by Lila Monroe
I know I’m playing with fire getting close to these kids. I should be treating them with brisk detachment like a client at the firm—or distant, annoying family—but instead, I can feel my heart warming to them with every day. And as for Cal . . .
I’m way past “warm,” and barreling fast towards “smoking hot.”
But what am I supposed to do? I’m in this now, and there’s no way I’m risking Cal’s chances of getting custody by just quitting on him in the middle of everything. There’s nothing for it but to keep playing along until our ten-day probation period is up.
And try to keep my panties on.
12
Jules
We ship the kids off for their court-mandated visit to Vivian’s the next morning. “Love you,” Cal promises, as we pull up outside the house.
“But I don’t want to.” Lottie folds her arms and glares.
“I know,” Cal sighs, not looking too chipper himself. “I promise, we’ll be back for you tomorrow afternoon, right on schedule.”
“That’s ages away.” Ezra hugs Howard. “Can’t we skip it?”
“Sorry, kiddo. I don’t make the rules. But I do make the best pepperoni pizza this side of the South Bay,” he adds. “And I promise, that’s what we’ll have for dinner as soon as you get back.”
“With extra cheese?”
“With triple-double-quadruple extra cheese.”
Mollified, Ezra climbs out of the car, and—with a long-suffering glare—Lottie follows. I watch Cal take them all the way up the path and kiss them goodbye. When he gets back behind the wheel, he lets out an exaggerated whoop.
“Finally! Some peace and quiet.”
“Liar.” I smile. “You miss them already.”
Cal sighs, and starts the engine. “Maybe. Just a little.”
I can feel him sinking into a funk all the way home, and once we get back, it’s no better. Cal paces the house like some kind of wild animal, stomping up and down the stairs and tracking a pattern into the carpet. He turns the TV on and off, opens drawers and rattles them shut. “Can you calm down?” I ask finally, shutting the screen of my laptop and sitting back to consider him. “You’re going to wear out your very expensive shoes.”
“I can’t help it,” Cal complains, flopping his long body down on the sofa like a moody teenager. “Obviously I don’t want them to have a shitty time at Vivian’s. But I don’t want them to have a good time, either. What if they like her better than me?”
“Then they have terrible taste and deserve everything they get.”
Cal throws a pillow at me.
“Okay, okay!” I laugh, ducking. “They won’t. I promise. I bet Vivian’s balloon-animal skills have nothing on yours.”
Cal taps his knee restlessly for a minute.
“Don’t you have work to do?” I ask.
“I can’t focus.” He frowns. “Want to get out of here?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.” Cal jumps up again, suddenly energized by the idea. “Paris. Atlantic City. I don’t care. I just don’t want to be here in this house for the next twenty-four hours, worrying about all the ways Vivian might bribe them into wanting to live with her.”
“Lottie and Ez are way too smart for that,” I promise. “Unless there’s a pony involved, maybe. I feel like if she offers them a pony then all bets are off.”
“So I’ll buy them a hundred ponies,” Cal insists. “Come on, let’s go somewhere. You could use a break too. I know they’ve been running you ragged.”
I hesitate. Getting out of town sounds like a truly terrible idea, with no tiny chaperones, no interruptions to keep us apart, but he does have a point. Plus, if Cal is this wired after ten minutes, I’m guessing another full day of anxiety won’t be pretty.
“Sure,” I say finally. “Let’s do it. I mean, not Paris. But somewhere.”
Cal grins.
It turns out the McAdams have a cottage on Martha’s Vineyard, so we drive down and take the ferry over. It’s a gorgeous day, the sun bright and wind whipping my hair around my face as I watch the choppy summer ocean speed by.
“Here.” Cal returns from the snack bar with two cups of coffee. “Black, right? Like your cold, cold heart.”
I laugh. “Hey! Actually, I take it like I take my men,” I say, teasing.
“Strong, bold, and irresistible?” Cal winks.
“Dense and rich,” I retort, and he laughs so hard, he nearly snorts his coffee through his nose.
“We can go sit inside, if you want,” he suggests, but I shake my head.
“Are you kidding? I love this view.”
“Have you ever been to the Vineyard before?” Cal leans against the railing.
“No. That would imply I get time for vacations,” I say wryly.
“They work you hard at that law firm then?”
“Understatement of the year.” I sigh. “This is the most time I’ve had to myself in, well, years. I would enjoy it, if there wasn’t a voice in the back of my brain demanding how I’m going to pay rent and keep up with my student loans.”
“Hey, none of that,” Cal says, mock-stern. “We’re taking a break today. If I won’t stress about the kids, you can’t get worried about jobs and your career. Deal?”
He holds out his hand, and I shake it, grateful for the reality check. “Deal!”
The ferry reaches the dock in Woods Hole, and we go back to the car. Cal drives us off, and I look around, eager to soak up the sights—and salty smell—of the island. It’s
peak New England, all candy-colored Victorian houses and tourist gift shops. I was expecting something snooty like the Hamptons, but instead, everyone seems really casual, walking around in jeans, sneakers, and beachy sweaters as we drive out of town, and along a coastal road, winding around the shore.
Away from the wind, the summer sun beats down hard, and I strip off the sweater I’m wearing over my tank top, rummaging in my purse for a pair of shades.
“We’re just up ahead,” Cal says, turning down a bumpy side road. The grass and trees are lush here, with the water glinting blue through the green. “There should be bicycles at the house, nobody drives here if they can help it.”
I sit up, eager for a look at this rustic cottage Cal has been rhapsodizing over the whole journey. We round a corner, the trees open up, and—
I burst out laughing.
“This is your family’s cottage?” I snort.
“Yes.” Cal frowns. “What’s wrong?”
“Um, nothing. Except if this is a cottage, then Buckingham Palace is just a small city pad.”
Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but this place is massive: a sprawling, three-story cedar situation, right on the water, with a four car garage and clusters of perfectly maintained hydrangeas on the sweeping front lawn. There’s even a boathouse, down by the jetty, and is that . . . ? I squint towards the back of the house.
Yup, a tennis court.
“Well, my mom’s family owns most of the property on this side of the highway,” Cal admits, punching a code into a keypad. “It’s really more of a compound, I guess? We have everyone out in summer, a big family thing. Kids running around for a couple of months, while the parents rotate through from work.”
“That sounds . . . nice.” It does, and I can just imagine Ezra and Lottie out here too, exploring the place. “Have the kids been?”
“Oh yeah.” Cal shoots me a grin. “They’re favorites. We had to tie Lottie up to keep her away from the firework display on the Fourth last year. She wanted to take them apart to see which made what color. Nearly gave us all heart attacks.”
“Sounds about right.”
I smile and follow him inside. It’s even more stunning than the exterior. The ceilings soar way overhead, with massive windows overlooking the ocean. The kitchen is spotless—none of the scratched Teflon pans and half-melted spatulas I picture when I think vacation house, that’s for sure—and the dining room table could easily seat twenty for a lobster boil or pa
ncake breakfast. A giant fireplace takes up almost one whole wall in the living room, a plush Persian rug laid out in front of it like an altar.
“This work for you?” Cal asks, smirking a little.
“I mean,” I say, making a face at him. “I guess I can make do.”
For lunch, we drive the short distance to Vineyard Haven, and a hole-in-the-wall pub with fake-Tiffany lamps hanging over the ripped booths and four domestic beers on tap. It’s not the kind of place I’d ever picture him—it reminds me of Bicycle Bar—but Cal seems completely comfortable. In fact, the ballcapped bartender greets him by name, looking happy to see him: “How’s your ma?” he asks, pouring Cal a Sam Adams without asking what he wants.
“She’s good,” Cal answers. “You know her. Always going.”
We order burgers and fries, and Cal feeds a few dollars into the jukebox before leading me to a booth in the corner. “My mom fucking loves this place,” he tells me as music fills the busy joint. Vintage Tom Petty, I recognize with grudging respect. “The woman can put down Budweiser drafts like nobody you’ve ever met in your life.”
I can’t help but smile at the thought of immaculate Diana McAdams bellied up to the bar swilling cheap beer. “We used to rent a house on the shore in Virginia every year when I was a kid,” I tell him. “I mean, it was nothing like this town, obviously—think, like, funnel cake and corndogs on a shitty boardwalk—but with four kids it was way too expensive for my parents to take us to Europe or Disney World or any of that stuff, so we’d just post up at the beach and run around like a bunch of monkeys for a couple of weeks.” The memory has me smiling. “The only rules were you had to be able to see the house unless you had an adult with you, and you couldn’t come into it between breakfast and dinner.”
“What if you had to pee?” Cal asks.
I shrug. “That’s what the ocean was for.”
He snorts. “Monsters!”
“Not all of us went to finishing school,” I smirk.
“I didn’t go to finishing school,” Cal laughs, more relaxed than I’ve seen him all day. “But there was that summer in Switzerland . . . never mind.” He grins. “That’s not a story for polite company.”
“Is that what I am?”
“No.” Cal holds my gaze, and my skin prickles hot. “You’re . . . something else.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Good. What’s your family like?” he asks, breaking the moment. “Besides, you know, water-polluters.”
“They’re crazy,” I tell him immediately, thinking of the whole noisy clan of them back in Philly. “Not in a bad way. They’re just a lot. Three siblings, seven nieces and nephews. Two big dogs.”
“And a partridge in a pear tree,” Cal finishes. “Are you the baby of the family?”
I tilt my head to the side. “What makes you think that?”
“Just a hunch. You seem like you get your own way,” he grins.
“Something about the way you’re saying that makes me think it’s an insult, but you know what? I’m too secure to be offended. And yes,” I add. “I’m the baby.”
“I knew it.” Cal laughs. “Are they all lawyers like you?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Two of them are teachers in Philly public schools. My other brother is a pediatrician. They don’t always know what to do with me, I don’t think—literally every time they call I’m at work.” I think of my mom, urging me to go out and meet someone, and I sigh.
“They want you to settle down?” Cal asks perceptively.
“Well, they’d never say it like that. But family is a big deal to them—and to me—and I think they wonder how I’m going to manage to find it with the kind of hours I work. I mean, I wonder too.” I shrug, picking at my fries. “I love my job—at least, I thought I loved my job. Whether it loved me back is another story. But I think I was just waiting for the rest of it to kind of take care of itself, you know? Getting married, having kids. And now it’s kind of starting to occur to me that maybe it doesn’t work that way.”
I’m not old, but I’m not young anymore, either. And with Kelly already married and pregnant now, it makes me realize there’s still a space waiting in my life for all the other things I want, besides that partner’s job.
“You know, I’m not worried about your long-term romantic prospects, Jules Robinson,” Cal says with a smile.
I roll my eyes at him, I can’t help it. “Because you would know what it’s like out there,” I tease. “I’m sure it’s really difficult for handsome, eligible billionaires to get a date.”
“Oh, I can get a date,” Cal says, kicking me gently under the table. “It’s the rest of it that keeps giving me trouble.” Then he grins. “You can tell me more about how handsome I am if you want, though.”
I throw a French fry across the table and hit him square in the nose. “You’re impossible.”
“You like it.”
“That’s what you think,” I shoot back, then take a long sip of my beer to cover the fact that I’m definitely blushing.
He’s not wrong.
Part of me is loving this easy, flirty dynamic we have, but the other part wishes it wasn’t so easy to be here with him, so easy for this to feel like a real weekend getaway instead of . . . whatever the hell it actually is. Because I haven’t felt this comfortable with a guy in, well, forever, and he’s setting the bar awfully high for whatever non-billionaire, non-drop-dead-handsome guy comes after him.
We finish up lunch and head back to the house. “I know we said this was a vacation,” Cal says, checking his phone. “But I need to work for a couple of hours. Is that okay?”
“Take your time.” I could use a minute to clear my head—away from him—so I change into my bathing suit and cut-offs and head down to the strip of private beachfront to catch some rays. I settle on a blanket and call Kelly. “Hey, preggo,” I say when she answers. “How are you feeling?”
“Well, it’s not so much morning sickness as it is ‘every hour of the day’ sickness,” Kelly reports, “but I’ll live. How’s it going with the billionaire?”
“Can you stop calling him that?” I chide, even though I just said the exact same thing to him at lunch. “It makes my entire life sound absurd.”
“Your entire life is absurd,” Kelly says cheerfully, “but in a good way. Now tell me all the things.”
I give her the broad strokes, focusing on the social worker and whack-a-mole with Lottie and once again leaving out the late-night grope fest. Still, Kelly’s known me a lot longer than Olivia has, and she isn’t fooled for a second.
“Uh-oh,” she singsongs, when I drop it into conversation—as casually as possible, of course—that we’re out at the beach for a night. “I know that voice. Are you catching feelings?”
I sigh. “A little,” I confess quietly, glancing over my shoulder like a sixth-grader worried her crush is going to find out she likes him. I think of his smile across the booth at lunch earlier. I think of how good he felt on top of me on the couch the other night. “But it’s a horrible idea. This is a work gig.”
“You keep saying that,” Kelly points out, “but it doesn’t really sound like any work gig I’ve ever heard of.”
“I know.” I clap a hand over my face, as if she can see me. “But still. It’s asking for trouble. Tell me it’s asking for trouble, please. Tell me I’m being an idiot.”
Kelly considers that for a moment. “Is that what you really want?” she asks seriously. “For me to talk you out of it?”
“Yes,” I say immediately. “No. I don’t know.”
“Oh, well in that case.” Kelly sighs. “Well, without more concrete marching orders the best I can do is tell you to listen to your heart,” she says. “And, you know. Your loins.”
I burst out laughing. “You are absolutely zero help, you know that?”
“You love me,” Kelly says. Then, all at once: “Shit, Jules. I gotta go throw up.”
I wince. “Sorry!” I call, though
I’m not actually sure if she can hear me. “I love you! Bye!”
I hang up and lie out on the beach a little longer, trying to relax. But even though it’s a gorgeous day for some vacation unwinding, my curiosity gets the better of me, and I head back inside the house for some uninterrupted touring.
Okay, snooping.
I look around, taking in the lived-in feel and warm, homey details. The beach house is still amazingly, outrageously posh, but this is obviously a property that’s been in his family a long time, even if it has been recently renovated in the style of Fixer Upper meets the Taj Mahal. The built-in bookcases are filled with yellowing paperbacks—including, I note with a smile, a well-thumbed copy of Jurassic Park—and a dozen family photos line the walls. I stop in front of one of Cal as a chubby toddler, his diapered butt plunked down in the sand. There’s another one that must have been taken in middle school, him standing beside his parents and proudly holding up a giant fish. He’s wearing a Sox cap and boasting a bright-red sunburn. He looks like a tiny, adorable dork.
Dammit.
I look around for something, anything to help me keep up a detached front. Evidence of kitten-mangling, or a copy of Ayn Rand on the bookcase, but I’m shit out of luck. He’s nice. And smart. And gorgeous.
And I already know he’s amazing in bed.
Yeah, this whole “professional” thing is going to be harder than I thought.
I’m exploring the library upstairs when hear a voice coming from down the hallway. I follow the sound to a bedroom, where Cal is FaceTiming with the kids on his computer.
“We miss you,” Lottie is saying. “The snacks here suck. She tried to make us eat tofu for lunch.”
“Aww, my brave warrior queen,” Cal teases. “But maybe don’t tell her I’ve been feeding you Cheetos and soda, okay?”
“Okay,” they agree grudgingly. I can hear Vivian calling for them in the background, and Cal musters a grin.
“Time’s up for now,” he tells them. “Be good tonight. I love you turkeys.”
He ends the call and flops back onto the king-sized mattress with a sigh.
