Give & Take (Redbeard Cove #2)

10. Lana

Chapter 10

Lana

“ H ow long have you been standing there?” I ask, my voice tight with panic. My hands shake under the table.

“Long enough to hear you call me a child, Sunshine.”

I groan. That means he heard the other part too. Then I blink. “Sunshine?” I snap, suddenly stiff.

Raphael laughs. To Chris, he says, “She’s like a ray of sunshine, isn’t she? I’m not kidding. It’s like when it’s cloudy and the littlest slice of sun pops out, it’s even better than a sunny day.”

Chris laughs out loud. Then she sees my face and schools her expression. “Sorry.”

I go to stand up, then I remember the box. Under the table, I shove it onto Chris’s lap. Then I stand up abruptly, the chair chirping across the pavers. “I need to get back to work.”

“I’m Raphael,” Raphael says, extending his hand to Chris.

I swallow, embarrassed I forgot to introduce them. But not as embarrassed as I am by the way it takes her a minute to get a free hand. Since she’s now holding the dildo.

But she manages. And when his hand meets hers, for the briefest moment, a spike of white-hot jealousy streaks through me. Chris is gorgeous, with her honey-blond hair and freckled cheeks. She’s also much closer in age to Raphael. She’d be perfect for him, actually. I should encourage them to date.

The thought makes me feel like boiling oil is rolling around inside of me.

“Most people call me Raph,” Raphael says, his hand back on the railing. He looks pointedly at me, like I’m the only one here. “Except Lana.”

I refuse to call him that. It’s too familiar.

“Although,” he muses, “when I was a child they called me Raffy.”

Christine laughs heartily again, introducing herself as she sticks the box inside her giant handbag ever-so-casually.

She looks over at me with a waggle of brows, and I feel like a fool for the jumble of feelings I just had. I love Chris to the ends of the earth, even if she did just gift me a giant dong.

I tolerate Raphael. That’s it.

Suddenly, I gather myself enough to realize Raphael’s alone. “Where are the girls?” I ask.

“Mommy!” Aurora calls, answering my question as she streaks across the patio. Relief and happiness flood me. And not a small amount of foolishness. I open my arms to catch my bouncy-haired Aurora, squeezing her tight and feeling instantly calmer.

When I open my eyes, I see Raphael’s watching us with a goofy smile, his chin resting on his forearms, right above his stupid sexy leather bracelet. His eyes look like melted caramel.

I look away fast.

Nova appears at the entrance of the restaurant, having followed behind her sister at a dignified pace.

“Hey sweetheart,” Chris says.

“Hello,” she says drily. But she smiles. She loves Chris.

I pull Nova in too before she can escape.

Nova tolerates me for only a moment before stepping back, planting her hands on her hips as she glares at Raphael. “We were going to pretend you forgot us at the beach,” she says. “But you had to come here and say hi all normal.”

“Sorry, Nov,” Raphael grimaces. “But today is judgment day, and I can’t pull any pranks your mom might fire me for today.”

So he hadn’t forgotten. I half wanted him to, just so I’d have something to ding him on.

I swallow hard, my throat feeling suddenly dry.

I’d planned on discussing things when I got home, but I don’t think I can stand feeling this way a moment longer. I set Aurora down and check my watch. I have a few minutes left on my break, and Chris doesn’t start for another twenty. Might as well bite the bullet.

“Speaking of which,” I say, “You okay to watch the girls for a minute?” I ask Chris .

“All the time in the world for these two!” Chris says. “You guys want some fries?”

Aurora’s already climbing on her lap as Nova crowds in on her other side.

I jerk my chin at Raphael. “Can I talk to you? In private?”

Raphael lifts a brow but says nothing, just walks around the opening to the patio and follows me inside. I feel him behind me like he’s a moving bonfire.

I pull out a chair at the bar for him, the chirp of it on the floor jarring.

Raphael, to my surprise, looks worried.

“Can I get you something to drink?” I ask, to soften things slightly. I don’t want this to be like I’m some kind of executioner.

Raphael shakes his head. “We’re not disturbing you, are we? Mac said you take your last fifteen at noon. And that he didn’t mind if the kids came in.”

I’m a little surprised this trip wasn’t spontaneous, that Raphael had taken the time to plan it out so he wouldn’t be interrupting me while on the job. I can’t help think of my old life, back in the city, when on the rare days Mike had the kids, he’d barge into my office unannounced, immediately launching into a gripe about how hard babysitting was.

His own children. Babysitting.

I shake my head to clear Mike from my mind.

Raphael frowns.

“It’s fine,” I say quickly. “I’m on my break. Thank you for checking. I just…wanted to talk to you. About us. I mean, the job. ”

I’ve already made things awkward the way I’ve announced this. It feels worse just standing here next to him, like I’m his server. So I slide into the chair next to him. Only these stupid bar chairs are much too close, and in order to face him, my knees brush against his.

A skittering of electricity dances up my thighs. “Shoot,” I say.

Raphael’s mouth curves up, his eyes twinkling again. He’s caught my nervousness, and it’s like he knows he has the upper hand again. “Shoot?”

“Yes, shoot,” I say, trying to shift away from him. “It’s just…this was a bad place to sit.”

“I don’t agree,” he says.

A frisson of nerves scatter up my belly at that. Too late, I realize the skin of both of our legs are bare—I’m wearing a skirt, the hem resting above my knees, and him khaki shorts. I try to angle my knees even further away, but that makes my body twist so I’m facing the bar. I overcompensate and twist back, panicking slightly as our knees brush yet again.

Before I can do anything about it though, Raphael lowers both hands on either one of my knees. The shock of his touch is so intense, the heat of his hands practically melting the bones from my body, I turn mute as he guides my swivel stool back toward him. “Here,” he says. “Let’s do this.”

My breath catches. I have no idea why I don’t resist as Raphael’s hands are suddenly wrapped around my knees. The heat of his skin against mine is electric; nearly unbearable. But even that isn’t as intense as his thumbs, grazing the sensitive skin of my inner thighs as he gently parts my legs, causing my skirt to shift just a slight inch farther up my thigh. It’s hardly anything, but my heart rate ratchets up to double time like he’s sliding my skirt up on purpose. But just as I feel like I have to interrupt this volatile, liquid heat rolling through me, Raphael drops his knee between mine. We’re interlocked, but not touching.

At least not our legs.

His hands still rest on my thighs, burning holes through me.

I think, randomly, of the dildo that sat on those thighs only a few minutes ago.

“Good?” he asks.

I’m sure that when I respond it’ll come out as a strangled, breathy sound.

But I manage to say “Fine.” As if yes, this is totally fine, when no, this is very Not Good. Thinking of the sex toy—and now the closeness of Raphael here—this position feels as intimate as if I were sitting on his lap.

I breathe, trying to control the intense heat I’m sure is rippling off of me. My body reacts to his in a way I’m so unprepared for it makes it hard to breathe, let alone talk.

I should be used to it by now. I should remember how wrong that reaction is. Instead, my insides kind of bottom out with this level of proximity.

Raphael must notice how tongue tied and not fine I’ve become, because he removes his hands from my legs.

While this is a much better development, my traitorous hormones scream inside of me, protesting this non-touching state .

At least I can breathe. I focus myself by staring at his hands as he rests them on his own thighs.

He has such beautiful hands.

And now I’m staring.

I close my eyes, breathing hard through my nostrils. Fucking focus, Lana!

That helps. When I open my eyes again, Raphael’s brow is furrowed. I can’t tell if he’s amused by me or just confused because I’ve turned into a blubbering pile of cells.

It still takes me a moment to find my voice. “Okay!” I exclaim. “Good.”

Great. Very sensical, Lana.

Raphael smiles then, which only makes me more flustered. He leans back, his hand resting on his knee, his thumb inches from the bare skin of my thigh once more, setting off a warning alarm in my head. His other arm rests along the bar. He doesn’t seem to notice or be bothered in the least by any of what’s going on here.

I force myself to ignore his body, instead clearing my throat. I have to do this now, before I chicken out completely.

Or come to my senses.

“Okay, so,” I say, proud of how steady my voice is. I meet his eyes, ignoring their caramel warmth, and instead focusing on him, as a person.

A person who deserves better than I’ve given him, despite him making my hormones set up a whole amusement park inside of me since he’s been here.

“So I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” I force myself to take a breath. “But, I wanted to…apologize. ”

He blinks. “What?”

“To you.”

He lets out a little laugh.

I frown. “Why are you laughing?”

“I don’t know.” He runs a hand through his hair. It’s so sexy I feel a flash of anger as I force myself to keep my eyes trained on his face.

“I guess I thought for sure I was getting fired,” he says.

Now it’s my turn to be surprised. “What? Why?” I frown. “Did something happen?”

“Nothing happened, Sunshine. Well, Nova stepped on a barnacle out there this morning. Nothing a little seawater couldn’t help though.”

I look over at my kids. Chris and the girls are laughing at something on Chris’s phone.

Raphael shifts, and the tips of his long fingers brush against my bare knee; a scratch of roughness that sets off an almost painful sparking inside of me. I keep my hands primly on my thighs, but since his eyes are on the patio, mine drop down. I can’t help notice how as he moves again, his knee—the one between my legs—disappears under my skirt.

I throb there. Like actually throb. Inappropriately. I drag my eyes away, sliding back as far as I can in my chair.

Raphael doesn’t seem to notice any of this. His eyes return to mine once more. “You were saying?”

I rub my thumb over the back of my hand in a hard, repeating gesture, so I can focus on saying what I’ve been working on since this morning .

“I wanted to say I’m sorry because…I underestimated you.”

Raphael raises his brows. “You don’t say?”

He’s teasing, but there’s something real there. It flashes behind his eyes.

He’s used to this. Being underestimated. It bothers him.

It bothers me that I’m thinking about him with more depth. I promised myself this morning that the only way this would work was if I acknowledge that I find him attractive, but compartmentalize that. Keep it wrapped up separately from this being a business interaction. Learn nothing more about him and let him live his life as my nanny, and then on his own. Separate from us. From me.

I seem to have completely forgotten all of that, woven together as we are on these chairs.

I force myself to continue. “I assumed the worst about you. I wasn’t going to consider hiring you. But you did…really well on your interview, even if you tricked me into it.”

He opens his mouth but I lift a hand. “It was as much Nova as you.”

I press my hands together again. “Before you even started, your references came back…well, I’ve never heard someone be gushed over quite so much. One of them begged me to send you back to California so you could work for them again, albeit in a teaching position.”

Raphael frowns, like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I like to do a good job at whatever I’m doing.”

“I can tell.” I think about how all week, I’ve come home to a clean kitchen. Little things like restocked toilet paper and shoes neatly in the shoe rack instead of scattered across the foyer. Yesterday, he’d mowed the lawn. None of those things were in his contract. I’d wondered at the time if he was just trying to make himself look good, but I think that’s just the way he is.

“You do things no one will ever know about,” I say, forgetting myself.

Yesterday morning, I told him that the trash collectors had started leaving the recycling bins behind if the glass wasn’t kept separate. That afternoon, after Raphael left, I glanced outside as he walked down the street—totally not creepily—and saw him do a double take at the bins. Not ours, which are always sorted, but my elderly neighbor’s.

“Mrs. Brown told me the trash collectors sorted her bins for her. I know they don’t do that.”

That’s not a lie—she did tell me that happened. But I also watched Raphael do it. He separated all the glass, then he lined the bins up neatly and moved the trash bins into a better position too.

That was just one little thing in a string of little things I’d seen this week.

For the first time since I’ve met him, he seems uncomfortable. He shrugs. “I hardly did anything.”

“Well, anyway,” I say. I hold my breath. Am I really going to do this? I’d actually called my mom last night because I was in such a quandary. I’ve mostly tried not to bother her over the past year. She’s usually either with a laboring woman or sleeping off spending a night with one. But I was desperate. Luckily, she’d picked up. She’d heard me out, and I’d shared everything. My mom and I were very close growing up, and still are except for the distance keeping us apart this year. She’d told me gently and confidently that she was pretty sure I already knew what the best course of action was.

God damn her for being so wise.

Raphael grips his thighs, inching slightly forward. My skin prickles at his proximity. I ignore that. I’m a superhero for ignoring all of this and carrying on.

“The girls love you,” I blurt out. “So, I’d like to ask you, formally, if you’d please stay with us for the balance of the summer. I uh…” I clear my throat. “I promise not to talk about you like I did out there on the patio. That was unprofessional.”

He shrugs, but his mouth is split in a wide smile. “I like that you think I’m beautiful.”

My mouth goes dry, embarrassment shooting through me hot and spiky.

“And professionalism is overrated. Respect, yes. Ignoring feelings, no.”

My eyes go wide. What is that supposed to mean? Whose feelings? But before I can say anything to that, he holds out his hand. “I accept.”

My hand moves on autopilot, even as my brain says Mistake! Mistake! Error!

Then his slightly rough, warm hand wraps over mine. It’s so big . The way it engulfs mine with its size and heat makes all the sensations I’ve been fighting so hard during this interaction come flooding back.

And hard.

His fingers are so long they fully wrap around my hand, brushing against the back of my hand in a firm, hot graze. His thumb sweeps against the soft divot of the side of my wrist not once, but twice, like he too notices the way it so perfectly fits.

When his eyes meet mine, my blood slows to syrup in my veins. Everything quiets, and suddenly I wonder very, very hard if the reason I decided to go through with this was entirely for the kids. Because as unnerving as it is, as wrong as the way I feel around Raphael is, something’s happened over the past week. The whole clattering mess of my feelings has angled in a completely different way, like a school of silver fish slipping into a gulf stream. The feelings are still there, still a jumble of confusion. But for the first time in a long time, I feel a loosening. A trust, that no matter what my feelings are doing, Raphael makes my life better.

The girls are in good hands, and despite everything, I think, so am I.