Chapter Twelve
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SHELBY HAD EVERYTHINGshe wanted. The file from her office, her favorite takeout in front of her, and Colton Bells eyeing her from across the dining room table withthatlook.
She knew that look. Ever since the kiss in her office, he’d been sending her smoldering glances. His touch lingered a few seconds longer than necessary. When they’d arrived back at the house to find her mom, dad, and Daniel there with food from the parishioners, Colton’s demeanor had been soft and protective, his normal razor-sharp tongue with her dad more tolerant and easygoing.
She’d introduced Connor to her parents and Daniel, and then he’d left to get his girlfriend. Six casseroles, three cakes, and twenty minutes of reassuring her parents later, Jack and Martha pulled out of the driveway with Daniel driving, leaving her alone with the man now sitting across from her.
Currently, it wasn’t just a smoldering glance drifting her way. He was full-on knocking her out with his bold gaze. “You’re not eating enough,” he said.
This from the man who hadn’t touched a thing on his plate. He’d poured himself a glass of tea, rather than grabbing a beer, and hadn’t even touched that.
The chicken fries she usually devoured in under a minute toyed with her nose, but her mouth watered for something else. Something only Colton could give her.
Picking up a fry, she nibbled on it. “Guess I’m not hungry for Moody’s after all.”
“I can heat up one of those god-awful casseroles in the fridge.”
“Be nice. It was sweet of the ladies’ group to go to all that trouble.”
“Feels like a funeral luncheon to me.”
“But we have Irma J. Brown’s triple decker chocolate cake. The one she puts the pudding mix in. She only makes those for special occasions. Happy ones.”
Like weddings.
“The last time I had a piece of that cake…”
He let the sentence trail off, and yep, there it was. His eyelids lowered to half-mast and his gaze dropped to her lips.
Because the last time he’d had that cake, he smeared the homemade frosting all over Shelby’s body and licked it off.
Slowly. One bare inch at a time.
Shelby twirled her braid and lowered her chin so she was looking at Colton through her lashes. Her tongue slipped out and licked her lips. “That was really good cake, wasn’t it?”
He kicked back in his chair, a lazy grin spreading over his face. “You wouldn’t be suggesting you want to skip your fine dinner for a piece of that cake, would you, darlin’?”
Hell yes. That was exactly what she was suggesting. She tossed a fry at him. “Chocolate is a food group, and the doctor said I could have anything I wanted.”
“Is that so? Are we talking about your real physician or the fake one we’ve been making up all day?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, ma’am. I’m in agreement with your doctor, fake or real. You can have anything you want.”
The air sizzled and snapped between them with that old chemistry she loved so much. It was like touching the ends of two alligator clips coming from a battery charger. If the ends of her hair lifted, she wouldn’t be surprised.
Her nipples went hard and her pulse skipped to a blissful beat, but Colton didn’t move, as if afraid to spook his prey.
Trapped in his smoldering gaze, she took a moment to assess her current state. Was she really about to jump back into the fire with him? To get caught up in his rocky, unpredictable world?
She’d been raised on fire and brimstone, and had never been shy about stoking the flames. Colton’s world, though, his very existence, took the blaze and turned it into an inferno inside of her.
Once you caught the fever for Colton Bells and tasted that kind of all-consuming passion, you were never the same. She had the feeling, this time around, she’d never get back out alive.
