“You okay?” I call out.
“Uh . . . yeah. I just . . . almost dropped my phone.”
“You sure that’s all?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. No worries.” There’s a tightness in her voice that has me curious, but whatever it is, she isn’t ready to tell me. Or it’s related to work, and she can’t tell me.
“Okay, I’ll be right back with your coffee,” I say.
“Thanks,” she calls out, but she sounds distracted. And as I leave the room, I don’t miss the sound of a video or audio clip playing on her phone. It’s a woman’s voice, but I don’t want to overhear something she doesn’t want me to listen to. It’s probably just one of her friends.
I return with her coffee a few minutes later, and she’s wearing one of my shirts and has a towel wrapped around her head. “You wearing nothing but my shirt and telling me you have to leave for a meeting is a special kind of torture.”
“Don’t worry,” she says with a wink as she reaches out for the steaming mug. “I’ll make it up to you when I get home. We have all afternoon.”
“I told McCabe we’d bring dessert tonight,” I remind her.
“Good. I look forward to seeing what you make while I’m at the office,Dear.” She chuckles as she leans up to kiss my cheek, and I smack her ass through the T-shirt before I turn to leave.
Some day, I might be able to stand in a steamy bathroom with her in nothing but my T-shirt and not want to strip it off her and fuck her in front of the mirror. But that day is not today.
“If I hadn’t come home while there were brownies in the oven, I seriously would not believe that you baked,” Morgan says, licking some of the gooey chocolate off her fingers as her eyes meet mine across McCabe’s kitchen table.
There’s laughter in her voice and her eyes sparkle with amusement as I’m sure she’s picturing how I dragged her upstairs to have my way with her the minute she got home, only for us to miss the brownie timer going off downstairs, completely burning the first batch. Luckily, I had enough ingredients that we worked together to make another batch, but we barely had time to bake them before we had to head to dinner with AJ and McCabe.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a baker,” AJ says, and as much as I’m trying to relax around her, the fact that she’s my boss still makes that difficult. At least the stress of the contractnegotiation phase is over, and I know I’ll be staying in Boston for the next few years, at which point I’ll probably retire.
The stress of maintaining both a personal and professional relationship with my boss, like I have since Morgan and I became “official,” makes me wonder how McCabe was secretly dating AJ in the midst of a tense contract negotiation between her and his agent.
“I have many talents,” I say.
“Most impressively,” McCabe says with a smirk, “the ability to hide this relationship from everyone for months.”
AJ turns toward him, tilting her head and giving him a small smile. “I feel like the pot shouldn’t call the kettle black here?”
“Touché,” he says. “But our reasons for hiding our relationship were obvious. Why would you two need to hide it?”
Morgan glances at me, the question obvious? Do we tell them how we originally met? I think AJ is the only friend of Morgan’s who might not already know. I give her the slightest nod.
“So...” she starts. “We actually met in Bermuda over Labor Day weekend, not really knowing who the other was. And then...there was this uncomfortable situation where we hooked up, and found out the next day that our parents were getting married.”
McCabe’s bark of laughter is so loud it scares Abby, who is almost asleep cuddled up on AJ. Abby starts crying, and AJ hugs her closer, kissing her and murmuring, “It’s okay, Daddy just thought something was funny.”
She’s rubbing small circles on Abby’s back as I glance over at McCabe, lifting an eyebrow as I silently mouth, “Daddy, huh?”
“Dick,” he mouths back. AJ’s focused on Abby, but Morgan’s silent chuckle lets me know she didn’t miss the interaction.
“Then what happened?” AJ asks, head still bent toward Abby.
Morgan explains about Max’s nickname for me and having no idea I was a hockey player. “Then we came back to Boston and realized we work together, and my dad is his agent.”
“Oh, I’m sure you backed off then,” McCabe says sarcastically, glancing at me. He damn well knows I didn’t.
“Obviously I did, but she just couldn’t stay away. Kept coming after me, over and over.”
She smacks my arm, hard, and with a laugh says, “Yeah, that’s definitely what happened.”
“The rest of the story doesn’t matter,” I say, wrapping my arm around her shoulder and pulling her into my side so I can press my lips to the top of her head. “We ended up together, and our parents are already in the process of divorcing.”
