Page 4 of His to Love
Tyson looked up and smiled at me, humor dancing in those dark blue eyes of his. “What a great idea.” His voice rumbled through me and hit some spot deep inside. Had I looked at her, I figured both of us would look the same, with our jaws dropped to the floor at that deep timbre.
“Oh, I think he’s okay…”
“Mommy, I have to poop.”
Bright hot pink flooded her cheeks. She didn’t look at Tyson before she unbuckled her belt and murmured, “Of course.”
As she stood, she smiled at me but it didn’t reach her eyes. I shook off her annoyance at my interrupting her and Tyson. I wasn’t even thinking about him.
Lie.
Kids just made me nervous. Especially sick kids.
“Excuse me.” Acid clung to her words as she passed me in the tiny, cramped aisle.
My smile widened. “Sure.”
With a huff, I plopped down in her seat—because no way was I sitting by that kid again—and quickly re-buckled.
“You look like you barely survived.”
“Oh…huh?”
“The kid. He scares you.”
A piece of my hair dropped into my eye, and I blew it out of my line of sight. “Of course not.” I tucked another piece of hair behind my other ear. Why…why, of all days, did my hair have to act like I stuck my finger in an electric socket?
“You fidget when you lie. You always have. And I also know you’ve always been scared of little kids, but not why.”
That knowing tone, the fact he knew so much about me when all he ever did was lie to me, made me cringe. Why did he have to be on my flight? All on a day that I was flying home, getting ready to see my father and my childhood home for the first time in ten years, and when I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t had enough time to prepare myself to see my father, or my mom for that matter. But as much as I tried to prepare myself for seeing my family, considering I’d see Tyson Blackwell again wasn’t even on my radar. I never thought I’d see him again—much less sit next to him in a cramped seat on an airplane.
I snapped my head to the man sitting next to me, intent on telling him off, but words clogged inside my head and I was lost in an ocean of blue. It was his eyes, or his shirt under his suit, or maybe it was just him. Not that he was blue. He was just…
He was the most incredible-looking man I had ever seen. Straight out of a GQ photo shoot. And so far, he had seen me panting like a dog in heat, sprawled out on the floor in front of him, and possibly drooling.
Fantastic.
“All right,” I rasped, leaning in. He did the same, and I caught a whiff of cologne that should have been illegal for every woman’s nose. It was intoxicating. Addictive. Spicy and I didn’t know what else, I just knew I wanted to lick the taste off his neck.
“Fine,” I agreed again while I tried to ignore his closeness. “Kids make me nervous, they always have. They’re always in your way. They’re fast and short and you trip over them. They’re loud, they’re messy, and they’re always…” I rubbed my fingers together and made a face, “sticky.”
One side of his lips quirked up. They were sexy full lips, too, and I almost got distracted. “Sticky?”
“Yes. From food or glue or snot…I don’t know. They’re just…” I shivered again. And then I shut my mouth. What kind of twenty-eight-year-old woman had an aversion to small children? But I had never spent any time around them when I was growing up, and I simply wasn’t used to them.
Still, I had to have sounded like a lunatic.
Tyson didn’t seem to mind. He leaned closer. His knee brushed against mine, and I had to fight not to jerk away from him. “They’re just what?”
“Scary,” I hissed back, more loudly than I intended.
Tyson threw his head back and laughed. It sounded like magic.
I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
“What other fears do you still have, Blue?”
I cleared my throat. No way was I admitting all my fears to him. No way. No how. I gave him enough and he was not going to take anything from me all over again.
