“I don’t think I did sometimes. They dragged themselves up at times. Max and Jackson and Claire helped out with the twins when they were toddlers, so I did have help. And I relied on child minders and babysitters. Occasionally Grant – although I left him one evening to sort the kids’ dinners out without leaving him written instructions and came back to total carnage.”
The office door swung open at a speed I recognised. Seph came in, fully suited, his glasses on, hair mussed as if he’d been running his fingers through it in frustration.
“Take over my desk while you’re here, why don’t you?” His grin at his mum was huge. “I have a ton of filing you can do if you’re bored.”
Marie stood up. “Forget that. Your ironing last week was enough.” She shot me a sly look. “Georgia was saying that you struggle with your time management, that you’re having to stay late just to catch up. Do you need me to help you organise yourself?”
Seph’s eyes flickered to me. I swallowed a giggle.
“I think Georgia knows I’m very organised. And professional.” There was a glint in his eye and a tang to his tone that made every nerve in my body stand up.
He said we had to be just friends.
He didn’t want to be just friends.
That kiss had affected him just as much as me.
As a kid, I’d had a stubborn streak as long as the Nile. As an adult, it was only slightly shorter.
You could have a relationship with someone you worked with and still be professional, Seph’s parents were proof of that.
And I wanted more of those kisses.
Chapter Twelve
Seph
It seemed that I was a masochist.
I’d spent the last week sharing an office with a woman who’d apparently cast a spell on me. I dreamed of her hair wrapped around my fingers, felt the touch of her lips on mine while I slept and the only image I could find to focus on when I jacked off in the shower, was of her and the way her blouses clung to her tits, or the glimpse of cleavage that I swore she was torturing me with when she bent over.
“Right hook!” Max yelled at full lung capacity, bracing himself as I pushed my frustration into the hit.
“Again!”
We went through the motions, sweat flying off us, tops long since discarded, mouth guards in – just in case one of us wasn’t concentrating because a black eye was a lot better than a knocked-out tooth.
It was six in the morning and we’d been here since five, battering the shit out of each other in an aggressively controlled way. Max was full of pent up worry about Victoria and the baby, but he couldn’t sound off to her as he usually would, and I was sexually frustrated and it was his fault.
He’d employed Georgie.
I blocked his upper cut and hit him with a fierce body shot that had him on the ropes, panting and sweating even harder.
“Time.” He called it, his gloves making a T. “Water.”
I grabbed the two bottles we’d left at the side and threw one to my brother. ‘You’re getting old.”
He shook his head as he drank, getting half the water over him, probably on purpose. “You’re getting good. Maybe you could start getting shit faced the night before we train or something. It was easier to dodge your punches then.”
“Yeah, well. I leave that to Shay now.”
“How is our disease-ridden cousin? His cock fallen off yet?” He grabbed a towel hanging over the ropes and wiped his face.
“Seen him once in the last week. We managed a couple of beers on Saturday night. How’s Vic?” We hadn’t exchanged pleasantries before starting to train and I was worried about Max’s wife. Out of all my siblings’ partners, she was the one I was closest too, despite having an Everest sized crush on her when Max first met her. I’d gotten over that now, and so had she. Wasn’t sure Max ever had though.
He nodded. “She’s good. We’ve a scan tomorrow.” His face lit up. “I can’t wait.”
It’d been years since I’d seen my brother cry, but his eyes definitely looked glassy and it wasn’t sweat that was in them. Usually, I’d rip the piss out of him for being soft, but this wasn’t the topic to do it with. He and Vic had been trying to get pregnant for ages before it’d finally happened, and now he was a bag of nerves, worried that something would go wrong.
