Her breath caught.

“Sophie?”

“Yeah?” she asked a little breathlessly.

“Take your time,” he said.

She let out a whoosh of air as if greatly relieved, and not for the first time he wanted to hunt down the men who’d been in her life, starting with her dad, who should’ve protected and cherished her and not let it be the other way around.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “You’re leaving.”

True story. “What do you need?”

She hesitated.

“Talk to me,” he said.

“Well…that’s just it. I need you to talk to me. I need your deep, dark secrets.”

“How do you know I have any?” he asked.

“All men do.”

“Ah,” he said, not particularly thrilled to have been looped in with her ex and her dad but getting it. “All of us, huh?”

“Every last one of you,” she said, sounding very sure.

“Okay.” He nodded. “Where should I start?”

“Well…” She considered. “You could tell me what you think of cats, since I’m thinking of becoming a cat lady. There’s your favorite food. Your feelings on sexy undies. Things that make you homicidal,” she said.

The last part did something to him deep in his gut. She’d buried her lede, afraid to ask outright if he was a dick when he got mad about something. He got that too.

“And let’s throw in your worst sexual experience,” she said.

He went brows up at that one. “I don’t like cats,” he started.

“Why not?”

“They’re smug fuckers. I hope that’s not a deal breaker,” he said, smiling when she cracked up. “My favorite food is cereal. I can eat it three meals a day for long stretches of time without getting tired of it. As for sexy undies, I love them. But my favorite undies are no undies at all.”

Her eyes warmed.

“As for what makes me homicidal…”

She froze. “Yeah?”

“It’s people who wear flip-flops. I think it’s the toes.”

She sucked in a breath. “Toes.”

He gave an exaggerated shudder. “I have a toe phobia.”

She laughed. “You do not.”

He did not… “As for your last question…I had the worst blow job of my life on a heli, though I suspect it was because she was also piloting the thing while we were going at it.”

She blinked. “Wow. I can’t beat that. But…” She kicked off her sandals and waved her bare foot in his direction. “Do my toes wig you out?”

Her toenails had been painted bright blue and there was a white daisy on one of them. “Cute,” he said. “And since they make me want to start there and nibble my way up your mile-long legs and see what else I find, I can say on good authority that no, your toes do not wig me out.”

“You’re doing it again,” she said quietly.

“Annoying you?”

She shook her head. “The opposite.”

He smiled. “Good.” Leaning in, he lowered his voice to a bedroom whisper. “My turn. Tell me a secret so dirty it turns you on just to admit it.”

She choked on a laugh. “I…can’t.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

“Can’t.” She paused. “Because it’s about you.”

“Even better.”

She bit her lower lip and he went insta-hard. “Your secret would be safe with me,” he promised.

She pondered this seriously. “Something else to think about,” she said.

Chapter 19

They ended up in Jacob’s cabin, specifically in his bed where they spent several hours, but eventually Sophie left, claiming something about needing to take her vitamins and how she couldn’t sleep outside her own bed. He knew why she really left.

She needed some space.

He did too. Or so he told himself. But without her in it, his bed seemed huge.

The next day Soph flew to Dallas to spend a few days with her family and his bed got bigger each night. It was late on one of those nights that his phone pinged. When he glanced at it, he was surprised to find a…tweet? The only way that could happen was if someone had signed him up for Twitter.

Kenna, no doubt, the little brat. And she’d also apparently set his phone for notifications when someone tweeted about or to him. She would pay for that…

He accessed the notification and stared down at the message, which had come from someone called CedarRidgeNumberOneMom. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who that was.