Me: I’m coming over in two minutes. I suggest you meet me at your front door unless you want me ringing your doorbell and waking up your family.
Emma: Do not come over here. I mean it.
Me: Ninety seconds…
Emma: Brett, no.
As I’m crossing the street, I see her light come on. She opens her curtains and looks out. I wave as I pass under the streetlight. She shakes her head and disappears.
At her door I don’t ring the bell, and I don’t knock. I don’t really want to wake up Evie and her mom. I just want to make Emma think that I will.
She opens the door and pulls me inside, then puts a finger to her lips. We go upstairs. When the floorboards creak, I turn around and look at Evie’s closed door, wondering if she hears it.
Once we’re safely in her room, she pulls her robe tightly around herself. “Why are you here?” she whispers.
“You blew me off at the restaurant and then you wouldn’t text. You left me no choice.”
“Won’t your wife be upset that you’re here?”
Even though she’s whispering, I can hear the animosity in her voice. “Would you quit calling her that? She’s my ex-wife.”
“That’s not what it looked like when you were kissing her,” she says, nodding to her window.
I’m upset she saw that. But now I understand why Amanda did it. “I wasn’t kissing her. She kissed me.”
“That’s not what it looked like from here,” she says.
“We were in my son’s room. He was asleep in his crib. I could hardly cause a scene. But you better believe I had words with her once we were out of Leo’s earshot.”
She sits on her bed, looking confused.
I sit next to her. “I’m not sure what you saw from the window, but she took me by surprise. It took me a moment to realize what was happening and then to figure out what to do about it with my son five feet away.”
She sighs. “You were married. And she obviously wants you back. Maybe you should—”
“You know why she’s doing this, right? It’s because we made her jealous last night. She doesn’t want me. She was just being a bitch.”
“It sure looked like she wanted you,” she pouts.
I almost smile. The woman who won’t date me is jealous.
“You should have seen how mad she was when I ran into her at the store this morning,” she says.
“Wait. You saw Amanda today?”
“And when she followed me out and saw me walking in the direction of your townhouse, she accused me of living with you.”
I laugh out loud and then cover my mouth, not wanting to wake anyone up. “Oh, how I would have loved to see that. Did you tell her where you live?”
“No, but she watched me walk all the way home.”
“Well that explains it then. She hoped the woman she thought I was dating might look out the window and see something going on.”
She falls back against the bed and covers her face with her hands. “I fell right into her trap, didn’t I?”
I quickly straddle her and pin her arms to the bed.
She looks at her closed door. “Brett, we can’t.”
I lower my head until my lips are next to her ear. “I’m not with her, Emma. I’ll never be with her. You’re the woman I want.”
I trace her neck with my tongue, drawing a line from ear to ear as she writhes beneath me.
“We shouldn’t,” she says with no conviction whatsoever.
“Why shouldn’t we? We already have, and we’re explosive together. I can’t stop thinking about you. How you look when you come. How you taste when I go down on you. How you stroke my cock exactly the right way.”
Her hips buck under me, making me harder.
“You want me, too,” I say. “See how your body reacts to mine? I’ll bet your pussy is already wet. I’m going to stick my fingers inside you and find out.” A moan escapes her as I push her panties aside and finger her slick folds. “Jesus, I knew it.”
She arches into my hand as I stroke inside her. Her mouth falls open and her head pushes back into the bed when I touch her clit.
“You like it when I do that, don’t you?”
She doesn’t answer so I pull away until she opens her pouty eyes to look at me. When she does, I lick my fingers. “Tell me you like it when I do that.”
She clutches my dick through my sweatpants. “Do you like it when I do this?”
I close my eyes at the feel of her touch. “You have no fucking idea.”
I open her robe and push up her nightgown, finding her breasts with my hands and then my mouth. I manipulate each nipple with my tongue, flicking and sucking them until she squeezes me so hard, I can’t take it.
“You want me inside you. Say it, Emma.”
“Yes,” she says, yanking my sweatpants to my knees.
I push a finger inside her and circle her clit with my thumb. “Say it.”
“Yes, okay?” she loud whispers. “I want you inside me.”
I smile as I reach into her nightstand and pull out a condom.
I lean down and whisper in her ear as I rub her clit. “I’m so hard I can’t wait another second to have you. I’m going to make you come like you’ve never come before. I’m going to make you shout my name so loud, you’ll have to muffle your screams with a pillow. I’m going to touch every part of you. Even the forbidden parts.”
I’m about to come just thinking about what I’m going to do to her. I’m not sure why being with her makes me talk like this. I’ve never been much for dirty talk. But she makes me want things I’ve never wanted before.
I kick off my shoes and socks and get rid of my clothes. Then I pull her to the edge of the bed, realizing it’s the perfect height for me to stand and enter her. I put her calves on my shoulders and push inside her, watching her face.
“You’re so tight. God, you feel good. I could do this all day if it weren’t for the fact that I’m almost coming.”
Her lips form a smile as she reaches up to run her hands across my pecs.
I rub her clit with one hand and with my other, reach under my cock and run a finger along the pucker of her ass. “Has anyone ever touched you here?”
“No,” she says breathily.
I slip the tip of my pinky into her ass. She resists at first, but then she relaxes, and my finger goes farther inside. It’s soft and smooth and tight and not anything like how I thought it would feel. My balls tighten as she moans loudly and pushes herself onto my cock even more. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from coming. Not yet. Not fucking yet.
“Brett, oh, God!”
She pulls a pillow to her mouth and I hear her muffled screams as her insides squeeze my cock and my finger at the same time. She pulsates around me so explosively that I come harder than I’ve ever come before.
“Unnnnnngh!” I bite my bottom lip to keep myself from screaming.
I pull my finger out of her and brace myself against the mattress, riding out the last of my orgasm. I stand here, breathing heavily as I go soft inside her.
She glances at the door. “I hope we weren’t too loud.”
“Well, I wasn’t,” I joke.
She rises onto her elbows and looks at the place where we’re still joined. “Are you going to stay there all day?”
I look at the clock. It’s 11:59. “The day is over in about one minute, so yeah, that’s the plan.”
She pulls her nightgown down to cover her C-section scar.
“You don’t have to cover up,” I say. “I’ve seen and felt every part of you. And it’s all beautiful.”
Her cheeks flush.
It turns midnight, and I pull out of her and remove the condom before lying down at her side. “How come you had to have a C-section?”
“I’m not one for pillow talk, Brett.”
I lean on an elbow. “Are you seriously kicking me out again?”
She gets up and tightens her robe.
I sit on the edge of the m
attress. “Can I at least use your bathroom first?”
“Of course.”
After I wash up, I leave a message for her on the mirror using her makeup, knowing this is her private bathroom.
“Are you almost done?” she says quietly but impatiently on the other side of the door.
I open it. “You know I’ve made it my life’s mission to stay in your bed for longer than ten minutes after we have sex.”
“What makes you think we’re having sex again?” she says.
“You’re kidding right?” I motion to the bed. “After what just happened? We have to have more sex. We owe it to sex to keep having it. Sex would be disappointed if we stopped.”
She tries to hold in a laugh. “Goodnight, Lieutenant.” She steps into the hall, looks at her mom’s door and then down the stairs. “Lock—”
“The door on my way out,” I whisper, pulling her into my arms. “I know the drill.” I kiss her. I kiss her long and hard. “Kissing would be disappointed too.”
She offers me an uneven smile and retreats into her bedroom.
I quietly make my way downstairs, cringing when I hit the squeaky step. I make it all the way to the bottom, across the foyer, and I’m about to open the door when Evie says, “Peanut butter chocolate chip cookie?”
She holds out a cookie. In the background, the kitchen light illuminates the hallway.
I look back up the stairs.
“She’s in the shower, remember? You can hear the water down here. You’ve got a good ten minutes.”
“I get the feeling you know a lot more about your mom than she’d like you to.”
“Do you want the cookie or not?” she asks. “We have milk, too.”
“We?” I ask, then I look back down the kitchen hallway to see Evie’s grandmother saluting me from the kitchen.
This is horrifying in so many ways. And Emma would be beside herself if she knew her mom and Evie had caught me leaving.
Evie’s grandmother waves me into the kitchen. I follow Evie down the hall. Mostly because I’m curious about Emma’s family.
“Hot or cold?” Evie’s grandmother asks.
“Ma’am?”
“Do you like your milk hot or cold?”
“Uh, cold, thank you.”
She pours me a glass and then sits at the table. She extends a hand. “Enid Lockhart. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant.”
“How do you …?”
“A mother knows things.” She winks at Evie.
“Please call me Brett.”
“Well, Brett, this has been an exciting few weeks for our little block, now hasn’t it?”
I raise my eyebrows. She knows I live across the street?
“Don’t be surprised,” she says, handing me a napkin. “I’m a woman who knows everyone and everything. Bonnie, she’s your nanny. We play euchre together every Thursday—when you’re not on shift, that is. It’s amazing what you can learn at euchre.” She puts a finger under my jaw, closing my gaping mouth. “Now go on, eat your cookie. Everyone needs a midnight snack now and again.”
I do what she tells me. I get the feeling this woman always gets what she wants. “Wow, this is good.” I turn to Evie. “Did you make these?”
She shakes her head. “Mom did. She’s a really good baker.”
“I know. I’ve tasted a lot of her creations.”
Enid smiles as if she already knew.
A strip of pictures is on the table. I pick it up and study the face of a beautiful girl who looks a bit older than Evie. “Is this Emma?”
She nods. “That’s her and my father.”
I look at the young man in the picture. “This is Stefan?”
“She told you his name?” Enid asks.
“Yeah, why?”
She smiles and wipes up some cookie crumbs off the table. “No reason.”
“Grandma and I are planning a trip to Germany to find him,” Evie says.
“You don’t say?”
“Mom won’t fly, so don’t tell her. She would flip out. I mean, we’ll have to tell her sooner or later because she’s my mom and all, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Enid smiles and says to me, “Twelve going on thirty.”
I laugh. “You’re not afraid to fly, Enid?”
“No,” she says. “If we let fear rule our lives, we’ll never really live, now will we?”
“But you never remarried.”
“That’s not because of fear,” she says. “It’s because I had my one true love. Evie’s grandfather was the love of my life and it’s enough to last me a lifetime.” She puts her hand on mine. “I’m sorry, I heard you also lost someone that day.”
I look at her sideways, confused.
“Bonnie told me,” she says.
“Oh, right.”
Enid taps on the picture. “I just wish we could narrow it down. Do you know how many men in Germany have the name Stefan Schmidt?”
“Maybe I could help. I know someone. We’re not close friends, but I’ve been to a few gatherings with him.” I think hard to pinpoint exactly how I know him. “Ethan Stone is his name. My buddy Denver’s twin sister is married to a man whose best friend’s sister is married to Ethan’s brother.”
Enid laughs. “That’s a lot of degrees of separation. Who is this Ethan?”
“He owns a private investigation business. I’m sure he could help you.” I look at the ceiling. “I’m just not comfortable asking him without Emma’s permission though.”
Evie elbows her grandmother. “See? I told you he was the one.”
The shower turns off upstairs, and I stand, handing Enid my empty glass. “Thanks for the milk and cookie. I’d better leave now.”
“I suppose you’d better,” Enid says. “You can go out the front door. It’s works even better now than it did before.”
I eye her curiously. Does she know Emma pushed me out the back door last week?
“Go,” she urges. “This will be our little secret.”
“It was nice meeting you, Enid.”
“Same here.” She takes Evie’s glass and hands her the strip of pictures. “Now off to bed with you. And be quiet about it.”
Evie walks me out. “I like you better than any of the others,” she whispers.
“I thought you never met any of the others.”
“I didn’t. I guess that’s why I like you the best.”
I laugh quietly. “Goodnight, Evie.”
“Night, Brett.”
I really like Emma’s daughter. I like her mother, too. I guess the only one I really have to win over at this point is Emma.
Chapter Twenty-two
Emma
“Daddy!” I yell as I run into his arms.
He scoops me up and carries me effortlessly even though I’m eight years old now and far too big to be carried by my father.
“Hey, sweet pea,” he says, brushing my cheek with a finger covered with soot.
He marks both my cheeks, making me look like a fireman too. Then he puts his helmet on my head, but it covers my eyes, so I have to push it up. It falls off. Daddy laughs as he picks it up and puts it back on.
“Fits me better, huh? I guess you’ll have to wait until you get older to wear your own.”
“Daddy, girls aren’t firemen. Girls are teachers.”
He puts me down and gets on a knee in front of me. “That’s not true, Emma. Girls can be whatever they want to be. We have a girl in our firehouse. She works a different shift, but she’s tough. Just like me.” He play-punches me in the arm. “Are you going to be tough when you grow up?”
“No, Daddy. I’m going to be soft. I don’t want big muscles like yours.”
A boisterous laugh comes all the way from his belly. “You’re my little princess, aren’t you?”
There’s an explosion behind us. I turn around and see a tall building in flames. I scream.
“Daddy has to go to work now,” he says without even taking pause.
&nb
sp; “Daddy, no,” I beg, holding onto his waist as he tries to walk away from me.
“It’s okay, sweet pea. Everything happens for a reason.”
I let go, and he runs to the building. Before he goes inside, he turns around. Only it’s not him now. It’s Brett. “Goodnight, Miss Lockhart,” he says and runs into the building.
“Brett! No!” I yell.
I watch in horror as the building collapses, each floor pancaking down onto the next until there’s nothing left.
I fall to my knees. “No!”
“Emma. Wake up, Emma.”
I open my eyes to see my mother sitting on the bed next to me. I look around the room and get my bearings. My head falls back against the pillow. Another bad dream. I’ve been having a lot of them lately.
“Sorry,” I say to my mom.
“It’s okay, sweetie. I still have them too sometimes.”
“I haven’t had that kind of dream in years. Only since…” I almost say since meeting Brett. “… the robbery.”
“It’s understandable that what happened to you would bring them back.”
I sit up on the edge of the bed. “I’m fine now. You can go back to sleep.”
“You sure?”
“I’m a big girl, Mom.”
She leans down and plants a kiss on my forehead. “Even big girls need their mothers from time to time.”
“Love you,” I say as she leaves my room, blowing me a kiss.
I put my head in my hands. I’ve lost count of how many bad dreams I’ve had over the past several weeks. But this is the first time Brett made an appearance in one. I go to my bathroom. I flick on the light and see the words he wrote on the mirror a few days ago.
GOODNIGHT, MISS LOCKHART
I can still hear those words in my nightmare.
I wad up a bunch of toilet paper, wet it down, and wipe off the red lipstick. It smears horribly, and I have to use almost an entire roll to get it clean.
I’m not sure why I kept the words there for so long. For some reason, I couldn’t get myself to remove them. Not until the nightmare.
The Men On Fire: A Complete Romance Series (3-Book Box Set) Page 72
