Free A Sweetheart For The Single Dad (The Camdens Of Colorado Book 8) by Victoria Pade Page B

don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t—and won’t—tell him that’s a possibility because it isn’t. For the nth time—I’m not taking Camden Incorporated on as a client.”
    “We’ll see,” Lindie said.
    “Yes, we will.”
    They’d both finished eating some time before and it was getting late so Sawyer crumpled up the sandwich’s paper wrapper, signaling that it was time to put an end to this.
    Lindie followed suit, slightly alarmed to discover that she was no more eager to end her time with him now than she had been before they’d had dinner.
    And maybe, despite the fact that he’d initiated the cleanup, Sawyer wasn’t, either, because once they got outside he leaned against her car door rather than offer her free access to open it.
    “So you really are going to show up again tomorrow?” he asked.
    “Really am. Maybe helping clear the spot for your chess tables so you can share the same experience with your little boy will put a drop in the bucket of making things up.”
    “It all happened a long time ago,” he said, looking very intently at her. “It doesn’t need to be made up for at this point. It might have been the catalyst for what I do now, but what I do now is important in its own right. That’s why I’m going to keep doing it,” he warned yet again.
    Lindie only smiled a small, confident smile at him and said, “I’m going to find a way that works for everyone.”
    He shrugged and gave her the same kind of smile. “You can go ahead and keep trying,” he said as if failure was inevitable. But there was something else in his tone, too. In the glint of his blue eyes. Something that had the air of invitation. As if he liked that she was trying. Maybe as if he liked seeing her, having her around. Maybe as if he liked her...
    He pushed away from her car door and took a step to stand directly in front of her. His eyes never lost contact with hers. And that sexy little smile never faded.
    “Now I have a confession,” he said quietly.
    Lindie tilted her chin up, encouraging him.
    “You’ve had some schmutz on your face since this afternoon and I didn’t tell you.”
    “You made me come here for dinner with a dirty face?”
    He grinned. “It’s kinda cute,” he said, raising an index finger to the apple of her left cheek to rub at whatever was there.
    There hadn’t been any physical contact before that moment and while it wasn’t much, it still packed a wallop for Lindie. For no reason she could explain, it set off a tingling sensation that was like a giddy little dance of excitement all around that spot.
    The sensation took her by surprise. She wondered if he’d somehow felt it, too, because that cocky grin he’d started out with turned more curious and his brows pulsed together in a split second of what looked like confusion.
    He traced all four tips of his fingers along the side of her face and said, almost more to himself than to her, “You have the softest skin.”
    Before she knew it was coming, he leaned over and kissed her. A quick peck that was there and gone before she’d even closed her eyes or registered it or responded.
    Then it was over, his hand was gone from her face and he had a shocked, but amused, expression on his.
    “How’d that happen?” he asked as if he hadn’t been responsible.
    Lindie asked the same thing but only with the arch of her own eyebrows.
    “Want to hit me?” he offered.
    She shook her head, unable to speak because what she wanted to say was
kiss me again
. And there was no way she could let herself do that!
    “Still on board for tomorrow?” he asked, clearly testing to see if that kiss had changed her plans.
    “Yes,” she confirmed.
    He grinned as if that pleased him, turned around and opened her car door for her.
    Lindie got behind the wheel and glanced up at him, trying not to wish that he would lean in to take advantage of her upraised face to kiss her again, after all.
    Which—wishing for it or not—he didn’t do.
    Instead he