a start. And a hell of a lot better than the pleasant don’t-want-to-upset-anyone Annie who comes out when you’re talking to Clark.”
“Seriously, get off me.” She shoved, taking in the intimacy of their bodies. She could feel every breath, every ripple, every, um—she wiggled and . . .
“I wouldn’t do that,” he warned.
Good thing it was dark, because there was a high probability that she was blushing. Wouldn’t that just make his day.
She placed her hands on his chest, careful not to touch anything too intimate, and gave a shove. He didn’t even budge. “Seriously, move.”
“Not until the coast is clear.” He lifted his head long enough to glance out the window. “You couldn’t stay quiet, could you?”
“Probably one of your fans. Let me guess, one of your girlfriends wants to know why you’re ghosting her.” She was able to lift her head enough to peek out the window. But all she saw was an older couple with a shopping basket, an employee in a red vest collecting carts, and a group of teenage girls.
“Worse,” he said, and dropped low again. “I think my daughter just caught me following her.”
She laughed. And because of their position, she literally laughed in his face. “You have a daughter?”
He did not laugh. Not even a little. Nope, the confident and cocky, smooth-talking Emmitt was nowhere in sight. Even in the glow of the supermarket lights, she could see he’d become all prickly edges and defensive spikes.
And when he clenched his jaw tight and exhaled like a bull during a fight, she caught a glimpse of the raw power and charisma that drew people to him. Like screws to a magnet, she thought, a spark of sexual awareness sizzling through her.
Without a word, he lifted himself off her and into the passenger seat, careful to stay low enough that, with his ballcap and aviators on, he wasn’t identifiable.
Not sure what had just happened, Annie shifted in her seat and straightened her clothes.
The jerk didn’t need to straighten out anything. He looked perfectly imperfect, just like a man of the world should. “Gah!”
“What?” he finally said, his voice drained of any emotion. “You don’t think I’d be a good dad?”
If he’d asked her that question five minutes ago, she would have kicked him out of her car. But now, seeing his emotional state, she didn’t doubt for a minute that he was not only a father but a good one.
She glanced at the group of teens, now climbing into a minivan, and caught a glimpse of her boss’s stepdaughter.
“Paisley,” she said. “Wait, Paisley is Sweet P! She’s yours?”
“Yup.”
Annie wasn’t sure what was more shocking: that Emmitt had a kid or that his kid was fifteen and female. She knew Paisley, knew Gray was her stepdad, even knew that Paisley’s biological father was a photographer. But she’d never put two and two together and come up with Paisley was Emmitt’s kid.
The single dads Annie knew didn’t keep a dictionary-sized black book, nor did they scour the world’s most dangerous places in search of injustice and suffering. And they most certainly did not look like a Range Rover dressed in North Face gear.
On one of the times Paisley had stopped by the hospital to see Gray, she’d mentioned that her “bio dad,” as she called him, was stationed in China. Annie had assumed he was either military or an overseas contractor. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Which made the tingling sensation swirling around in her belly all the more annoying.
“Then why are you hiding in my car instead of saying hi to her?” she asked.
He let out a breath. “I’m keeping an eye on her. Trying to figure out how she ticks.”
Annie snorted. “She’s fifteen. She doesn’t tick, she explodes. Her goal is to be unpredictable and challenging and test every single limit to see how far she can push before one of you breaks.”
With a shaky laugh, he tossed his glasses on the dash and leaned back. “Then she’s doing a good job. She said a total of ten words to me today before she broke me. I don’t know how she did it, but I’m broken.” He turned to look at her and, oh boy, if this was him broken, she was in big trouble when he got back to his fighting weight.
His ballcap shadowed his face from the outside glow, but not so much that she couldn’t see his eyes. A warm whisky color that reminded her of caramel. Annie loved caramel. She