“I need you to really know that I want you.” His voice roughened. “Because I don’t want you thinking I’m pulling away after tonight.”
“Are you?” I couldn’t help but ask. “I feel like I have whiplash right now.” I had to be honest. I felt like I was in deep with him, and it had only been a short amount of time.
“I’m sorry.” He dipped his head. “I want to take you for dessert on my counter tonight, but it’s obviously not something I can do when my daughter’s home. I’m a single dad. I don’t have the luxury of having the apartment to myself.”
“So what does that mean for us?” I asked.
“Isla is my priority,” he responded.
“I would never ask you to put me ahead of her,” I stated because it was obvious to me. My parents had always put me and my siblings ahead of their needs. I knew what good parenting looked like.
Something in his face eased. “I know,” he said. “But I still have to say it.”
“Okay.” I reached across the island and touched his hand. “Say it. I like that you say it.”
His fingers turned under mine, linking us together.
“The way you love her is one of the things I like most about you,” I said.
Hunter went very still. There it was again. That look. Like I had touched a place in him he didn’t let many people near.
“Catherine.”
“What?”
He shook his head once, almost helplessly. “You make this hard.”
I smiled. “I thought that was your line.”
A rough laugh broke out of him, and some of the tension eased.
“Dirty mouth,” he said.
“You like my dirty mouth,” I said.
“I like it way too much,” he admitted.
“Then feed me faster.”
His gaze darkened. “Why?”
“Because after dinner, I believe we said we’d continue where we left off.”
Hunter stared at me for one long second.
Then he pointed at my plate. “Eat.”
I grinned and took another bite, then another until I had eaten enough. Hunter cleared my plate before I could make another comment about dessert.
“You’re quiet,” I said, watching him rinse the dishes and load them into the dishwasher like we were two normal adults having a normal dinner and not two people actively destroying all reasonable boundaries.
“I’m focused,” he said.
“On dishes?” I questioned because he looked like he was too much inside his head.
His gaze flicked to mine.
“No.”