Oh yes, I’m going to thwart her tent plan.
But…I’m also very much wrapped around her little finger.
CHAPTER 13
MIA
I completely get the attraction to single dads, or even just men being wonderful with babies and kids. I see it all the time at the library.
But I have never found a man interacting with kids as attractive as I find David with his nieces.
Of course, I already find David attractive, so that’s part of it.
And his nieces really are irresistible.
Chelsea is so sweet and protective of her sisters. She had Del, the youngest, drive with her on the four-wheeler and went faster and over bigger rises and dips just to make Del laugh. She is completely tuned in to her sisters.
Ray is the wild one. I rode with her. And there wasn’t a curve or ramp-like hill that she missed, and it wasn’t for me. It was all for her.
Del, the baby, thinks her sisters are amazing. Only slightly less amazing than their grandma and grandpa, who are only slightly less amazing than their dad. She looks at Jack with stars in her eyes. She’s the talkative one. The outgoing one. The one who asks a million questions. Questions that Chelsea patiently answers correctly, and Ray answers with outrageously wrong answers. But answers that are so wrong that Del even knows it, and laughs as if every single one is the funniest thing she’s ever heard.
My two hours with them have flown by, and I wish I could come up with a reason to see them again.
But now that David is here too, I never want to leave Delaney and Tucker’s house.
Unless David wants to take me to his house.
And it’s getting worse—better?—by the minute.
Right now, the rugged, broody, over-protective game and parks officer, who looks so good in work boots, and his uniform, stomping around outdoors, is sitting at his mother’s dining room table with his big, calloused hands spread on top of paper placemats, letting his youngest niece paint his thumbnail a bright fluorescent blue.
I’m painting his other thumbnail a pretty pale pink.
Which means I get to touch that big, warm, calloused hand. A lot.
I’m touching it—and his thick wrist and his muscular forearm—more than I really need to. Though I’m sure he doesn’t know that. There is no way David Bennett has ever had a manicure before. But he actually needed this. His cuticles were a mess before we made him soak his fingers, then pushed back his cuticles, and trimmed them.
I did that part.
Not because I got to hold his hand and touch him even more. Okay, not just because of that, but because there is no way five-year-old Del could handle the cuticle cutters.
Sure, Sloan could have done it right after she did Jack’s and Chelsea’s. She is quick and efficient. But I wanted to do it. Even though I’m no manicure aficionado. And even though I made two of his cuticles bleed.
He swore he didn’t even feel it.
I actually believe him. Especially after he used the opportunity to tell the girls about all the different animals and bugs that have bitten him over the years.
There have been a lot.
The wide eyes and “wows” from his nieces are worth a little blood.
Okay, easy for me to say. But the girls are very impressed.
As am I, actually.
He might be making it all up, but I don’t think so.
The guy is tough and, dammit, that’s sexy. I’m a bookworm who really likes the indoors, but this guy who spends more than fifty percent of his time outside in the elements, with wildlife, really gets me going.
