No Matter What (The Billionaires of Sawgrass #4) - Delaney Cameron Page 0,69

every atom of her being was begging for a repeat performance.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” she blurted out, putting her glance in the safe zone between his chin and his chest.

Reece held out his hand. In the palm lay the blue ribbon that five minutes ago had been in her hair. “Yours, I think.”

She snatched it away in the manner of one afraid of getting burned. “Is that all you have to say?”

“There’s a lot I could say,” he said as he watched her redo her ponytail. “I’m just not sure you want to hear it.”

Muttering under her breath, she crouched down to get the bag she’d dropped when she temporarily lost her mind and let Reece kiss her. Honesty compelled her to amend this. As she and the man in front of her knew all too well, she’d gone from being along for the ride to a willing participant too quickly and thoroughly to claim innocence.

Most of the bag’s contents had fallen out. Robin didn’t mind. Picking them up gave her time to compose herself. Or it would have if Reece hadn’t done the gentlemanly thing and dropped down next to her to help.

“Was it that bad?” he asked.

The only thing bad about it was that it had to end. Never in her life had she thought a kiss could make her feel like this. As if she was experiencing spontaneous combustion. Her lips were still burning, and her heart was simultaneously in her throat and somewhere around her feet. “It has nothing to do with the…quality of the kiss.”

He retrieved the pinecone and put it into the bag. “Then it must be me that you have a problem with. If that’s the case, I owe you an apology. I obviously made a mistake.”

She’d been avoiding looking directly at him, but something in his voice made that impossible. She slowly raised her eyes to meet his. “What do you mean you made a mistake?”

He shrugged. “I thought you liked me a little.”

A little? There was no way to like Reece just a little. She’d known that from the first night she met him. He’d hooked her with his boyish smile and slowly reeled her in with his kindness and impossible-to-ignore charisma. “I do like you.”

He held out the yellow flower in a symbolic gesture as old as time. “Just not enough to kiss me, huh?”

“We’re past that,” she said slowly, taking the flower from him. “I did kiss you. The problem is I shouldn’t have.”

“Why? Do I have cooties or something?”

He was too close, which made thinking (and breathing) difficult. Robin stood up quickly. “You know why, Reece. You’re Wade’s stepbrother.”

He laughed as he rose to his feet. “I hope you’re not going to hold that against me. I had nothing to do with it.”

She went to rub her forehead and realized she was still holding the flower. Irritated, she quickly dropped it into the bag. “We can’t ignore the fact that you’re connected to Wade, but we can forget what just happened.”

“I can’t forget something with that much ‘wow’ factor. And I don’t believe you can either.”

Her level of participation in said event left her little wiggle room to deny it. “Fine. Then we’ll do the next best thing. We’ll agree that it can’t happen again.”

“That would be hard for me to do, Robin.”

“Why?”

His eyes didn’t waver from hers. “Because of how I feel about you.”

This was the emotional equivalent of an 8.6 magnitude earthquake. The bag slipped from Robin’s fingers yet again. Was it possible Kait and Wade were right? Could Reece be interested in her? The thought was at the same time delightful and bittersweet.

Reece had evidently had enough of the bag. He pushed it out of the way with his foot and reached for her hand. “Is the idea of us being more than friends too horrible for words?”

Her glance fell to their clasped hands. Her heart shouted ‘no’. Her head produced an alphabetized list of reasons why it couldn’t happen. Instead of answering him directly, she countered with a question. “Do you realize how complicated that would be? I dated your stepbrother. I met his mother and your father. To suddenly switch to you would be the definition of awkward. How could I face your family?”

“First of all, there’s nothing sudden about this. You and Wade broke up months ago for what I understood were mutual reasons. Secondly, just because something is awkward doesn’t mean it should be abandoned. And lastly, there’s only one thing