Temptation Trails (The Haven Brothers #3)

Just hearing her name tugged one corner of my mouth upward. “Yeah, she’s um…” Completely irresistible… The sexiest woman I’ve ever met… “She’s great.”

She lowered her voice. “I won’t make a big deal out of it, since you don’t seem to be sharing anything right now. But she sure seems to like you a lot.”

Suddenly I was like a kid on the playground, dying to know what my secret crush had said about me. “What did she tell you?”

“I can’t share specifics. Hair stylist confidentiality and all that.”

I furrowed my brow.

“Trust me, it’s a thing. Anyway, it wasn’t so much what she said as how she said it. Her whole face lit up when she talked about you. It was really sweet.”

On the outside, I tried to keep my cool, but on the inside, a potent combination of warmth and elation spread through me.

“Things are good so far.”

Good so far? Way to sound apathetic.

But damn it, I had all these feelings and I didn’t know what to do with them. Especially because Owen kept looking at me like he knew I was hiding something.

Maybe he did know I was hiding something.

Obviously not that I’d gone out with Harper. I didn’t need to keep that from my son. We were going out again, and he knew that too. But my unexpected visit to her house? He didn’t need to know about that.

Marigold touched my arm. “I think it’s great.”

“Thanks, Mari.”

My family didn’t need to know either. Not yet. They’d make a thing out of it and I didn’t know if this was a thing yet or not.

Fucking her up against a wall did kind of take things to the next level, though.

“Hey, Dad?”

I blinked back to reality at the sound of Owen’s voice. “Yeah?”

“Can I go get the cookies I brought?”

“Cookies?” Luke turned and the football nailed him in the side of the face. “Hey!”

“Who has cookies?” Zachary asked.

“Cookies! Cookies! Cookies!” my nieces started chanting. Will joined his sisters. “Cookies! Cookies! Cookies!”

“I think that’s a unanimous yes,” Mom said. “Need help?”

“No, I can get them,” Owen said. “I’ll be right back.”

Owen went through the house to get the box he’d brought home from Angel Cakes. He hadn’t let me look and the smell had tormented me all the way there.

Mom moved closer to me and tucked her hand in the crook of my elbow. “Owen isn’t wearing his hood.”

“What?”

“His hood. For the past, I don’t know, six months to a year, every time I saw him, he had his hood up. Like he was trying to hide. He’s not even wearing one today.”

I thought about it for a second. She was right. He had started wearing a hoodie almost every day, no matter the weather, and often kept the hood up. I probably saw him with it down more than she did, since he didn’t always wear it at home. But today he was in a T-shirt, no hood to be seen.

I’d figured the hoodie was just a middle school thing. But was it more? Had I missed something?