“No one kisses fish! Tell him, Uncle Jack!” Libby looked around him and grinned.

Hank turned, and sure enough, there was his younger brother, his own beard all neatly trimmed as if he was going on a date himself. Jack smirked and gave Hank a thoughtful look. “I don’t know, Libs, your daddy’s been mighty lonely up in Alaska. Maybe he was kissing fish.”

His daughter’s sweet squeals of laughter almost made him not mind Jack’s comments. Almost. Except Jack had been making cracks all afternoon and it was wearing on Hank’s nerves. Like he needed this tonight. So he set down the beard trimmer, picked up Libby off the counter, and looked over at Jack. “This gonna be a problem?”

“Why would it be a problem?” He feigned an innocent look. “You’re coming home tonight, right?”

“Of course I am. I have a daughter.”

“You might get lucky—”

“I’m coming home,” he growled. And that was that. “You have my cell number. Call if there’s any problems or Libby gets scared.”

Jack reached over and took Libby out of Hank’s arms. He hauled her into the hallway and flipped her in a quick, dangerous way that made Hank’s heart leap, but Libby laughed and squealed as Jack tossed her around on his shoulder like she was a sack of feed. “Maybe me and Libby will watch a fish movie ourselves, hmm?”

“Nemo!” she called happily. “Let’s watch Nemo!”

“You go watch.” Hank took one last look in the mirror and steeled himself.

He had a damned date, and he decided he was going to approach it the same way he approached everything in life. He was going to take it on with grim determination.

Everyone in the world dated, right? He could do this.

CHAPTER NINE

Becca fussed with her hair for what felt like the hundredth time in the last hour, smoothing down an errant strand. Of course she wasn’t having a good hair day today. Now that she had a date? It was humid for the first time in weeks and her carefully fixed hair looked puffy and wild and slightly untamed no matter what she did to it. After wrestling with it for a while, she clipped it up and put on a pair of dangly earrings, hoping it would make her neck look longer. She put on lipstick, took off the lipstick, put on gloss, took off the gloss, and eventually put on just a light flavored gloss instead.

He might kiss her, after all, and she didn’t want to get pink lipstick all over him.

That sent butterflies floating through her stomach.