Melting Into You (Due South Book 2) (12 page)

What she’d find upon entering the den of iniquity, she had no idea. Two semi-comatose girls high on su
gary junk food and flaked out in front of the giant TV screen, most likely.

“Hello?”

An electrifying guitar riff swallowed her voice.

She continued into the family room—and stalled her engines in the doorway. Zoe, curls in a dervish around her face, leaped onto Ben’s sofa with a wooden spoon clasped in her fist, singing like a karaoke pro. Draped half upside down over the rolled couch arm, the tips of her pigtails kissing the floor, Jade’s belly laughs shook her whole body.

And then there was Ben…

Ben with his back to her and the girls.

Ben in his worn, snug jeans, which should be regarded as an illegal weapon against womankind.

Ben with a showman’s strut, shaking his truly sup
erior ass and playing air guitar.

Ben yelling above the music, “Told you I got moves, kiddo,” and turning to Jade with a killer smile.

Ben freezing with a comical open mouth.

Ben causing everything to disappear in the room—the music, the giggling, the charred smell of something recently burned—leaving only the two of them co
nnected by a pulsing strand of awareness.

“Kezia.”

His lips formed her name—lips surrounded by dark whiskers since he hadn’t shaved—but no sound emerged over the wailing guitars. Someone hit the stop button, and the cheesy, teenage voices cut off mid-warble.

“Mamma!” Zoe rushed over, her enthusiasm the pe
rfect antidote for a moment’s insanity.

Kezia hugged her daughter and buried her nose in the girl’s wild curls. “You look like you’ve had a great time.”

Zoe wriggled in her embrace, a vibrating electron of pure joy. “Oh, Mamma, we’ve had so much fun. Haven’t we, Jade?”

Jade scrambled off the couch and hovered by K
ezia’s side. Kezia impulsively ran a hand down the child’s mussed pigtails, smoothing the soft, brown strands.

Jade beamed up at her. “We baked cupcakes.”

“Cupcakes?”

Her gaze darted to Ben, sprawled on his sofa. His six-foot-plus body made the large piece of furniture a
ppear child-sized.

“I gave them the option of TV or cupcakes. Check out the carnage.” He locked his hands behind his head.

“Yeah—come see, come see!” Jade tugged her arm.

Kezia stopped dead at the kitchen entrance. Flour covered the countertops. Bowls and wooden spoons spilled out of the sink, and globules of cupcake mixture dripped down the cabinet doors.

“Oh, dear Lord—did the three of you do all that?”

“And then some,” Ben said from behind her.

She didn’t turn, didn’t need to. The static charge of him so close lifted the fine hairs on her arms.

“The little devils covered me in floury hand prints. I’m not long out of the shower.”

Kezia could’ve guessed from the soapy scent wafting over her shoulder. Soap and something else. The XY factor that made some men smell so good you just wanted to lick the nearest inch of available skin.

Fingers separated a long curl from her hair and tugged it gently.

“Zoe! Covering Ben in flour is a bit cheeky.” Her scolding mamma voice crackled as pleasurable tingles rushed over her scalp.

“It’s all good,
Kez. We were only having some good old-fashioned
fun
.”

She wanted to lean into his hard body, allow his fi
ngers to tangle farther into her hair.

“Yeah, he didn’t get mad or anything,” said Jade.

“’Cause he started it.” Zoe giggled and grabbed Kezia’s hand, towing her away from Ben to the dining table. “Look—aren’t they pretty?”

Kezia stared at the plate of iced cupcakes. The girls had decorated with a typical “more is better” design aesthetic. The cupcakes had purple, yellow, or blue i
cing, and an explosion of sprinkles and small lollies topped their creations.

“Wow. They’re incredible.
Fantastici
!”

“I know, I know,” Zoe crowed.

Traces of purple icing smeared Jade’s Cupid’s-bow mouth. “Mine are the purple ones.”

“I’m very impressed. I bet they taste as good as they look.” And Ben’s heroic effort to spend time with the girls impressed her more.

“They do!” Both girls spoke together, shared a glance and shouted, “Jinx!”

Kezia’s fingers clenched the top of a dining chair. It would break Zoe’s heart when Jade went home. She’d already made half-baked plans to fly them to Auckland next school holidays—assuming Marci would allow the girls’ friendship to continue.

Didn’t that thought sour Kezia’s good mood?

“How many cupcakes have you girls eaten?” she asked instead.

“They’ve had one each because we burned the bottoms on the first batch.” Ben walked past them into the kitchen and leaned over the counter to crank open another window.

Kezia sniffed again. “Ah. That’s what I can smell.”

He turned back. “Yeah, I did a ‘Piper’ with the oven temperature and had it up too high. Lesson learned.”

A stripe of flour crossed the fly of his blue jeans where he’d pressed his body against the dusty counter edge. Her brain, apparently, held far too much fascin
ation for the man’s groin area. Wasn’t that a lesson she should’ve learned by now? Stop staring at Ben. Staring led to dangerous encounters.

“We saved you a cupcake, Mamma. You have to try it—it’s really good.”

Her attention returned to Zoe, who fortunately hadn’t noticed her mother crushing on her friend’s father like a lovesick schoolgirl.

“It looks divine.” Though how she’d choke down cupcake crumbs with such a dry throat, she didn’t know.

“Dad showed us how to make coffee in the coffee machine—you want one with your cupcake, Kezia?” Jade asked.

“Oh, well I—”

“Please, Mamma? Jade and I can play one more game of
Cluedo
while you have afternoon tea. She promised me I could be Miss Scarlett this time—please.”

Kezia glanced at her watch. “Ben’s probably too busy—”

“Not busy at all.” Ben shoved his hands into his jean pockets, emphasizing the floury arrow. Her gaze flicked up to his and he grinned knowingly. “I could murder a decent coffee.”

“You and Ben sit on the deck, and we’ll pretend you’re customers in a café and bring you coffee,” said Zoe.

“And cupcakes!” added Jade. “Everything’s better with cupcakes.”

Ben swept a hand toward the deck’s sliding door. Unwilling to ruin what had obviously been a wonderful day for Zoe, Kezia walked outside.

Halfmoon Bay harbor sparkled in the distance and the crop of boats—fishing boats, sailing boats, and dinghies—rolled gently on the waves. From one of the neighboring houses came the rhythmic chop-pause-chop of kindling being split for winter. She sucked in a lungful of clean, uniquely Stewart Island air and lowered herself into a deck chair angled to get the best harbor views.

Ben remained in the kitchen, giving last minute i
nstructions. The deep timbre of his voice flowed over her, soothing away some rough edges. She’d forgotten the comfort of a man puttering barefoot around the kitchen, making coffee at the end of a busy day.

Not that in her past life as an architect’s wife she had many days of Callum arriving home before her. And in the year before he died, the year Zoe got sick and her world shattered into jagged pieces she couldn’t glue together again—well…Callum hadn’t come home early at all.

Ben stepped outside and sat in the opposite chair.

Drumming her nails on the glass patio table between them, Kezia sighed. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For playing with the girls. I can see they had a wonderful day with you.”

He chuckled. “It was cupcakes or Barbies. I figured cupcakes would do a lot less damage to my reputation.”

“Your reputation?”

Hardly a question. Since she’d moved to Oban and had been welcomed into Shaye’s group of friends, the topic of eligible men had come up often in their get-togethers. Out of deference to the Harland sisters, the comments about their big brother had been fairly tame. But after the parking-lot rescue, the girls had a lot more to say on the subject of Ben.

A lot more.

“Heartless womanizer’s been tossed around.” Ben scratched the line of stubble along the taut curve of his jaw. “Also cold-fish, commitment-phobe, oh—and
stronzo’s
been thrown out there too.”

He surprised a laugh out of her.

Before she could comment, Jade walked toward them, a plate bearing two cupcakes clasped in her hands.

“Ben made these ones.” She carefully placed the plate on the table. “One for him and one for you. His is the boring one ‘cause he said he’s allergic to sprinkles.” Jade rolled her eyes.

“It’s very pretty…thank you.”

Being a mum and a teacher meant using manners in front of children, even when a pink-iced cupcake with a wobbly, heart-shaped outline filled in with sprinkles made her blood thrum faster. Of course, the heart didn’t mean anything.

“We’ll bring the coffee real soon.” Jade skipped inside.

“Does it get me off the hook for covering you in mud the other day?”

Kezia peeled away the cupcake’s liner and broke off a small piece. “This is your way of apologizing?”

“Gifts of food work for guys. If we even bother apologizing.”

“You’re forgiven for the mud.” She popped the cupcake chunk into her mouth. It was dry and crumbly, but she gamely chewed and swallowed.

“But not for hugging you in public, right?”

She shook her head, more to banish the memory of heat and excitement as he held her close, than to disagree. “I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

“About us.”

“There is no us.”

He checked over his shoulder to make sure the girls remained out of hearing range. “There could be an ‘us’. I’m attracted to you,
Kez, I can’t deny it. And you can’t deny you’re attracted right back.”

She swiped a swirl of frosting off the cupcake and licked her finger, sighing as the sugary sweetness coa
ted her tongue. “I’m not denying it.”

“So if you’re not denying it . . .?” His eyes went darkly serious. “Is this about your husband? He was a banker, wasn’t he?”

“No, an architect. And he’s been gone nearly five years.”

“Are you over him? Shit—” Ben scrubbed a hand over his face. “Stupid thing to say. You never get over a loss like that, right?”

“No. You don’t get over the loss, but you adjust and grow stronger—one day after another, you learn to live with it.”

“You still think about him all the time?”

“Not anymore.” And when she did think of Callum, she no longer dissolved into a weepy mess. “I don’t see him around every corner now and I’ve done my years of wearing black.”

“You’re ready to move on.” A statement, not a que
stion.

She could lie, tell him she still clung to
Callum’s memory and couldn’t consider being with another man. But that would be cowardly, and completely untrue. She’d considered being with Ben far more than she ought to in recent days.

“I have moved on, Ben.”

His brown eyes sparked with triumph. “Then let’s have some fun—see where it leads.”

“Where do these things usually lead, mmm?”

He grinned—a wicked grin with his dimple used to devastating effect.

“Precisely. I have no intention of ending up there.” She pointed a finger. “Unlike the women you usually hook up with, I don’t do casual…encounters.”

“Ouch. Shaye and her friends
have
trashed my reputation.”

The girls interrupted by carrying mugs of coffee o
nto the deck. Ben pulled his long legs in to let them pass. His knee brushed hers, and she straightened, crossing her legs to avoid any more accidental contact.

“There you go.” Jade set a mug in front of Ben.

“Brilliant,” Ben said. “Now, I guess you’ll want a tip?”

“Yeah!” Zoe put down the second mug and hurried to stand by Jade’s side.

Ben fished around his jeans pockets, shrugged, and cocked an imaginary pistol at Jade. “Here’s a tip. It’s always Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the revolver—now scram!”

Both girls groaned and flounced through to the fam
ily room. Kezia bit back a smile at her daughter’s cynical, “Your dad’s so lame sometimes,” and Jade’s long-suffering, “I know.”

Kezia glanced at Ben, having failed to keep the smile off her lips. He’d surprised her over the past ten days. As much as he denied understanding kids or wanting to be a father, he’d made amazing progress with Jade.

He raised an eyebrow and leaned on the table. Beneath the sleeves of his white tee shirt, biceps bunched. “So. We were talking about sex.”