“Are you going to take a step back from me because this happened?” he asked, surprising her with the blunt question.

“I should probably take a step back from you for a lot of reasons.”

“Please don’t do that, Emma. Whatever this is between us, it’s good. It’s so damned good. I want more of it.” He nuzzled her neck. “I want more of you.”

“It’s all so ridiculously complicated.”

“So what?”

She laughed softly. “Easy for you to say.”

“It’s not easy for me to say. I don’t do complicated as a rule, but in this case… I can’t imagine you and Simone leaving here later this week and not seeing you again until the next family event. I don’t want to wait that long.”

“You don’t?”

He shook his head. “A week is going to be too long.”

Though his statement made her heart flutter, she said, “Why do I feel like we’re setting ourselves up for disaster? You’re starting a business here. I live in the city. How do you see this playing out?”

“I have no idea, but the thought of letting you go on Friday and having this be over is completely unacceptable to me.”

“It is, huh?”

“Absolutely, totally and completely unacceptable.”

She smiled at his emphatic declaration.

“I know you’ve been off the dating circuit awhile,” he said, still speaking softly as he ran his fingers through her hair, “but what happened between us earlier doesn’t come along every day. Hell, it’s never come along for me. Not like that anyway. We’d be crazy not to see where it takes us.”

“I feel like we’d be crazy to try to make it work under these circumstances.”

“Will and Cameron made it work. Lucy and Colton are making it work.”

“True, but they didn’t have Simone to consider, and with Lucy here more than in New York these days, I have to think about my dad, too. I could never leave him there all alone.”

“It’s a lot to consider. I know it is. But all I’m asking for is a chance, Emma.”

He was so sweet and so convincing and so damned sexy. She wanted to curl up to him and let him make everything that was wrong okay again, which was a rather radical thought for a woman who’d taken care of herself and her daughter on her own for such a long time.

“Let’s take it a day at a time,” she said. “That’s all I’m capable of right now.”

“I can live with that.” With his finger on her chin, he turned her toward him and laid a gentle kiss on her lips. “Today was amazing.”

“For me, too.”

For the longest time, he held her gaze, neither of them blinking as they drank each other in.