Free Here Comes Trouble by Erin Kern Page B

and now they itched like a damn mosquito bite. Maybe Lacy would scratch them for him. The scandalous thought just entered his head when Lacy’s mouth turned up in a sly grin. “What?”
    She rolled her lips. “I was just thinking I hope the woman was worth the memory because those scratches are probably going to scar.”
    Damn, little Twiggy was a lot more observant than he gave her credit for. Why had he tried to pass them off as something else when any idiot with half a brain would know they came from a human nail? He decided to out on a limb and provoke her. “There are ways for you to erase her memory.”
    The beer bottle, the last little bit of liquid sloshing on the bottom, paused just before reaching her mouth. Her green eyes, full of the sparkle he loved to put there, narrowed at him. “Are you hinting what I think you’re hinting?”
    He stacked his bare feet on the coffee table. “You’re a smart girl, Lace.”
    The muscles in her slender neck moved subtly when she down the last of the beer. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lily crawl from the sliding glass door to her diaper bag by the table. Chase kept his gaze locked on Lacy’s as she lowered the bottle and set it on the end table next to the recliner. She licked a bead of moisture from her luscious, bottom lip and kept her eyes on his. The corny cliché “cutting the sexual tension with a knife” was the only thing that came to mind as the two of them assessed each other from across the living room. Over the past two years, Chase had become so used to Lacy’s glares that anything else was like trying to understand a foreign language. Her eyes left his face and touched his chest before lowering to his nether regions. In about point zero-five seconds, said regions sprang to life and pulsed against his zipper. He almost shifted to hide the result of his reaction but stayed where he was. Better to let her see what she did to him, if only to coax a reaction out of her. Coaxing reactions out of Lacy had fast become one of his favorite pastimes.
    “What would you say if I agreed?” Her soft, bedroom voice dropped an octave as if she didn’t want Lily to hear.
    The baby, completely oblivious to their conversation, babbled over a book she’d pulled out of her diaper bag. “I’d say,” he answered slowly, “that you’re treading in dangerous water.”
    A mischievous glint lit up her cat-like eyes. “You’re the one who brought it up.”
    That he did. And what in the holy hell had he been thinking making a comment like that? Any other woman would have laughed it off. Leave it to Lacy to call his bluff. It was actually kind of amusing. Debating a hypothetical affair with her was the most fun he’d had all day.
    The intense, sexually charged moment lasted a few more rapid heartbeats before being interrupted by a knock on the front door. Chase had enough time to stand from his chair before his brother and Avery walked in. The married couple looked satisfied and refreshed from their kid-free evening out.
    As usual, Avery’s hair was styled in its perfect, not-a-hair-out-of-place fashion. The sophisticated up-do suited the crisp, stick straight, Texas Bluebonnet dress that fell just above her knees. One would never know of her background from talking to her. She was one of the most grounded, big-hearted people Chase ever had the pleasure of knowing. And she made his brother grin like the Cheshire Cat. That in itself was reason enough to love her. But it didn't hurt that Avery always looked like she belonged in a limousine headed to a star-studded party in Beverly Hills rather than Trouble, Wyoming. Everything about her polished appearance screamed, “I come from money.”
    Lily squealed when she saw her parents and crawled as fast as her pudgy arms and legs could carry her. Her two-toothed, slobbery grin stretched from one miniature ear to the other as Avery scooped Lily up and tossed her in the air.
    “Mama missed you, sweetheart,” Avery cooed