SEAL the Deal(60)
Mick felt the oddest mixture of relief and disappointment at her words. He had dreaded the idea of her broken heart, but hadn’t fully considered the possibility of his own.
He soothed his confusion by pressing a firm kiss against her lips. “Then we’re okay?”
Biting her lip, Lacey nodded.
“Good, because I’m not sure which I’d miss more. The friendship or the sex.” Mick kissed her again thoroughly, tangling his hands in her silky hair and felt his own body respond. “Mm. I think I know which now.”
The subtle movements of her lithe body as she sat on his lap nearly sent him over the edge as she pulled his mouth back to her own. One eye open, he glanced at the plate of eggs on the counter.
Hell with it, he decided. The eggs could wait.
Again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cozy in front of Maeve’s fireplace, Mick watched Lacey carefully place her T, E, and R tiles on the game board. “Wetter,” she said, her eyes locked on Mick’s.
“Mm.” Mick responded, his knowing eyes glimmering in the firelight. He pulled three tiles from his own stash. “How about this one? Suck.” His meaning was apparent.
Lacey practically purred a response, ignoring the presence of their friends.
Maeve groaned. “Oh, God. Will you two stop?”
Jack took an angry chug of his beer. “Suck. Yeah, this sucks all right. If you want a room, go upstairs, will you? Some of us are trying to play a serious game here.”
Mick looked at Jack innocently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Maeve glanced down at the board, reading some of Lacey and Mick’s latest additions. “Suck. Wet. Big. Lucky. If I wanted to play Scrabble with a couple teenagers, I’d call the kids down the street.”
“Okay, okay,” Lacey conceded. “We’ll keep our hidden meanings to ourselves.”
“Yes, puh-lease,” Jack said with vigor adding E and T tiles to the word “ball.”
Mick shook his head. “Ballet? Okay, Nancy-boy. Guess that girlfriend of yours took your balls with her when she left.”
“You’re not dating Lisa anymore?” Maeve asked lightly.
“Lissa,” Jack corrected her pronunciation for the umpteenth time. “She dumped me last week. She thought I was dating someone else, which I wasn’t. Total paranoid.”
“Why would she think you were dating someone else?”
“I talk in my sleep. Guess I said a name that wasn’t hers.”
Maeve snorted.
Mick rose to check out the snow falling outside, and leaned against the doorway leading to Maeve’s addition. The room’s paned windows looked out to a winter-blooming magnolia, and Mick could picture Bess’s child seeing her first snow fall here next year. For a brief moment, he dared wonder what it would feel like to have a home of his own, one he intended to fill with a lifetime of firsts for a child, rather than the kind of home he left without looking back.
His eyes wandered to Lacey, and a strange tug gripped his heart. The Navy was the only family he could have right now. “You better watch that sleep-talking with your security clearance, Jack. Don’t want to say something you shouldn’t.”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t think Lissa would understand anything I said about nuclear engineering, anyway.”
“She didn’t seem too bright,” Bess agreed.
“When did you meet her?” Lacey asked.
“I bumped into them at The Buzz once.”
“I’ve never been there,” Mick said blankly.
Lacey grinned. “You’re too old. It’s where twenty-something singles go to get coffee. I don’t think they let you in if you’re over thirty.”
Laughing, Bess patted her belly. “Yeah, I’m the only pregnant woman I’ve ever seen there. I can’t even drink the coffee—it’s way too caffeinated for me now—but I love just smelling it.” She added a P to “lucky.”
“Plucky,” Jack nodded solemnly. “Not bad.”
Lacey sighed as she finished off a two-letter word. “I should tell you that I had the letters to make the word ‘hard,’ but I’m sparing you all since you’re overly sensitive tonight. Does anyone need anything from the kitchen?” she asked, waggling her empty soda can.
Bess reached over to hand her an empty glass. “More juice, please.”
“As if she doesn’t pee often enough,” Jack said with a sidelong glance to Maeve.
Still leaning on the doorframe, Mick gave a little backwards nod toward the addition with its bare drywall still exposed. “Your office is really coming along, Maeve. But when are you going to paint it?” He would never let it slip around Bess that the space was destined to be a surprise nursery. Still, he couldn’t help tease Maeve.