And I didn’t think about Mag, our episodes that morning (both of them), his sweetness that night, and how warm it felt, not scary, not anxious, that every moment shared he might be the one.

No.

I didn’t think of any of that.

I thought of a woman named Nikki and how in the hell she’d let go of a guy like Daniel Magnusson.

Chapter Thirteen

Force of Nature

Evie

The next morning, I was at Mag’s coffeemaker, scooping in coffee, when the door to his bedroom opened, and he appeared in it, messy-haired, sleepy-eyed and cranky-looking.

Even with that last, my mouth watered.

Because he was messy-haired (and that hair!) and sleepy-eyed (and man, those eyes).

And bare-chested.

“You fuckin’ suck,” he declared.

That killed the mood and my eyes went squinty.

“What?” I asked irritably. “Are we now in a competition about who’s going to start the coffee?”

He didn’t answer.

He walked right up to me, pulled the coffee scoop out of my hands, tossed it on the counter, swept me in his arms and laid a wet one on me.

He might be messy-haired and sleepy-eyed, but he’d brushed his teeth.

Yum.

He also smelled all musky man.

I loved that.

It was getting heated, I liked that heat, and then he ended it.

I was blinking up at him as he was smoothing the hair away from my face, staring down at me, now lazy-eyed, but always gorgeous, when he said, “I want you to think today about alternate sleeping arrangements tonight after I treat you to dinner and a movie.”

Was he…?

I continued to blink up at him.

Was he asking me to take the day to consider having sex with him tonight?

I mean…

How sweet was that?

“If I sleep with you,” he went on, “I might be able to exhaust you so I can beat you to the kitchen and make you breakfast without any backtalk.”

The “exhaust you” part gave me a tingle.

The “backtalk” part made me squint my eyes at him again.

“You know, many men would want the little woman making them breakfast,” I pointed out.

“What I know is, many men are morons. You’re a man at all, you take care of your woman. You beat that competitive streak, I’ll even bring you breakfast in bed.”

That sounded awesome.

I did not share that.

“You know, most women can take care of themselves, say, by feeding themselves, say, by cooking breakfast.”

“Now you’re just bein’ ornery,” he groused.

“Who uses words like ‘ornery’?” I asked.

“I do, when I’m trying to beat back the need to carry you to my bed and eat you for breakfast.”

Oh…

My.

My legs went weak, my fingers dug into his shoulders, and I whispered, “Danny.”

“Torture, all that’s you across my condo, and I’m alone in my bed,” he muttered.

Oh my God.

He was so…

Into me.

I moved my hand to fiddle with a loose, dark curl at his neck and promised, “I’ll think about alternate sleeping arrangements tonight. But just to say, I don’t consider sleeping with someone until at least the sixth date. So, since we’re already living together, which I figure puts us at least in ninth- or tenth-date territory, it’s looking good for the both of us.”

He gave me a squeeze, a grin and a murmured, “Good to know, honey.”

“And if you’re treating dinner and the movie, I’m buying brunch.”

His cheerful, I’m-gonna-get-me-some expression morphed back to cranky.

“Follow me, my handsome Danny, out of the ’80s, into a bright future,” I urged on a tease.

“How is it, when you act like a dork, the need to bang you strengthens?” he asked.

“I have it on good authority me being a dork is cute.”

He dipped his head to me, his eyes changed to something profoundly beautiful and equally profoundly hot, and he whispered against my lips, “That good authority knows what he’s talking about.”

He then kissed me.

I kissed him back.

It got heated.

But he ended it, turned me in his arms, let me go and put a hand to the small of my back to give me a little shove toward my room, saying, “I’ll finish coffee. You get ready for brunch. I’m starved. Keep your bathroom door closed, honey, and I’ll leave your cup on the nightstand.”

I did as ordered because I was hungry too.

And because I wanted to be out in the world with Mag, doing normal things normal people do.

Normal couples do.

And because it was dawning on me that I’d never had this.

“This” being what just happened in Mag’s kitchen with Mag.

I didn’t even have it with my ex.

The confidence to tease and boast, that last, even in jest.

To talk frankly about impending intimacy with no hint of anxiety because I knew to my bones with the way we kissed, it’d be good for me and for him, because he was into what I had to offer.

I’d never been that sure.

I’d never felt that confident.

I’d never felt this way before at all.

Not with what just happened with Mag in his kitchen.

Not before that, waking up, raring to take on the day, a day where I knew I was waking up to him, and time with friends, rather than a day to endure or exist through until I was again asleep.

And I thought, maybe Mag had been right.

Maybe what Lottie wanted for us wasn’t about her looking after her boy.

Maybe it was about her guiding me to what I needed to see about my life, my place in it, what I deserved and the people around me the way they should be seen.

The bad.

And the good.

And the hope.

And the fact I deserved a time like I just had with Mag in his kitchen.

And I deserved a guy like Danny Magnusson in my life.

“Okay, well, apparently, this jackhole didn’t have it out for your shoes, which I gotta say is too bad because no one needs this many pairs of Chucks,” Ryn declared, standing in my bedroom with one of my navy Chucks held up in one hand, one of my burgundy Chucks in the other.

“Chucks are timeless,” Hattie chimed in.

“Agreed,” Ryn replied, finding the mates and returning them to my shoe shelves in the closet. “But there’s not a single high heel in this joint.”

“I only wear heels when I strip,” I told her.

Ryn looked at Pepper, openly befuddled, and asked, “Is that even possible?”

“Don’t ask me,” Pepper replied. “I had to buy under-bed storage so I had more space in my closet for my heels. The bitches at DSW send me birthday cards.”

I looked to Hattie and laughed.

This had happened to me a lot that day.

Laughter.

Including during brunch, something that Mag alternately teased, joked and audaciously flirted his way through, to the point my sides hurt from laughing so hard.

It was kind of our first, real, official, going-out-somewhere-together date.

And it was the best I’d ever had.

On that happy memory, Mo strolled into the room and pointed at a box that I’d gone through that Ava and Lottie had filled with decimated knickknacks.