“And were you going to invite me to your bed, Bryce?”

She knew the answer to that. “Yes.” Her body had begun throbbing for him the moment he’d shown up to take her to dinner. She figured the only reason he hadn’t kissed her then was because Duke had been there replacing the knob on her dishwasher.

“Then do it, Bryce. Invite me to your bed.”

She had a feeling for her to issue an invitation was important to him. What if he wanted to stay overnight? His truck was parked in her driveway for all to see. Should she care? Inwardly, she knew that she wouldn’t care. She was thirty-two, a few months shy of thirty-three, and was too old to care what people thought and what they would say.

“Would you join me in my bed, Kaegan?”

He smiled down before sweeping her into his arms and then heading toward her bedroom.

* * *

“YOUR MOM DOES wonders with blueberries,” Kaegan said, as he and Bryce sat at her kitchen table sharing a slice of blueberry pie with cups of coffee.

It was crazy. They’d made love so many times during the past four hours, yet his body was hard, ready for a repeat performance. She was sitting across from him wearing his shirt. Unbuttoned and nothing else. Did she not know what a sexy image she presented? How hard it was to resist her?

“I’ll give Mom the compliment,” she said, intruding into his thoughts. “By the way, Sawyer came to see me today on official police business. He questioned me about any jealous ex-boyfriends.”

He looked over at her. “Do you have any jealous ex-boyfriends?”

She chuckled. “None that I know of, but he still wanted names of anyone I’ve dated in the past year.”

“Well, I happen to know one jealous boyfriend of yours.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Who?”

“Me.”

She looked shocked. “You?”

“Yes. Even when I was supposed to dislike you, I was jealous of any guy who paid any attention to you. I remember seeing you out on a date a few times and it took everything I had not to break some man’s jaw.”

She frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. You didn’t even like me then.”

“I’m thinking that maybe I did, but was refusing to admit it to myself. Even when I wanted to believe the worst about you, I still couldn’t let you go. I used to drive Ray and Sawyer crazy.”

And because somebody said that confession was good for the soul, he added, “I even warned Isaac, Vaughn and Brody to stay away from you when they moved back to town, in case they got any ideas.”

She stared at him and he wondered how long it would take for her anger to boil over. He figured she wouldn’t like what he’d said, mainly because he’d had no right to do that. But he preferred telling her now than letting her find out later and use it as a wedge between them.