“You’re safe,” she said more casually than she felt. “My daughter’s upstairs fast asleep.” She motioned to the baby monitor beside the chair.
“I wasn’t…It’s not that.” He closed the distance between them and sat in the chair beside her. He set a Powerade in the grass and began wringing his hands, the muscles in his jaw clenching. “The way I act around Hadley, it’s not her, Daph.”
Part of Daphne wanted to ease whatever had him looking so troubled, but the mother in her needed to know more. “If it’s not her, then what is it? Because it sure feels personal.”
His eyes flicked up to hers. “It’s not. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for the way I react to her.”
The honesty in his voice softened her a little, but it wasn’t quite enough. “Why do you cringe when you see her? She’s just a little girl.”
“I know she is, and it’s not fair. As I said, it’s not her. It’s me.” He leaned his elbows on his knees, shifting his attention to his wringing hands, and said, “Some things happened a long time ago that messed me up pretty badly.” He was quiet for a beat, his pain weighing heavily in the air around him. He lifted troubled eyes to hers and said, “I thought I had moved on from it, but I guess I didn’t realize how much it still affected me until Harvey passed away and I no longer had him to worry about day in and day out.”
She wanted to ask what had happened, but the rawness of his grief was palpable, and Daphne understood grief. She’d grieved for her failed marriage and for her daughter who would not have a daddy, and it had taken a long time before she could talk about all the hurtful pieces. At least this time Jock wasn’t avoiding her as he had that morning and all the times before. He was opening up, and knowing he was having such a hard time made her want to help him find his way to a better place. Tegan had said he was looking for answers. She didn’t know what Jock’s questions were, but maybe helping him would give her the answers she needed, too.
Before she could respond, he said, “I’m sorry. I interrupted your dinner.”
“What?” She followed his gaze to the slice of half-eaten pizza she’d forgotten she was holding, and that reminded her that while he was sitting there looking studly, her hair was pinned up in a messy bun, she had no makeup on, and she wore one of her biggest, comfiest sweatshirts. With her luck, she probably had pizza in her teeth, too. Way to add to his hot-mess-of-a-mother image of you. “Oh, no, it’s fine. I got busy with book club stuff and forgot I was even eating.” She waved the half-eaten slice. “I was almost done.”
“Almost done?” He glanced at the pizza box. “But that’s only your first piece.”
“I’m not very hungry.” She was starving, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. She set her laptop on the table, trying not to think about what was going through his head, like the fact that nobody got to be her size by eating one slice of pizza. “Have some, really. Go ahead. Dive in—feed all those muscles” rushed from her lungs. Feed all those muscles? Her cheeks flamed. Why did she invite him to eat with her? All that vulnerability of his must have turned her brain to mush.
He laughed softly and said, “You’re so damn cute, you should come with a warning label.”
Cute? Warning label? What did that even mean? Cute was for Hadley. But it wasn’t like he’d call her sexy. No one had ever called her sexy except her girlfriends, and they practically had to, like sisters.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, reaching for a slice. “I’ll feed my muscles if you promise to eat more than one piece. You’ve got to keep your energy up to chase after your daughter.”
“Mm-hm.” She nibbled on her slice, and he finished his in four bites, watching her the whole time, making her even more self-conscious.
He opened his Powerade and said, “Want some?”
“No, thank you. I have lemonade.” She reached for her cup in the grass on the other side of her chair as he took a drink. Even his Adam’s apple sliding up and down his neck was sexy.
He ate another slice of pizza as she ate the last bite of hers. He took another drink, his eyes trained on her as he lowered the bottle to the grass and licked his lips. “Ready for more?”
“Oh, yes.” Her words came out embarrassingly breathless, and she felt her cheeks burn again.
He chuckled, shaking his head as he handed her a slice of pizza, and said, “Forget the warning label. You should come with an ice pack.”
She narrowed her eyes, hurt burrowing deep inside her. “Is it that painful to eat with me that you have to ice your eyes or something?”
His brow furrowed, and he lowered the slice he was about to bite into. He leaned closer and said, “No, Daphne,” in a deathly serious tone. “It’s not my eyes I’m worried about.”
Oh. My. God. He had to be kidding, didn’t he? She shoved the pizza in her mouth, earning the sexiest grin and a shake of his head along with a rumbly laugh. They ate in silence. He openly watched her, and she nervously looked away, but her eyes were drawn right back to him every time.
She scrambled for something to say to ease the tension humming between them. When she finished eating, she said, “You mentioned Harvey. Tegan said you took care of him for a long time.”
“Twenty-four-seven for a decade, give or take. I was pretty lost when we first met, and by the end we were as close as friends could be.” He reached for another slice of pizza and lifted his brows in silent offering.
“No thanks. I’ve had enough.”
“I’m not sure I know the meaning of enough.”
His dark eyes remained trained on her as he took a bite, eating almost half the slice, and licked the corner of his mouth. Daphne’s mind went straight to the gutter, thinking about all the other things he could do with that tongue. She gulped her lemonade, vowing not to watch him eat ever again, and hunted for a safe topic that her sex-starved mind couldn’t twist into a fantasy.
“You must miss Harvey a lot,” she said as she set her glass on the table, trying not to look at Jock’s mouth. But she liked getting to know him, and holy hotness, she liked his handsome face and pillowy lips too much not to look at him.
“I do miss him. He could be a pain in the ass sometimes, but I sure loved him. He enjoyed getting under my skin.” He smiled, as if he were reliving a memory.
“How so?”
“He was an eccentric retired actor, and a hell of a prankster. He’d fake his death every few weeks, sending me into a panic.”
“Oh my goodness! That’s awful,” she said with a laugh.
“That was Harvey. He once hired a guy to act like a burglar, and of course I had no idea, so I protected Harvey. That prank didn’t end well for the other guy.” He shook his head and said, “Then there was the time he pretended to choke in a restaurant, and when I got behind him to do the Heimlich, he started yelling, ‘Help! This guy is trying to kill me.’”
Daphne laughed. “I’m sorry. I’m sure that was embarrassing, but he sounds hysterical.”
“He was a riot.”
“Tegan told me he gave you your nickname. Does your family call you Jock, too?”