by Katy Kaylee
I took my baby girl automatically, smiling down at her. “Hello, baby,” I cooed.
Originally, the plan had been to name our daughter Lacey, after her aunt, but we’d decided that would be unfair to this new baby. We weren’t trying to use her to replace someone that Alex lost, and Alex was afraid that if she grew up with that name, she’d think that was all that she was. I was worried that Tabitha would struggle having a sister-slash-cousin named after her dead mother.
In the end, Lacey had become Sarah’s middle name, so that Alex’s sister was still honored.
Sarah made a few nonsense noises at me, and I smiled down helplessly at her. I’d had to take on more of an administrative role lately since her birth five months ago, but it was worth it to spend more time with her and to be able to bring her in with me to my office, cuddling her as I dealt with paperwork. She was my light, my life, my absolute darling.
Alex adored her just as much. It was adorable to watch him singing her lullabies or dancing with her in the kitchen. I had always known that Alex had a soft side. I’d seen it in how he interacted with Tabitha from the beginning, but it was kicked up to eleven with the baby. Every time I thought that I couldn’t love him more I would see him with her and I would fall all over again.
I nodded at Pippa. “I’m ready.”
Pippa took my hand and helped me walk over to the rest of the wedding party. Tabitha was practically bouncing with excitement. She’d been looking forward to being a flower girl for months.
“You ready?” I asked her.
Tabitha nodded. I wasn’t sure that I would ever stop feeling honored that this girl had let me come into her life and take on a parental role. I worked with her on letting her know that she could call me Aunt Claire, or just Claire, or anything else that she wanted. And little by little, I felt like Tabitha was letting me be her mother, as I worked it out on my end. The two of us learning together.
“Off you go,” I told her, as the music started up.
Tabitha went down the aisle, scattering flowers, and I handed Sarah off to Pippa, kissing my daughter’s forehead. Dad took my arm. I’d worried that it would be weird for him to give me away to his best friend, considering everything, but Dad insisted that he was fine with it. He had seen for himself the evidence of how much Alex loved me, and he would be a shit best friend, he’d said, if he didn’t want his best friend to be with the love of his life. Same with being a shit father if he didn’t want the same for his daughter.
Our family was clearly unconventional in how it had come about. But we loved each other, and that was what mattered. We were all together now.
Dad walked me down the aisle, and suddenly, it was like the crowd of people weren’t even there. It was just Alex, standing at the end, waiting for me.
He was handsome as ever. No, even more handsome, because he was smiling at me with this expression like I was the only thing in the world that existed. It made my heart flip.
“You are radiant,” Alex whispered as I stepped up to him and he took my hands. I thought I could even see tears in his eyes. I squeezed his hands, and felt him squeezing them back.
I barely heard the rest of the ceremony, just managing to say my vows because I’d practiced them so many times in the mirror it felt like I could say them backwards in my sleep. Everything was Alex, my whole world filled up with him, and he was looking at me like it was the same for him, and I couldn’t even breathe with how much I loved him.
When he kissed me at the end, I swore I could feel my heart stop for a second.
Alex took Sarah in his arms, cradling her, as Sarah babbled up at him. She adored him so much, and I could already see her starting to show some of his features, like his dark hair and his big eyes. I grabbed Tabitha’s hand. “Time to walk down the aisle.”
“And go have cake?” Tabitha asked.
I laughed. “Yes, and go have cake.”
Tabitha grinned, leading the way as our family walked together, into our new life.
I couldn’t possibly be happier.
***The End***
An Innocent Thanksgiving (Excerpt)
Description
My dad’s best friend has me drooling.
He’s more tempting than spiced Thanksgiving sugar cookies.
… and equally as bad for me.
One single night.
That’s how long it took for him to get me pregnant years ago.
I was a little innocent girl back then.
And today, I’m the mother of his child.
The child that he doesn’t even know exists.
It looks like a bunch of secrets will come out this Thanksgiving.
The damn turkey better be worth it.
This is a standalone romance from my Holiday Heat Series. Each book in the series can be read as a standalone and does not involve any cheating. Not to mention, each of these forbidden romances end in a drool worthy HEA.
Prologue
I wasn’t usually the type of girl who lied.
Honest to a fault, my mom would always say. I would blurt out whatever was going on in my life like it was burning a hole inside of my chest. I didn’t like lying, either, didn’t like hiding things or keeping secrets. Growing up, it used to drive my friends and parents nuts how I would complain about books, movies, television, even real life drama, saying that all of the problems could be solved if only characters—or people—wouldn’t keep secrets or lie to each other.
“It just creates more problems!” I would say.
Which was why it was so very out of character for me that I was lying tonight. Outright, manipulative, made-up-a-massive-story kind of lying.
But how else was I supposed to get what I wanted?
If my parents knew what I was planning, they would lock me in my room for the rest of my life. No thanks. And part of it I could understand. It wouldn’t have been so much the whole I’m going to seduce a man and lose my virginity to him thing, more the oh by the way the man I’m seducing is my dad’s best friend thing.
Oops?
Look, it wasn’t my fault. And it wasn’t Cal’s, either. That was his name—Calvin Munroe. I had grown up calling him Cal, though. Just Cal.
Of course, there was something a bit creepy about the whole ‘grown up calling him Cal’ bit. He’d known me since I was a kid and I was just praying he would be able to overlook that when I made my move tonight. Sure I was still young, but I wasn’t a child anymore. I was twenty, a sophomore in college, and Cal hadn’t seen me since my high school graduation two years ago. My hope was that he would see me not as just the funny young daughter of his friend but as a mature, adult, and engaging woman.
Because God knew, I’d been thinking of him as a hell of a lot more than engaging for years now.
My crush on Cal had, I could admit, started when I was fifteen in high school. He was untouchable then, of course, for multiple reasons. Just take your damn pick: famous artist, my dad’s best friend, over the age of eighteen while I was under it, and a pretty good age gap besides. But that hadn’t stopped me from thinking he was sex on a stick and even now, five years later, I still couldn’t shake my desire for him. I ran into men in college and they were all just so… immature. They had no passion, no vision, or if they did, it was very… up in the air, they never did anything about it.
Cal was the kind of guy who not only had a vision for himself, for his art, but he had the dedication, hard work, and charisma to make it work. It took a hell of a lot to make it in the art world and Cal had done it. I admired him immensely for that. And he always spoke to me as an equal, never as a child, which I’d always appreciated. And his eyes, God his eyes. They could look gray, or hazel, or even blue depending on the lighting, but when you really looked directly into them? You realized they were dark green.
I wanted to drown in those eyes. So many times I had touched myself over the years, imagining him staring at me with those eyes, whispering instructions on how fast or slow to go, to tease myself, where to glide my h
ands over my skin. I’d had to swallow down pleads for him more times than I could count, his name on my treacherous lips. I couldn’t wait for the day when I could beg him for real.
Tonight—tonight if all went well, I would get to. Finally.
It was Thanksgiving, and traditionally, Cal would have it alone. I didn’t know the details, since I’d been a kid for most of it, but I knew that Cal didn’t really have any family and didn’t like to make a big deal out of family holidays. But this year my dad had convinced Cal to join us instead of just moping around on his own—my dad’s words, not mine.
“I do not mope,” Cal had said, but he’d agreed to come, and so now, here I was, helping to put the food on the table while Cal did the place settings and I tried not to climb him like I was a rabid squirrel and he was a tree.
He was as handsome as ever. Forty-six but aged like a fine wine. I’d seen pictures of him in his early twenties and frankly I preferred him now. In those old pictures, he looked kind of like a puppy. Like he hadn’t finished growing into himself and figuring out what to do with his large hands, his tall stature. His dark hair would flop all over the place and he had a goofy look to him.
Now, he was nothing short of distinguished. Charismatic. He moved like a jungle cat, sleek and in control. His hair was just long enough that I could probably run my fingers through it if I wanted (and oh, how I wanted) and it looked terribly soft, but it was shorter now, under control. His face had grown into his nose and ears, so that they no longer looked oversized but perfectly complimentary, and his hands weren’t too large… still large, still… tempting… with his long fingers…
I might have spent a lot of hours thinking about his hands, and his fingers.
He was so goddamn handsome I didn’t know what to do with myself. He was also successful, funny, sweet, and dominated whatever room he was in. I didn’t want a guy who had to shout to get everyone’s attention and had to walk around the room like he was swinging his cock, trying to impress everybody. Cal just had to stand there quietly and everyone knew who the alpha was, and it turned me on like nothing else.
Call me snobby, but I wasn’t going to waste my precious and valuable time on random college men when I had a whole entire three-course meal of a man right in front of me.
Cal raised an eyebrow at me as we finished setting the table. “Penny for your thoughts,” he said, a smile curling up the corner of his mouth.
I wanted to feel that smile against my lips. “Ah, it’s nothing.”
“You’re being unusually quiet, Maggie, clearly it’s something.” His tone was warm, gentle, like he thought there might be something the matter.
If only he knew. “I’m just a little embarrassed, I have something to ask you, but I feel kind of like I’m taking advantage of your friendship by asking about it.”
“I always knew this day would come.” Cal shook his head. “You need my help hiding a body.”
I burst out laughing before I could stop myself, and Cal grinned triumphantly. You’re always so serious Maggie, all my friends would say, but Cal always knew how to get me to lighten up. I wondered if he knew that—if he realized that he was one of the few people who could consistently make me laugh.
“No, no, nothing like that. Yet.”
“Nothing like what?” Dad asked, coming in with the turkey.
“Maggie does not need help hiding a body,” Cal said.
“Well now that you say that I’m worried that’s exactly what she needs help with.”
“She did not say yet, so…”
“I promise you,” I said, crossing my heart, “that if I need help hiding a body, it was justifiable homicide.”
Dad rolled his eyes. “Don’t encourage her, Cal.”
Cal winked at me and it felt like my legs were melting. I had to sit down before they genuinely gave out on me. I would give anything for him to wink at me like that right before he strode across the room and took me into his arms, kissing me.
Mom came in from the kitchen and the conversation got sidetracked until we were all ready to bring out dessert. I was trying not to eat too much. Usually my goal on Thanksgiving was to consume as much stuffing as my body could possibly handle, but if all went well I’d be getting my brains fucked out in just a short hour or so and I didn’t want to do something humiliating like throw up.
I also might have snuck a couple shots of liquor from the cabinet to give myself some extra courage. I was so nervous, but I knew that if I didn’t take advantage of this chance, I was going to regret it. Mom and Dad didn’t notice a thing—I took the shots while I was doing dishes, and I’d gotten good at holding my liquor. Yay, college parties. I was the only one of my friends not interested in hooking up, which meant I ended up looking out for them and making sure they got home safe. As a result I’d learned exactly how much alcohol to have to give myself a bit of courage and a slight buzz, without slipping so far that I was losing my judgment or disorienting myself.
Mom brought out the pumpkin pie and the pecan pie, and I brought out the vanilla ice cream. Simple, but delicious. Cal was talking with Dad about his latest art exhibition, which was the perfect opening. Cal was so artistic in a way that I could never be. I was logical to a fault, which Mom always said I got from Dad. Dad was an accountant, which honestly was the most boring job ever if you asked me. I might’ve been good with numbers but no way was I going to let that be my life. I was studying computer science instead.
Cal, though—he was spontaneous and artistic. The complete opposite of me. I was a planner, like tonight, planning it all out to the last detail, writing a script of what to say and memorizing it. It was part of why I was so drawn to him. I wanted him to bring that spontaneity out in me. I wanted to bask in his artistic soul.
Yeah, yeah, I was in pretty damn deep, emotionally.
I started things off by sharing some funny stories from college, bringing it around to my roommate, Natalie. “She’s the one who gets me into these messes,” I said, laughing at the memories. “She’s such a party girl, she’s slept with the entire sorority row, I swear.”
“I do not need to hear about the sexual exploits of your friends,” Dad said.
“She’s an art history major, actually,” I said, ignoring Dad and turning to Cal. “And a huge fan of yours. I let it slip that I knew you and ever since then she’s been asking me about you.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about being in a class with ‘history’ in the title,” Cal joked. “But I’m flattered. It’s always good to know that people appreciate my work—especially younger people. At a certain point you start to worry that you can only speak to the people who are your age, or your gender, or your… whatever. And art should be reachable by more than just the people who are like you. Art should cross boundaries.”
Jesus Christ, it was stuff like that—where he said things like that just easy as breathing—that made me fall more in love with him. Who just said stuff like that? Cal, that’s who.
“I was wondering… you know that thing I wanted to ask you that I was worried about asking you? I was hoping—if you might have some small piece, something you aren’t able to sell, you know, just a sketch or unfinished work or whatever, it doesn’t matter, but—instead of throwing it away or leaving it to gather dust, I was hoping that I could maybe take it and give it to her as a present?” This was why I’d written a script, planned what I was going to say. Between my nerves and the liquor, there was no way I’d be able to know what to say if I hadn’t prepared. “It’s okay if not, really, but I just wondered… it would mean the world to her.”
Cal put his chin in his hands, and it was dorky and adorable at the same time. How could he be so stern and in control one moment and then soft and approachable the next? I would never figure it out.
“It’s not inappropriate at all.” Cal laughed, almost as if he was surprised. “I was gearing up for something insane—Maggie, how long have we known each other, huh? One small piece of artwork? Hell, that’s no problem. Ask me
for something bigger.”
My heart started racing, and I told myself that I was being ridiculous. He didn’t mean it the way that I wanted him to mean it. Cal still thought of me as a kid, I was sure. Even though I had filled out and grown, shedding baby fat in my face, sprouting up an extra three inches and finally getting some proper curves. It was up to me to change his mind.
“Come on over to my place and we’ll pick something out for her, something nice,” Cal went on, saying exactly what I had been about to suggest. “You know her taste better than I do.”
“Would it be possible to get it tonight?” I asked, going for it before my courage failed me. “I… have a lot of homework to get done this weekend, and I know you have that other show to plan for…”
“Sure thing.” Cal grinned at me. “C’mon over later.”
Dad was the chef in our family, and he did all the cooking, so the rule was that Mom and I cleaned up. That would take up a couple hours, but if I was really quick about it, I should have time to get ready before I went over to Cal’s.
Mom and Dad were doing a video chat with Mom’s cousins after we cleaned up, so I snuck upstairs to get ready. I couldn’t be too obvious, at least on the outside, or my parents would ask if I was going to meet someone other than Cal tonight. I put my makeup in my purse, and then put on my best lingerie—a dark blue set of bra and underwear that I’d gotten with friends when we went on a group shopping trip about a month back. I’d known that it was most likely wishful thinking when I’d gotten it, but a girl could dream, right?
I did style my hair at home. I couldn’t do that in the car. I put on a tighter pair of jeans than before, and a sexy blouse that I hid underneath a hoodie.
“Be back soon!” I said as I walked past the living room. “Going to Cal’s!”
“Have fun!” Mom called. Dad waved.
Once I was safely in my car—it was my present for getting into a good college—I took off the hoodie to reveal the blouse, put on my heels, and did my makeup. I checked myself in the mirror.
