The woman had finally wormed her way into his dad’s pants. Brandon had known it would only be a matter of time. He wasn’t stupid. His dad was probably lonely and Annabelle was hot. Half his friends were already panting after her, gazing in her direction as if she were a Greek goddess or some such shit, making up excuses to go with him when he had to go to the office. But Brandon saw through her game. She needed a man to take care of her. She already had a kid with some other loser, and now she was eyeing his dad like the top prize at a carnival booth.
It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t it enough that they’d lost Mom? She’d been the love of Dad’s life—he was sure of it. He couldn’t understand why Dad was forgetting that fact. Annabelle didn’t hold a candle to Mom, he thought. Mom had been the kind of woman people could trust, the one everyone turned to when they needed help. A PTA mom, a woman who brought brownies for his class to share on his birthday. Annabelle was the kind of woman who was more likely to seduce the teacher than volunteer for lunch duty.
Jessie’s voice broke into his angry thoughts as the echo of their earlier conversation came to mind.
“What’s gotten into you?” she’d asked, irritation warring with concern in her hazel eyes. “You’re going all mental over your dad’s new office manager. I think she’s nice.”
“That’s because you can’t see her for what she truly is,” he’d retorted in annoyance.
“Which is?” She crossed her arms and glared.
“A gold digger.”
Jessie snorted and scoffed at the idea and his ears burned, but he didn’t back down. “Oh, c’mon. You don’t seriously think that, do you?”
He answered with a testy stare.
She shook her head. “You’re way off base. Maybe you need to stop freaking out about stupid things and deal with your issues. You’re creeping me out with all the ugly crap you’ve been saying about Annabelle.”
“Can’t help what’s true.”
She pinned him with a short look. “Yeah? Well, if you keep it up, you’ll be spouting off to someone else because I don’t want to hear it anymore.”
And then she’d left. Brandon didn’t blame her for leaving the way she did. He didn’t much like himself the way he was feeling but he couldn’t stop. It was as if Annabelle had burrowed under his skin like a parasite and was eating away at his ability to be a nice person. A flash of shame followed at the knowledge that his mom would have been very disappointed with him.
He countered by saying that if his mom knew how this woman had designs on his dad she’d want Brandon to protect the family however possible.
Which is exactly what he planned to do.
ANNABELLE couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She suspected it had something to do with the fact that each time Dean came into the building her heart rate tripled and the urge to lick him like a giant piece of man-candy nearly overwhelmed her.
He glanced her way and her mouth curved.
This could be a problem. She allowed her smile to fade and busied herself with work. A fling was transient, fleeting and brief. Annabelle tried to focus but Dean was in her peripheral vision and her attention wandered.
When he looked up from his PDA, their gazes locked. A slow grin spread across his lips and she knew their thoughts mirrored each other’s. She dropped her stare first. They couldn’t keep doing this all day. For one thing, they wouldn’t get any work done and for another, it was incredibly suspect. People were bound to notice.
“Have dinner with me tonight.”
She started at his sudden proposition. “No.”
“Why not?”
“You know why. We already covered that.”
“At my house.”
“Your house?”
He chuckled as if he’d surprised himself with the suggestion but immediately warmed to it. “Yeah. Let me cook you and Honey dinner. Brandon is staying at a friend’s tonight and it’d be nice.”
Tempting. Wildly tempting. Which is why she must decline but she wavered. “What’s on the menu?”
“I can only do one thing well.”
She blushed as her imagination provided a range of possibilities. Clearing her throat, she said, “Which is?”
“Barbecue.”
“Barbecue? Chicken? Fish? Steak?”
“Anything that tastes good charbroiled,” he answered. “Interested?”
Lord help me, yes. “Mildly.”
Dean pocketed his PDA and grabbed his keys. “See you at five. Bring your appetite,” he added with a wink.
Her breath hitched in her chest as she stared after him, trying not to gawk so hard that his jeans caught fire.
A woman could get used to a man like that. It was a full moment before her good sense returned and a regretful sigh followed. It seemed she had inherited her mother’s deplorable compass when it came to steering clear of trouble after all. Only she hadn’t gravitated toward a loser—quite the opposite. But it spelled trouble for Annabelle just the same.
So, what are you going to do about it? She worried her bottom lip and glanced toward Honey, who was playing with a set of toy keys Dean had picked up for her at the hardware store.
End it?
Yeah, how about trying that with a little conviction next time.
BY THE TIME Dean returned to the office he was humming. He entered the building with a smile and went straight to Honey, picking up the toddler as if it were perfectly natural to do so at the end of a long day, and fought the urge to kiss Annabelle. Instead, he grabbed Honey’s diaper bag and gestured for the door. “Shall we?”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked, hesitating as she followed. “I mean, this is going a bit fast. I don’t want you to think that I expect anything from you just because…”
He glanced back at her, drank in the sight of her standing there backlit by the sun, her hair a fiery halo around her head, and his heart stuttered a beat. He transferred Honey to his other side and pulled Annabelle to him. She gasped, making an adorably feminine sound, and looked up at him with wide brown eyes. He lowered his head to hers and took her mouth firmly, leaving no doubt as to how he felt about her statement. “You worry too much,” he said against her mouth. “It’s just dinner, right?”
“One dinner, one kiss…I think we know how these things end up,” she said wryly, though the corners of her mouth turned up playfully. She pushed away from him. “Fine. Dinner it is, but don’t get used to this. I’m not your girlfriend.”
“What are you then?”
Her mouth quirked as if she didn’t quite know what to call herself and in the absence of knowing, simply shouldered the diaper bag and moved past Dean with a mumble under her breath that sounded a lot like, “office manager with benefits,” and he felt laughter rumble in his chest. He liked her—more than he should—and he knew the consequences would likely make his heartburn feel like a mild flicker.
ANNABELLE, wineglass in hand, studied the pictures on the wall while Dean made all sorts of racket in the kitchen that didn’t sound promising.
“You sure you know what you’re doing in there?” she asked, pausing to glance at a photo of Brandon as a little boy. Judging by the missing tooth, he was probably around seven. Cute. Although, that wasn’t surprising. Despite his crappy attitude toward her,