“That’s right. You know what’s in raw cookie dough?”

“Eggs?” Rory asks—still sounding like a smartass with the one short word.

“Yep. So, maybe since you’re so tough, you can play Russian roulette with salmonella and be our dough taster. What do you think?”

And he cracks a smile. “Sure.”

“All right, then! Everyone grab a bag and show me where the kitchen is.”

They do as they’re told and follow my mother with her cookie bags like she’s the Pied Piper. All except Rosaleen, who stays in the foyer with me. I move to the bottom of the staircase, one arm resting on the oak railing. Waiting.

Then Chelsea appears on the landing. And it’s—boom—instant slow motion. Like every cheesy fucking teen movie from the eighties that I never watched. Her royal-blue dress swishes as she descends, giving teasing glimpses of creamy thigh. The soft fabric cinches at her waist and the deep V of her neckline exposes a tantalizing hint of perfect, pale cleavage. Her curled, glossy hair bounces with each step . . . and so do her boobs.

Rosaleen’s little blond head swivels from me to her aunt, then back to me. “Are you gonna kiss her?” she asks curiously.

My eyes continue their travels. And I breathe out, “Oh, yeah.”

Rosaleen scrunches her nose like a bunny that ate a bad carrot. “That’s disgusting, Jake.”

• • •

After reminding the kids not to be idiots for my mother, I take Chelsea to the Prime Rib—a high-end supper club in the heart of DC. It has an elegant, old-school kind of feel—candlelit tables, dark-paneled walls, excellent red wine, and an adjoining room for dancing to the soft tunes of the piano man singing bluesy versions of classic songs. I step in front of the maître d’ and pull out her chair myself. After rattling off the specials, he goes to retrieve the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon I ordered as we scan our menus. For a second, a horrifying thought occurs to me.

“You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

“No,” Chelsea scoffs, gazing back at the choices with anticipation. “I love a good piece of meat.”

“Happy to hear it.” She detects the smirk in my voice and meets my eyes over the menu with a playful laugh.

After placing our orders, we drink our wine . . . and I can’t stop looking at her. She’s just so fucking gorgeous. She takes a sip of wine and a crimson drop glistens on her upper lip. She swipes at it with the tip of her tongue and I ache to lick it off with mine. Suck on those lips. Drink wine from the hollow of her throat.

I adjust myself below the table and take a swig from my own glass. Christ, this is going to be a long night. Everything she does, everything she says, makes me think of sweaty, slow, hard, deep fucking.

“Your mom isn’t anything like I imagined.”

Except that.

“What were you imagining?”

“Well . . . a larger woman, I guess. How did she even survive you—you must’ve been a huge baby. And . . . she looks so young.” Chelsea points a finger. “That means you have good genes; you should thank her.”

“My father was a big guy; I take after him build-wise. And my mom looks young because she is young. She had me when she was sixteen.”

“Sixteen?” Chelsea repeats, probably thinking, That’s only two years older than Riley. Pretty fucking young.

I nod, sipping my wine.

“So, your parents are divorced?” Her tone is hesitant; she doesn’t want to wander into uncomfortable territory.

“Yeah.” I shrug. “He left . . . when I was eight.”

Her face pinches with sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” And I couldn’t be more honest. “It was the nicest thing he ever did for me.”

Our food arrives. Chelsea stares wide-eyed at her porterhouse, ’cause it’s larger than her head. “Now, that’s a big piece of meat.”

And she says it so innocently, there’s no way I can let it pass.

“Mine’s bigger.”

She tilts her head and there’s exasperation in her giggle.

“What?” I laugh, gesturing to my plate. “It is bigger. Unless you thought I was referring to something else?”

Her answer is an adorable pink blush.

“Dirty, dirty mind.”

Chelsea picks up her knife and fork and gets to work on her meat. I get a depraved kind of enjoyment watching her fork slide between her lips, how she closes her eyes and moans on every other buttery mouthful. Before she’s a quarter of the way finished, I’m readjusting my cock again—trying to make room in the ever-tightening confines of my pants.

“Did you grow up in DC?” Chelsea asks between bites.

I tip the wine bottle, refilling her glass. “We moved around a lot when I was younger. After my father took off, my mom didn’t have a lot of options. She was twenty-four, with a kid, didn’t even have a high school diploma. So she joined the army.”

“Wow. It’s hard to picture her in the army.”

I shake my head, cutting my steak. “Believe me, she’s tougher than she looks. She got her GED and became a military mechanic. We lived on a few different bases when I was a kid. She was never deployed, but they shuffled us around wherever they needed an extra hand.”

“So you were an army brat?”

“Kind of.” You’d think army kids would be disciplined—well behaved—but that’s not always the case. I was forever the new kid, in places where strength was respected above all else. “Kill or be killed” was a big theme. Where the quickest way to prove your worth was to step on everyone else around you. “After she was discharged, we settled in Baltimore.”