Page 59 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

What the fuck did he know about her past?

Had she been talking to him?

Despite knowing my older brother was head over heels in love with his high school sweetheart, Sadie, and had been his entire life, I found myself feeling jealous, an emotion I wasn’t used to.

“I think Cuba Gooding Jr. said it best in Jerry Maguire,” Dawson said straightening.

“Show me the money?” I had no clue how that quote corresponded to this conversation.

Dawson shook his head. “No, dumbass, when he was talking to Jerry about dating a single mom.”

“Oh.” I didn’t actually remember what he’d said, I hadn’t watched that movie since I was in high school.

“Don’t shoplift the pooty,” Dawson said as if that was supposed to mean something to me.

“Don’t shoplift the…” Oh, right, I got what he was saying. It took me a second, but I got there. He didn’t want me to sleep with Felicity under false pretenses and take advantage of her.

I wasn’t. She’d laid out the rules, I was doing my best to follow them. Well, except rule number one. Not that I could tell him that, since one of those rules was that no one could know.

“I’m not,” I gritted out, hoping Dawson couldn’t see the nerve he was hitting.

“Good.” Dawson stood and slapped me on the shoulder. “Then don’t.”

I looked up at him.

“And don’t try to save her. Stand beside her. Let her handle her own shit. Let her tell you when she needs help. And if you still want her when she doesn’t need a damn thing from you—” Dawson walked over to the cart and got in. “Then maybe it’s real.”

My brother pulled away after imparting his final words of wisdom and left me feeling even more confused about the situation than I had before. I’d spent most of my life assuming my emotions were kind of a liability—something to be managed, minimized, or eliminated entirely. And I was good at it, no matter how loud or sharp the feeling, I could always shrink it down to something manageable. But I couldn’t do that with Felicity. There was no managing. But that had nothing to do with her being a single mom.

I told myself Dawson was wrong, what I felt for Felicity had nothing to do with a “Superman complex,” which I’d been accused of having more than once. This was just two people acting on an attraction neither of them could deny or ignore. That’s it.

That’s what I told myself, and I almost believed it.

20

BLUE COLLAR ANGEL

Felicity

Mondays were usually my peak productivity days, but this one in particular, I was a force of nature. The office was uncharacteristically empty. I wasn’t sure where everyone was, but I thrived on the solitude and quiet, something I didn’t get a lot of with an active four-year-old and a co-worker I was hooking up with.

The only thing slowing down my efficiency of output was that my mind kept taking breaks to fantasize about Dean Lockhart and his extremely illegal mouth and hands.

I’d positioned my chair so my back was always to the door, which was crucial for daydreaming purposes. In my head, Dean was striding in, all alpha cowboy in a crisp white shirt, and taking me against my own desk—no, not just take. Devour. He would press me into the cool metal without so much as a preamble, all growly and in control. I was in the middle of mentally unbuttoning his jeans, which, let’s be honest, was basically an Olympic sport for me these days, when a sharp vibration shattered my concentration like a brick through glass.

My phone vibrated so hard it threatened to leap straight into next quarter’s projections. I didn’t recognize the number, which typically meant sales calls, and I almost let it go to voicemail, but something—some maternal sixth sense, maybe—forced me to pick up.

“Hello,” I answered.

The woman on the other end sounded like she was performing triage in the middle of a riot. “Ms. Foster! This is Valentine Bay Early Learners. Maverick had a little accident on the playground, he’s okay, but we think you should meet us at the emergency room, just to be safe.”

The words snagged in my brain like a wire hanger on a silk blouse. Emergency room. The only thing worse would have been the phrase “meet us at the police station.”

“What happened?” I asked as I stood and dropped everything—budget, dignity, my beloved insulated coffee mug—and ran out the door.

With the entire building eerily empty, the echo of my boots on the wood flooring following me like a guilt trip. The conference room was a ghost town, the break area, abandoned. I quickly checked in Selma’s office, but it was empty. I considered scrawling a note, but there wasn’t time. Maverick had a head start on a hospital visit and I was already behind.

“He had a tumble from the top of the jungle gym and bumped his head. Clarissa is headed to the E.R. with him now.”