by L. B. Dunbar
My head leaps up as my hands cup her upper arms. My mouth has gone dry.
“We need to talk, Billy. We need to talk about a few things, but I want to promise to pay better attention to the signs. To read you better. I want to promise that I will love you with my whole heart and all my being and—”
I don’t let her continue as my mouth crashes into hers, wanting to swallow every word. I drink in the possibility of her promise. The hope she’s saying yes to everything. Us. Sadie. The three of us together. I reach for the corner of her lips and kiss her in a way her mouth curls, and then I return to full coverage. Devouring the lower lip before licking against the seam, asking for her to let me in.
“You are trouble, Billy Harrington,” she mutters against my mouth, and I pull back, hesitantly relinquishing her lips. I don’t want to stop kissing. I want to keep kissing her until she accepts there’s something between us. Something forever.
“But you love me,” I tease, not expecting an answer.
“Yes, I do.”
My brows rise, and my heart drops. She…
“I love you, Billy.” Her voice softens as her hands come to my jaw, stroking my scruff. My eyes close, pinching under the relief that she’s here. She’s touching me. She’s saying yes to me.
“I love you, too, Roxie. God, I love you,” I say as my eyes open, and my mouth returns to hers for another breathtaking kiss before I pull back. I reach for her hand, stroking my thumb over the ring.
“I don’t want to be just roommates,” I say and then lower to kiss the back of her hand over the ring. Then turning it over, I press a kiss to her palm and a second on the inside of her ring finger. “I want us as forever-mates.”
“Forever-mates?” She chuckles as she scrunches up her face. “Like roommates forever?”
“Like lovers forever. And best friends. And soul mates.” I look at her face, holding her eyes with mine. “I want to marry you one day, Roxie. If you’ll have me.”
“I’ll have you, Billy.” Her lips curl into a deep smile. “Speaking of having you…” She tips up on her toes and takes my lips this time, her tongue pressing forward. Her body leans into me, but I want to be clear.
“So, this is a yes? You’re moving in with me? You and Sadie. And it’s not casual, and it’s going to get complicated.”
“So complicated, William,” she teases, her voice lowering as she presses against me. “And yes, I’d like to move in with you and Sadie.”
Another kiss ensues before I can’t take it anymore.
“Fuck, I’ve missed you,” I say as the kiss accelerates, and I’m stiff as a block of wood. “I want to slip inside you underneath this skirt.” My hands come to her hips, rocking forward so she knows how I feel about her.
“What is it with you and my skirts?” she teases.
“It’s like a little private tent over us, like a secret for only us.”
“Only us,” she whispers, and I lower my forehead to hers.
“I want to complicate things right here in my office,” I admit to her, and she pulls back.
“Here? You said you never take women to your office.”
I look at her hairline and brush back that silver-white hair before meeting her eyes. “No women. One woman. You.”
“Does this mean desk sex?” she inquires, her voice a bit eager at the possibility, and my curious bookstore owner gives me a saucy look. I spin her so her backside hits the desk, and I lean toward her.
“Would you like that? Desk sex?”
“I want any kind of sex with you, William.” Her voice softens on my full name as she flirts with me.
“Well, I don’t just want sex with you, Roxie. I want to make love to you. In my bed. Against a wall. On a desk. I don’t care as long as I’m inside you.”
Her breath hitches, and her fingertips rub over my scruff again. “You should be a writer. You have a way with words.”
“I prefer to be a reader.”
“But you don’t read,” she reminds me.
“Yeah, but I want to read you, Roxie. Every page.” I kiss her jaw. “And every corner.” I kiss her lip in that spot that gets her. “And every fold.”
“Billy,” she hisses, and there’s the sound I want to hear.
“Ready to beg me for it, Roxie?” I tease.
“Yes, William. Yes, I want you to give everything to me.”
Like a firecracker, I’m off. Mouth on hers. Hand lifting skirt. My fingers can’t get to her fast enough. As I slip past her underwear and into her warm depths, we both pause, and our eyes meet.
“I love you,” she whispers.
“I love you,” I say. “And I can’t wait to take you home.”
Her mouth curves. “How about you take me here first?” she says, and I don’t want to disappoint her. I never want to disappoint her again, and I plan to make good on all my promises, including giving her what she wants on my desk.
Everything.
Our bodies lean back, and one of her legs lifts for my hips. Her hands clutch at my neck.
“Hold onto me, darlin’.”
“I’m never letting go,” she moans, and that’s the kind of noise violation I want to hear.
Epilogue
February
[Billy]
I’m nervous when I shouldn’t be nervous. My hands swipe down my jeans-covered thighs before I open the door for Roxanne and Sadie. Their items were moved in after the new year, and we’ve been working at building a life for three.
“Well,” I say as I hold the door, watching my girls walk into the house. Our house.
“I passed,” Sadie announces, holding up the driver’s license in her hand. She beams, matching the photo on the identification. We discussed changing her name but conceded to hyphenating it, so she can keep her identity as a McAllister, but in my heart, she’s all Harrington.
“I’m so proud of you,” I say, pulling her in for a hug. I give them freely to her now, and she gives them back to me, which I know I shouldn’t expect to always happen. She is a teenager, after all, so I take whatever she offers, and I stash it in my heart to hold it a little longer.
Roxie steps up to me next, offering a kiss herself, and I always find it a struggle to keep it chaste and clean in front of my child. Most days, I still want to ravish her from the moment her mouth touches mine. It’s been so different being with her day in and day out, and although I don’t compare Roxanne to Rachel, I see how different it can be. How different love can be.
We head to the kitchen, ready to make lunch when a knock comes on the door. Roxanne’s head pops up. “I’ll get it.”
When she turns, she sheepishly looks at Sadie.
“Sadie, there’s a boy here to see you.”
Sadie’s face turns bright red, and her hair falls forward as she looks at her feet, fighting a smile. She tucks a wedge of hair behind her ears and then steps out of the kitchen.
“This is a joke, right?” I stare at Roxie, who fights her own smile.
“He’s cute,” she teases, and I tip my head as if to look through the opening to the front entry. “Stop,” she admonishes, pulling me behind the wall.
“Is it that Christian kid?” I hiss, and Roxanne’s lips twist.
“Did you know he was the boy working at the Christmas tree farm?”
I actually did know. I got him the job to work off the money he stole so he could pay me back the money I paid out to cover what he’d done for Sadie.
“He’s trouble,” I warn, acting as if I can see through the wall into the living room where Sadie still stands by the front door with him.
“So are you,” Roxanne teases, tugging at the collar of my shirt. “But under all that trouble might be a man with a soft heart.” She brings my mouth to hers, and I fall into the kiss, forgetting for only a second that there’s a boy speaking with my daughter in the front room.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” I question, pulling back and leaning to the side as if I can hear them.
“Wall sex,” Roxanne states, her tone serious until I look at her. Her silver eyes dance, and she bites the corner of her lip.
“That’s not even funny,” I retort, but I don’t have any bark to my bite. “I think the troublemaker is you.”
“Me?” She holds her hand to her chest. “I’m never trouble.” But the smile she gives me tells me she is. She’s still a pain in my ass somedays, and most days, I love it.
“I love your kind of trouble,” I say, leaning toward her for another kiss.
“I love you,” she says. It will never get old hearing her say those words to me, and she tells me every day. When I question what I’m doing as a father or wonder if I’ve proved myself with my father, she tells me she loves me, and I know I’m enough. Just me as I am.
“Ah-hem.” Sadie clears her throat. She’s used to this, often catching us kissing one another. At first, I found it strange she was upstairs whenever Roxanne and I buried ourselves in my bed. We’ve become rather creative with a teenager in the house. “Christian would like to take me out for hot chocolate, but I’d like to know if I can drive.”
“You just got your license,” I say, knowing the plan was a celebratory lunch and then bowling this afternoon.
“He’s on his motorcycle.”
“Here are the keys,” Roxanne offers, leaning for the key hook near her head. She hands them to Sadie, who continues to smile. She’s such a beautiful girl, and I’m surprised sometimes when I consider I made her. But it’s been Theresa and Roxanne who molded her into the girl she is. The one conscious of her grades but still likes to have a little fun in life.
“Behave yourselves,” Sadie warns us like we are the teenagers.
“We always do,” I tease, and Sadie huffs with a roll of her eyes. “You behave yourself.”
“It’s only hot chocolate,” she says, and I’m about to reply that it’s never just hot chocolate, thinking back to the night I asked Roxanne on our first official date and brought her to my home. I knew that night everything would be different, and it was.
Roxanne covers my lips with two fingers, worried what I’ll say next. She isn’t wrong. My comment might have been too much for Sadie.
“Have fun,” Roxanne says, smiling at her niece, and Sadie returns the grin before disappearing behind the wall. When we hear the front door open and close, I sag forward, resting my forehead on Roxanne’s.
“I’m not going to survive fatherhood.”
“I hope that’s not true,” she says, and I pull back, wondering what she means. My eyes narrow as my head tilts.
“What are you saying?”
“What if I were pregnant?”
My heart falls to my belly, and the chest-clenching sensation which hasn’t been present for months returns. My knuckles run up my throat, scratching before my hand cups my chin. I’m forty-six. Roxanne is forty-one. Is this possible?
“Are you?”
“No.” Her smile grows as my blood slowly begins to flow again.
“That wasn’t even funny.”
“It was kind of funny.” She laughs.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Just wanted to poke the bear,” she teases, still chuckling.
“I’ll give you something to poke.”
“Don’t you mean, something to poke me?” Her voice remains playful. She slides out from her position between the wall and me and curls her body around the opening into the dining area. “We’re all alone, William.”
“Meaning?” I hitch a brow, understanding her implication before she even speaks. Her shirt comes over her head as she stands before me, and I lunge, but she takes off at a brisk pace, stalking through the dining room, then living room, and making a sharp right into our room.
Our room.
I catch her just inside the door and then reach back for the slider to close off the living room. We’re alone, but I want to tuck us into the bed tent of sheets and bury myself in her, but first, I press her up against the wall.
“I love you,” I tell her.
“I love you, and I was only joking about a pregnancy.”
My hands slide over her bare belly, and I pause. “I’d never say no if you wanted to try.” Roxanne knows I feel like I’ve missed out by not raising Sadie from the ground up, and I know Roxanne has always felt like she missed a part of herself, where she hoped to one day have a child of her own.
“I think Sadie is enough,” Roxanne says, her hands swiping down my shirt and then tugging it up, so it slips over my head.
“You’re enough,” I remind her.
“So are you,” she says before her mouth finds mine, and the way she kisses me is no joke.
+ + +
Want more Silver Foxes of Blue Ridge? Charlie Harrington, up next: Silver Mayor
Want more Billy? How about an out take with his brother James?
Bonus Chapter
If you enjoyed this story, you might also like Second Chance, where the youngest Harrington starts the Harrington stories.
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+ + +
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Silver Mayor –
1
Janessa
“What are you doing in here?”
My eyes leap up to the mirror over the dresser, meeting rich brown ones scowling back at me. The depth of his voice doesn’t match his face. Smooth and handsome, almost pretty. With silver at his temples and a clean-shaven jaw, he’s everything I left behind, and his question is a good one.
What am I doing in this town?
What am I doing in his house?
I stare back at him, my hand lowering to my belly. The fingers of my right struggle with the item on the left. I shouldn’t be in here. I shouldn’t have done this.
“Who are you?” he growls.
“I’m Jan,” I say, struggling on the name. I should clarify with more detail, but I don’t want to get my mother in trouble. With all she’s sacrificed over the years, I don’t want her to lose this job working for him. I don’t need to ask who he is. I’ve heard of him.
Charlie Harrington, mayor of Blue Ridge, Georgia.
“I asked you a question. Do you not understand English?” His voice softens a little, trying not to insult me with the possibility but insulting me all the same. Just because my skin is darker than his, he’s making assumptions I’m not American.
“I can speak English very well, thank you,” I snap back at him, still tugging at my left finger with my right ones. I can’t believe this is happening to me. It’s what I get for being sidetracked.
Mama sent me over here so she could take care of something for my papa. I didn’t want to be here, and my eyes wandered when I was supposed to be picking up the room. Make the bed. Straighten the pillows. Fresh towels. Toss the laundry in the washroom. I wasn’t the housekeeper and I didn’t want to act like one. I didn’t want my mother to be one either, but her entire life had been dedicated to cleaning up after others. It’s what she did. She did it for me and my brother.
“You still haven’t answered my question. I’m giving you to the count of ten before I call the police.”
Dear Lord, he’s acting like I’m a child, but I’ve done something childish. I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted to know what it would look like but now I’m struggling to remove it. My right fingers tug as the knuckle of my left bunches.
“One. Two.”
The louder he counts, the more I sweat, and my ring finger swells. His voice isn’t helping either. It’s deep and rugged, clashing with the sharp suit and open-at-the-collar dress shirt. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Mama said he left for work.
