Page 20 of How Sweet It Is (Willow Shade Island #3)

I scoot in behind Amelia. It’s a tight space, and I have to press up against her back to fit under the blanket, but I don’t mind.

Ever since she hugged me this afternoon, I haven’t been able to think about anything but getting close to Amelia again.

And now that I’m so close I can smell her, it’s driving me a little crazy.

I think she uses a vanilla-scented shampoo. It smells a little like sugar cookies, and I can’t get enough of it. I scoot in closer to her, and my heart beats out an insane rhythm in my chest.

Skyler crosses her legs. “Now that we have a fort, we should form a secret club.”

“Ooh,” Amelia says. “What should we call it?”

“Hmm,” Skyler says, thinking. “I don’t know.”

“How about Blanketopia?” I say.

Amelia looks at me over her shoulder. “That’s good. I vote for Blanketopia.”

Skyler giggles. “What does it mean?”

“It’s combining the word blanket with utopia . Do you know what a utopia is?” Amelia asks Skyler.

She shakes her head. “No.”

“It’s a perfect society, where everything is nice and no one is suffering. It’s often described in literature.”

Skyler looks at her funny.

“It means this fort we built is really cool,” I say, grinning at her.

“Yes!” Skyler claps. “Let’s have a secret meeting.”

“Okay,” Amelia says. “What should we talk about?”

“We can talk about Bluey.” Skyler picks up the flashlight and turns it on. Apparently, it has gotten too dark under our blanket, even though we still have sunlight streaming in from the window. She shines the flashlight around the tent, playing with it.

“What’s Bluey?” Amelia asks me quietly.

“A TV show about a blue dog,” I whisper back to her.

“Ah,” Amelia says. “What’s your favorite episode of ‘Bluey’?”

“I love the one where they go to the forest.” Skyler jumps up and runs out of the fort.

Amelia waits for a moment before she whispers, “Are we done with the fort?”

“We might be,” I whisper in her ear. My thumb grazes her fingers. I didn’t mean to touch her, but it sends zaps of attraction through me, and I don’t move my hand.

Amelia ignores it. “That was a lot of work for a very short playtime. Should we go out?”

I’m enjoying this closeness, so I don’t want to move. “Maybe,” I say, putting my chin on her shoulder.

Amelia looks at me, and I shift so I can stare back at her.

Her lips are so close to mine, if I drew any closer, I would be kissing her.

The seconds tick by, and she doesn’t move.

I don’t move either. I just wait to see if she pulls away from me, but she doesn’t.

Is she thinking about what I’m thinking about?

I lean a tiny bit closer to her, my gaze dipping to her lips.

She’s not moving away from me. If I close the distance and kiss her, would she be upset?

I’ve kissed a lot of girls, but Amelia is different.

She’s unexpected, and it makes things between us unpredictable.

I feel like she’s attracted to me, but she keeps telling me she won’t date me. It’s confusing.

“You’re not being very helpful,” she whispers, breaking the spell I was under. I pull back from her.

“Sorry. I’m distracted.” I back out of the fort we made, and Amelia follows me. I find Skyler under the kitchen table, shining the flashlight around.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Hunting for bears.”

“Ah, I see,” I say, biting back a laugh. “Did you find any?”

“Not yet.”

My DoorDash arrives, and I help Amelia set the table.

Skyler crawls out to see what kind of food I bought. She wrinkles her nose as I put some on a paper plate for her. “I don’t like that kind of food,” she announces.

Amelia elbows me. “I told you,” she whispers.

“Try it, Little Pup.” I scoop some onto her fork.

Skyler takes a bite then spits it out. “It’s too hot. I don’t like it.”

I’ve never seen her spit out anything Tobias gives her. Although, to be honest, I’ve been working a lot, or away at school, so I guess I haven’t spent a ton of time with her other than for Sunday dinners. “What don’t you like about it?”

“Can I have cheese pizza?” she asks, ignoring my question.

Amelia snickers. “We can order her some, can’t we?”

“All right,” I say, sighing. “I’ll order. I just didn’t want to get pizza because the place here doesn’t have any gluten-free options, and when I googled, it said that curry didn’t have any gluten in it.”

Amelia touches my arm. “That was very kind of you. But you got me gluten-free pizza the other night. Where did that come from?”

“The mainland.”

“You went all the way to the mainland to get me pizza that night?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

Amelia blinks at me, and I can tell she’s holding back emotion. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

Amelia and I eat the curry and rice, which is delicious.

I pop the mango sticky rice into the fridge for later.

After the cheese pizza arrives, I feed Skyler.

Then we go back into the living room. Skyler takes the blankets down and piles them on the floor, with the couch cushions. “Now let’s play princess.”

“Okay,” Amelia says. “How do we do that?”

“We sit on the blankets and do each other’s hair, like princesses.”

I’ve been itching to see what Amelia looks like with her hair out of that silly bun, so I plop down next to Skyler. “Good idea. Amelia, you sit here. We will make you look like a princess.”

Her hand flies up to her bun. “You want to do my hair?”

“Yes!” Skyler shouts. “Sit down.”

Amelia looks like she’s going to protest and not play along, but Skyler begs her with a really cute “Pleeeeease?” and she can’t refuse.

“I’ll go get my hairbrush.”

“Goodie!” Skyler says.

Amelia comes back into the room and sits down on the blanket in front of me and Skyler. She takes the hair band out, and her hair falls down her back. It’s glossy black, and Skyler grabs the hairbrush.

Skyler tries to brush Amelia’s hair, but she uses too-short strokes, and the hair quickly gets tangled. “Ouch.” Amelia’s hand flies up to her hair.

“Here,” I say, taking the brush and gently helping Skyler untangle the hair. “You need to use longer brush strokes. Like this.”

“You do it, Uncle Levi,” Skyer says, pulling her hand away.

I take the lead. I lightly pull back some of Amelia’s hair, letting it slide over my fingers as I brush it. It’s silky soft, and touching it makes my pulse race. I don’t know why. I’ve never done a woman’s hair before. It’s a little sexy and incredibly intimate somehow.

Amelia is silent as I brush her hair, combing it back. It’s long—it goes halfway down her back—and has soft waves. I can see why she likes to keep it up, but it’s beautiful down.

“Braid her hair, Uncle Levi,” Skyler commands.

Skyler made me braid her Barbie’s hair once, so I know how to do it. I pull back all her hair and separate it into three sections.

I can’t stop thinking about how close we were to kissing in the tent. I don’t want to take things there if she’s still saying she won’t date me, though, so I’m going to have to find a subtle way to discover how she feels about me.

Or maybe I’ll just come right out and ask.