Page 30 of The Playboy SEAL
Macs presses his lips into a firm line as he lets his gaze dip to my body. He doesn’t even hide it in front of my mother. She turns to look at me but immediately looks back at Macs. She’s deciphering body language, my face. She’s picking apart this moment so fully I know I’ll hear an earful later. I can’t care, or take my eyes offhim. He’s looking through the surface—it’s as if he’s seeing inside,my every thought entering his own.
“I wanted to surprise you,” he says.
My mother faces me again. That draws my focus, and I clear my throat.
“I invited him to lunch with us. I hope you don’t mind, honey,” Mom says. She already knows I don’t mind. Viola Sebrof just planned our wedding. She blinks, her smile widening. She just picked out my wedding dress. Another smile. She clamps her hand over her mouth, like that has the ability to hide her excitement. “Are you ready to go?” she asks, finally gaining the good sense to live in the now instead of in her dream world.
I nod at her and roll my eyes. She smiles again, the grin melting all annoyance.
“Macs, I see you’ve met my mother.”
“Did I ever,” he replies, waggling his eyebrows.
She didn’t catch it, but Charlotte did, and my friend laughs.
“What’s funny?” Mom asks. “Charlotte introduced me to your friend. Why didn’t you tell me he was so—” she stutters.
This is going downhill fast. I have to nip it in the bud.
“Out of contact?” I supply for her.
Macs steps out of the circle they’ve made around him and approaches me. He’s doing it again. Moving like he owns the world. I close my eyes for a second or two.
He lays a hand on my shoulder. The warmth sends shockwaves to every part of my body. The butterflies in my belly turn to vultures, with long wings and big, pecking beaks.
“I’m sorry. I got busy at work,” Macs whispers.
I know they heard.
“Do you want me to come to lunch with you?” At the sincerity of his voice, I glance up at his face. Dimples greet me.
“Don’t use those things to get what you want. Of course I don’t mind if you have lunch with us. I mean, you might regret it in the end, but this is what we’re doing, right?” I ask, speaking so he is the only one who hears. “I wasn’t sure what was going on. You kind of dropped off the map there.”
The smile falls off his face. He has this stoic supermodel face. Blue Steel without trying and no duck lips. I make a mental note to use this as a teasing arsenal for later. He knows how good-looking he is, but I’m not sure he knows how everyone else sees his beauty.
“I apologized already,” he says. It’s the only explanation I’ll receive.
I nod. He doesn’t even owe me that. The lines with this thing are blurring too. The lines of my whole life are one big fuzzy mindfuck. “I’m starving. Let’s go,” I remark, grasping for control.
He takes my hand in his, and I don’t miss how tightly he’s holding on.
Charlotte and my mom ask Macs a million questions. He answers some, is cheeky with others that he can’t answer, but he’s completely disarming. I find myself smiling at him while he talks, and my mother notices. She is beaming like a lighthouse after lunch is finished. She tells Macs stories about me from when I was small. This is when I realize she’s planned more than my weddingtoday. She might have her grandkids named as well.
It’s my fault for not giving her anything of substance all of these years. No boyfriends. No reason to believe I was ever ready to take the next step with a man. She sees a man like Macs and my interest in such a man, and it’s all over. Maybe that’s my problem too. Even if it’s fake, for the first time I’m letting myself wonder what is normal in a relationship. What I realize is that it’s not that bad. Other than my heart being on the line and the severity of what that could lead to.
Macs holds me against him as we walk out of the café. It’s now starting to get busy, and I’m glad we chose the time we did. “I’m going to take a walk around the Gaslamp, Tay,” my mother explains when we exit to the street. My apartment is only a few blocks over, and she has a key.
Charlotte says she has to go stalk the mailman, but not before waggling her brow, and Macs and I are left staring at each other on a sidewalk filled with people.
“What now?” I ask. A car horn blares, startling me. Macs is unaffected. I wonder if his hearing is messed up from being around gunfire and explosions. I bet he has psychic powers and predicted the horn would go off. Oddly enough, that’s a more rational hypothesis.
He clears his throat and looks over my head. Flicking his gaze back to me, he asks, “It’s the third date?”
I grin. “Do you know what that means?”
Eyes narrowed, he pulls me against his body, cradling the side of my face in his large hand. Macs has fire in his eyes, desire so wild and feral it causes me to lose my breath.
“Where?”
