by Sam Mariano
Staring up at the ceiling, all I can do is reiterate, “You’ve been free for four years… and I didn’t know.”
Christmases, birthdays, so many of Cassidy’s firsts—I could have been there for all of them.
The life I spent my time daydreaming about, putting onto paper and selling to others… I could have had it for myself. It could have been real.
The sharp edge of fear slices at me, but I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t know why. Then my brain starts working again, and I pick out a more crucial part of what he just said.
Kayla left him. He didn’t leave. Kayla left because it wasn’t fun, because she had no one to torture with her victory. If I had stayed, that wouldn’t be true. If I had stayed, this bastard would have let her torture me. She would have rubbed my face in the fact that Derek belonged to her every chance she got over the course of those two years, and maybe even longer, because Kayla hated me as much as I hated her. I’m spiteful enough to give up the love of my life if it meant co-existing with her, and she might have been spiteful enough to remain inside a miserable relationship if she knew it still hurt me.
And Derek would have let it happen.
That is the problem.
Kayla was never the problem; Derek was.
I look over at his stupid, handsome face. He still doesn’t get that. Right now I bet he thinks he’s got a winning hand. The evil whore has been removed from the equation, so there’s nothing stopping me from agreeing to that date. From falling right back into his trap.
Maybe if he had removed her that would be true, but he didn’t. He’s a beautiful, charismatic, spineless jellyfish, just like the day I left him at graduation. Life happened and Kayla left, but what might happen if she came back? Or something else happened? Derek never chose me. He’s here right now, but he has nowhere else pressing to be. Just like he said Henry doesn’t deserve any trophies for waiting for me, Derek doesn’t deserve any for showing up.
I guess that’s the problem. There’s nothing he can ever do to make me trust him again, and without trust, I can never feel safe with him. And I shouldn’t, because I already know I’m not. I know how reliable this man is. That’s why we can never be together… but it doesn’t mean I have to kick him out of my bed, either.
Knowing Kayla isn’t around reduces the stress of this situation exponentially.
I still don’t want a relationship with him, but maybe we could be friends. Friends who give each other orgasms, when it’s mutually convenient. I’ll have to keep a firm hand on my feelings, because I know they have gotten away from me before, but it’s such a tempting prospect. If I can have all the fun of being with Derek and none of the heartache… shouldn’t I?
Because he is an opportunistic monster, Derek turns those big blue eyes on me and pulls me close, telling me, “I think that’s why Cassie likes you so much already. I never bring girls around her. You’re the first chance she’s had at getting herself a new mom. We Nobles know a good opportunity when we see one.”
Biting back a smile, I shake my head at him. “You’re shameless.”
“Completely,” he says unapologetically, before kissing me on the tip of my nose.
Why does that make me want to kiss his whole face? Dammit, Derek. Stop doing Derek things.
I can’t fight a little strain of happiness that comes to life inside me though, and I don’t see why I should. I get plenty of contentment in my life, but little enough genuine happiness. I don’t see the benefit of turning it away.
I know this ride has to end, I know I have to be careful, but dammit… I’m going to enjoy him for a little while first.
Chapter Seventeen
“What should we do for dinner?”
My gaze doesn’t flicker away from my laptop as I sit on Derek’s couch, laptop balanced on my knees, attempting to submit a book I need ready for publication tomorrow. “I don’t know. Why is your wi-fi so horrible? My connection keeps timing out.”
Derek glances over at me, then at Cassidy, snuggled up against him with her Kindle in her lap. “Probably too many devices hooked up to it.” He shifts, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll try turning the wi-fi off on my phone.”
I’m feeling antsy about being here already. It’s Sunday, and last night when Derek proposed I pack up my stuff and come spend the rest of the weekend at his place instead of alone at mine, it seemed like a good idea.
It seemed like it, but Derek’s life is much more chaotic than mine. When I wasn’t trying to work, everything was charming and adorable, but now that I’m under deadlines with a to-do list as long as my arm full of things I need to get done before I can go to bed tonight, I am less charmed.
I’m the grumpiest grump that has ever grumped. A total monster. Clearly not mother material. I get it. It’s just that I wasted an hour helping Cassidy hunt for Phoebe the lady bug earlier, and now I’m so far behind, I think my head might explode. I always put enough work to occupy four hard-working people on my to-do list, and I always get it all done.
Normally I don’t have Derek hauling me to the bedroom when Cassidy is playing, ladybug hunts, or internet connectivity issues either. Like I told Derek last night in bed, work is my life. All of it. I don’t have time for an actual life on top of it.
“I have an idea,” Cassidy announces. “Let’s go to Uncle Ryan’s for dinner. I want chicken tenders.”
Just the thought of leaving the 8 hours of work I still have to do to go waste 2 hours at a restaurant fries my brain. As it is, I need to leave and head back home in around 4 to 5 hours, and then it’s a 3 hour drive back to my house. I cannot accomplish anything during the drive. It’s time completely and utterly wasted.
This was a bad idea. I should not have come here and tried to work. Derek was so confident when he assured me I could have the best of both worlds; I could warm the empty side of his bed, play with him and Cassidy, and still get all my work done.
Derek was wrong.
I knew Derek was wrong, but I wanted him to be right, so I took the chance. Now as I have to fight the urge to snap at a five year old for wanting chicken tenders, I admit defeat. I am not going to get all this work done tonight. No amount of stressing myself out, no amount of being mean to everyone around me is going to change that.
If I had stayed home, the work would be done, but I chose to play. I tried to have a life. Lesson learned. I do not have time for a life. The damage is done now, so all I can do is salvage.
Okay, new plan. Tomorrow is Monday. I’ll be back at home; my routine will be back to normal, so I can catch up then. Right now I need to narrow down my to-do list to the things I absolutely must get done today. I can probably get that stuff done in a couple of hours. Yes, I’ll have roughly 6 hours of work to add to my docket this week (and I already had myself scheduled from the time I woke up until the time I went to bed) but if I spread it out over a couple of days and cut back on sleep, I should be back on track by Wednesday night.
“Sounds good to me,” Derek says, entirely unaware of my nervous breakdown in-progress. Glancing over at me with an easy smile, he asks, “Wanna show Ryan you don’t always wear prom dresses?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. Just let me get this book submitted first.”
Cassidy pushes her Kindle aside, climbing across the couch and looking at my screen. “What are you doing?”
“I am putting a book up on this website so people can buy it and read it.”
“What kind of book?” she asks.
“Uh…” A very naughty one. Can’t say that. “It’s about a rock star getting back together with the girl he used to be in love with.”
“Why’d they break up?” she inquires.
“Because he was a real bonehead.”
Cassidy giggles. Her dark hair sways as she leans forward on her knees, reaching her hand forward to point at the cover. “I like that picture.”
“Oh, honey, don’t touch—”
My face loses several shades of color as she goes to to
uch the cover, but her tiny finger hits the X on the project. My laptop is a touch screen, so the project closes. I have spent the last 40 minutes ticking the right boxes, typing all the right copy, proofreading, pricing, uploading… and now it is all gone.
“Cassie, don’t touch that, it’s not yours,” Derek says, reaching over to loop his arm around her waist, tugging her back against him. She giggles as he tickles her, and my face heats up with barely restrained frustration.
“Let’s go get chicken tenders,” Cassidy says. “Can we go to the park, too? I want to go on the swings.”
Nine hours. Now I have nine hours of work left to do.
Taking a breath, I close my laptop. There’s nothing to save now, so I set it aside. “You know what? I think I need to head home.”
“What?” Derek asks, frowning. “Already?”
“I have so much work still to do, and… I just, I really don’t have time to go out to dinner.”
“But we gotta play tic-tac-toe,” Cassidy tells me.
Unbothered, Derek shrugs. “So keep working, I’ll make something here.”
“No,” Cassidy says dramatically, tipping her head back and looking up at him. “I don’t want home food, I want chicken tenders.”
Squeezing her, he says, “I can make you chicken tenders, little monster.”
“Not home ones,” she complains.
“How about I make dinner on the grill?” he suggests, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Cheeseburger? Hot dog?”
Flashing his big blue eyes right back at him, she says, “Chicken tenders.”
“You guys should go get chicken tenders,” I assure him, pushing up off the couch.
Derek’s gaze remains trained on me. Cassidy has snuggled up against him, but as I unplug my laptop cord and wind it up, he tells her to scoot, stands up, and comes over to grab my wrist.
“What are you doing?” I ask, as he tugs me.
“Come on,” he says, giving me a harder tug and angling his body to herd me. I know he’s going to try to haul me to the bedroom again, so I pull back.
“Derek, no. I do not have time—”
Ignoring me, he tells Cassidy, “We’ll be right back.”
“You gotta make the bed again?” she demands.
“Someone keeps messing it up,” Derek says with playful exasperation.
I sigh as he drags me away from my laptop and down the hall, then tugs me into his room and closes the door.
“You are not getting laid,” I inform him, as he puts his hands on my hips and walks me back toward his bed.
“I’m getting whatever I want,” he murmurs, leaning in to brush his lips across mine. “Why are you cranky?”
“Because I’m a mean person,” I inform him.
“Try again,” he replies. “Did Cassidy mess something up on your computer?”
I don’t know if he’s intentionally trying to minimize the hour of work that was lost—and that I have to do again promptly, in order to have a book for sale for my client, which is literally my job—but I decide he is. “I wasn’t playing solitaire, Derek. I was working. It may not be important to you, but it’s my job, and it is important to me. She didn’t do anything intentionally, it was just an accident, it’s obviously not her fault, but she just set me back an hour, and I was already behind.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he tells me.
I shake my head, glancing down. “It’s no one’s fault, it’s just… working here doesn’t work. I need my office, I need peace and quiet.”
“Your living room,” he corrects. “Your office is your living room. You’re supposed to live in there, hence the name.”
“I can live in your living room when I come here, but I think this whole… blending of our lives is not going to work. Our lives are too different. There’s no need to do this. I would rather keep work and fun separate. When I come here, I’ll clear my schedule so I can enjoy you guys. When I work, that needs to be all I’m doing. It’s too stressful otherwise.”
Not looking at all pleased, Derek nods his head. “And how often do you see that happening?”
“I can’t promise it will happen every single week, but I’ll do my best to clear one day a week. I’ll try to take a day off like normal people.”
“Normal people get two days off,” he informs me. “And they have work days—which end at some point, so they can do other things.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I tell him right back. “I can’t do that.”
“Then maybe you should hire someone else. Or give your current employees more work and more hours. Or, I don’t know, take on fewer clients. It sounds like you have overscheduled yourself in a big way.”
“Hey, remember when I told you we can only be booty calls? Booty calls don’t get to interfere with my life. That’s not what a booty call is.”
“Hey, remember when I kidnapped you? I’m thinking about doing it again,” he states.
“Good luck,” I tell him, running my hands over his muscular shoulders. “You need me drunk to take advantage of me. I’m not drinking anything around you ever again.”
“Lies,” he tells me, brushing my hair off my neck, tipping my head sideways, and placing his perfect lips against my neck.
“I am not going to fuck you right now,” I inform him more forcefully, since I know his tricks.
“Huh?” he asks, with mock innocence. “I’m just kissing you. Jeeze, can’t a guy kiss his booty call? What good is having a booty call if I’m not allowed to even kiss her?”
“I kissed various parts of you already today. It’s work time, not play time.”
“Remember when I told you I only want to deal with Nikki, not Nicole? I think I invited the wrong one to my house this weekend.”
Cracking a smile, I arch against him as his lips touch a particularly sensitive patch of skin. “You did. Nicole is all work and no play. She’s going to take an axe to your face if you try to seduce her right now, so… you know, fair warning.”
His hand slides around my side, dropping low to cup my ass. “Oh, man, wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we?”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re pushy?” I ask him, reaching back to shove his hand away.
“Never. Has anyone ever told you that you’re uptight?” Placing his hand against my chest, he shoves me back on his bed. “Someone really needs to help you out with that. Lucky for you, I know a guy.”
“Derek Noble,” I say, lifting my eyebrows as he climbs on top of me.
“That’s his name, how’d you know?” he asks, sinking his hard body against mine.
Even through his clothes, I can feel his heat as his weight comes down on top of me. I bring my arms up against his chest to try to shove him off, but it’s a fruitless venture. He’s too strong, too heavy, too forceful. It shouldn’t turn me on that he’s such a fucking brute, but as he grabs my hands and pins me down, arousal curls through me.
“Get off me,” I mutter at him, half-heartedly.
“Nope. Not until I get you off,” he replies, pushing his face into my neck. His kisses trigger even more pleasure, but I still resist.
Sighing, I tell him, “Derek, I don’t have time for an orgasm.”
He pauses, lifting his head to pin me with his blue eyes as effectively as his hands pin my wrists. “Then you are definitely living your life wrong, Harmon. Thank God I’m here to save you.”
“You don’t get to save me,” I mutter, lifting my leg to legitimately try to knee him now. “I don’t need to be saved, asshat. I saved myself. You were the thing I needed saving from. We discussed this.”
“Past tense,” he informs me. “I retired from that life. Now I’m the prince, and the prince is damn sure going to give you an orgasm.”
“I don’t think you understand the rules of being Prince Charming. Literally as soon as the princess says ‘no thanks’ the prince has to respectfully shuffle away and jerk off to porn in the bathroom. There’s none of this pushing of his affections, no matte
r how well-meaning.”
Screwing up his face, he says, “All right, maybe the prince life isn’t for me.”
I can’t help smiling, and like the vulture he is, he pounces on my happiness, covering my lips with his and stealing his way into my mouth. I want to curse him, I want to race to my car so I can get home and get back to work, but then his fingers tangle in my hair, his hand slides down the front of my pants, and I can’t remember why.
Chapter Eighteen
It takes me four whole days to get completely back on schedule, and by the time I do, it’s weekend again. I tell Derek I can’t come to him again this weekend. There’s too much work to do on my book and everyone else’s books, and I can’t justify the three hours of drive time just to sleep in his bed and drive back the next morning.
“All right, I’ll come to you,” he says.
I argue again, not because I don’t want to see him, but because I don’t want to keep taking him away from Cassidy. The poor kid went from having him all to herself, to now him spending half his weekends away from her to come see me.
“There is a third option,” he texts. “I could bring her with me. You do have two extra bedrooms in your house.”
The idea of a child in my office—since my house is more or less just an office with a bed—seems like a terrible idea. Instead of saying that, I say nothing. I go back to work and try my best to ignore my phone.
Derek figures it out and texts me again. “Keep ignoring me, I’ll show up on your porch with a kid and a bed. You won’t have the heart to turn us away.”
I crack a smile, but text back in all caps, “PUSHY.”
“How about this? I’ll come pick you up. I’ll drive you here and back, that way you can work the whole time we’re in the car.”
“To the tune of Old McDonald Had a Farm?” I ask, since that is Cassidy’s car ride song of choice. “That’s too much work. We’ll just hang out next weekend. I swear, I’ll do enough extra work this weekend so I can take off Friday. I’ll drive out, come meet you for dinner, spend the night, and come back Saturday after breakfast.”
