Later that evening, after Libby had watched two animated movies and Hank had held Becca on the sofa and kissed her neck until she was trembling, Hank took his daughter home and tucked her into bed. It was past midnight, and he knew he shouldn’t have kept Libby up so late, but he also couldn’t help himself. Every time he told himself he needed to go home, he needed to call it a night, Becca would look over at him with that shy, half-flirty look on her face and bite her lip, and he’d be a goner. Next time he’d pay more attention to the clock, he decided.

Next time maybe he wouldn’t get so utterly enthralled by a pair of lips.

He pulled the blankets up to Libby’s chin and tucked them close around her.

“Daddy?” She opened sleepy eyes to look at him.

“Yes, baby?”

“Did you kiss Miss Becca?”

“Yeah, I did.” No sense in lying about it, because he planned on doing it a lot.

“You should marry her,” his daughter declared sleepily. “So she can be my mommy.”

“We’re going back to Alaska, remember?”

She nodded and rolled over, going to sleep, but the conversation bothered him even after he went to his own room.

Becca had asked if he was going back to Alaska. The moment he’d said yes, she’d said they would keep it casual. What the hell was that? She always said she didn’t know how to be casual and yet she was suggesting it? He’d been about to suggest that maybe she could move back with him when she threw that “casual” bomb.

Hank didn’t know what to do about it.

The smartest, safest thing would be to back off entirely. Keep his head down and his lips to himself.

Even so . . . he didn’t want to. For the first time, he’d met someone that fascinated him. Someone that he wanted to talk to and that he wanted to hear talk, even if it was about nothing at all. He wanted her smiles, her laughs, he wanted to drink in the way she casually tossed her hair over her shoulder as she bent to work. He wanted more than casual.

But . . . he lived in the backwoods of Alaska and he planned on going back there. There wasn’t a place for a hairdresser there, much less a hair salon. She’d have to give up her business to go rough it in a cabin with him.

Hell. Why did even thinking about it feel like a mistake? He wasn’t changing his life just because he’d kissed a pretty woman a few times.

Maybe she was right to suggest this thing between them was casual . . . even if he didn’t like the idea.

*   *   *