“I don’t wanna go for pizza today,” Sophie announced.
Miranda wrinkled her forehead. “But it’s our Saturday tradition.”
Her daughter stubbornly shook her head. “I don’t wanna go. Can you ask the pizza man to bring pizza to Sef’s house?”
“Sure, we can get it delivered,” she said, baffled. “But why?”
An exaggerated sigh reverberated in the interior of the car. “’Cause you’re tired, Mom. Duh!”
With that, Sophie returned her attention to her new doll, leaving Miranda to shake her head in awe and amusement. God, she had great kids. Sweet, perceptive, smart. Just all-around incredible.
The rugrats are smart, babe. Smart enough to know that you’re the only parent they need.
Seth’s words from the other night buzzed in her brain, immediately followed by the convoluted thought Sophie had voiced minutes ago.
Sometimes he’s nice, but then he stops being nice when he sees that we see he’s being nice.
Out of the mouth of babes.
Was Sophie on to something, though? Was Seth going out of his way to refrain from being nice to the twins? Was he purposely putting distance between himself and her children? Because the other day, when he’d recited his reasons for not wanting or liking kids, something had sounded so…false. And call her crazy, but there might have even been a tremor of panic in his tone.
It suddenly occurred to her that she hardly knew anything about Seth Masterson. He’d grown up in Vegas, he’d been raised by a showgirl, he’d enlisted at eighteen.
But what else? What was his childhood like? What were his hopes and dreams? How did he envision his future?
And did it really matter whether she had the answers to any of those questions? The involvement between her and Seth was purely sexual. Sooner or later it would fizzle out, so why try to forge a deeper connection?
Maybe the less insight she had into Seth’s complicated psyche, the better off she’d be.
Seth was feeling edgy as hell as he watched Miranda wipe the corner of her mouth with a napkin, all cute and demure-like. The four of them were sitting on the living room floor around the coffee table, munching on the pizza Miranda had ordered for dinner. The flat screen on the wall was playing an animated movie Jason had picked, but Seth wasn’t paying attention to the TV. He was too busy looking at Miranda, same way he’d been looking at her every goddamn second for the past three days.
Everything the woman did turned him on. She made even the most innocuous activities look dirty. Folding laundry, sweeping the kitchen floor—didn’t matter what she did, he wanted her. Tonight it was watching her eat pizza that got his blood going. His gaze was glued to her mouth, so focused on it, in fact, that one of the rugrats finally decided to comment. No surprise as to which one, either.
“Why are you staring at my mom?” Sophie demanded.
Seth blinked out of his lust-filled stupor. “Ah, because she had tomato sauce on her cheek.”
“I did?” Miranda’s dubious look said she saw right through him.
“Yeah, but it’s gone now. You wiped it away.”
Sophie pursed her lips in disapproval. “It’s rude to stare.”
“You’re right. It is.” He met Miranda’s hazel eyes. “I’m sorry for staring, Miranda.”
“It’s quite all right, Seth.”
She held his gaze for another second before turning to scold Jason, who was making a huge mess as he dipped his slice into a plastic container of barbecue sauce. Which kinda floored him, because Seth had never met anyone who slathered BBQ sauce on pizza the way he himself did. Neither he nor Miranda’s son had remarked on it, but there’d been unmistakable pleasure in Jason’s eyes when Seth had called dibs on one of the barbecue sauces. It was obvious the kid liked having something in common with him.
“Anyway, thanks for dinner,” Seth said, standing up. “I was dying of hunger when you got home and I couldn’t decide what to eat.”
Their gazes locked again. Miranda’s cheeks turned pink.
You, he told her with his eyes. I wanted to eat you.
Still did, too. He wanted to latch his mouth on that sweet pu**y of hers and eat her until she screamed his name.
Her tone was nonchalant as she answered, “Well, if you’re hungry again later, let me know. I could always stop and grab you something to eat on my way back from the club tonight.” Later being the operative word in that sentence.
“Actually, I won’t be here later. I’ve gotta be at the base at one a.m. We’re doing night dives.”
More eye contact. Another unspoken message.
“Whath nithe difes?” Jason demanded through a mouthful of pizza.
“Jase,” Miranda chided. “Chew, swallow, talk.”
The little boy did as asked, then repeated himself. “What’s night dives?”
“It means we’re diving in the ocean in the middle of the night,” Seth explained brusquely.
“You go in the water in the dark?” Jason’s eyes widened. “But Mom says it’s dangerous to go swimming when it’s not sunny.”
Miranda smiled at her son. “Dangerous for you,” she corrected. “But see how big and strong Seth is?”
Jason nodded, slightly awed.
“Well, that means he’s allowed to do dangerous things every now and then. He underwent a lot of training, years and years of training, to be able to do what he does.”