Spanish still turned her brains to mush and left her tongue-tied.
Dumbstruck, she watched the presumptuous idiot stroll to the door where he glanced back and aimed a cocky but still irresistible—darn his arrogant hide—wink at her.
Obviously, it would take a major case of amnesia for her to finally forget Nick and the incredible pleasure his lips promised and never failed to deliver. With that in mind, she staggered back to the classroom, seriously considering slamming her head into the door.
~*~
Nick smacked his palm against the steering wheel and muttered a string of four-letter words under his breath. He never should’ve kissed her, damn it. But it had been so long, and her mouth had looked so tempting. He hadn’t been able to resist.
It would be just his luck to screw things up with her before he even set foot back inside the house. Despite the potential backlash, the outraged but hungry-for-more look on Sam’s face left him whistling most of the way home.
Unfortunately, leaving her speechless had been a minor victory that he chose to savor since it would probably be his last for a while. Sammy was bound to throw a very loud conniption when she came home and found Chewie lounging around her house. That surprise, coupled with the stolen kiss, could very well land Nick and his pet in a flea-ridden motel for the night.
At the red light near Peddler’s Village, he reached behind the seat and scratched the dog’s neck. “Don’t worry, pal. You’ll grow on her. And Dani will be nuts about you.”
After the stupid stunt he’d just pulled, he needed as much optimism as he could muster. The fury flashing in Samantha’s eyes after he kissed her said it would take a lot more than a peace offering of peanut butter cups to finesse his suitcases and Chewie inside. Only major extortion was likely to convince her to let him stay. Like, say, bribery, guilt, or blackmail?
If necessary, he’d use his entire arsenal of coercion methods. Otherwise, he’d be facing a terminal case of celibacy. Even though the court might have legally dissolved his marriage, his non-practicing Catholic penis still considered Sam his wife—and probably always would.
CHAPTER 4
Nick stomped on the brake twenty yards from his driveway and watched in horror.
A totally ripped, bare-chested teen chased a giggling hottie—who Nick fervently prayed was not his little girl—around the front lawn, attempting to swat her fanny.
The cut-offs on the adolescent siren barely covered her bottom and rode so low the waistband scarcely concealed the crack in her behind. Perspiration glued her tank top to her woman-sized breasts like a second skin. The entire outfit screamed, ‘ Come and get it !’ as subtly as a streetwalker on Sunset Boulevard.
No. That girl couldn’t be his little Dani. According to Sam, their daughter had only hit puberty last spring, right before she’d flown out to visit him. She couldn’t have grown breasts that size in only six months. Could she?
The girl turned and ran toward his SUV, and his stomach clenched. ¡ Madre de Dios ! That teenage strumpet was his daughter.
And directly behind her was a heat-seeking missile with only one objective—penetrate the target, namely Nick’s little girl.
Had Sam lost her mind letting their child dress like that? And when had Dani’s legs gotten that long?
One side of the double driveway was already occupied—by the boy’s car, he assumed. To avoid taking Sam’s space or blocking the kid’s vehicle, Nick parked the SUV along the shaded tree-lined road in front of the Manion’s property.
He wasn’t quite ready to introduce Chewie to his daughter, so he lowered the windows to keep the dog from cooking in the heat. “Lie down and stay,” he ordered. As soon as the animal complied, Nick climbed out of the vehicle.
The moment Dani saw him striding across the road toward the house, she froze in her tracks. The shirtless teen, whose camouflage cargo pants rode
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