Page 57

She studied his face for the longest time, looking for cracks. But she wouldn’t see any. Mike was absolutely certain. Joe was the most fascinating woman he’d met in his entire life.
Finally, Joe threw down her napkin, both literally and figuratively.
“Then what are we waiting for?” she asked, a smile blossoming on her lips. “Your place or mine?”
Now Mike’s face fell. “Shit, Joe.”
“What?”
Wrong move.
She was already, at his careless words, busy erecting the wall he’d worked so hard to tear down. He couldn’t get his assurances out fast enough.
“You remember I mentioned teenagers? Well, I was telling them about you, and how I’d been ‘running into you’ around town. Then I told them that tonight was our first date, and they kind of made me promise I’d bring you back to the house so they can meet you. Which would mean…no sex tonight.”
Instead of throwing a hissy, Joe giggled. Another thing he liked about her. Curve balls didn’t faze her in the least. “They really do have you wrapped around their little fingers, don’t they?”
“You have no idea,” Mike concurred with a fatalistic shake of his head.
“And seriously, Mike? You won’t mind adding me to that highly manipulative consortium?”
Mike grinned again. Joe was giving in. “Not in the least,” he told her sincerely.
“Okay then,” she allowed for a second time. “I think you’re a masochist, but let’s go meet the kiddos.”
Mike barely glanced at the bill on the table before throwing down cash and taking Joe’s hand.
“You’re more than meeting expectations, you know,” he told her as they walked out the restaurant door.
“How so?” she questioned with an adorable wrinkle of her nose.
“You roll really well with the punches.”
“And you, clearly, have pretty low standards,” she scolded. “Mike. This whole thing could backfire once your kids meet me. They might think I’m some horrid jezebel. A lowlife out to trap you. And if the people closest to you can’t embrace me as a new person of interest in your life, you’ll have no choice but to drop me.”
Mike knew there was no chance of that, but he threw the challenge back at her.
“Does that mean I’ll have to pass muster with your uncles? And if I don’t, you’ll boot my ass to the door?” he questioned. The prospect of charming the old codgers didn’t actually bother him at all. He could play nice with almost anybody.
“Absolutely,” Joe responded. “And be warned. They’re going to want to grill you up one side and down the other until you’re thoroughly cooked.”
He answered with confidence. “Then it’s a good thing I don’t mind heat.”
They walked to the parking lot, and when Mike’s reptile brain realized there was both a truck and a car waiting, he frowned. “We have two vehicles,” he griped needlessly.
Joe shrugged. “I’ll take mine and you take yours,” she responded pragmatically.
“But—”
Joelle shut him down with a stern look. “Remember what I said about independence? I mean it. I’m not the type of woman you have to mollycoddle. I know how to drive, I know how to fix a flat, and I’d beat the begeezus out of anyone who attempted to car-jack me. So…no overprotective stuff from you unless I ask for it.”
Mike huffed. “I wasn’t saying you can’t take care of yourself. I was going more on the possibility that if we were in one vehicle, we might pull off before we get to my house and make out a little.”
Joe threw back her head and laughed.
Before he could brace, she was already crashing her body into his, backing him up against his driver’s side door. “You mean like this?”
She grabbed hold of his shirt front, yanked him close, and attacked his mouth.