Lola grins as she straddles my lap and kisses me.
She rocks against my hardening cock and I groan. My hands slip under her shirt of their own accord, seeking out her smooth skin and teasing at the edge of her bra.
A loud knock raps against the door. “Hey, Lola, stop banging your boyfriend and get your ass down here. I may have a god given gift for barista-ing but the whole apple fries malarky is your brainchild, so get to it.” There’s a pause before Skyler adds, “I may also be low-key terrified of the deep fryer.”
Lola snorts a laugh and I grin at her as she rests her forehead against mine.
I squeeze her hip. “Go. You’ve got this. I’ll be down in a minute, and you can put me to work.”
“Ooh, I like that sound of that.” Lola smirks then yelps when I swat her ass.
She presses one last kiss to the corner of my lips, and I deserve a fucking medal for letting her go and not pinning her to my lap like this forever. But my girl has big dreams and I’m here for it.
I make the bed and put Spout pride of place on Lola’s pillow. I’m just about to head downstairs when Lola calls up to me. “Uh, Roman.” The panic in her voice has me yanking open the door.
Anxious eyes stare up at me from the bottom of the stairs. “Your dad’s here.”
I curse under my breath and storm down into the shop. Sure enough, my father is standing out on the street, dressed in one of his fancy ass suits and scrolling through his phone.
“I’ll go get rid of him,” I growl, fury at what he did to Lola ratcheting through me.
Lola’s fingers touch mine. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No.” I don’t want Lola anywhere near my father. I turn and press a kiss to her forehead. “Stay here, I’ll deal with him, you just focus on your shop, you hear me?”
Fiery eyes narrow. “You’ll tell him I said he can shove his blackmail up his posh ass?”
I smirk, the rough edges of my anger smoothing over. “I’ll tell him.”
She squeezes my hand. “Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too.” I shake my head as I leave the shop. It’s crazy how easy those words come and yet I don’t think my father’s ever told me he loves me.
The door dings as I open it, then clicks shut behind me. There’s been a slight break in the summer heat and the cool morning air pricks at my skin.
It’s weird seeing my dad here on Main Street. Growing up I had two lives, the time I spent at boarding school and the holidays here in Pine Rock. My parents didn’t feature heavily in either life, but they never came here.
For those short breaks I could pretend that the Fords were my real family and having Richard Banks standing across from me on the cobbled street is like a knife to the glass, shattering the mirage.
“You need to leave,” I say and he finally looks up from his phone.
He slips the mobile into his pocket and eyes the newly installed shop windows. “I heard you had some trouble.”
I clench my teeth, not liking how my father seems to have spies everywhere. “Nothing we couldn’t handle.” It may have taken the past two days, working from sunrise until late in the night, but we’d managed to get the shop back to Lola’s dream design.
Combed back silver hair. My father’s cool gaze meets my blank one. “We have things to discuss, Roman.”
“You have nothing to say that I want to hear.”
He looks past me to where Lola’s working in the shop. “I beg to differ.”
I let out a soft chuckle and shake my head. “You’re not going to turn her in. If you did, you’d only reveal just how involvedIwas in what she did.”
His eyes flick back to me. The muscle in his jaw pops. “I see.”
That’s the trouble with men like my father, they always overestimate themselves. He didn’t think Lola would tell me about the blackmail and his PI clearly didn’t do enough digging to figure out that I already knew.
I feel kind of sorry for him that he thought the love I had for Lola could be broken by something so trivial. Lola could have committed murder and I’d be right there, helping her bury the body.
