Six More Hot Single Dads!. Kate Hardy

out of his grasp as this woman took him to heights he hadn’t expected and to sensations he hadn’t thought possible.

      It was a major revelation to him.

      Coming up for air, Brandon drew back and looked in wonder at the woman he’d brought along on this little field trip. Concerned that she might have been offended, he didn’t know whether or not an apology was in order. There was no way on earth he was sorry he’d kissed her. But he honestly didn’t know how she might react to what had just happened.

      Unable to put up with the stillness any longer, he broke it by making an apology. “Sorry,” he murmured.

      About? Was he sorry that he’d thrown his doors open to anyone and everyone? Or was it more personal than that? Was he sorry he kissed her?

      “I already told you that you have nothing to be sorry about.”

      “That was before—”

      He was talking about before he’d kissed her, she realized. Straightening, her eyes never leaving his, she allowed her voice to interrupt his. “But it still applies.”

      He relaxed a little, relieved that she wasn’t annoyed, that she didn’t think he had just taken advantage of her because the opportunity had presented itself. Nothing would have been further from the truth. If anything, he’d been the one to be taken advantage of. Not by her, but by his own momentary lapse into vulnerability.

      He didn’t like leaving himself open like that. People who were open got hurt. That was why, ordinarily, he was locked up tighter than Fort Knox. Nothing and no one got through.

      Because the last time he’d allowed himself to be open, to be vulnerable, he’d lost his heart to Jean, Victoria’s mother. At the time, he’d thought it was a good thing because it was for forever. Learning that “forever” was incredibly finite had been a cruel, hard lesson that had almost broken him. But he had learned it. It was a lesson that he meant never to forget.

      But Isabelle had made him do just that, made him forget, if only for a moment.

      He had to be careful that it didn’t happen again. Because he knew that the consequences would be too hard for him to endure.

      “About that lunch you promised me,” Isabelle prodded cheerfully, sensing he needed to have his thoughts diverted. She nodded toward the old-fashioned building they’d passed at the corner.

      “Right.”

      This time, he looked both ways before placing a hand to her back and guiding her across the street. There’d been enough risks taken for one day.

       Chapter Eight

      “Oh, my God, the view from here is absolutely incredible!” Isabelle cried breathlessly. “It’s like looking into forever.”

      “Looking into forever,” Brandon repeated, rolling the words around in his mind. “Might not make a bad title,” he murmured, more to himself than to her.

      They had had their late lunch at the restaurant, which, she’d discovered, turned out to be even more quaint on the inside than on the outside. Afterward, they’d gone across the street to take in the view. There was a charming gazebo built strictly for that purpose. It had been there, Brandon told her, for as long as anyone could remember.

      The freshly repainted gray, circular structure was perched on the edge of an embankment that overlooked the beach. The ocean stretched out from there for as far as the eye could see.

      It was the ocean that had captured Isabelle’s attention. The waters were almost painfully blue and just slightly restless, its waves reaching out to the shore only to withdraw like a flirtatious southern belle, teasing her suitor and testing her feminine powers for the first time.

      She could have stood here watching for hours. If she’d had the time.

      “Do you come here often?” The moment she asked and heard her own question out loud, Isabelle had to laugh.

      “What’s so funny?” Brandon asked, more than a little amused. Isabelle’s laugh was captivating. Captivating and innocent, like having someone take his hand and draw him into a party.

      “What I just asked you, that sounded like a line a guy usually says to a girl in a bar or a club.” Mocking the scenario, she made her eyebrows rise and fall wickedly before repeating the question using a far deeper voice than she had initially. “Come here often, honey?”

      “As a matter of fact, I do,” he purposely took on the feminine role and made his voice go up two octaves, approximating a falsetto. And then he went on more seriously in his own voice, “Driving up and down Pacific Coast Highway and looking at the ocean from here are a couple of ways I use to clear my head and get my creative juices flowing.”

      From out of nowhere, there was the smell of rain in the air. It rarely rained in southern California in July, so Isabelle attributed the sudden damp smell to the wind shifting, ushering in the scent of the sea.

      “In your quest for creativity, do you ever walk along the beach itself?” she asked.

      “That’s my third way,” he confirmed.

      Brandon glanced down at the shoes she was wearing. Her footwear was the one very impractical thing about her. Rather than running shoes or low, barely-there heels, Isabelle apparently favored high-heeled sandals. Granted, the heels were rather solid as opposed to stilettos, but they were still high heels. He’d never seen her wearing anything else. He’d asked her about them once, saying that he would have thought that sneakers would have worked better for her. She’d replied that she felt more stable and in control of the situation in heels. Thanks to life with his mother and Victoria, he knew better than to argue with a woman when her mind was set.

      “How about it? Are you game to go for a walk on the beach now?” he asked.

      Rather than answer him, Isabelle put her hand on his arm to help her maintain her balance as she slipped off her shoes. The hem of her white slacks was a hair’s breadth from touching the gazebo’s wooden floor.

      Holding her shoes by their straps as proof, she declared, “Game!”

      The quick grin that accompanied her declaration fluttered directly—and almost lethally—into Brandon’s stomach.

      He did his best to disregard the feeling and the very real, very strong sexual pull he experienced. This wasn’t the time or the place.

      “Okay, it’s this way,” he needlessly told her, pointing to a path that ran past another, far more image-conscious restaurant. The path was narrow and winding, and had once been painstakingly paved with colored bits of concrete, but any intended patterns that had been pressed into its surface were long gone, worn away by years of foot traffic and the sun.

      The path’s incline was also steep enough to make her feel as if she could easily pitch forward if she wasn’t careful or moved too quickly. She deliberately kept her gait measured and slow. To insure her stability, Isabelle slipped her arm through Brandon’s.

      The sand, when they finally reached it, was a pristine shade of almost white, the result of many vigilant patrons and neighbors who took pride in keeping it clean. The sand felt beguilingly warm against the soles of her bare feet the moment she took her first step. By then, Brandon had stopped to take off his own shoes—and socks—as well.

      As they began to walk along the uncrowded beach, she had no doubt that the sand had found its way into the cuffs she had carefully rolled up. The thought didn’t really trouble her. Being here was well worth the minor inconvenience.

      With so few people around, the beach seemed somehow larger to her. As if it truly did go on forever.

      Isabelle slanted a glance toward the man beside her, wondering if it made the same impression on him that it did on her.

      “Does this