Page 40 of Bad Wolf's Nanny

“I didn’t mean…I know you’re doing your best. I just… ugh.” She pressed her lips together and rubbed her forehead with her free hand. “This is why people don’t like me.”

Dane tilted his head, “Who said people don’t like you?”

“I didn’tsaythey said it. It’s just…obvious. I always say the wrong thing, or I say too much, or I sound like I’m lecturingsomeone when I’m really just nervous, and then I get defensive, and I—”

“Lola.”

She snapped her mouth shut.

Dane was still looking at her, but the sharp edge had faded from his expression.

What was left was something far softer. Almost amused.

“You really think I’d be letting you live in my house, care for my kid, and talk my ear off about werewolf sociology if I didn’t like having you around?”

She blinked.

Hard.

“I…I mean…I figured it was just a necessity. You were desperate. I was…available.”

“That sounds like a bad dating ad,” Dane said dryly.

She groaned, burying her face in the crook of Sam’s blanket. “I am not good at this.”

“At what?”

“Talking. Interacting.Being normal.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then Dane crossed to the arm of the chair and sat on it, close enough that she could feel the heat of him beside her.

“You don’t have to be normal,” he said. “I like you exactly how you are. Even when you’re reading academic theory to my son like it’s a bedtime story.”

Her heart did something very stupid.

He meant it casually, she knew that. A joke. Maybe even kind of a compliment. But it still lodged itself somewhere beneath her ribs and refused to budge.

She looked up at him, words caught behind her teeth.

But he didn’t look away.

And for once, neither did she.

The silence stretched between them like a tightrope.

Lola wasn’t sure who was going to fall first. Her, with her heart thudding behind her ribs like an idiot, or Dane, with that unreadable look on his face that wasn’t teasing anymore. It was something else. Something quieter. He looked…like he was thinking.

That alone was alarming.

She glanced down at Sam to break the tension, brushing her fingers over his blanket. He let out a soft sigh, his tiny face smushed into her chest.

“He’s asleep again,” she murmured.

Dane didn’t reply right away.

Then, voice low, he said, “You’re really good with him.”