“Crazy for you.” Elec leaned over and gave her a long, delicious kiss. “Mmm. Been waiting awhile to do that.”
“Are you coming?” Hunter called loudly from the patio.
Elec gave her a look, and Tamara laughed. “Don’t say it, not even under your breath.”
“What?” he said, all innocence, like he hadn’t heard the word coming and reached the same conclusion she had.
Knowing that she was pushing it, but unable to resist, Tamara leaned in and whispered in his ear, “I wish I was coming. On top of you.”
Elec moaned and squeezed her waist. “You’re torturing me.”
Torturing both of them. But she just smiled and said, “Yep,” and headed out the back door.
ELEC sat in front of the fire he had built, Hunter wiggling on his lap, and held his stick over the flame, watching his marshmallow turn a nice golden brown. Tamara was sitting next to him, her feet crossed at the ankles, her hair up in a ponytail, the firelight dancing across her beautiful face whenever she glanced over at him, a smile showing off her teeth.
Pete was on the other side of the fire, tossing marshmallows directly into the fire to watch them catch and implode in the dark.
Elec could honestly say that he had never been quite so content and relaxed in his whole life. They’d had ribs on the grill, corn on the cob, and potato salad for dinner, and they’d gotten soaking wet running around and slamming water balloons into each other.
He liked hanging out with Tamara and her children. A lot. Like to the point where he thought he would get a lot of pleasure out of making this situation permanent. About being able to be at home with them whenever he wasn’t traveling and having the right to call this amazing woman his wife, this fire pit his fire pit, these kids his stepkids.
Damn, he was in trouble.
And he was hopelessly, head over heels in love with Tamara. “Your marshmallow’s burning!” Hunter yelled, because almost everything Hunter said was in the form of yelling.
“Whoops.” Elec pulled it back out of the flame and blew on it.
“Eew,” Hunter said, licking sticky goo off of her fingers. “It’s all burnded.”
“Burnded?”
“Yeah. Really burnded.”
He laughed. “It is burnded. But it still tastes good.” He slid it off the stick and popped it into his mouth. It was good. It was all good. “Now let me up, baby doll, I’m going to help Pete catch some fireflies.”
They had already found a frog earlier, down at the edge of Tamara’s property, and now the fireflies were out in full force. He thought Pete would get a kick out of capturing a few and watching them flit around in the jar for a minute before releasing them.
“Tamara, do you have a jar we could use?”
“Sure,” she said, tucking a stray hair back into her ponytail. “I’ll go grab one.”
“I’ll come with you.” He turned to Hunter. “Go on and play in the grass with your brother away from the fire until we get back, alright, baby doll?” He didn’t want a log rolling out and hitting her leg.
“Okay.” Hunter held out her arms to be picked up, so he did, figuring he’d just carry her to the grass himself.
Hunter gave him a sticky marshmallow kiss on the cheek and Elec felt his heart squeeze.
Oh, yeah, he was in trouble. But it was an amazingly good kind of trouble.
He followed Tamara into the kitchen and watched her bend over at the sink and fish out a glass jar. The angle did great things to her ass in her plaid shorts, and he wanted to run his fingers across her thighs and backside at the same time he knew it would just result in frustrating the hell out of him.
But now that he had her alone, he wanted to ask her something. When she turned, he said,
“What are you doing next weekend?”
She shrugged. “Just hanging out, I guess.” She held the jar out to him. “Why?”
Elec took it and said, “How about you come down to Daytona with me for the Fourth of July weekend and race?”
Tamara stared at him. “With the kids or alone?” she finally asked.
“I was thinking that you could come down a few days ahead of the race by yourself, then the kids could join us. You can stay with me until they get there, then I’ll get the three of you a hotel so we’re not sharing a bed in front of them.”
Her hair had slipped again and she tucked it back impatiently. “Who is going to stay with my kids while I’m gone and bring them down?”
“Your in-laws,” he said, willing himself not to fidget. If she said no, she had legitimate reasons and he couldn’t take it personally. “Don’t they always come to Daytona for the race?”
She nodded.
She didn’t give him an answer for a second, and Elec knew she knew what he was asking her. To tell her in-laws the truth. They weren’t going to be able to hide it much longer anyway since he was spending time with her kids. But he knew it was a lot to ask of her and he wasn’t going to be surprised if she said it wasn’t possible.
But Tamara glanced toward the back door, then toward him, and she nodded. “Yes. I would love to go to Daytona with you.”
Well, hot damn. They were going to be sharing a bed for two or three nights. All night.
His body reacted to the thought and he got an immediate erection. “That’s awesome. Good.
We’ll have a great time.”
Tamara glanced down at his erection, her eyebrows raised. Then she burst out laughing.
“I’m guessing we will.”
“What can I say? I’m a guy. We don’t hide our emotions.”
“Yeah, right. Emotions is what you’re calling that these days?” She rolled her eyes.
Elec leaned in and kissed her gently. “God, I . . .”
“What?” She pulled back and looked up at him, her eyes wide.
He chickened out. “I can’t wait to be alone with you.”
He could only hope that was disappointment in her eyes. But she just nodded. “Me, too.”
Elec held up the jar. “Now let’s go catch us some fireflies.”
CHAPTER FIFTEE
TAMARA had decided her best bet was to go to Beth, who would be more rational than Johnny about her request, but she was still shaking like a leaf and having a hard time forcing the words out of her mouth.
“What’s the matter, Tammy?” Beth asked her as she cut some blue hydrangeas off the bush to take into the house.
Tammy was sitting on Beth’s back patio watching her kids run through the sprinkler and trying to work up the nerve to confess the truth to her mother-in-law. “I have a favor to ask you, Beth,” she said, settling on the roundabout approach.