Hot Mess - Elise Faber Page 0,10

you say so.” He grinned and held up the basket. “I wanted to see if you and Rylie would take some fruit off my hands.”

Her brows drew together.

“My ag—uh . . . friend sent me this, and it’s way too much for one person to eat before it goes bad.” He shrugged. “I just thought that most kids seem to like apples and oranges.” A beat. “Or, at least, my nieces and nephews do.”

“I love apples,” Rylie said, skipping in. “Can I have one?” He nodded, and she glanced at her mother, who nodded as well, before scooping a shining red fruit from the basket he held. “Can I read on the deck, Mom?” she asked, lifting the apple to her lips.

“Wash it first,” Shannon admonished. “And, yes, but what did you forget?”

Blue eyes streaked with brown met his, and Finn experienced another gut punch courtesy of the females in this house. Because where Shannon’s eyes were tinged with sadness, Rylie’s were bright and clear and startlingly happy.

“Thanks, Mr. Finn,” Rylie said.

“You’re welcome, Ms. Rylie.”

A smile, a vivid burst of happiness before she sprinted off to the kitchen, where the water turned on for all of one second as she washed the fruit. Then footsteps raced across the hardwood, her, “excuse me,” rushed but still there when she slipped by them to pass through the door. And then she was skidding to a stop in front of a chair on the deck, covering herself and her stuffed fox with a blanket before she pulled out a book.

The actions told him that she must have done the same routine time and again until it was second-nature, until she didn’t think, just knew that was a place she could be safe and cuddle up with a book.

And his heart, the organ he’d thought numb and unfeeling, pulsed again.

“Um . . . did you want to come in for something to drink?” Shannon asked, stepping back.

Considering he was still standing on the threshold, a dozen apples and oranges—minus one—in his hands, that seemed like a good idea.

“Oh, can you leave that open?” she said, when he moved inside, started to close the door behind him. “I can’t see Ry unless it is.”

“Of course.”

He spied a tiny doorstop in the shape of a starfish and used his foot to prop the wooden panel open then followed Shannon into the living room. It was smallish, like his, but the large front windows opened the space up. That along with the white couch, the gray and aquamarine accents, gave the room a calming, luxurious feel, and Finn knew the decorators he’d paid a boatload of money to decorate his house back in L.A. couldn’t have done a better job.

In fact, if there hadn’t been family pictures on the mantle, he could have believed it was the staged beach house in Malibu he’d been touring to buy before he’d hightailed it out of town.

He frowned.

“You okay?”

“No kid clutter.”

“What?”

She had a rambunctious six-or-seven-year-old. A white couch with no stains on it, no Legos littering the pale gray carpet, no rogue banana peels or juice boxes or—

“What are you staring at?”

He jumped and spun toward Shannon, seeing she was watching him carefully. While he’d been staring off into space like a dumbass. Cool. “Who designed this for you?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, frowning. “I did.”

“No. Who picked out the furniture?” Finn turned in a circle. “Who did the placement? The color scheme?”

Her frown went deeper. “I did.”

“But you have a kid,” he said, coming toward her and setting the basket on the glass coffee table—yes, a glass coffee table. “How is it that the couch doesn’t have stains? How is it that there aren’t toys scattered everywhere?”

Shannon’s face relaxed, her mouth twitching up at the corners. “Rylie is pretty good at cleaning up after herself—though I’ve all but given up with her room. After spending many hours organizing and then re-organizing her toys, both with and without her, I now abide by the there’s a door, so close it, and move on mentality.”

He snorted, remembering the chaos in his home, being one of five kids who ran wild, and as his mom frequently stated, giving her a multitude of gray hairs. “I think that was the only way my mom made it through our childhood.”

She chuckled. “Well, I’m definitely glad I’m not alone.”

“No, you’re not.”

Shannon froze. Probably because his words were soft, and his tone sounded real crazy. Repeat, real crazy. Quiet and husky, as though they were