Amanda's hand pressed over his lips with a tenderness that startled him almost as much as her disappearing hair. She took a step closer to him, shaking her head, her green eyes bright with unshed tears and emotion.
"No, don't say that. You didn't know, plain and simple. You can't change the past."
"I want to."
A small smile glossed over her lips as her hand slid over to cup his cheek. "You, Danny Tucker, are a beautiful man. You know that?"
"What do you mean?" Men weren't beautiful, and he was too big and bulky to be considered anything but lumbering. And even though he was the man and should be doing the comforting, he suddenly liked that she was touching him, soothing him. He stared at her, stood perfectly still, afraid that he wanted too much.
Her hand was satin smooth on his rough, stubbly skin, and he could smell her as she leaned toward him. She was like wildflow-ers, fragrant and riotous, bold and attention-grabbing with their scent, height, color.
"I mean that you are a good guy. One of a very few. And I'm glad that I met you, and that you're Piper's father."
And she kissed him. A light press of her mouth to his, lips cool and soft on him, then quickly gone.
She sighed. "Thank you."
He wasn't sure what the hell she was thanking him for, but he wasn't above accepting a little more gratitude.
Amanda was willowy, tall enough to meet him face to face, to lock eyes with him, to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. And he wanted more from her—he wanted more than just that teasing taste she'd given him—he wanted her, and he wanted to share a moment of pleasure, escape, comfort.
Without thinking over whether it was wise or not, he closed the distance between them and kissed her back. A tentative, questing kiss that quickly shifted into long, lingering, luscious.
She gave a little gasp of surprise somewhere along the way that opened up her mouth and let him pull her bottom lip into his mouth and suck gently. He'd closed his eyes at the first salty taste of her, and somehow he wrapped his arms around her back, tugging her closer into him.
Amanda's hand snaked from his cheek around the back of his neck, and he cupped her bare flesh above her waistband, drowning, aching, burning. It was more than a kiss, it was a conversation, and she was telling him that she hurt for him, for Piper, for himself, and his emotions echoed hers. It felt good to unburden, to share his pain, to give in to the attraction he had felt since the first time he'd spotted Amanda.
Sometimes it was hard to be slow and steady and not worry.
He'd been doing nothing but worry for the last ten days, and Amanda understood that, didn't fault him for it, and she recognized how beautiful and special Piper was.
And she was so amazingly gorgeous, so hot in his arms, so passionate.
Their kiss was going deeper and deeper, leaving behind any doubts that this was a friendly kiss of compassion. The living room was filled with the sound of their desperate breathing, their little gasps, and he was really, really thinking that no woman had ever tasted quite so good. So eager. So delicious.
He didn't understand Amanda and her world, and he didn't understand his own attraction to her, but he understood that there were some things that weren't going to make sense, and he and Amanda Delmar were very compatible.
At least their lips were.
And their thighs seemed to have a nice fit.
Everything fit, and everything felt so goddamn good, and he was shifting his hands down lower, lower while his mouth moved over hers.
"Danny," she whispered, clutching at his shoulders when he found her backside and stroked across it.
"Hmm?" She had a really wonderful neck, long and graceful and smooth, and his lips slid across it with little effort. Her firm little ass rested in his hands, and he indulged in a squeeze, enjoying the way her breath caught.
Amanda was a mysterious mix of tall, yet thin, strong, yet fragile, sassy, yet vulnerable, and he was losing his grip on reality. He just wanted her—fast, slow, some, all—whichever way she was willing.
"I told Piper I'd meet her in the yard." And she wrenched herself out of his arms, smoothing down her skirt, and clamping her swollen, shiny lips closed.
Nothing like the mention of one small, impressionable child to douse his dick in ice water.
"Oh. Okay. Sorry." For taking a nothing of a kiss and turning it in to mating season for tongues.
"Don't be sorry," she said, though her eyes were focused somewhere over his shoulder.
He knew the rooster painting hanging on the wall behind him was not that exciting. It shouldn't be pulling her attention away from him at this particular moment. Unless she wanted it to, because he had kissed where a kiss wasn't wanted. "Look, I don't want you to feel uncomfortable here. Piper cares about you, and you obviously care about her. You're doing a great job, and, I'm, well, sorry if I got… carried away."
Shit on a shingle, he was blushing. He could feel it. Heat rising in both cheeks. Damn. "Just forget it happened, Amanda."
He had taken a moment of vulnerability on her part and taken advantage of it. He had taken one teeny itty bitty little old kiss and gone down and dirty on her. He was pathetic. He was a dirtbag.
He was horny.
"You want me to forget it?" Her eyes had narrowed, and she looked a little put out.
God, he could not chase her away because he couldn't keep his horse in the barn. Piper would be devastated. "Yes, absolutely. Just forget it, and I'll forget it, and we can forget together, so that we're just the way we were an hour ago."
There was a long pause.
Then she said, "You're an idiot," with a disdainful toss of her shorter hair. "I'll be swinging on the swings with Piper, Mr. It Never Happened. I saw your sunglasses on the kitchen table. And put on some sunscreen. The tips of your ears are red, and skin cancer is so preventable."
Amanda turned and walked toward the kitchen and the back door, her hips swaying in her sassy skirt and her chin up in the air.
Well. She was staying. That was good.
Except he had the strangest feeling she was mad at him.
Danny touched his red ears and went for the sunscreen, though he didn't think it was ultraviolet rays that had caused the flush.
He was an idiot. An idiot to kiss Amanda Delmar and to think she could ever be interested in a redneck like him.
Willie Tucker wasn't happy.
Her son had given her a granddaughter, eight years after the fact, gypping her of baby clothes shopping, and now he had taken that blond bimbo into his house and was letting her baby-sit Piper. Instead of her, Willie, the child's very own grandmother.
It rankled severely that Piper could ever prefer Pampered Princess with a Tan over her, her own flesh and blood.