Page 124 of The Nanny and the Hothead
“That part got me teary, too.”
Too?
He wiped at his eyes. He wasn’t crying. He didn’t cry! “I must have an eyelash in my eye.”
Charlotte cocked her head to the side. “In both eyes?”
“It happens,” he answered, then cleared the emotion from his throat.
“The teacher wanted us to see that Oscar’s doing okay. He misses his mom, which is very normal. But he’s getting used to life with you—life with us.”
There it was again, the sweet sound ofus. Charlotte made them an us—a unit. And dare he think it, a family?
He stared at her. “How do you do it?”
She blushed again, and God, he loved when she did that.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mitch.”
“You make it better,” he said, leaning in like a moth to the flame.
Her chest heaved as she inhaled a sharp breath. “What do I make better?”
“Me. Everything. Your goodness is everywhere. It touches everything you touch. It brightens the whole damned world. You’re sunshine wrapped with an auburn bow, and the closer I get to you, the more of you I want. And I can barely hold myself back.” He gripped the side of the table, employing the last of his resolve that kept him from tearing off her clothes and claiming her body in the middle of his kitchen.
She took in his white-knuckled grip. “It’s not just you, Mitch. If you haven’t noticed, I’m losing my mind over you.”
Every muscle in his body tightened. “You are?”
“You heard what I said to Oscar when he asked if we were going to bed, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “I did.”
“It sounded like the ramblings of a lunatic,” she replied, but she was smiling.
He hummed an over-the-top contemplative little sound. “I wouldn’t say a lunatic. It was more in the ballpark of someone who’d downed one too many super-charged margaritas, followed by a Jell-O shot chaser while possibly dressed as a mythical marine creature.”
She laughed. “You won’t let me forget that, will you?”
He dropped the funnyman act. “I can’t forget anything when it comes to you, Charlotte.” He released his grip on the table and cupped her face gingerly in his hands. His lips hovered a breath above hers—so close to getting what his body so badly craved. She closed her eyes and pressed her palms to his chest as his pulse kicked up. But he stopped himself from taking it any further and pulled back a fraction. “I want to do this the right way with you,” he rasped. He was hardly able to believe he’d reined in the beast within. The beast who was two seconds away from making love to her until they couldn’t see straight.
“I’ve kissed you enough to know that you are absolutely doing everything right in that department,” she whispered into the sliver of space filled with their heated breaths.
“No, not the kissing part. I want to get the courting part right,” he replied, then stilled at his word choice. Courting? His brain must have turned to parmesan risotto mush! Where did he think they were, Victorian London circa 1850?
She opened her eyes and cocked her head to the side. “Courting?”
He dropped his hands, not knowing what the hell to do with his appendages. He felt as settled as one of those damned inflatable tube men with crazy flowing arms. The goofy things that bopped and swayed in the wind in front of sandwich shops and used car dealerships, and that was not the vibe he was going for. He attempted to center himself. “You know, courting. It’s the same as wooing.”
“You want to woo me?” she asked, enunciating each word.
He frowned. He was tanking in the Casanova department. “When you say it like that, it sounds so—”
She pressed her fingertips to his lips, silencing him. “No, I didn’t mean to make it sound negative. I’ve never been wooed. I think I’d like it.”
For the record,wooingwas a damned silly word. Somebody should come up with a better term because courting sounded ridiculous as well. But it was exactly what she deserved.
“You’re okay with wooing?” he asked. He had to make sure.
