.
He glanced at the apple again. Yep, it wasn’t like he’d been christened Adam. He wasn’t doing temptation at the moment. He was only doing friendship.
‘Well don’t you look adorbs sitting under my tree, reading,’ he called out and had to bite his lip to stop the grin from appearing as she fumbled the book she was reading and looked up at him.
Actually glared would be a much more fitting description.
Had he mentioned her eyes?
They were the colour of sea-green glass and could cool you down quicker than a cold shower or heat you up faster than a laser beam. Stunning and mesmerising in equal measure, they could observe a scene in a second, judge in a nano, and hand down a sentence with one perfectly-timed blink.
They could also twinkle.
Sparkle.
Beckon.
‘Adorbs?’ she spluttered. ‘Adorbs?’ With a look of utter disgust, she added, ‘get away from me Purloiner of Tween Words.’
Now his mouth did split into a happy grin. There was just something so soul-lifting-satisfying about riling her.
She was never going to believe she really did look adorable with the sun catching the auburn streaks in her hair, serenity vying for concentration on her face as she read her book.
Gloria didn’t often look at peace. Maybe when she stared at her daughter sometimes. But other than that, what she usually looked was ready to do battle. Lip-Sync Battle, Battle Rap, Battleship. Basically any kind of let’s-do-this battle.
It used to be she’d battle her own shadow along with everyone else and their shadows. These days she chose more wisely and battled mostly for those who couldn’t. Making her, in his humble opinion, charmingly righteous.
‘Language is for anyone and everyone to use,’ he replied. ‘If it wasn’t, you’d be in breach of copyright for every combination of swear word a sailor or trooper ever came up with.’
She scowled up at him. ‘Does Beth use word contractions like,’ she stopped, shuddered and declared, ‘no, I won’t say it again.’
For a moment he had no clue who she was referring to, and then with an embarrassed sweep of his hand to the back of his neck, remembered Beth was the name of the girl he’d been talking to in the bar all evening, a few nights before.
‘Ah. Sweet Beth,’ he murmured. Truthfully, sweet Beth was so saccharine she set his teeth on edge. She certainly didn’t challenge him or appeal to his sense of humour or engage his brain like … he looked at Gloria …
Steady.
… other women he knew.
Now was not the time to allow the stress of getting Jake to recognise he’d be an asset to the Hall to mess with his head. He might have been impulsive over the years but never self-destructive.
Maybe it was only natural to feel drawn to someone the complete opposite of his now ex-wife, Joanne.
Or not.
There was nothing like signing your name on a legal document to inform the opinion that you didn’t need to team up with anyone for life to still be all right.
‘She’s not for you, you know,’ Gloria said, before raising the apple to her mouth and taking another bite out of it.
‘Not for me?’ His gaze zoomed in without his permission to study the way she chewed sexily on the flesh of the apple.
Nope.
He gave himself a mental slap upside the head.
Thoughtfully.
He watched her chew thoughtfully before she swallowed and added, ‘Think about it … If you became “exclusive”, your “ship name” would be either “Seth” or “Beth”. How could Whispers Wood possibly invest in that?’
‘What the hell is a ship name?’ Seth asked, lowering his six-foot-two frame down to the ground so that he could settle himself comfortably beside her.
It was weird to have Gloria show any kind of interest in his love life.
If a scowl could be considered interest, that was, and not that he had a love life.
Steering clear of that for the foreseeable and maybe even the ‘foreverable’.
Gloria shook her head sadly at him. ‘You have adorbs down but not ship and exclusive? Ship – as in relationship. A ship name is where you merge your names together for added impressiveness. Like Kimye.’
‘Okay. Pretty sure any ship I was supposed to be in has sailed. And exclusivity hardly ever stays that way. We have the battle scars to prove it.’
Gloria didn’t say anything and instead focused all her attention on her apple.
What no comeback?
Without stopping to think too much about it he reached out, enclosed her hand and the apple in his and brought the two up to his mouth. He paused for a moment to take in the shocked bounce of her gaze to his and then, caught up in the darkening shade of green, bit into the apple to appease some of the gnawing hunger. He chewed, swallowed and had a thought. ‘So if you and I were shipping we’d be referred to as Gleth or Sloria?’
She stared at his mouth and he felt the crazy little jump in the pulse-point at her wrist. Reward in and of itself, he mused, instructing himself to let go of her hand. Stroking his thumb over that jump of flesh would start something he had no business starting and he had a new rule about not being a dick.
‘You see,’ she mumbled. ‘Either way it just doesn’t work.’
‘Well, phew, right?’
The way she licked her lips didn’t look accidental and his body said screw it. With his eyes on hers he took another bite of the apple, his lips accidentally-not-accidentally grazing the skin of her thumb.
She snatched her apple back and rubbed her thumb. ‘Hannibal much? How can you always be so hungry?’
‘Appetite for life,’ he said, trying not to focus on the jaw-dropping news he had the power to get Gloria to full-on blush from a simple touch.
‘Appetite for life?’ she snorted. ‘I suppose it’s about time.’
He forgot about flirting as her words struck home. For a while, particularly the while right after seeing Joanne so happily shacked-up with another man, he had lost his verve … his zest … his you-only-get-one-life approach.
It wasn’t jealousy that had zapped it. His free-falling pride-tumbling descent had been more to do with his brothers and sisters considering it their duty to issue well-meaning lectures on the steps to maintaining a happy and stable relationship. Each offering had been delivered first-class signed-for and fully-tracked to ensure maximum overlap.
He hadn’t been able to take a breath for all the ‘You know if you’d …’ and ‘I think for the future …’ And ‘You have to stop thinking you can just do what you want, when you want …’ advice.
Advice that had made him question if they knew him at all.
‘So what’s got you so peckish?’ asked the woman who, instead of offering advice had simply served him a drink when he’d needed it, let him talk when he’d needed it, flirted with him when he’d needed it and riled him right on out of his pity party when he’d needed it.
His gaze snagged on her mouth and for a moment he couldn’t seem to get his brain to follow through on her question. ‘Even if your name was Eve our ship name wouldn’t work,’ he muttered.
‘Huh?’
‘Huh?’ he repeated, and then as a bee buzzed madly over the prop in her hand, and she, thankfully, swatted lazily at it, bouncing it back out of whatever kind of