Petey was sitting at the table eating spaghetti. Elec was putting an aluminum dish into the oven, his behind looking mighty nice in his jeans when he bent over.
“Wow, you’re eating,” she said to Petey, feeling a little flustered at the domestic scene laid out in front of her. Her husband had never put anything in the oven, ever, and the fact that Elec did so easily was a little unnerving. “Where’s your sister?”
“I’m hungry,” Petey said, like that was an obvious reason for eating, which she supposed it was. He slurped up a noodle. “This is good.”
“Hunter’s in bed,” Elec said. “She was worn out and wanted to lie down, so I figured this time of night, might as well put her in her bed so you don’t have to move her later.”
“She let you put her to bed?” Tamara was amazed. Hunter wasn’t an easy kid to settle down at night.
“Yep. She was just about asleep by the time I left the room.”
“Oh. Wow. Thanks.” Tamara rubbed her temples. “I’ll just run up and check on her.”
“Dinner should be ready by the time you get back,” Elec said with a smile.
Tamara walked out of the room, fighting the urge to run. She didn’t understand the chaos of feelings she was experiencing. Anxiety, anger, longing, pleasure . . . they were all swirling around inside her and she didn’t know how to deal with any of them.
When she got to Hunter’s bedroom, her daughter was indeed already asleep under her checkered flag comforter. Inhaling the lingering scent of rubber, Tamara stared in the dark at her baby, her mouth open on a silent snore, and wondered what the hell she was doing.
This wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to keep her relationship with Elec, which was supposed to revolve solely around sex, separate from her children. In one night, he had shattered that compartmentalization and questioned her very ability to have that kind of secretive affair anyway. She was too apt to get attached to think that she could have a sex-only fling and not be affected. Already she was feeling jealous of women like Crystal.
In the hallway she heard Petey coming up the stairs loudly, telling Elec some kind of fact about cockroaches being able to survive a nuclear war. Tamara leaned on the door frame of Hunter’s room, glancing over her shoulder as they walked past her to Petey’s room. Elec reached out and brushed his hand across her waist and the small of her back and she clenched her fists in her armpits, fighting back tears that had suddenly popped into her eyes.
This was too much. This was too much a reminder of what she’d lost. Hell, it was a reminder of what she’d never had. Pete had been a great guy who had loved his family, but by no means had he been hands-on. She could count on her hand the number of times he had tucked his children into bed. Which was why it always struck her as interesting that doing so was one of Petey’s primary memories of his father.
“Meet you in the kitchen, okay?” Elec whispered to her.
“Okay. Good night, Petey,” she called to her son.
“Night. Love you.” He waved from the door of his room, popping his head in and out and grinning. Clearly he was bouncing right back from being sick.
“Love you, too.”
When Petey disappeared into his room, she was left standing alone with Elec, his intense stare on her in the moonlit hall.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” he said in a gravelly voice.
“Good.”
Because they clearly needed to talk.
After he kissed her.
CHAPTER TE
ELEC walked into the kitchen, not sure what his reception was going to be. Tamara had pulled the lasagna out of the oven and put it on two plates on the table. She had opened a bottle of red wine and poured one glass. Next to the other plate was a bottle of beer, which stupidly touched him. She remembered that he didn’t drink wine.
God, he was in way too deep and they were only ten days into this thing. Being in her house, with her and her kids, was comfortable and satisfying, just as much as being in bed with her was, though in a totally different way. Making love to Tamara satisfied him physically and as a man, a lover. It was hot and sexy and emotional, intimate and intense.
Sharing an evening at home with her satisfied his need for a friend, for companionship, for the need he had to protect and take care of someone.
Together, it was dragging him under quick and he wasn’t at all sure how she felt.
“I broke the rules, didn’t I?” he said when she turned around, napkins clutched in her hand.
She nodded. “Yeah, you did.”
“I’m sorry, that really wasn’t my intention. I wasn’t trying to push or manipulate you.
When you told me about being stuck in the house, I just thought that it would be a help if I stopped by with dinner. That’s all.”
“I know. I can see that.” She set the pink napkins down on the table. “It’s just that the minute you walked in the door, it changed. It’s not just you and I hooking up for fun.”
“Were we really going to be able to do that?” he asked. “I know we fell into this impulsively, but at least on my part, there is a deeper attraction than that. I agreed to keep it quiet and casual because that’s what you wanted. It’s never been what I wanted.”
Tamara didn’t answer his question. She just chewed her lip and fretted. “My kids are going to ask about you. Hunter will root for you on the track. They’ll wonder why you don’t come over.”
“Ty and Ryder don’t come over all the time, do they?”
“No.”
“So chalk it up to them getting special visitors because they were sick. We don’t have to involve them if you don’t want, I promise.” Even though he could honestly say he would enjoy spending more time with her kids. “But don’t shut me out. I want to see you, Tamara.”
She gave a little laugh. “Funny how you’re the only person outside of work who calls me Tamara.”
He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. “That’s how you introduced yourself to me,” he said, baffled. “Would you rather I call you Tammy?” Hell, he’d call her whatever she wanted as long as he got to see her again.
“No. I like Tamara.” She looked at him over the table with those big blue eyes, wide with uncertainty. “I like you, I mean really like . . . and I’m so confused. I don’t know what we’re doing, I don’t know how to date. I haven’t dated since I was eighteen years old, Elec.”