but his want was more of a ravenous need to know all her secrets. The desire unnerved him.

For now he would sing. He’d closed her eyes, couldn’t breathe fully let alone sing with those reddish-brown beauties locked on him. Before he overthought this to death, he hummed the first note to “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”

Why that song, he couldn’t say. A way to communicate the stirrings Clementine inspired, to say things he’d never have the courage to admit aloud. Granted, what he felt for her wasn’t love. Not this early. But the storm behind his breastbone wouldn’t cease. It was a stronger desire than he’d experienced with Ava, and the few women before her.

He poured his uncertainty into the song, watched as her chest rose and fell faster, deeper, her lips parting as though to inhale his words.

This could be the beginnings of love, he hoped he conveyed.

Fools do rush in, his tone implored. I am a fool for you right now.

I can’t help it.

The last words drifted between them, seemed to wilt in the humid air. Strawberry-blonde hairs frizzed around Clementine’s face, and her slender shoulders shuddered slightly. Her nose had a slight bump in the center. An almost-invisible scar notched her chin. He was a detail-oriented person and her details were very consuming. They made his blue suede shoes feel too tight, his chest tighter.

She kept her eyes closed. He wanted to kiss her fiercely.

“I can’t take you on a date,” he said. A silly statement, considering she hadn’t asked him for a date. Or agreed to one. If