I can practically hear her nodding her head. “Yeppers. It’s okay, but you can still kiss it when you get home. I only cried for, like, two seconds.”
“I’ll give it two kisses,” I promise. “Are you going to listen to Nonny from now on and stop running when she tells you to?”
“Um, probably most of the time, but I’m just a little kid, Daddy. We’re not great at listening.”
I let out a full belly laugh. My kid is a hoot. “I have faith in youthat you can be a good girl and not make Nonny chase you. You’ll end up with fewer skinned knees like that.”
“Okay, I’ll try, but just in case, we have lots of polka-dot Band-Aids.”
“That’s true. Did you have a good time at the farmers’ market?”
“It was great. We got lots of fruit and some avocados. Can I have avocado toast for breakfast tomorrow?”
As we talk, I pick up a pencil and begin doodling on a sticky note. An idea is coming to me.
“We can definitely do that,” I tell Reece as the picture becomes clearer in my mind. A football helmet, complete with face mask, and one gorgeous aqua eye peering out. Jordie’s eye.
“Okey dokey. You can go back to work now,” Reece graciously informs me.
Charlotte is under strict instruction to always put my daughter’s calls through. I don’t care who I’m meeting with. They can fucking wait if my kid needs me, and it’s not like Lorraine lets her call fifty times a day. In fact, it’s pretty rare.
Am I over-compensating with that rule? Yeah, maybe a bit, but I don’t care. I love my job, but it’s not the most important thing in the world. I put my daughter first, unlike her egg donor. So you’re damn right I’ll do everything in my power to place Reece over my career. Always.
Two days later, I still haven’t come up with anything new for Jordie. Honestly, I’ve been swamped with meetings since I saw her, but my mind keeps going back to her. I have to come up with something because I feel this inescapable need to please Jordie McNamara.
My twin and I are reclined back on lounge chairs beside his pool in the hot July sun, while our cousin Dutton is in the pool with the kids. Though Dutton’s son, River, is a year younger than Reece, they love playing together. And it’s nice to see our cousin relaxing a bit. He’s acowboy who owns Hale Ranch north of Houston, and all he seems to do is work, take care of his boy, and act like a grouch.
I bring up my struggles with Jordie’s campaign to Helix, and he ruminates on it for a moment. He’s seriously the smartest guy I know, and though he has a doctorate degree in biochemistry, he’s more than just a lab rat. Helix is surprisingly astute when it comes to the human psyche. I’m pretty sure he has some kind of superpower.
“Why don’t you play up the more natural angle and her all-American looks?” he suggests. “You know, instead of trying to make her some glam queen?”
I nod slowly because that’s exactly what my team’s first attempts had been. Trying to make Jordie something she’s not.
We scheme for a while over color palettes, and Helix suggests coming up with some softer hues for her makeup to make her look more like, well…her. Yes, we’re a cosmetics company, but playing up a woman’s natural beauty is key.
As my eyes rake over the pool, the color reminds me of her. “Jordie’s eyes are the most stunning color of aqua. I’ve never seen eyes like hers before,” I say in a voice that makes Helix’s eyebrow rise.
Shit. That sounded dreamy as fuck. But she’s just so damn pretty. And seeing her vulnerable side when she was worried about whether or not this was the right move for her only made me admire her more. It took a lot of guts to admit that.
“And you’re sure there’s nothing going on with you two?” Helix asks, suspicion lacing his question.
I wish.
My face reddens at theunbidden thought, and I quickly blurt out, “Nothing at all. I think I annoy her.” Jordie had seemed inordinately hostile toward me at the beginning, and all I’d done was compliment her.
“Understandable,” my asshole twin chuckles. “You annoy the shit out of me too.”
The next day, I get to work designing a new campaign for Jordie McNamara from scratch.
She was completely accurate earlier this week. The sketches did nothing to capture what I’m going for. Especially after meeting her in person. Jordie is phenomenal in every way, from her natural beauty to her innate strength.
Her words come back to me.Nothing about ballgowns and beehives screams strong to me. I’m more of a ponytail and cleats kind of girl.
I begin sketching like a mad man as ideas come like lightning strikes in my brain. A ballgown, but she tears it off. Regular clothes underneath. No, no, scratch that. Herfootball uniformunderneath. Yes, fuck yes. And cleats. Quick flashes to her lips to show the lipstick. Then her eyes for the eyeshadow. Dear god, the woman has the most mesmerizing eyes I’ve ever seen.
My hand flies over the pages for over an hour, and then I flip back to the first page. The ballgown ripped to shreds. My cock twitches, and I scoot back my chair a couple inches to look down at it.
“What the fuck was that?” I ask, but it has no excuse for its behavior. Dicks are like that.
