Single Dad. Jennifer Greene

      Three

      All evening, Josh had the weird sensation that it was wicked and wrong to be alone with her. His six-year-old was having trouble handling the temptation of Ariel’s magic. He wasn’t afraid of crystal balls or card tricks, but yeah, he was uncomfortably aware that the lady had some kind of magic. Dangerous magic, because she sure as hell seemed to have cast some kind of spell on him.

      For that reason alone, he never meant to kiss her. He’d have sworn in court that neither the thought nor intent was remotely on his mind. And a guy was supposed to be able to count on those handy physics laws of the universe—like the relationship between fire and fuel. If nobody lit a match, nobody had to worry about the repercussions of starting a blaze.

      There were no matches in sight. There was just an instant—an innocent instant—when they were standing together in her shadowed doorway. Her face was tilted up to his. He was wearing his denim jacket, ready to leave, his hand even on the doorknob. Their eyes met. It couldn’t have been for more than a millisecond. Nobody made a soul connection in a millisecond. For cripes’ sake, Josh didn’t even believe in hoaxy ethereal stuff like “soul connections.”

      But something happened. Something insane. Something that made it feel perfectly natural to lift his hand to gently touch her cheek. When she turned her head, he bent down, as if they already naturally knew the steps to this dance. When their lips met, though, there was nothing natural about the kiss.

      Her lips were softer than butter. Softer than spring. Her eyes turned this smoky misty green, and then they closed, as if inhaling the texture of this sensation was all she could concentrate on. She tasted sweet, and to kiss her small mouth, her lips, was like sliding on silk.

      Hormones. His mind lanced on the word, seeking excuses and explanations for an explosion of emotion that had no such simple reason. Yeah, his whole body tightened from the chemical connection. And below his belt, he knew exactly what she was doing to him.

      But that crazy, wild kiss had nothing of lust in it. It was a lost kiss. A testing, tentative, beguiling acknowledgment of longing and loneliness.

      He’d never denied being lonely; it was just supposed to be a back-burner item, a problem he’d take out and deal with after the kids were grown and he had time for it. Only, she put it on his table right now. How many nights he’d been alone. How fiercely he missed believing there would ever be someone to talk to, be with. How rich, how heady, how mountain-tall a man could feel with a woman who cared about him.

      He wasn’t used to riches—not extravagant, expensive, luxurious riches like her. Her silk rustled alluringly against his denim. His callused hands seemed an impossible contrast against her pearl skin. The pulse was beating hard in her throat. Hard, but not fast. The whole world had tuned down to slow motion, as if life had been kind enough to give them both a time-out, and nothing existed, not at this moment, but the two of them and a kiss that neither of them could seem to let go of.

      He’d wondered how that long hair would feel sifting through his hands. Now he knew. Dangerous. A man’s fingers could get lost in those long, shivery strands and never come out. Her hands clutched his jacket and then slid, softly and slowly, around his neck.

      Somewhere, he could smell blueberry muffins. Somewhere, he could hear a clock ticking. Somewhere, a coat hook was stabbing him directly between the shoulder blades, and it was extremely odd, but he didn’t give a damn. She was kissing him back as though she hadn’t met a man who mattered to her in the past four, five thousand years. His instincts pitched back to the caveman era, but even accounting for those primitive, prehistoric male emotions, he knew damn well he’d never kissed anyone like her. The crush of her plump breasts made him feel hot and violently protective at the same time. Her skin warmed under his touch—warmed and flushed. Her scent, her texture and touch, hit him like a seductive, erotic overload.

      He tried to gulp in oxygen.

      There wasn’t a lick of air in the whole room.

      She tried to gulp in air, too, then raised her eyes and smiled at him as if she were waking from some dream. “Josh?”

      He wasn’t sure what she was asking. Her voice was husky, low, shy. Hurtable, he recognized. Never mind her sensual feminine lair and her antimarriage rhetoric and the free spirit implied by her walking around in pajamas. She didn’t do this every day.

      Hell, neither did he.

      It took a second to untangle his hands from her hair, to smooth a strand away from her face, to brush his lips against her brow. The kiss was a gesture of comfort, not apology. He couldn’t apologize for something he wasn’t sorry for. But he also couldn’t talk about something he couldn’t explain.

      She seemed to understand, seemed in no mood for conversation, either, because she smiled at him just before he turned around and pulled open the door.

      Outside, a cool drizzling rain was still falling. He yanked up his collar and headed down the slick, wet metal steps. Smells drifted off the Connecticut River; a passing car swished water from a puddle, but that was the only sound. The whole town was dark and quiet. The white steeple of the Congregational Church and pointed rooftops were familiar landmarks, everything washed and clean this night. Rainbows haloed under the street lamps as he climbed into the cool, damp seat of the Bronco. He lifted up to filch the key from his jeans pocket and started the engine.

      And then he took a breath. It seemed the first lungful of real oxygen he’d had since being with her.

      For some crazy reason, that spellbound feeling didn’t want to go away. Josh had no patience or belief in fairy dust. He didn’t exactly mind a singular, temporary, short, one-shot excursion into insanity...surely any guy was entitled? Every male human being had fantasies from the day he reached puberty, but he never expected to actually experience one. Ariel. Hell. If all those looks and sensuality and sex appeal weren’t enough to knock a guy to his knees, her openness and giving nature, the way she listened as if he were the only man in the universe—and yeah, the way she kissed—were enough to rattle any man.

      Of course he was shook up.

      It was okay that he was shook up. No reason to panic. It was probably underlined and italicized in the guys’ rule book somewhere—any male exposed to Ariel Lindstrom who was not shook up should probably run, not walk, to a doctor for an immediate physical.

      It was just that nothing like that had ever happened to him before.

      He turned at the light, cruised Maple for a block, then traveled up the hill into his little burb. If it hadn’t been storming earlier, he’d have walked to her shop. The drive didn’t take five minutes.

      The kids had left the lights on. In fact—no surprise, with him gone—every window in the house was ablaze with lights. The month’s electric bill was gonna be a monster. He swiped a hand over his face as he locked the Bronco and loped to the back door. It was coming back. Sanity. Slowly, too slowly, but logic and common sense had never deserted Josh for long.

      A moment’s craziness was understandable, even acceptable. As long as a guy didn’t mistake it for reality.

      The reality was that he had three troubled kids, a work and life schedule that blitzed any free time, and a mess of a divorce behind him. What would she want with a ready-made household of trouble, dirty towels, dishes and a kleptomaniac squirt? No way, nohow, could he picture Ariel