He glanced at her but she didn’t open her eyes. Hair whipping around her face, she wore a small, secret little smile on her lips that said she’d have a good time no matter what was going on because life was too short. She’d learned that lesson long ago, and so had he.

Ashes hadn’t learned anything but the joy of sticking her head out the window and drooling on the glass.

“Nothing beats this,” Summer said after a few minutes. “A nice drive, a nice, rainy night, a nice…” At that she opened her eyes and looked at him. “Friend?”

He nodded, and she relaxed again, closing her eyes.

A nice friend. It’s what he’d promised her, though it was going to kill him. She was going to kill him. He pulled onto her street and turned off the engine. “Wait here,” he said, and was rounding the trunk of his car when she opened her door and tripped getting out. She sat on the wet curb and grinned up at him as Ashes bounded from her seat to Summer’s legs.

“You never listen.” Joe bent and scooped Summer up in his arms. “Ashes, come.”

Summer sighed a dreamy little sigh, slipped her arms around his neck, and settled her face against his throat. “Love it when you do the he-man thing.” She pressed her lips to his skin.

“Stop that,” he said.

“Okay.” She bit him instead.

The feel of her teeth sinking into him shot arrows of heat straight to his groin. “Red—”

“I love the way you say my name.” Pulling back, she smiled at him. “All thick and husky. Like you’re turned on.”

He was, but it was more than that. It was the warmth and affection in her eyes, the way her right eyetooth was slightly chipped from that headfirst fall she’d once taken off the monkey bars in third grade, the light smattering of freckles across her nose. It was the way she held on to him, like he was the most important thing in her world, at least at the moment.

She laughed a little, and he looked into her face and thought, you are the silliest, more adorable, sexy drunk I’ve ever seen.

“You have the prettiest eyes,” she sighed. “All four of them.”

Asking her for her keys would be useless, so for the second time he let himself in the back door of her cottage. “You should lock this thing up better.”

“I know. But then how would you tuck me in? You are going to tuck me in, aren’t you?”

He didn’t bother to answer that question because in all truth, he had no idea what the hell to do with her.

“I want a bubble bath.”