She bounded from toy to toy, giggling and squealing in excitement with everything she touched. “Look, Daddy! I can put my makeup on here, just like Felicity,” she said when she got to her plastic vanity.
I groaned inwardly. I’m not ready for those years yet. The makeup, the hair appointments, the attitude, the dating.
God help the poor bastard who eventually married her because he would have to first get through me and all of my threats to make him wish he were never born if he so much as made her cry. But he would also have to deal with that sweet face, the one that made you want to give her the world and never tell her no. The one that was almost painful to see because your heart squeezed every time she flashed it at you. Whenever the day came that I would have to give her away, I would make him promise to always take care of her and then I would wish him good luck.
I can’t think about her getting married. If that didn’t happen until she was somewhere in her forties, I would be happy.
How she hadn’t noticed the four giant horses on the wall the second she entered the room, I had no idea. But she was seeing them now and she was awestruck. I walked forward to stand next to her, switching my gaze from her to the horses and back to her again. Her expression was something I would never forget for the rest of my life.
“Do you like your room?” I asked her softly.
She nodded, her eyes still not leaving the horses. “Yeah. A whole lot. I like all my toys and my bed.” She reached forward and ran her hand along the baby blue-painted wall. “That’s my favorite color.” I smiled and she lifted her head up to me while pointing at the wall. “Can I have a horse like that here? So I can ride it in the yard?”
I laughed. “Maybe. Our yard might not be big enough.” But the stables I was currently inquiring about a pony at were. I would save that surprise for another day, though.
I squatted down to bring my face eye level to hers. “Hey, Peanut. I want to ask you something.” She reluctantly turned her head to look at me—she really didn’t want to take her eyes off those horses. “Do you like Felicity?”
She tilted her head to the side and I got a startling glimpse of an older Penny, one who was much older than six years old. She was still a child in many ways. But in some ways, Penny had to grow up a lot faster than other kids her age. There was a certain wisdom in her eyes at times that surprised even me.
“Yeah, I like her,” she said, nodding her head. “She’s really nice and she plays horsies and dress up with me. She even said that maybe we could go ride horsies together some time.”
My chest constricted at the image that statement provoked. Seeing my two girls riding horses together, like a family. “And how do you feel about her coming over to our house more? Eating dinner with us and going to the zoo with us?”
“I like it when she comes over.” She rubbed her lips together and then asked, “Is she your girlfriend?”
The question took me off-guard but I quickly recovered. I nodded. “Yes, she is.”
“Do you love her?” she asked, the question one of those that definitely made her sound wise beyond her years.
“I think so. Is that okay?”
Her mouth broke into a genuine smile. “Yeah, it’s okay. ‘Cause I think you love her too. You’re always smiling and laughing when she’s around. You never did that with Mommy. You always looked sad with her.”
My heart felt like it shattered.
I absolutely hated that she knew that, that she had seen those things between me and Vanessa. She knew her parents didn’t love each other and it broke my heart. Kids saw and understood a lot more than adults gave them credit for and what she just said was proof of that.
I decided to completely bypass the comments about Vanessa and get back to the matter at hand. “Felicity does make me happy, Peanut. But I want you to be happy, too. So if you don’t like Felicity being around so much, you need to tell me, okay?”
She did that tilting of her head again. “Is Felicity going to live here with us?”
Yikes. That was a hard one to answer because to her, if you were in love with someone, you married them and you lived together. She didn’t really understand the concept of dating because I hadn’t done much of it since Vanessa and I divorced.
“No, she’s still going to live at her own house. But she can come over and you guys can play horsies whenever you want.”
That snapped her out of that solemn expression she had adopted for a few minutes. “Okay! But you have to play too, Daddy. And you have to play house with us. You can be the dad, Felicity can be the mom, and I can be the kid!”
How was it that my six-year-old daughter and I had the same dreams?
##
Chapter Eleven
Felicity
“Okay, you’ve been puttin’ off this double date for weeks now,” Bea said as she entered my office. “When are you and Gabe the Babe goin’ to take a break from your sex marathon and come out with me and Zane?”
I finished typing the email I was working on and sent it off before sitting back in my chair to take in her “Bea means business” expression.
“Sorry, but I’ve been helpin’ he and Penny move into the new house and unpack,” I told her. “You can only get so much done by yourself with a six-year-old runnin’ around so I offered to help.”
She smirked and waggled her eyebrows at me. “Yeah, I’m sure you’ve been helpin’ out with a lot lately.” I rolled my eyes, making her laugh. “My sister, the sex addict,” she mused. “Who would have thought.”
“You did notice that my door was closed when you came in, right?” I asked. “Which means I’ve got a ton of work to do so leave me alone.”
She backed out of the room, still laughing. “Yeah, yeah. I’m off to meet with the Tragers now so hold down the fort for the next hour or so.”
I knew she could tell I was smiling even though her back was to me. “Try not to get arrested if he grabs your ass again.”
She groaned and dropped her head. “You know, you would think with his wife right there he might restrain himself. He’ll be lucky to even have a hand if he does it again.” She shook her head and grumbled under her breath, “Horny old man.”
“But why do we put up with it?” I asked, reminding her.
She looked back at me and, in unison we said, “Six figures.”
Any clients who were paying us in the six figure sum were very special clients, which meant that we would put up with a lot of crap from them. And if that meant dealing with a little grab ass from a sixty-year-old man every now and then, so freaking be it.
Ten minutes later, the buzzer on my desk sounded, letting me know that someone had entered our shop. We didn’t like bells on front doors, thinking they were tacky for the image we were trying to project, so we had these buzzers installed on each of our desks that went off anytime the front door was opened. It allowed us to work in our offices when no one else was here without checking the main floor for walk-ins every two minutes.
I stood up, smoothing my clothes out, as I made my way out of the office and toward the front of the building.
And then I saw her.
Vanessa Bradshaw.
I had finally figured out who she was whenever Gabe introduced us all those weeks ago. It seemed that she was becoming more established as a model because she had now moved on from cigarette poster ads that you saw in subway stations to top-shelf vodka billboards. Every now and then when I saw a picture of her, I briefly felt self-conscious. I mean, she was a long-legged, slender, gorgeous, famous model who had once been married to my boyfriend. Any woman might feel a little intimidated by that at first.
But then I remembered what a truly heinous human being she was and I felt better.
And she certainly didn’t like me either. Which begged the question, what the hell was she doing here?
That same condescending smirk as before was on her face as she took in the showroom, an expression implying that everything around her was beneath her. “I have to say, this
is about what I expected,” she remarked.
I looked her up and down, refusing to let this woman push me around. I normally didn’t encourage confrontation with anyone, but saying what she had to me that day at Gabe’s apartment and showing up at my place of work was stepping over the line. I was about to let her know it, too.
“Well, havin’ heard what I have about you, you’re pretty much what I expected, too,” I said.
Her upper lip curled and she narrowed her eyes at me. “You don’t know shit about me.”
I looked down at my watch. “I know you should be goin’ to pick up your daughter from school right about now. Or did you forget about her?”
Vanessa was supposed to be taking Penny this weekend, and Gabe and I had a whole weekend planned of nothing. Just staying at the house and relaxing, that was the extent of our plans.
“Don’t tell me what to do with my daughter,” she spat.
I shrugged. “Not that this isn’t fun and everything, but why don’t you say what you came here to say so we can get this over with?”
She adjusted the ridiculously over-sized purse on her shoulder and raised her chin. “I just came here to learn more about the woman who’s trying to play mommy to my daughter and the little woman to my ex-husband. Because if you think that you’re going to replace me in their lives, think again.”
I approached her, slowly, maintaining eye contact with her the whole time which I could tell unnerved her a little. “First of all, I’m not the type of woman who would ever try to replace a girl’s real mother. Second, you know nothin’ about my relationship with Gabe so don’t presume otherwise. And third, you should probably be more focused on repairin’ your relationship with your daughter than my role in both of their lives. Because I would say that it’s none of my concern, but you comin’ into my business like this is sure as hell you makin’ it my concern.”
She huffed indignantly. “Penny loves me.”
There was a flicker of vulnerability that flashed across her face before she quickly hid it under that trademark sneer of hers. “Penny is indifferent to you,” I told her. “Don’t you see it? With all of the men and the jettin’ off to city after city, dumpin’ her on Gabe when she was supposed to spend time with you, she hardly knows you anymore. And what she does know, she’s afraid of.”
I braced myself when she lunged forward but she stopped inches away, not touching me. “You don’t know anything about us, you hillbilly slut!” she shouted in my face, making my ear drums ring.
Hillbilly slut. Nice.
“And I don’t care to know anything, about you anyway,” I responded calmly. “Gabe and I are together and you need to respect that. You comin’ here and harassin’ me won’t look good for you in court. You keep this up and you’ll be lucky to even get supervised visits with Penny.”
Heat flared in her eyes but before she could say another word, Bea’s voice filled the room. “Everything okay here?”
We both turned to face my sister who was shooting daggers at Vanessa. I wasn’t sure how much she’d heard, but it was clear from the way Vanessa was standing and my defensive stance that she had walked in on a very tense conversation.
I gave her a curt nod. “Yeah, we’re good.” I looked back at Vanessa and said, “You need to leave. And don’t ever step foot inside this shop again.”
She swung around, her tangle of hair almost hitting me in face, and stomped out the door, leaving a trail of cigarette smoke smell behind her. Bea looked back at me when she was gone, quirking an eyebrow.
“She’s even uglier in person,” she said with a scowl.
Despite the anger coursing through me, I laughed.
That was why I could always count on her. She had been ready to throw down for me if I needed it. But she could also make me completely forget why I’d been ready to do the exact same thing.
##
My day may have been the day from hell, but the evening had been progressively better. Almost too good to be true.
Which was why I never mentioned my encounter with Vanessa that afternoon to Gabe. I didn’t want to spoil the evening by putting him in a bad mood and stacking more stress on top of the already heavy load he carried.
For dinner, Gabe had displayed his amazing skills at the grill, cooking two T-bone steaks to perfection, while I handled the garlic roasted potatoes and vegetables inside. We ate on the back porch, sitting under the sprawling umbrella covering the patio table, and enjoyed watching the sun set as the smells and sounds of early summer filled the night air. We moved to the porch swing after we cleaned up the kitchen and lazily swung back and forth while the fireflies danced along the breeze in his backyard.
“This is what I’ve been waiting for,” Gabe said after several minutes of silence, his arm resting on the swing behind me. “Even before I moved to New York all those years ago, this is what I’ve always wanted. A place like this. A home like this.” He looked down at me, absolute sincerity on his face. “A woman like you.”
Oh, be still my heart.
I could hardly swallow around my dry mouth, let alone respond to something like that. Though I didn’t have to because he spoke again…and I lost the final piece of my heart to Gabe Wexler.
“I’ve fallen in love with you, Felicity.”
It was the first time he had ever said it. And the moment couldn’t have been more intense, more meaningful. The fact that he had chosen to wait to tell me until he had moved into his new home, and did it on a night when it felt like the entire universe was in perfect alignment, told me how powerful his feelings for me were. How desperately he wanted to make this moment special for me and for him.
I knew that not only admitting strong feelings like that but also allowing himself to feel them in the first place had been very difficult for him ever since Vanessa had blown through his life like a hurricane, demolishing everything in her path.
“I’m in love with you, too,” I whispered.
His mouth broke into a quick smile before he brought his lips down onto mine, stealing my breath as his tongue coaxed my lips to part, allowing enough room for it to enter and stroke my own. It didn’t take long for the kiss to go from sensual caress to passionate embrace, and before I knew it I was straddling Gabe’s lap on the swing, fighting to swallow down as much of him as I could.
We both let out strangled moans when my sex made contact with his hardness and especially after I started to grind my hips down onto his length, creating a heady friction between our bodies. My shirt was over my head before I realized it, leaving my breasts bare since I hadn’t bothered with a bra when I changed from my work clothes. I also didn’t care that we were outside because Gabe’s closest neighbors were over a mile away and there were enough trees in his backyard to hide us from any passing prying eyes.
I ripped his shirt off and brought our upper bodies together, my sensitive nipples rubbing against his hard chest driving me insane with need.
“I need you,” I said, panting as his mouth ravaged my neck with kisses. “I need you so bad.”
“I love hearing you say that,” he growled. “I love hearing that you need what I have to give you. Because I’m the only one who could fulfill your needs, aren’t I? Who could give it to you so good. Right, baby?”
My hips sped up as his mouth moved downward to my breasts. “Yes. You know no one else can do this to me.”
“Damn straight.”
He abruptly stood up, grabbing me around the waist to hold me to him. I slid my legs around his hips and licked along his collarbone as he led us through the house and up the stairs to his bedroom. He immediately covered my body with his after he dropped me onto the mattress, divesting us both of our shorts, the last barriers between us.
And when he entered me, there was absolutely nothing holding us back anymore. It was a different kind of lovemaking that took place, one far beyond any of the others that had happened before that.
It was an experience that left us both trembling and speechless after he finish
ed inside me, our declarations of love hanging in the air.
##
Chapter Twelve
Gabe
I don’t know what woke me up.
If it was a bad dream that I couldn’t remember or a noise, I wasn’t sure. But my eyes opened to a dark room with Felicity’s soft breaths blowing steadily against my neck. She was wrapped up in my arms, one of her legs thrown carelessly over my hip. I smiled, remembering what had happened before we fell asleep, how I had taken her and how she had screamed for more.
My body instantly woke up at recalling those sounds of her hers.
Hearing all of those again didn’t sound half bad.
My hand drifted down her naked body, gliding over her flat stomach toward that sweet, soft center of hers that drove me crazy every time I was inside of it. She stirred a little and I could tell that her mind was trying to pull her out of unconsciousness, her body registering what I was doing and telling her to wake up.
I could feel my second wind coming on and I had plans for her.
That’s when I saw a flash of light coming from the nightstand, right where my phone was at. Confused, knowing that I hadn’t heard the thing ring at any point, I pulled away from Felicity and scooted up the bed, reaching for the device. I unlocked the screen and immediately saw the missed call notifications.
All nine of them.
The first few from Vanessa and the rest from a number I didn’t recognize.
What the hell?
I hadn’t heard any of them. How had I missed that many? And then I remembered. I had put my phone on silent earlier in the evening—something I never did since having a daughter. But it had been the first time Felicity and I had been alone in weeks and I wanted absolute peace and isolation. Penny had been with Vanessa so I had thought I would have been okay to turn it off.
Unexpected Love (Timid Souls Book 3) Page 9
