Page 59 of The Apple Tree

“No. He’s adorable. All the girls were totally going crazy over him. He should be the team’s mascot.”

I chuckled.

“By the game's last two minutes, he leaned his head onto my lap and fell asleep. Even when the crowd cheered, he didn’t flinch.”

“He’s a sound sleeper like his dad.”

“I’ll get us another beer,” she said, standing.

I grabbed her wrist and shook my head when she peered back at me. “I don’t want another beer.” I lied. There were too many lines I wanted to cross with Eve, but giving her alcohol felt most wrong because it wasn’t legal for her to drink.

However, it was technically legal for her to do other things I wanted to do with her, but not drink.

“You’re no fun,” she said with a pouty face.

“I’m a little fun.”

She stared at my fingers around her wrist, then glanced back at my face. With a nervous laugh, she pulled away and cleared her throat. “So you said you have root beer?”

“Not in the fridge.” I followed her into the kitchen and grabbed a Dad’s Root Beer bottle by the back door.

She watched me with wide, cautious eyes as I filled a glass with ice and poured the root beer over it. While I capped thebottle, she took a sip. When she licked the froth from her top lip, my dick stirred to life.

Our tacos were getting cold. Josh was upstairs, although dead to the world. There were ten years of life between us. And all of that was above and beyond the family connection and her father being the town’s preacher.

Still, I pushed the hair off her shoulder, and she swallowed hard before her lips parted. I took the glass from her and set it on the counter with my other hand.

“Why do you have to be eighteen, Eve?” I said, gazing at my hand as my knuckles brushed her neck.

“Because my parents had unprotected sex in 1968.” She bit her lip.

This. Girl. Was. Me!

I was a wise guy at her age. Trouble found me, and I welcomed it. Conforming felt like a crime, and rebellion flowed through my veins. Had I been dead, I would have said Eve was my reincarnation.

When I looked into her eyes, she rolled her lips together to suppress her grin, but I made no effort to control mine.

“They had it in 1966 too, but my twenty-year-old sister is taken.”

She made my face hurt from grinning nonstop. “Why do I want to kiss you so badly?” I murmured.

Her chest rose and fell faster and faster, and her lips parted to accommodate each quickening breath. “Um …” Again, she swallowed, and her face tensed with concentration.

“It’s a rhetorical question,” I whispered.

Eve bobbed her head several times.

“We should finish eating. I’m terrible atjustkissing.” I handed the drink back to her.

Eve inhaled a shaky breath and took the root beer, but she didn’t look at me.

There was no logical reason to kiss her. The math didn’t add up. But I loved the sparkle in her eyes when she looked at Josh, and the way she bit her lips to hide her smile when she gazed at me.

The fire in her belly ignited something inside of me.

For a stolen moment, I wasn’t a single dad; she wasn’t ten years younger. I was a man who wanted to kiss a woman.

Because she was beautiful.

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