Page 22 of Honey Bee Library (Sweet Tea and a Southern Gentleman #7)

COLE

I’d spent my whole life being cool under pressure.

You don’t get to be the owner of one of the most exclusive night clubs in Miami by folding at the first sign of trouble.

I could broker million-dollar deals with celebrities.

I could handle fights. I could spin scandals in a way that would make a breakdancer sigh.

What I couldn’t handle was watching Willow hold my grandmother’s hand and smile at her as only a woman could. I’d already witnessed Willow mother her son, and it was one of the most attractive things I’d ever witnessed. But seeing her caring for my grandmother? A stranger?

I was in trouble. Deep, deep trouble. The kind of trouble that I doubted I would be able to get myself out of. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

I could feel Willow’s gaze on me as I drove down the road, away from Seabreeze Memory Lodge. I wasn’t sure where we were going or what she wanted to do. I could tell that Miami startled her. It was a far cry from the narrow roads and cheerful smiles on Harmony Island.

I felt like an idiot, wondering if she could actually find comfort in the place that I called home. If she could see Miami as a place to live, then maybe there was a chance that she could see me as something more. Because I wanted to be a lot more to her.

But the memory of how quickly she’d told me she was leaving at the airport came flooding back.

She was determined to get back to Harmony as soon as she could.

I may want her to stay, but that wasn’t what she wanted.

I’d been around that woman long enough to know there was little I could do to sway her once she’d set her mind to something.

So I flipped on my blinker and merged onto the freeway.

“I can take you back to the airport, now,” I said, my voice low with emotions. I feared the tone would give me away, but I was too tired to try to hide it.

When Willow didn’t respond right away, I glanced over at her. She was staring out the window. Her shoulders were soft and she looked relaxed. Such a stark difference from the first time she was in my car.

“Willow?” I asked, leaning forward to catch her attention. That seemed to work.

“Hmmm,” she said as she shifted her weight so she was facing me.

“Do you want me to take you to the airport?” It was taking all my strength to not ask her to stay with me. Especially when I knew she thought staying with me was worse than sleeping upright in her desk chair at the diner.

She glanced back at Jasper for a moment before she turned to me. “We can stay the night…if you want.” Her gaze was shy as she brought it up to mine.

The words echoed around the car. My ears were ringing as I tried to decide if I’d heard her right. My heart pounded in my chest, making it hard to concentrate on the road in front of me. My hands tightened around the steering wheel while I tried to gain control of my emotions.

How was I supposed to tell her that I wanted her here with me without sounding too eager? My entire body felt like it was exploding, and the last thing I wanted to do was scare her off.

So I cleared my throat, relaxed my body against the back of the seat, and nodded. “Yeah, sure. I mean, you can stay.” I closed my eyes as my words finally registered in my ears. I sounded like a complete idiot. If Willow changed her mind, I wouldn’t blame her. I was embarrassed for myself.

But Willow didn’t say anything. She wrapped her arms around her chest as she returned to staring out the window. Confidence grew in my chest that this woman was actually going to come back home with me, so I redirected the car to take us to my beach house instead of the airport.

Fifteen minutes later, I was pulling through the gate after waving at Alfred, the security guard.

I drove the familiar streets of my community until I got to my home.

It was the last house on Candy Cane Dr. I pressed on the garage door opener as I pulled into my driveway and waited to pull into the garage.

I peeked over at Willow, wondering what she thought about my place. I wanted her to like it more than I wanted to admit. She must have felt me staring at her because, a moment later, she looked over at me.

“You definitely have a type,” she said with soft laughter in her voice.

I stared at her. If she only knew. “I do,” I said, my voice low.

I studied her profile as she turned her attention back to my house.

I loved the way her lashes framed her eyes.

I loved the way her cheeks flushed when she knew I was watching her.

And I loved how her bottom lip jutted out like she was pouting.

The sudden urge to press my lips to hers and take that lip between my teeth to gently nibble rushed through me.

I ripped my gaze from her face. Those were the kind of thoughts I should not be having when it came to Willow.

She was not here to date me. She was here to…

well, I wasn’t really sure what she was here to do.

After all, she had Jasper back, there really wasn’t anything keeping her here.

But I knew one thing: She wasn’t there to be mine.

The sound of the rear door slamming seemed to be exactly what we both needed to snap us from our thoughts. I glanced over at Willow, who was pulling on the door release, so I did the same.

Jasper was already across the garage, and I chuckled as Willow once again hurried to catch up with him.

“Jasper,” she snapped. “What did I tell you about barging into other people’s houses? We talked about this.”

Jasper groaned and twisted his arm in an effort to break his mom’s grasp. “It’s not a stranger’s house,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s Cole’s house.”

I couldn’t help the smile that emerged as I rounded my car to open the trunk. My chest swelled at Jasper’s declaration. I was no longer Cole the stranger. I was now just Cole. And that felt good. Really good.

My ears pricked to hear Willow’s response. I waited for her to tell him that he was being ridiculous. That I was a stranger. But those words never came.

“Still, we need to be polite and wait for him to invite us in.”

Still. Never in my life did I want to know what one word meant so badly. Did she see me as more than a stranger? And if so, how much more? The kind of more that my entire body wanted?

I grabbed the handle of my duffel bag and yanked it from the car.

I was frustrated with myself for allowing my thoughts to wander.

I wasn’t this man who obsessed over every little word.

I was freaking Cole Watkins. I was confident and I knew what I wanted.

But all it took was Willow coming into view for my resolve to melt. I didn’t want to be that guy anymore.

I wanted to be whoever I got to be with Willow.

“Come on, kid,” I said as I passed by them and nodded toward the door that led into my house. “I’ve got something I want to show you.”

I pushed through the door and dropped my bag onto the mudroom floor. I didn’t have to look to see if Willow and Jasper were following me, I could hear his suppressed footsteps as Willow no doubt held onto him to keep him from running ahead.

When I heard Willow’s exasperated sigh and saw Jasper hurriedly join me, I knew that he had broken free. I reached out and tousled his hair, loving the fact that he felt safe enough to walk alongside me. Spending the morning with him had been the highlight of my year.

“Are you Batman?” he asked, his wide, innocent eyes tipping up to study me.

“Batman?” I asked as I led him through my kitchen and into my living room. “Naw, I’m not that cool.”

“Fish!” Jasper shouted as he ran over to my saltwater reef tank.

I chuckled as he rushed up to the glass.

I’d put in a lot of work, acquiring all kinds of vibrant coral and fish for this tank.

Clownfish, tangs, and angelfish swam around lazily in the water while starfish dotted the ground.

Blake had done a great job taking care of my tanks while I was in Harmony.

“Which one is your favorite?” Jasper asked as he kept this nose pressed right on the glass.

“Probably my emerald crab,” I said as I moved to stand next to him.

Jasper shifted his head from side to side, but didn’t pull back from the glass. “I don’t see it.”

I knelt down next to him so I was at his level. I pointed at the cluster of coral on the far end of the tank. “He normally hides back there.” I paused and glanced around until I finally spotted him. “See? Right there.”

Jasper pressed his palms and nose further onto the glass. He was doing everything he could to see what I was pointing at.

“Jasper,” Willow hissed from behind me. I turned to see her reach for his shoulder.

“It’s okay,” I said, meeting her gaze. “It’s just glass.”

Willow’s hand froze inches from Jasper. She held my gaze as if she were waiting for me to take my words back, but I wasn’t going to. Glass could be cleaned. Broken things could be fixed or repaired. But a boy’s love for his hobbies, once lost, could never be ignited to the same level.

I slipped my phone out of my back pocket as I stood.

I hadn’t noticed how close Willow had gotten until I glanced over and saw she was only centimeters away.

My entire body froze as her gaze met mine.

I wanted to believe the shy, nervous expression that passed over her face was for me, but it was easier to believe my eyes were playing tricks on me.

I wanted her to react that way to my presence, but in reality she wasn’t.

Willow dropped her gaze and took a few steps back. With some distance between our bodies, I focused back on my phone screen and swiped it on. Once I found a picture of the emerald crab, I handed it over to Jasper.

“This is what you’re looking for,” I said.

Jasper didn’t even look up. He just grabbed my phone from my hand and went back to studying the inside of my fish tank.