“It was the best sex of my entire life,” I said bluntly.
“And that’s a bad thing?”
I shrugged. “I just… I don’t see this going anywhere. So I’m trying not to get too carried away with it.”
“It doesn’t need to go anywhere,” Peyton said. “That’s the definition of a fling.”
But I don’t want it to be a fling,I thought. It wasn’t just that the sex was amazing. It was waking up next to Liam the next morning and knowing I was exactly where I was supposed to be. It wasn’t very often in my life that I felt so sure about anything.
“Oh, Grace,” Rosa sighed, rubbing my arm. One look at her face told me that she knew exactly what I was thinking. She’d always been perceptive like that. “You know what I think?” she asked softly. “I think you’re writing the end of this story before it’s even started.”
“I’m his daughter’s teacher,” I said, hearing desperation in my voice. “My brother is his boss. And Andy already can’t stand the guy.”
“So maybe it doesn’t work out,” Rosa said, shrugging. “Maybe you have great chemistry that burns itself out pretty quickly. Maybe all you’re supposed to get is a few weeks of fun and passion.” She held my gaze. “Regardless how it turns out, do you really want to miss whatever happens in the meantime?”
I found my eyes drawn to Liam once again. He was talking to Gabriel now and a tall kid who couldn’t have been much older than twenty. He looked relaxed and at ease, laughing and drinking his beer. Maybe he felt me watching, because his face turned towards me.
All it took was that one look for me to have my answer. I wanted Liam O’Conner. No matter how short our time might be, no matter how careful we needed to be about hiding it—it would be worth it, to be with him. Whether I got a few months or weeks or even just another night. Whatever I could get from him would be worth it.
Even if I ended up heartbroken when it was over.
CHAPTER 18
Ifelt Gracie before I saw her. The hairs on the back of my neck were suddenly at attention and my eyes seemed to know exactly where to look to find her. She was standing at the side of Andrew Knight’s ridiculously huge mansion, her two friends behind her. I couldn’t see them, though. Couldn’t see much of anything when Gracie was nearby.
Hadn’t it always been that way?
The sight of her took my breath away. Dressed in a pale yellow sundress, her hair piled up on the top of her head, she had never looked so beautiful. Well, that wasn’t quite true—she’d been more beautiful when she’d come apart in my arms on her couch last week. And in her bed. And the shower.
Just like that I had to adjust my khakis to hide the hardening of my dick. I wanted to throw her over my shoulder and take her inside, find somewhere private where I could get my hands and mouth on her. Wanted to peel away those tiny little sundress straps to taste the skin over her shoulders. Wanted to sink deep inside her warmth and her heat and?—
“Are you even listening to me, man?”
I jerked my eyes away from Gracie to see an amused expression on Jay’s face.
“Don’t say it,” I began, and Jay held up two hands.
“Say what?”
I pointed at his smirk. “Whatever is making your face look all smug like that.”
He grinned, but made a zipping motion over his lips. Yeah, like that was going to last long.
My eyes were drawn down the grass for about the hundredth time since we got here, to the spot where my daughter was shrieking with laughter in a bouncy house. The only way I’d been able to convince Josie to come at all was to promise her that she wouldn’t be the only kid. When the GM told us our owner was throwing this party for the entire organization and their families, he made it pretty clear that our attendance was not optional. Management was clearly hoping bonding off the ice might improve our play on it.
A few of the married guys in the locker room had mentioned bringing their kids along, and from the amount of little rug rats running around, I could only assume that front office employees had brought their families as well. I had barely seen Josie since we got here—she’d headed straight for the bouncy house, where the other kids were playing. I wasn’t the biggest fan of that activity—all of those rowdy kids jumping around in an enclosed space seemed like a recipe for disaster, and I really didn’t need an injury on top of everything else. But Josie had seemed so excited about it, I couldn’t bear to say no.
“She’s fine,” Jay said, once again guessing the direction of my thoughts.
“I’m gonna need to get her to eat something sooner than later,” I muttered, the thought making my stomach clench. I could just see the disappointment and annoyance in her eyes when I went to fetch her and forced her to spend a measly fifteen minutes at my side to eat some lunch.
“I can be the one to wrangle her,” Jay offered.
It was nice of him, and I would probably take him up on it. But it still hurt like a jab to the solar plexus, knowing my daughter would be happier to be with Jay than with me.
Before I could get too maudlin, I heard a high pitch female squeal from the direction where Gracie had been standing. My eyes sought her out once more and sure enough, the dark-haired friend was slapping a hand over the blonde’s mouth. But not before I distinctly heard her screech a sentence that sounded an awful lot like, “you already banged him!”
I didn’t bother to stop the slow grin from spreading over my face. I would bet half my salary for the season that Gracie was telling her girlfriends about me. And from the red hue spreading over her cheeks, she knew that I knew.
