Hot Mess - Elise Faber Page 0,43

relief spreading over his features, softening them. “Come out to dinner with me tonight. Let’s go on a real date.”

“Ry—”

“I’ll bribe my sister into watching her.” He rested his forehead against hers. “Or Pepper.”

“I—”

“A real date, Blue Eyes. You and me and some wine. Maybe a nice dress and heels. I’ll wear a suit and tie.”

Mmm. Finn in a suit and tie. She’d love to hold on to that scrap of silk, use it to tug him closer until his lips settled onto hers.

“What just went through your mind?” he asked, voice husky.

She told him.

He grinned. “Does that mean you’ll go on a date with me?”

“Yes.” Shannon nodded, lifting up on tiptoe to brush her mouth over hers.

As these things tended to happen, a simple brush turned into much more. Her lips parted, his tongue slid inside her mouth, and desire rippled down her spine. She moaned, pressed closer, loving that his chest rumbled against hers in response, loving that this man could kiss her well enough to make her head spin.

Eventually, though, he pulled back, cupping her cheek lightly with one hand. “I’ll wear a tie if you bring the heels.”

Shannon’s heart bubbled up with joy. “Deal.”

Then he laced their fingers together and led her into the cottage to meet his sister . . . which turned out to be less meeting and more rescuing her from Rylie’s love of powdered sugar.

Just saying, Shannon couldn’t deny that it also made the French toast taste better than ever.

Or maybe, that was just the company.

Sixteen

Feels Like the First Time

Finn

He was sitting across the table from a beautiful woman, and he couldn’t taste his food.

Not because it wasn’t delicious.

But because it just didn’t matter.

Not when he was sitting across from Shannon.

They’d spent most of their meal bantering like always, nibbling at their entrees, drinking two bottles of wine, and sharing a piece of chocolate cake between them. But the consumption of food and drink wasn’t in the forefront of his mind, not in the least.

What dominated was the heat between them.

Boiling up from beneath the surface, inundating the space between them, sparking whenever their eyes met, or their legs accidentally brushed under the table . . . or whenever Shan leaned forward or smiled or laughed or breathed.

He wanted this woman.

And her gaze was saying she wanted him right back.

But Finn wasn’t going to have her—or not that night anyway. He’d pressed her that morning, had seen her fear, and while he knew she’d pushed past that, he also knew that she wasn’t impervious to the memories or completely free from what had happened to her.

So, sticking with slow and steady.

Rylie was with Lexy at Shannon’s house, no surprise that the two had hit it off. Finn had a pre-release copy of a new kid’s film coming out in a couple of weeks, so Ry and Lex were having a girl’s movie night complete with sundaes and mani/pedis, and once Shannon had been convinced the babysitting would not be an inconvenience to Lexy, she’d allowed Finn to make dinner reservations and had hit the grocery store for supplies.

When they’d left the girls a few hours earlier, Lexy and Ry had been in their pajamas already, mani/pedi supplies laid out on the glass table.

Now, he was pleasantly full, somehow still surprised to find that had happened, considering he hadn’t really tasted anything that had crossed his lips, and he was ready to have Shan to himself.

“Let’s take a walk on the beach,” he said.

She looked up at him from under her lashes. “I’d have to lose the heels.”

He shrugged. “You can always put them back on later.”

“That’d be a crime to my toes.”

“Oh, shit. Are they uncomfortable?”

A shrug. “I think the correct question is, are heels ever comfortable? And the answer to that question is no”—a grin, no trace of sad, and Finn knew in that moment he wasn’t falling for her, he’d been gone for Shannon a long time ago—“but we get used to it.”

“Well,” he said, reaching for the little leather folder that held the bill. “We can do the walk, but they’re not going back on. Not if it’s going to hurt you.”

“And how am I going to get home?”

“I’ll carry you.” He flipped open the cover and frowned.

Shannon flipped it closed. “I got it earlier when you went to the bathroom.”

“What?”

She stood, and instinctively Finn followed suit. “You got what?” he asked, helping her with her coat, though it was a shame to cover up that luscious body clad