Off Limits by Emma Jay Page A

didn’t quite believe him. “What are you going to do to make it up to me?”
    He cast a teasing glance at the table where he’d kissed her.
    She frowned and jammed her hand on her hip. Sexiest thing he’d ever seen. But the message was clear. Fat chance. Something rose up in him that completely erased his need to escape. Something stronger than his long-ingrained need to protect his privacy. But it wasn’t just desire, either. It was foreign to him.
    “Are you free for dinner?” The question surprised him the minute it was out of his mouth.
    Her eyes widened, letting him know she hadn’t expected it, either. “It’s after eight. And I’m babysitting.”
    “Right.” He looked from the suspicious child to the equally suspicious woman. “When are you done?”
    “Her mom works until two. So a while.”
    “Ah.” He backed toward the still-open door. His chance to escape, though it no longer had the same appeal. “Tomorrow?”
    She ushered the child into the room behind her—the living room, he reasoned—and cocked a hip. “You came here to see me, right? Otherwise you’d just have called.”
    His defenses went up. He didn’t want her to look too closely at his motivations, especially when he wasn’t sure what they were. And yes, he had wanted to see her again, to remind himself what a bad idea his continuing fantasies were. “If I didn’t think you’d hang up on me. Or ignore the phone altogether.”
    “Then stay.”
    Panic tripped his pulse. He glanced past her to the room where the kid had disappeared. “Help you babysit?” That sounded so damned domestic.
    “You can’t tell me you’ve never done that before.”
    “Oh, I definitely have.” Years ago, with Becky Turner, the girl who gave him his first blowjob. Not that he thought Paige would do the same, but the possibility of it, the idea of being near her held more appeal than he wanted to admit. He closed the door and moved nearer. Before he could touch her, and God, he ached to touch her, she spun and entered the room after CeCe. The little girl was curled up on the deep-green sofa in the cozy little room, and held up a DVD case for Paige. Paige took it and loaded the player beneath a small flat-screen TV.
    “Just fifteen minutes, okay? It’s past your bedtime.”
    As Paige got the child comfortable, Zach looked around. The furnishings were modern, if modest, the wall behind the couch painted a soothing creamed-coffee color, and iron accents decorated the room. The signs of a kid living here were the collection of G-rated movies in the black cabinet beneath the TV and the pile of pillows and stuffed animals on the floor.
    “Does she talk?” He eyed the girl with the same wariness she eyed him.
    “Of course she talks. Just not to strangers. CeCe, this is my friend Zach. He’s not a bad guy.”
    “So why are you mad at him?” CeCe asked around the fingers in her mouth.
    “Because he doesn’t make good decisions. Just like Mommy gets mad at you when you do something you know you shouldn’t do.”
    CeCe’s frown deepened. “What did he do?”
    Zach watched Paige as she thought about how to explain his mistakes to a little kid.
    “He broke a promise.”
    Huh. He didn’t see that coming. What promise?
    “What promise?” CeCe echoed his thoughts.
    Paige flushed. “Your movie’s starting.” She settled on the couch and Zach crossed to sit beside her, not as easily distracted.
    “What promise?”
    “Not spoken,” she said, her gaze on the TV. “But you know what you did.”
    “I’m sorry, Paige. I acted on impulse.”
    She turned to him. “Why? Did you think Adam had a tracking device on me and he was going to storm in at any minute?”
    “I don’t know.” He passed a hand over his hair and rested his elbow on his knees.
    She wasn’t completely satisfied, he could tell by the set of her lips. She turned away, hugging a pillow to her. He wished he was that pillow. He had a lot of groveling to do first before she’d let