Kyle let out a whoop and swept her up in his arms, spinning her around effortlessly. Laughing at his enthusiasm, she whacked him on the arm with token protests sputtering from her lips. This was not the appropriate way to thank his caseworker.
And then he let her slide to the floor again, much more slowly than he should have, especially when it became clear that there was very little of him that wasn’t hard.
She cleared her throat and stepped away.
“Thanks, Grace. This means a lot to me.” Sincerity shone in his gaze and she couldn’t look away. “So it’s over? No more site visits?”
“Well...” She couldn’t say it all at once. Her excuse to continue seeing him would evaporate if she said yes. “Maybe a few more. I still plan to keep an eye on you.”
The vibe between them heated up again in a hurry as he leaned into her space. “But if you’re not my daughters’ caseworker any longer, then there’s no reason I can’t kiss you again.”
True. But she couldn’t have it both ways. Either she needed an excuse to keep coming by, even though that excuse would prevent anything from happening between them, or she could flat out admit she was still enormously attracted to him and let the chips fall where they may.
One option put butterflies in her stomach. And the other put caterpillars in it. The only problem was she couldn’t figure out which was which.
“I’m not closing the case yet,” she heard herself say before she’d fully planned to say it. “So I’ll come by a couple more times, just to file additional support for the recommendation. It could still go the other way if anything changes.”
“All right.” He cocked his head. “But if you’ve already filed the report, there’s no issue with your objectivity. Right?”
And maybe she should just call a spade a spade and settle things once and for all.
“Right. But—” she threw up a hand as a smile split his face “—that’s not the only thing going on here, Kyle, and you know it. We haven’t been a couple for a long time, and I’m not sure picking up where we left off is the best idea. Not saying never. Just give me space for now.”
So she could think. So she could figure out if she was willing to trust him again. So she could understand why everything between them felt so different this time, so much more dangerous and thrilling.
He nodded once, but the smile still plastered across his face said he wasn’t convinced by her speech. Maybe because she hadn’t convinced herself of it, either.
“You know where to find me. If you’ll excuse me, I have some cattle to tend to.”
She watched him walk off because she couldn’t help herself apparently. And she had a feeling that was going to become a theme very shortly when interacting with Kyle Wade.
Six
Kyle didn’t see Grace for a full week, and by the seventh day, he was starting to go a little bonkers. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, about picking up that kiss again. Especially now that the conflict of interest had vanished.
But then she’d thrown up another wall—the dreaded give me space. He hated space. Unless he was the one creating it.
So instead of calling up Grace and asking her on a date the way he wanted to, he filled his days with things such as learning how to worm cattle alongside Doc Glade and his nights learning which of his daughters liked to be held a certain way.
It was fulfilling in a way he’d have never guessed.
And exhausting. Far more than going for days at a stretch with no sleep as he and his boys cleared a bayside warehouse of nasty snipers so American supply ships could dock without fear of being shot at.
Kyle would have sworn up and down that being a SEAL had prepared him for any challenge, but he’d been able to perform that job with a sense of detachment. Oh, he’d cared, or he would never have put himself in the line of fire. But you had to march into a war knowing you might not come out. Knowing that you might cause someone else to not come out. There was no room for emotion in the middle of that.
Being a father? It was 100 percent raw emotion, 24-7. Fear that he was doing it wrong. Joy in simply holding another human being that was a part of him, who shared his DNA. Worry that he’d screw up his kids as his parents had done to him. A slight tickle in the back of his throat that it could all change tomorrow if Grace suddenly decided that she’d made a mistake in awarding him custody.
But above all else was the sense that he shouldn’t be doing it by himself. Kids needed a mother. Hadley was nurturing and clearly cared about the babies, but she was Liam’s wife, not Kyle’s. Now that the news had come out about Grace’s recommendations, it didn’t seem fair to keep asking Hadley to be the nanny, not when she’d hoped to adopt the babies herself.