Easy Kisses (The Boudreaux Series Book 4) - Kristen Proby Page 0,24
bigger, and I’m staying longer than you.”
“Good reasons.” I can’t breathe with him this close to me. He could have suggested that we’d be staying in a yurt and I would have agreed. “Should we move in now?”
“Fuck no, we’re going to take that shower.”
***
“You are a popcorn hog,” I accuse Simon as we leave the movies the next evening. We saw the latest Marvel superhero movie, which I love.
“I am not,” he replies and takes my hand as we walk out to the car. He’s very affectionate and chivalrous, which is new to me. He always holds my hand, opens doors, and a whole host of other manners that I didn’t even know existed outside of my own family.
He’s dangerous for me, because I can’t have him and I feel more for him than I ever did Ryan. Or for anyone, now that I think about it.
“You ate plenty of the popcorn,” he continues.
“No, I just stopped putting my hand in harm’s way. I thought for sure you might take it off.”
“Okay, drama queen,” he says with a laugh. “What now?”
“I have a sweet tooth,” I reply. “Let’s stop somewhere for dessert.”
“My pleasure.”
We find an ice cream place in town that’s open late, so we stop in and each order a sundae, then find a table to enjoy our treats.
“What does cupcake ice cream taste like?” Simon asks me as he spoons up his chocolate.
“Here.” I hold my spoon up to his lips and watch as he takes the bite and nods.
“Good.”
“Yeah.” I clear my throat and shift in my seat. “You have a sexy mouth.”
“Keep talking like that,” he says and takes another bite of his own ice cream. “I dare you.”
“You dare me?” I raise a brow. “What will happen if I do?”
“I’ll take you out to the car and suck your clit until you come all over my mouth,” he replies without looking up from his ice cream, as if he’s talking about the damn weather. “You’re sweeter than this ice cream.”
“God, Simon.” Hello, wet panties.
“I won’t warn you again,” he says and meets my gaze with his.
“Tell me about your parents.” I offer him an angelic smile and lick my spoon, changing the subject.
“Muriel and Charles Danbury,” he replies.
“Are you close to them?”
“Very,” he says. “They usually come with me to these seminars, but Mum recently had a knee surgery, and Dad is nursing her to health.”
“How long have they been married?” Finished with my ice cream, I set the cup aside and lean on the table, resting my chin in my fist and listening to the British in Simon’s voice.
“Thirty-three years.”
“They had you quickly.” I smile and watch the warm smile come to his face.
“And I was a handful. I was a sickly child.” He pushes his own cup away and leans on his elbows. “I had apnea issues as a baby, so I was in the hospital for three months.”
“You stopped breathing? That must have been terrifying!”
“I’m told it was.” He nods and reaches for my hand. “Mum was always a stay-at-home mother when I was little, so she stayed at the hospital full time with me and Dad came around his work schedule.”
“What does he do?”
“Aren’t you the curious one?” He grins at me and keeps talking. I love his voice. “He’s retired now, but he was a professor at university. After I went to high school, Mum went back to school as well to become a teacher, and she just retired last year from teaching primary school. She retired early so she could enjoy it with Dad.”
“That’s awesome,” I reply and rub the back of his hand with my thumb.
“Sometimes, when they join me on these trips, my dad will take one of the afternoon lecture sessions and teach it himself. He gets a kick out of it.”
“I think it’s wonderful that you include the people closest to you in your business.”
“There’s no one else I’d rather have with me,” he says. “They’re the ones I can trust implicitly.”
“I can understand that. I have a small staff at the store, and I’m finally confident in who I have working for me. But it was a process. I had girls steal from me, girls who were lazy, girls who couldn’t show up to work on time. A strong work ethic isn’t necessarily ingrained in everyone the way it was in me and my siblings.”
“No, it’s not,” he agrees with a smile. “And once you’ve been burned, you get very protective.”