Her Off-Limits Single Dad by Marion Lennox

Author:Marion Lennox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2023-07-13T18:35:05+00:00

* * *

‘I...’ He closed his eyes.

And in that moment something stirred. Anger? Rebellion?

No.

Fun.

The word was suddenly front and centre. Fun!

Maybe that was what this night could be about, he thought. To take this lovely woman into his arms, to feel her body, to smile into her laughing eyes...

Fun and so much more.

‘You know what?’ she managed, and now she sounded almost breathless. ‘Your in-laws aren’t in my bedroom.’

‘Your bedroom?’

‘It’s the furthest away from Minnie and Jacob,’ she said, a trace of insouciance surfacing again.

‘Jen...’

‘Don’t you dare sound shocked,’ she said, her eyes flashing with anger again. ‘It’s just... I’ve watched how lovely you’ve been with Anna tonight, how skilled, how gentle, and I’ve been thinking of how damned sexy you are. And I just thought, suddenly, in between mouthfuls of toast, that if you and I wanted to exorcise some demons together it might be fun. So... If a guy thinks a woman is sexy and interested and free, he might proposition her. No force, just a gentle enquiry. Does it work both ways or have I offended you to the core?’

Sexy and interested and free? As simple as that.

Was he available? Here, in this house echoing with memories, in this night filled with charged emotion, in the silence where Jacob and Minnie lay sleeping and in this world where Emma still lived, but only her body, not her lovely mind...

Here was this woman. Sexy and interested and free.

Jenny spoke again before he could begin to form a response, but now she sounded as if she was struggling to get the words out. He realised that she’d put herself in an impossible position. The words she’d said couldn’t be unsaid.

‘So back to our separate ends of the house, Dr Pierson?’ she managed. ‘That’s okay. But you know what? I’m not even going to feel vaguely humiliated. I might go back and cuddle Stumpy a bit more until I’m over it, but there’s an end. Don’t you dare judge me. If you could kindly move to one side, I’m going to bed.’

He should let her. He should simply stand aside and let her pass.

But she didn’t move. She was watching him, her eyes wary, her very stance shouting of defiance. And then he thought...no. It’s not defiance. It’s courage.

He knew her well enough now to have seen through the sorry tale of the zigzagged dinner suit and realised the shattering effect it would have had on her. She’d left her job, her friends, her community because she’d needed to get away. He’d have expected her to curl into a ball of self-protection, yet here she was, exposing herself again. To pain?

To judgement? To yet more humiliation?

She was wearing oversized pink pyjamas with blue penguins on them. She was wiry and tough and defiant. She was competent and...and beautiful.

Soul-searingly beautiful.

She was offering fun. For both of them.

‘I think,’ he said, slowly now, as if every syllable needed to be carefully considered, ‘that I might just have reacted all wrong to your...your very interesting idea.

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