by Liz Meldon
Mystified, Skye watched as Finn settled everyone down, made a few of them giggle, and then explained the nuanced gameplay of Red Light, Green Light. Within two minutes, he had all the kids heading to one side of the room, himself included, while a volunteer raced to the other and faced the wall. Her eyebrows shot up when the game went off without a hitch, leaving her biting her cheeks to keep from smiling at the sight of a grown man in notably expensive attire creeping alongside an army of elementary-aged kids, freezing in silly positions when RED LIGHT was shrieked from the other side of the room. Anyone who moved on a red light was out. The goal was to make it to the other side and touch the wall without the red-green announcer catching you.
Finn had been right.
Kids loved him.
Skye would kill for that kind of credibility.
He had also introduced an additional callout: Godzilla. As soon as the announcer on the other side of the room said it, everyone shrieked and went running back to the wall they’d started on. The kid who’d been tagged took over the announcer’s duties, and the game started again.
The first round lasted about two minutes, and at the commencement of the third, a soft, feminine voice called out for Cassandra, who was still glued to Skye’s hip.
“Mommy!”
Sure enough, after an ID check and a signature, Cassandra’s mother checked her out. Skye recognized the woman as a museum employee from another booth, not a fair visitor, but she didn’t stick around long enough to chat. With her shadow gone, Skye gently placed Finn’s soft, warm, delicious-smelling jacket on an unused hook by the gate, then started to tidy up the area after the whirling tornadoes had turned it upside down.
“Come on, Skye,” Finn called as he charged back to the other side of the room, jogging beside the herd of mad-dash kids. “Join the fun!”
After a chorus of encouragement from the horde who had blatantly ignored her attempt to assert her authority less than ten minutes earlier, Skye slipped off her kitten heels and entered the arena. She purposefully situated herself as far from Finn as she could, still unable to process what the hell was happening, but was soon lost in the game at hand—and found herself enjoying it.
And, as usual, enjoying Finn. Not only was he excellent at wrangling kids, encouraging them, exciting them about the other games he had in mind—he could throw down the gauntlet when challenged, too. When the ringleader of the little boy terrorists pushed a girl and laughed when she fell, Finn marched him right out of the game, sat him down on a comically tiny stool, and had him face the wall for a five-minute time-out. When he’d served his time, his minions had fled and his power was gone, and that was the last bit of trouble they got out of him.
Skye eventually withdrew from an intense game of Blob Tag—kids who were tagged held hands and hunted down everyone else as a blob-like unit—when Janet, the attendant who was supposed to be minding the madness, finally returned from her break.
“Hey,” Skye said breathlessly, noting the way the woman’s hawkish eyes assessed the situation over her shoulder. “How was your—”
“Who the hell is he?” Janet demanded, her gaze fixed on Finn—and her tone unnecessarily snippy. Skye crossed her arms, incredulous at the unsaid accusation.
“He is a friend of mine who stepped in to help with the mess you left me,” she replied coolly. “I look forward to mentioning that to your supervisor… You know, that you left me alone with—”
“Yeah, whatever,” the woman muttered, tossing her purse by the door and sighing. “You think I get paid enough to care? I’ll take over if you can handle the check-outs. The fair’s closing in a half hour and we’re done in ten minutes. Parents’ll be here all at once, as usual.”
“Fine.” Skye’s curt tone earned her no response from the attendant, and she watched the woman charge in, break up the game, and re-introduce unorganized chaos—also known as free time. Within seconds, the screaming, shrieking, and crashing resumed. Oh yeah. Skye would definitely be speaking with this woman’s supervisor. She wasn’t the type to report some poor underpaid employee if they were just trying to do their shitty job, but this was ridiculous.
“Well, she’s a peach, isn’t she?” Finn muttered after stalking back to Skye’s side, watching the scene unfold with crossed arms and a scowl. “Is she the one who was supposed to be watching the children?”
“The very same.”
“Right. I have a few choice words for whoever is actually in charge here.”
They exchanged glances, Skye’s lips twitching into a smile before she forced herself to look away. Now that they didn’t have the kids to distract them or change the subject, she couldn’t ignore the absurdity of the situation.
“Finn, why are you here?” She gestured toward the madness, trying not to roll her eyes when the attendant pulled out her phone as kids ran haywire around her. “Why did you… stay to help?”
“Because I saw a damsel in distress,” he remarked with a shrug. “There were an awful lot of dragons to slay by yourself.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he held up a hand. “Look, I’m not trying to be slick with you. My sister did the whole scout-troop-leader charade with both of her kids when they were younger. I’ve been roped into similar situations before, and I like it. I just thought you could use a hand, that’s all.”
Skye swallowed hard as all the time she had spent agonizing over whether she had made the right decision a month ago, if it had been right to cut Cole and Finn loose cold turkey, came flooding back to her. Right now, as Finn stood watching the madness, his body exuding its own gravitational pull that Skye was still fighting with every fiber of her being, she wasn’t so sure it had been the right thing to do. Long-term, yes. Or maybe no. Should she have just tried her luck with Finn?
No. That would never work. She couldn’t look at him without some little voice at the back of her mind bringing up Cole, and then she’d remember how much she cared about him too.
“Finn…” She touched his arm, an electrical current racing along her skin from her fingertips to her shoulder, then straight to her heart. When he looked down at her, eyebrows up, she lost her nerve. “You don’t have to stay. I think we’ve got it under control.”
The muscle in his jaw flickered slightly, but just when his lips parted, someone cleared their throat from the other side of the gate. As Janet had bemoaned moments earlier, parents were starting to line up, and Skye had no choice but to busy herself with the checkout procedures. Finn could leave. There was no reason for him to stay.
But, of course, he did. Because Finn wasn’t that kind of man. Instead, he was the kind to pull kids out of the chaos and walk them back to the door, their little faces red and smiling. He did it for each and every checkout, exchanging some back-and-forth with the parents for good measure as Skye handled the paperwork.
And each time he returned to her side, charming everyone within a five-mile radius, she found herself edging closer to the realization that she had, in fact, made a mistake.
A mistake of epic proportions.
One that was probably too late to correct, whether she wanted to or not.
So, for now, she contented herself with the smell of his cologne, the sound of his voice, and the barely-there caress of his talented fingers on the small of her back whenever he stood beside her.
Knowing it was probably the best she could hope for, that she shouldn’t want more.
But deep down… she did.
16
Climactic Reunions
“Absolutely ridiculous,” Finn grumbled as he stacked a pile of teeny-tiny chairs on top of each other to make them easier to carry. “She ought to be getting fired, not given a stern talking to.”
“I think you’re being a little hard on her,” Skye told him. “I mean, yeah, it was shitty to leave me here by myself, but I don’t think it’s a fireable offense.”
“That paired with her horrible attitude ought to at least be worthy of a suspension.”
Honestly, that awful cow worke
d with children. If she was really so blasé about her duties, she ought to seek employment elsewhere. Finn scowled at the mere memory of his conversation with the day care’s supervisor, who had seemed just as nonplussed by the incident as her employee had. Although he’d been assured the issue would be addressed, he had serious doubts anything would come of it—and he planned to check with the weekday staff to ensure this wasn’t a common occurrence. Parents put their trust in these people. It was a good thing Skye wasn’t the type to sit around on her phone and let chaos reign, or someone could have gotten hurt.
Never mind the fact that the woman’s absence had all but ruined his plan to reconnect with Skye in a meaningful, perhaps more salacious way. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, realizing that that was primary reason for his frustration—and now he was taking a snippy tone with Skye because of it. Exhaling, he pushed his ire to the side; it ought to be unleashed on the appropriate person, after all, and not the woman he was falling in love with.
“Regardless of all that, I hardly think it was your responsibility to offer to stay and clean while she’s being reprimanded,” he said, straightening up to stretch his lower back. It had been some time since he entertained children under the age of ten. He’d forgotten what a strain it put on his body—a body he considered in rather fit shape at that. Not that he minded the achy twinges: Finn had enjoyed horsing around with the little ones, even if they cut into the time reserved for winning back Skye.
“Well, she’s had a long day, and I feel bad that it’ll be even longer because we tattled on her,” she insisted as she piled a bunch of inch-thick mats on top of each other, then hoisted them up. “You don’t have to stay. I mean, I’m getting paid to be here.”
“Like I would let you undertake this mess by yourself.” Finn grabbed the two piles of stacked plastic chairs, one in each hand, and shot her a grin. “Besides, your company is payment enough.”
Something in his chest tightened at the way her cheeks flushed, and he cleared his throat, trying his damnedest to play it cool.
No matter what he had told her earlier, Finn was here with the express purpose of talking to Skye. He and Cole had spent the last month working like madmen to allow themselves the time off to pursue her again. After all, as much as they would have liked to spend all their waking hours in Skye Mode, they both had jobs. Cole, as usual, buried himself in work; Finn had hardly seen him, though they were in virtual contact almost every day.
Finn had been in LA for much of the month, preparing for the launch of the customizable edible chocolate creations line his father had charged him with, along with opening a brick-and-mortar location in Beverly Hills. Things were on schedule and running smoothly, but mostly because Finn knew how to hire the right people for the right job. Cole, meanwhile, had every iron in every fire, and Finn could never understand why. Sure, the man was a workaholic, but that didn’t justify the insane hours he put in on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
All those crazy hours, however, had allowed both men to take a full two weeks off now—no shop talk, no conference calls, no factory inspections. Cole was down to a single phone. Finn had told his people not to bother him unless something was literally on fire.
They had given Skye a month to cool off after her decision to sever things, and hopefully, now that some of the more taxing emotions had settled, Finn and Cole could start to rebuild. Slowly. Neither wanted to frighten her off by being too bold, too presumptuous—Finn had had a lot of other ideas that fit both adjectives perfectly, but Cole had nixed them before they even got off the ground. They wanted to assure Skye that her opinion was respected, but also show her that her fears were unnecessary.
A relationship between the three of them could work.
He and Cole had hammered out the details.
Now all they needed was to bring the lovely Miss Summers into the fold—and not scare her off in the process. She had already bolted once. Her reasons for doing so, while frustratingly inaccurate to the situation, were valid. She hadn’t wanted to hurt either of them, not realizing that they had no intention of making her choose or allowing her to sully the friendship between them. Both he and Cole admired her for what she had done, even if it had, at the time, felt like he’d stepped on an active landmine.
Both of them had needed to find ways to casually run into her, the plan falling in line with their don’t-make-her-run-again theme. Having learned from their mistakes, they had decided her workplace was off-limits. Cole had something rather secretive up his sleeve, and given how excited he was about it, Finn hadn’t the heart to demand all the details. If Cole was throwing himself into something other than work, Finn wasn’t about to stop him.
Unfortunately, that had meant he needed his own way to casually “happen” upon Skye out in the real world. Bars were no good; she’d be with friends and more likely to seek shelter in them. Work was out. Cole had already used the “oh, you take yoga classes here too?” excuse. When Finn had learned from a social peer that today’s museum event was taking place, he had looked up the details immediately. Pleased to find Gallery Sens in attendance, Finn had brought Skye’s favourite chocolates and wandered around aimlessly all day hoping that he might bump into her. It had been Skye’s boss who eventually sent him in the direction of the children’s day care.
The building around them had gone quiet now, with vendors in the midst of packing up, all the visitors gone for the day. Skye had volunteered to stay behind to tidy a little, which meant Finn was also tidying up. Just the two of them. Alone in this bizarre, circular room that smelled like apple juice. Just him and her—Finn and Skye, who was wearing the perfect pair of dark-wash jeans, the kind that hugged her sinfully tight little backside to the point of being a major distraction. Skye, with her thick red hair billowing around her in messy beach waves, sexier than if some stylist had tried to create it for her. Skye, whose freckles he wanted to trace with his tongue. Skye, whose hazel eyes Finn could stare into for—
“Are you even listening to me?”
“What?” Finn snapped out of his daydreaming and realized he had just been standing there, staring at Skye and her adorable little blush—holding an obscene number of stacked tiny neon chairs in each hand. “Sorry. I was just a bit distracted.”
Her eyebrows furrowed slightly, a pile of squishy multicolored mats hugged tight to her delightfully toned frame. Beneath those jeans and that purple chiffon blouse was a masterpiece. Finn blinked hard, not wanting to lose himself again, and nodded toward the nearly invisible doorway at the back of the room.
“I take it all of these go in there?”
“Apparently they’re worried about people stealing them,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Thank you… for staying to help. And for wrangling the kids. And for speaking to that woman’s supervisor.” She paused, drawing a soft breath. “Thank you for being here.”
Not wanting her to notice that her thanks was like catnip to him, Finn shrugged. “It’s all just a happy coincidence, I promise.”
“Well, you didn’t have to stay, but you did. So. Thank you.”
“Anytime, Skye.”
They studied one another in a weighted silence, before she turned and marched straight for the concealed door. Finn followed at a safe distance, allowing his gaze to drop, just for a moment, to her pert arse.
It was positively sinful how fantastic those jeans made it look.
All he wanted to do was trail his hand over that generous curve, then slide it between her thighs, listening to the gasp that was sure to follow, and…
No. He shook his head and hurried after her. Carnal desires, no matter how strong, belonged on the backburner while Finn convinced Skye neither he nor Cole—collectively—were a threat to her heart.
But then again, he was only a man. A living, breathing, human man. It would take the resolve of a god not to succumb to the wiles of Skye Summers.
Apparently, all that time apart had made him even more susceptible to distraction around her than ever. N
ot good. Skye reduced him to nothing more than a horny teen who had never been alone with a woman before. Not good at all. Focus, you prat. Remember the bigger picture.
He followed her through the doorway to the storage room, but came to a sudden stop at the sight of the nightmare inside.
“Good lord.”
Everything was… everywhere. The room was quite expansive, surprisingly so, but it appeared as though some giant, brightly colored beast had vomited everywhere. Toys. Chairs. Mats. Three-wheeled bicycles. Books. It was sheer, unadulterated chaos, even more so than the actual children had been. Not wanting to contribute to it, Finn merely set his load of plastic chairs to the side of the door, then slowly closed said door to give them a bit of privacy.
“Yeah, those were my thoughts exactly,” Skye said as she looked around the room. “I’m not cleaning this up. I said we’d put some stuff away… That’s it.”
“I wouldn’t touch this mess with a ten-foot pole.” Finn wrinkled his nose as he surveyed the storage room. Everyone had seemingly done the same thing: walked in, seen the mess, tossed their armful of whatever wherever, then closed the door behind them. To the day care’s credit, at least it smelled clean. The room that housed the children was another story. It wouldn’t surprise him if employees retreated in here periodically throughout their day to scream into a pillow.
“If they really wanted our help, they should have put us museum folks in here all day,” she said, hands on her hips as she slowly turned on the spot to face him. “Can you imagine how meticulous this would be if a few archival techs got their hands on it? We were wasted on those kids.” Skye laughed, her blush rising from the dead when their eyes met.
“Oh, I don’t know.” He risked a step toward her, then another when she didn’t flee. “I think you fared rather well out there.”
“Because of you.”
Another step. “Possibly.”
With nothing more than a foot of space between them, Finn cocked his head to the side, holding her gaze for a moment before allowing his to wander freely. Her freckles really were delightful. At the sight of her swallowing hard, her head bowed slightly, Finn threw caution to the wind—and tucked a bit of sunset-red hair behind her ear.
