Lord. I hadn't heard that in a while.

"Iris doesn't eat meat," Marie answered him.

The Widow scoffed, moving around the table with his plate held high. I was off to the side, behind a couple I recognized from Mayhem, so I knew he couldn't see me. Or maybe he was just one of those people who didn't give a crap. "Who doesn't eat meat?" A dumb question, obviously. "God gave us all these teeth so that we could eat hamburgers, chicken, meat. Not no damn black bean burgers."

The urge to correct him of his ignorance buried itself in my throat, but I was used to it. I was used to people saying things that weren't correct at all. Like this guy. Whatever.

But apparently, just because I kept my mouth shut didn't mean that everyone else did the same.

"How about you just shut up and eat your hamburgers and watch your cholesterol go up, Pete? She can eat whatever she wants to eat without hearin' you babble off your stupid shit."

Oh. Boy. It was Dex. Dex that I hadn't seen sitting at the fourth table.

"Language!" Marie snapped, smiling right before she turned around.

"I'm just saying." The guy I figured was named Pete had his face turn red.

"Nobody cares," Dex cut him off. "Ritz, come eat."

And then, awkwardness descended. The Pete guy finally realized that I was standing pretty much right by him but he had the decency to look a bit ashamed. Not much but something was better than nothing.

I flashed him a jerky smile but made my way toward the table to start putting things on my plate. Sure enough, there were three black bean burger patties piled onto a dish and I took one to put between hamburger buns, adding more things from the multiple dishes on the table. Egg-less potato salad, leafy lettuce, and skewered pineapple.

I started to walk around the three people still serving themselves, heading toward a patch of nearly dead grass to plop down on, but a hand reached out to grab the back of my bare knee.

"Sit right here," the low smooth tone I'd heard so much of over the last few weeks said to me.

Looking over my shoulder, Dex sat on the end of the picnic table bench, straddling it. His legs were wide, his food set on the table, and while he'd taken up more room than one man his size genuinely needed, it still wasn't enough space for two people.

"I can just sit on the ground." I smiled at him.

But he was watching me with those intense eyes. If watching could be considered that simple when there seemed to be a million different things going on in his head. Dex was staring and I didn't understand why. He'd looked at me in that way a few times before but this time was different. It's like he multiplied the look by a hundred. When he dropped his eyes down to my chest—which unfortunately had my dress sticking to my wet bathing suit—I had to gulp.

"I made room." He looked back up at me. "Sit."

Oh sweet mother.

He wasn't going to let it go, and I guess I must have not really wanted to sit on the grass because I sighed. And then set my plate down right next to his. The only way to fit without having an entire butt cheek hanging off the edge was to straddle the bench, too.

My butt pretty much snuggled safely between Dex's thighs, our quads lined up.

We were sitting way too close. If I were to slouch, my back would hit his chest. I'm positive that if I took a deep breath, I'd touch him that way too. The denim of his jeans practically hugging my bare thighs almost made me make some kind of noise.

It was too much.

I breathed a little too deeply and my shoulder blades touched Dex's pecs. Crap.

You can do this, Ris. You can sit with a man like this. It's just Dex.

But that was the problem—it was Dex.

I swear on my life that his h*ps move forward just an inch. But an inch was an inch that bumped the seam of his pants, the cradle of his groin, smoothly against my rear.

I shivered.

When I looked over my shoulder as I reached for my black bean burger, his face was right there. And it was tight—so damn tight.

I smiled at him nervously, but Dex didn't smile back.

He stared at my face, his food untouched, and I had no clue what the heck was going on with him.

"Do you want me to move?" I whispered. I could see his mom looking at us from across the table. She wasn't even trying to play her gaze off.

He still said nothing.

Okay. "Charlie," I whispered again in a sing-song voice, trying to draw him out of whatever thought he was lost in.

But still, nothing.

All right. His mom kept watching us and I started to feel weird again.

I tried to get up. My butt was maybe just an inch off the bench when his warm hand landed on my outer thigh, the thumb on the inside and all four of his long fingers curled over the outside of my leg, and he pushed me back down gently.

"You're fine there." His voice was way too low.

I finally managed to nod my head and force a bite of black bean burger into my mouth to give me something else to do besides look at him, or focus on the heat of his body.

Because honestly, my stomach was doing flip-flops at our proximity. At the feel of that long, sinewy body practically cocooning mine. Sweet baby lord.

I mean, we’d been pretty close when he hugged me the other night but this was completely different.

“So, Iris, what’s your little brother up to?” Dex’s mom asked abruptly.

“He’s in the Army in Japan.”

She lifted up her eyebrows. ”Japan? That’s fancy. You been up to visit him?”

“Not yet.” Especially not when I couldn’t even reach him on the phone. “Hopefully one day soon.”

“You should, life’s short.” Debra winked.

I smiled at her and nodded. “I should start saving up for a plane ticket.”

One of the women I recognized from Mayhem tisked. “Girl, just find yourself a sugar daddy to pay for that.”

Did Dex just grunt?

“Pretty girl like you, I bet you could find a man like that,” she snapped her fingers.

Debra barked out a laugh that was eerily similar to her son’s. “Don’t listen to her. She’s always trying to talk everybody into finding sugar daddies.”

“That’s true,” Dex’s sister threw in. “But if you listen to Ma, she’ll tell you to find a good man that likes you, has good credit and a steady job.”

Debra nodded enthusiastically, pointing at two men standing up. “Yeah, and ya listened to me. See how well my advice worked out for you two?”

The Mayhem woman snorted, cutting me a look. “I still think you should find a sugar daddy.”

“Would you quit with that mess?” Debra huffed.

Something traced the curve of my shoulder, breaking my attention away from the women.

“Ignore ‘em.” It was Dex’s fingertip running over the strap of my bathing suit top. ”Like your bathing suit.” He drew a line down my shoulder blade.

And then he shuffled forward another inch, bringing his lower body even closer to mine. The fingers on my leg tightened, his thighs closing in on mine. Was that a grumble?

His finger made a line back up, slowly, and my stomach fluttered in recognition of his touch. “Eat, baby,” he muttered.

Oh hell. I was still holding the burger in my hand, mid-air after the last bite. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye and smiled.