“That’s not enough time for what was going to happen on this sofa if I hadn’t stopped when I did.”
Her heart beat erratically. “What was going to happen?”
“Clothes were going to start coming off.” He leaned in to tug on her sweater. “Starting with yours.” His lips were swollen from kissing her, his jaw was covered in stubble, and brown plaid flannel had never been so sexy. She could lie there staring at him until tomorrow morning, and it wouldn’t be long enough to absorb the fact that Gavin was sitting on her sofa looking at her like he wanted to eat her up.
Not that she would say no to that . . .
“Quit looking at me like that,” he said gruffly.
“How am I looking at you?”
“You know. I’m trying to be honorable by not jumping you the first chance I get, and you’re lying there looking all sultry and sexy.”
“Am I?”
“Ella! Stop it.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re breathing. That’s enough for me.”
“I keep thinking I’m going to wake up, and it’s going to be Saturday night and my Cherry Garcia would’ve melted during the time I had this amazing dream about sleeping with Gavin and grocery shopping with him and making out with him.”
“You’re not dreaming, and neither am I. For the first time in a very long time, I’m having a really good day, and it’s all because of you.”
“Thank you.”
“Do not thank me. All the thanks goes to you, my little bulldog.”
“Um, is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“Yep. You were tenacious like a bulldog, never letting me get away with anything and calling me out on my shit. You have no idea how much I needed someone to do that.”
“I’m glad I helped, but let’s retire the bulldog analogy.”
Smiling, he tugged on her hand. “Let’s get going to your parents’ place so I can talk to your dad about the work he wants done before dinner.”
Reluctantly, Ella let him help her up, but she wished they had nowhere to be so they could continue with the kissing. The kissing was good. Very, very good.
“Is it okay with your mom if I come to dinner?”
“Oh yeah. She makes enough to feed an army every week. I think my aunt Hannah and cousin Grayson will be there today, too. I heard he was in town visiting his mom this weekend.”
“I haven’t seen him in years. He’s in Boston, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did he ever get married?”
Ella pushed her feet into the moccasins that had fallen off when he carried her to the sofa. “Nope, but you can hardly blame him after what he went through with his parents.”
“No kidding.”
Ella’s uncle Mike had walked away from his wife and eight children when the older kids were in high school and the youngest ones still in elementary school. “A lot fell to Gray as the oldest. He really stepped up for his mom and siblings. He probably has zero desire to have his own family after all that.”
“Do they ever hear from their father?”
“Occasionally, but it’s nothing regular.”
“Can you imagine a man leaving his wife and children like that?”
“No man I know would do something like that, but then again, we never thought Uncle Mike would either. He loved family life and his kids and Hannah. They were a true love match, or so we thought.”
Gavin held her coat for her before donning his own coat. “Did you ever find out what went wrong?”
“Not really. My mom suspects he had some sort of breakdown or something happened with his job. But I’ve never heard the full story. I don’t know if even my mom has heard the whole thing, and Hannah is her sister.”
“And Hannah never remarried?”
“To be honest, I don’t think they ever got divorced.”
“Wow, and how many years ago was this?”
“Well, let’s see, Gray is the same age as Hunter and Hannah, and they’re going to be thirty-six in December, so almost twenty years ago, I’d say.”
“Twenty years. How’s it getting to be almost twenty years out of high school for us?”
“Don’t say us. I’m quite a bit younger than you.”