She reaches for a small bowl, looks me over, then grabs the medium one instead. "Now, the most important question. Which flavor?"
"Flavor?" Her tongue swipes her lower bottom lip, and I can’t help but track the movement. A single word slips out. "Vanilla."
She laughs, and my dick pulses in response.
What the fuck? I haven't... I scrub a hand over my face. I haven't felt attraction inyears.
"I will humor you with asmallscoop of vanilla if you insist, but you are not a vanilla man."
"I'm not?"
"No." She leans over the ice cream case and puts a quarter scoop of vanilla in the bowl, then studies me. "Something dark and silky. Rich and not too sweet. The kind that commands a room and a person's taste buds. Meant to be savored late into the night."
I swallow hard. With every soft word, the ice cream shop fades away, until there's only Gemma, the scent of vanilla, and the odd feeling in my chest.
"You're a decadent chocolate caramel truffle, I think. The kind of flavor that lingers in your memory." She puts a big scoop of ice cream in the bowl next to the vanilla, another smile teasing her lips as she holds my gaze.
I reach for the bowl.
She holds it away, looking personally offended. "You can't have naked ice cream."
The image of licking vanilla ice cream off the soft skin between her breasts suddenly hits me full force, and my cock hardens so fast that my head swims. Jesus Christ. I can't afford this kind of distraction. Not tonight.
And yet, I can't walk away.
Gemma adds some chocolate chips and a light drizzle of caramel to the bowl. "Whipped cream?" she asks, then shakes her head. "No, that would make it too sweet."
She holds the ice cream out.
I stare at her a beat, then slowly reach for the bowl.Our fingers brush, and I hear the slight hitch in her breathing. Her cheeks flush beneath my gaze.
I can't forget the job or that I'm only here for one more night. But for this one moment, I let myself pretend I'm the kind of man who would be worthy of breathing the same air as Gemma.
It’ll be a memory to take with me when I disappear from this life.
CHAPTER TWO
GEMMA
You can't become a teacher if you're in jail.
Damn him. My father knows exactly which buttons to push to force me to do what he wants. Tonight is dinner with some important investor and then another fundraising gala for his campaign election.
Me: Dad, please. I don’t want to go
Dad: Your mother is sick. You know she can’t be there. I need you to stand beside me to show them I care about family
I stare down at the message on my phone, watching those three little dots that say he is typing, stomach rolling before I even read the next message.
Dad: I don’t want to ruin your life, Gemma. Don’t force my hand
I want to refuse. I want to drop my phone in the vat of chocolate sauce I just removed from the industrial refrigeratorand pretend I didn’t see the text, but that would be a waste of perfectly good chocolate, which might be more of a crime than what he’s set me up for.
It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know what I was signing, or what he would do with it. Arthur Townsend gets what he wants. He has since he married my mom and adopted me when I was four.
That doesn’t erase the man who built me a treehouse or showed up for my first school play when my mom didn’t.
It just means the man who loves me and the dirty politician aren’t the same person.
