Royally Broken by Elle Boon Page 0,31
them up to a pair of black jeans. Holy crap on a cracker, the man has a bulge that would make any sane woman think twice about trying him on. He wore a black T-shirt with a black leather jacket, making her heart nearly burst as she saw a pair of stunning dark eyes, eyes she’d thought to never see again. “Silas,” she whispered.
He squatted down, putting his finger over his lips. “Ssh, my name is Keys. Damn, you sure look pretty, Miz Palmer.” He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear.
Palmer licked her lips, feeling like a teenager with her first crush. Heck, he was her first crush. “You’re here.” Gah, she slapped her forehead. “Of course, you are. I mean, lawd, I’m making a fool of myself. Hang on, let me remove my foot from my mouth and start over.” She smiled, feeling as though the first ray of sunshine in a shitstorm had finally appeared.
“Are you really gonna make your kid eat this?” He held up a container of baby food, his face showing his disgust.
She reached for it, their fingers brushing. Her breath froze at the electric feel of touching him for the first time in what seemed a lifetime. For her it had been. To cover up for her wildly racing heart, she looked down at the label. “It says right here it’s made of all natural organic.”
He snatched it back. “All natural my ass. No kid wants kale. Trust me. I live in California and they pass this shit off at every restaurant. The only ones who actually buy it are the model types and Hollywood stars. I bet even those fuckers go into the bathroom and puke that shit up. Ain’t that right, kid?”
Palmer’s mind whirled at the first up-close and personal view of the sweet young man who’d left such a hole in her heart. Silas DeMarcus had been a gorgeous teenager. The man standing before her was nothing like the kid who’d left. Yes, he was every bit as handsome, only the man was so much more now. He was bigger, taller, and even better looking in a dangerous way that would turn any woman’s head. If she were a betting woman, she’d wager even straight men turned to watch him walk by. Case in point, the entire store seemed to be finding a reason to walk by or down the aisle where they were.
She’d thought about him so many times over the years, wondered what happened to him. Never had she imagined him looking the way he stood before her.
Keys hand moved, lifting her chin up. “Didn’t your granddaddy teach you it wasn’t polite to stare at men like that, sunshine?”
The nickname caught her off guard. Only he’d ever called her that and it had only been a handful of times. She opened her mouth to refute his words when a little cry from behind her brought her out of the stupor Silas’s presence caused. “Dang it, you make me lose all sense of who, what, and where I am, Silas DeMarcus,” she muttered, turning toward her son.
If there was one thing, she’d learned from her mistakes it was that men were fickle beasts who weren’t to be trusted.
“Hey there, little man. You getting hungry? Do you think you’d like kale?” she asked, unstrapping him from the stroller before his little cry could turn into a full out wail.
“He looks just like you, Palmer. Right down to your cornflower blue eyes. Or did his father also have those color eyes?”
She lifted her son up to her shoulder, bouncing him up and down. Goodness, nobody told her a teething baby would be so hard. She wondered if the Bed and Breakfast she had moved into would kick them out if he was too fussy. “No, my...his father had brown eyes.”
The thought of her sweet boy having anything that resembled the late Thomas Kincaid made her stomach cramp. Her child was the only thing good from her marriage.
“What are you shopping for besides baby food?” Keys eyed the shelves, then turned his dark stare back to her.
“Um, some milk and chips. I’m buying shit snacks, sue me.” She glared at the woman staring at them as she passed.
Silas raised a brow. “A woman after my own heart. How bout I push your stroller while you hold Hoss there?”
She laughed at the nicknames. Her son was no little nugget by anyone’s imagination. At his last doctor’s appointment, he’d been in the ninety