looked so grateful she wanted to hug him.
Poor baby.
He must have had a long day and a really bad six weeks or so.
“Look, my girls are upstairs asleep—”
“I could stay here, in case they wake up,” he offered.
“Okay,” Lily said. “It won’t take me a minute. Everything’s in the refrigerator?”
He nodded. “And the cards and stuff are on the counter by the refrigerator. I left the side door open, and my uncle went to drive the truck back to the rental place, so the house is empty.”
“Okay. Be right back.”
She knew the house from when the last couple lived there, and her kitchen faced theirs, so all she had to do was get around the low row of bushes and she was there. And everything was right where Jake said it would be.
Sissy had indeed brought a cake. Something fancy with fruit and glaze on it.
“No way you made that yourself,” Lily muttered. Sissy wasn’t much in the kitchen. And she should have known it was much fancier than a teenager boy cared for it to be.
Jean’s turkey looked tastier than usual. It was easy to match that dish with Jean’s card. A half-dozen others, and Lily was left with only Audrey’s card and one with absolutely awful handwriting that looked like it might even be the work of teenage girls.
Even the teenagers were flaunting their baked goods along with their bodies these days?
The two dishes left were a container of homemade macaroni salad and a baked chicken thing.
With that body, Audrey probably didn’t touch carbs, Lily reasoned. The baked chicken was likely hers.
She decided to ask Jake just in case. After all, he wouldn’t have forgotten Audrey in that little outfit. Whether it had blinded him to everything else, including what she brought, Lily didn’t know, but she’d find out.
She took the container of baked chicken to show Jake, opened the kitchen door and there was Nick.
She had to work fast to keep the chicken from landing on the ground. He was more worried about her landing on the ground, because while she caught the pan of chicken, he caught her with lightning reflexes and the kind of strength she couldn’t help but admire.
She’d have pitched backward, if not for him.
As it was, he had her, his big hands on her upper arms holding her easily, a wry, maybe slightly amused expression on his face.
“Lily,” he said, much too close. “You okay?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Sorry I startled you.”
His hands lingered for a long moment, her arms feeling odd and tingly. Only once he was sure she was firmly planted on her feet, did he let her go and he step back.
“No. It was me. I wasn’t looking where I was going,” she admitted, a funny little catch in her voice, finding herself oddly breathless and seeing nothing but wide shoulders and wellmuscles arms.
Feeling pure heat coming off his body.
Not such a shock, she decided.
After all, she hadn’t been this close to a man other than her ex-husband in years. So she supposed it wasn’t all that surprising.
She blinked up at him, a little confused and a lot embarrassed and…she wasn’t even sure what else.
What had she been thinking? Doing? Saying? Her mind was a blank.
“I doubt you’re the kind of woman to come over here and steal baked chicken, so…”
“Oh,” she rushed in. “No. I wasn’t. I swear.”
“I didn’t think you were, Lily.”
No. He just probably thought she was nuts. “Jake got a little confused about which dish came from who, and I told him I’d help him sort it out.”
“Yeah. He ripped off the cards and lids and was eating out of the pans before he even thought about keeping track of who brought what.”
Lily nodded. “He seems like a really sweet kid. He’s at my house, to make sure my girls don’t wake up and find themselves alone. I’m sure I know who brought everything except this and one other thing.”
She held up the baked chicken.
“I remember that one,” he said.
“A woman wearing…”
“Next to nothing,” he said plainly and if anything, a bit confused by it all.
“Shorts and a…”
“Bra-like thing,” he said.
“Audrey Graham,” Lily said, turning around and heading back into the kitchen. “I’ll just put her card with this dish, and—”
“Does she often show up at strangers’ doors dressed like that?” he asked.
Lily laughed, couldn’t help it, then reminded herself that she might not have dressed as provocatively as Audrey and the rest of the neighborhood ladies, but she’d been first in line at his door this morning.
What did that say about her?
What did it make him think about her? That she was just like all the others?
“Well…Audrey is…I guess you could say…she’s turned into a physical fitness buff since her divorce was final.” It was the kindest thing Lily could come up with to say. “She runs most every day now, and it’s been so hot, so…”
She turned around, having finished labeling dishes, and found Nick Malone leaning against the kitchen counter, looking like a man with a lot of questions he wasn’t sure he wanted answered.
“Friendly neighborhood,” he said.
“Yes. Very.”
“I’ve never lived in a place like this. Didn’t expect such a welcome,” he said carefully, like they were treading all around all sorts of subjects now. “Is it always like this when someone moves in?”
“Well…” She supposed she should warn him. Or give him the good news, depending on how he felt about things. “There aren’t a lot of single men in the neighborhood.”
“Okay,” he said, looking even more confused.
“Mostly married couples and divorced mothers,” she explained.
Lonely, divorced mothers.
Mothers with certain unmet needs.
Of which, she wouldn’t have said she was one. Would have said she was fine. In need of nothing. Wanting nothing except a long, hot bubble bath and a good book.
And now here she was, with a gorgeous neighbor and that funny, slight fever again that she’d proven to herself wasn’t a fever. At least not the first two times she’d taken her temperature today.
Lily looked up at him as innocently as she could manage.
“And all those women who showed up today are single?” he asked, like the idea frightened him a bit.
“No. Not all of them,” Lily said, and then thought that meant she’d spent all day watching his house from her kitchen window.
Wait…no. That she’d looked at all the cards that came with the food.
She hoped that’s what he thought she meant.
Not that she was spying.
“They’re just…always happy to welcome a new neighbor,” she said.
New man, she’d