“How do you know?”
For an instant, he considered telling her that he’d recently talked to his own mother, who’d confirmed Ava’s family was in perfect health—if not in th
eir right minds. He thought of telling her about their family connection and remind her of their Sunday-night dinners together as kids to prove to her he wasn’t a loser backwoods bike mechanic. But then what? She wasn’t here because she wanted Isaac Banks. She could get a newer, shinier version of Isaac Banks behind every office door in Manhattan. She was here because she wanted Isaac the backwoods bike mechanic. The one she believed hung with a dangerous biker gang.
“I don’t think you’d joke about that?” he answered.
She tilted her head. “How would you know?”
He shrugged. “Call it intuition.” He changed the subject. “Can’t wait to hear about Lola and Becky Rae.”
“Lola has a two-year associate’s degree from a junior college and a minister for a daddy.”
He lifted his brows. “Promising.”
“And those years she spent in prison were on accounta her daddy pulling her into an embezzlement scheme on the parishioners. How was she to know the money donated by the congregation for the less fortunate didn’t include their own family?”
“Oh my God, no,” he said. “Just no.”
“Yes, sir. Their congregation lives by the firm belief that charity begins at home.”
He rubbed his face with both hands, laughing. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” He held up his hands. “Forget it. I’m done. The phone can ring. I’ll just ignore it.”
On cue, the phone started ringing. Ava automatically turned toward it. Isaac grabbed her arm and pulled her back. Pulled her all the way back until her body bumped his, then wrapped his arms low on her hips and held her against him.
“Let the machine get it,” he told her. “You haven’t told me about Becky Rae yet.”
She relaxed into his hold, and the feel of her body melting against his put a match to his gasoline. He slid his hands up her back, confirming what his body already knew: she wasn’t wearing a bra. And the freestyle way she felt against him made him hum with pleasure. “Did you come here commando, Miss Ava?”
“Maybe.” Her hands curled into his T-shirt. “Becky Rae may be your best option.”
“You don’t sound confident.”
“She’s a little…eccentric. But she has experience, a car, no kids, and can work a full day.”
“After everything you’ve told me,” he stroked a hand over her head and down her braid, “she sounds like gold.”
“Depends on your perspective. From where you stand, she’s the best you’re gonna get unless you want to keep looking.”
He lowered his gaze to her mouth. The mouth she’d had wrapped around his cock. The mouth she’d used to leave an indelible mark on his soul, if not his body. “I don’t want to keep looking.”
“I didn’t think so.” Her soft answer brought his gaze back to hers.
Her eyes were clear, light blue with a dark ring around the iris. Her long lashes had been darkened by mascara. She fit against him like the perfect puzzle piece and smelled like lilacs after a rain. She looked both innocent and seductive, and she made Isaac ache.
He lifted his knuckles to her petal-soft cheek. “And what are you looking for, Ava?”
“You.” She stretched to wrap her arms around his neck. Her body slid against his, breasts against his chest, hips against his erection. “And this.”
Damn. This was one of those times when he wished he’d been wrong. Or at least half-wrong. He wanted this too. He just also wanted more. “Sure you’re not slumming again? Trying to make your boyfriend jealous?”
“I told you I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Why not?” he asked, hoping to get her to open up a little.
She didn’t answer, just held his gaze with thoughts passing through her eyes. “We broke up,” she finally admitted. “He cheated on me—repeatedly.”
Isaac nodded, relieved she’d told him the truth. A cool breeze fluttered the hair that had fallen from her braid, and he skimmed his fingers into the loose strands at her neck. “How’d you find me?”