He smiles widely at me. “I know he is.”
I take a deep breath, and my mind wonders, Can it really be that simple? “So, uh, now what?”
He brushes the hair away from my face and leans in, pressing his lips to my forehead. My hand goes to his hard chest, loving the feel of his muscles under my palm.
His hand circles my neck and holds me there. “Well, I’m here now. And the storm brought you to me. I say we see how this plays out.”
It’s crazy. We just met, but I know I can’t turn away. Not now. “Yeah, I’d like that,” I whisper to him right before his lips crush against mine.
Epilogue
A Few Months Later
Clay
I owe Jay. I owe him everything. I would gladly give away every penny I ever made if it meant I had listened to him sooner and in turn found my way to Caroline before I did. But at least she’s mine now.
It shouldn’t have been this simple, I know it, but it has been.
From that first time I saw her, I knew. I was ready to claim her as mine that first night in the basement. After she read the letter and I convinced her to stay awhile, we ate the cookies she brought over and then I took her to my bed, holding her, loving her until she completely forgot about leaving. Since that night, we’ve been inseparable.
“Clay!” she hollers at me and I walk out of the office into the living room.
She’s standing there with a thermos of tea and a bowl of cookies in her hands. She points toward the big bay window out into the darkening sky. “It looks like it’s going to be a big one.”
She’s smiling at me. I never dreamed I would see her smiling about a storm. Maybe it’s because she knows anytime a storm comes, I still take her down to the basement but I make sure to keep her so preoccupied that she forgets all about the storm brewing outside.
I saunter over to her and take the food and drink out of her hands, setting it on the coffee table. I wrap my arms around her. “Are you smiling about a storm, Mrs. Walsh?”
I still can’t believe I convinced her to marry me, but I did. She puts her arms around my waist, sliding them into the band of my shorts. “Yes. I have a lot to smile about.”
I kiss the top of her head. She’s right. We do have a lot to smile about, and I chuckle.
She laughs with me, but she pinches at my stomach. “What are you laughing about, mister?”
I pull back from her, still holding her in my arms. “Oh, you know, my wife is scared of storms, but she’s smiling and laughing. If I had to guess, I’d say you finally went loco.”
She slides her hands up my stomach until they’re resting on my chest. “Well, I’m not loco. I’m just happy. I have a husband that I know will never let a storm touch me, no matter what kind of storm it is and I also know that he’s going to be a great daddy, too.”
I’m already nodding my head, because she’s right: I wouldn’t ever let something hurt her. “Wait, what? Daddy?”
I pull back to look in her face and she already has unshed tears in her eyes. “I took the test this morning. We’re pregnant.”
I fall to my knees and kiss her soft belly. We haven’t used any protection and to me it was just another way to tie her to me. But now it’s more. I’m going to be a dad. I stand back up, lifting her in my arms, holding her gently. “I love you, Caroline.”
She kisses my lips and when I try to deepen the kiss, she pulls away. “I love you too, Clay.”
I walk with her in my arms to the steps that lead to the basement. That’s where this all began; it makes sense that we would celebrate there as well.
As I descend each step, her hands rubbing across my body, I can’t help but think what a lucky man I am.
The day I met Caroline was the single best day of my life. And I owe it all to Jay. Well, to Jay and Texas storms.
THE END
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Bestselling romance author Hope Ford writes short, steamy, sweet romances. She loves tattooed, alpha men, instant love stories, and ALWAYS happily ever afters. She has over 80 books and they are all available on Amazon.
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Lockdown with Daddy Harrison
Jade West
Chapter One
Poppy
I stare out at the garden, the flower beds so neatly trimmed, the lawn so tightly mown. It should be a great sight, but it’s not. Not now I’ve been staring at it for eight weeks straight.
I thought it would be just a few weeks that we would be holed up here, in the middle of nowhere with no freedom to even venture from the grounds. But I was wrong. There’s no end in sight.
Harrison is out there right now, shirtless. He knows I’m watching, even though I’m pretending to look at the planters near the fence and not at him. I’d usually be out there too, in my gardening gloves joining in with his efforts. I’d usually be keeping a smile on my face, laughing and joking about how I can’t wait to see his son – my boyfriend – again.
I was wrong about that, too.
I’ve been wrong about a lot of things lately.
I was wrong about just how much Calvin wanted to get back to me. I was wrong about how our future was together, forever and ever.
Yep. I was wrong. I found out like a slap in the face just how wrong I was about that one.
I’ve seen him with Christy Williams. I’ve seen how they look together on group chat photos, both of them grinning into each other’s eyes like they’ve found their soulmate for all time. Either their soulmate, or the answer to milking his dick every day and night. I’m past caring.
If she can give him what I couldn’t, then good luck to her. If he wouldn’t wait just a little bit longer for me to feel ready to give him my virginity, then he was never worth being my forever.
He was never worth being my anything, in fact – I’m just glad I found out now.
Harrison waves at me, and I wave back. He beckons me to head out there with him but I shake my head. I’m struggling to find the motivation for another day in the garden today. Instead I’m holed up in here, the living room, with the TV on blaring pointless in the background. Even George, the cat, looks fed up to all hell, lying on the arm of Harrison’s chair.
Harrison is trying to keep a fake face on it, but he’s seen the Calvin pics too. He’s seen how his son is cheating on me and fucking a college buddy he was only supposed to be seeing for a catch-up week when lockdown got imposed.
He could’ve come back home.
At the time I believed his bullshit about staying true to regulations and being safe against the virus. I believed he’d come home if he wasn’t scared of passing on the terrible illness to both me and his dad after he’d been out partying with so many people for nights on end. But not anymore.
There’s no way he hasn’t passed through enough of a quarantine to know he wouldn’t be risking giving us anything. This isn’t about the lockdown anymore. It’s about blonde bombshell Christy and her gym body. Not that there’s anything wrong with mine.
I can do a decent stint on the exercise bike, and I might be quite skinny, but I do have some curves to my frame. I like to think I have a pretty enough face to get some horny smiles grinning back at me. I’m just no Christy Williams.
She’s welcome to him.
I’ll be out of here and back to my parents’ place just as soon as lockdown is lifted. I’ll have to be, after all, I don’t belong here unless it’s with Calvin.
Harrison turns his back to me outside and carries on with the hedge cutters, and I notice again how toned he is. He looks like Calvin. Same firm jawline and dark eyes. He’s tall – maybe even a little bit taller than his son – and his shoulders are wide. Wide and muscular.
Yeah, he’s like an older version of Calvin. Calvin but grey, and a little more
rugged. I’m surprised he hasn’t snapped up another woman given that Gina bailed on their marriage over seven months ago. I barely met her when Calvin and I got together, she was already heading off with Joey, one of their old family friends. As it turns out, I didn’t like her much, but I wouldn’t tell Calvin that. He thinks she’s some superstar who still makes his toast in the morning when he stays over at hers. Mummy’s boy.
Harrison sure doesn’t look like he was ever a mummy’s boy. He looks like he was born with hedge trimmers in his hands given the power he has handling them. He wipes the sweat from his forehead and drops them onto the lawn, and he’s heading back inside, making me feel weirdly nervous as he steps in through the back door and heads through to the living room.
“I’m getting a coffee,” he says. “Fancy one?”
I shake my head and mumble out a no thanks, but it’s another bout of weird because my voice doesn’t sound like mine and hasn’t done for the past few days he’s been half naked in the garden. I guess I have the summer sun to thank for that.
Scoping out Harrison’s body is a whole new thing to me. I haven’t been around many naked men in my life. My mum was a single mother and wasn’t really involved with anyone while I was growing up. I don’t have many male family members, and England’s grey skies make any stripped outside bodies a relatively sporadic appearance.
Calvin was my boyfriend. My first love. I thought he’d be my last, too. When I met him at a friend’s eighteenth birthday party all those months ago he blew my world apart, he was that hot and that cocky. He snared me just as soon as he said hello.
I was working up to giving him my first time. I was nearly there, too. He was touching me, and I was sucking him, and if he hadn’t been so… demanding… then maybe… just maybe I’d have wanted to do it sooner…
It doesn’t matter now. Christy has seen to that.
Part of me now wishes I hadn’t met him at all. A bigger part of me wishes I hadn’t followed him like a puppy dog right across the country to hole up with him at his dad’s place.
My tummy has butterflies as I hear Harrison pottering about in the kitchen. I push away the temptation to lean forward in my seat enough to peek around the doorway. I like to believe it’s because he’s been my only real contact for weeks and I’m getting reliant on him, but I’m lying to myself and I know it.
There’s something different in the way he’s been looking at me these past few days, just like there’s something different in the way I’ve been looking at him. He’ll pause just that little bit longer, his eyes holding on mine, and I feel my cheeks burning every time. I feel that tender little flutter down deep, nervous of him just like I was nervous around Calvin when he came crashing like a tornado into my life.
I can’t fancy Harrison. Not like I fancy his son. I mean, I just can’t. He’s way over twice my age, and I shouldn’t. It’s beyond forbidden to think about your boyfriend’s dad in bed at night, with your fingers down between your legs.
Still, I do it.
I couldn’t stop doing it these past few nights.
Panting.
Craving.
Dreaming of him.
Dreaming up what he could do to me.
He puts his head around the door, sipping on his coffee, with that same intense stare as he looks at me.
“You not coming outside, Poppy?” he says. “How about you be a good girl and help me with the planting?”
There’s something about the way he says good girl that has me jittery. I want to be a good girl for him. I’ve been a good girl for my mum, and for my teachers at school… but this seems a whole lot different somehow.
I give him a nod. “I’ll help with the planting.”
“That’s my girl,” he says, and those butterflies multiply as I get to my feet.
I brush it all off as nothing and throw my sandals on. I follow him out into the garden and take his guidance on which seeds I should be planting where, and I force myself to think of this as normal. The whole lot of it as normal.
There is nothing weird in how I’m thinking about Harrison Gable, and there is nothing weird in how he’s thinking about me. This is just us, holed up together at his place, with my boyfriend – sorry, ex-boyfriend – being a dickhead and leaving me here. As soon as this has eased up, Harrison will be waving me off with a sigh of relief, never to see me again. He’s probably looking forward to having his space back. A guy in his forties wanting to watch porn on the big TV with his dick out every night. I dunno. I have no idea what Harrison does for fun when I’m not around.
I dig down into the planters and put the seeds where they are supposed to go, and the sun shines bright. Even George the cat heads on out with us and spreads himself out on the lawn with his tail swishing.
I ignore Harrison and his toned body, and he ignores me. I’m sure he does. I’m sure he’s not looking over at me nearly as often as my paranoid mind thinks he is. There’s no way the shivers I’m getting are really because of his stares. There’s no way he’d be looking at me like that.
But he is.
Every time I turn my head to check it out, his eyes really are on me.
His smile isn’t his usual smile. It’s darker somehow. More loaded somehow.
It’s crazy how I feel like I’m cheating on Calvin, even though I’m only staring back at his dad. It’s crazy how I feel like I’m cheating at all, seeing as Calvin is the one who fucked me over to screw someone else.
I finish planting the new batch of seeds and head back inside when Harrison does.
He makes us a summer evening platter of salad and meat, and it’s nice to sit there at the dining room table, enjoying dinner.
We watch some shit TV together tonight, but I don’t say a word. My voice feels caught in my throat every time I try to speak.
I say I’m tired way before midnight, and head upstairs. Harrison waves me off, but stays where he is, watching some dull ass TV show.
I’m still awake when I hear his footsteps on the stairs. I’m staring at the ceiling when I hear the bathroom door open across the landing, and then hear the shower start up. I try not to picture him in there, under the stream.
I fail.
I can’t stop picturing him in there, under the stream.
My fingers slip down under the covers, and right down between my thighs. I’m already wet, and start circling, and it feels so bad. So dirty. But I can’t stop.
I panic and pull my hand away when I hear the shower stop. My heart is racing guilty, even though I know he’ll be straight through to his room without so much as giving me a thought.
Only he isn’t.
His footsteps sound loud on the landing outside my door, but they stop there. I can sense him just outside my room. I can sense him towelling himself down and staying right there.
There is something so forbidden about thinking about him on the other side.
There is something so forbidden about how I still want to touch myself, even knowing he is right there.
I’m not expecting it when the door handle creaks.
I suck in a breath as a crack of light shines into the room. And there he is. Harrison is standing there in the doorway, wrapped in nothing but a towel.
I pretend to be asleep, but my eyes are open just enough to see a little. My heart is thumping hard as he steps up closer, and I don’t know what to do.
“I know you’re awake, Poppy,” he whispers, and he’s closer than I thought. Standing right by my bed.
I stay quiet. I keep my eyes closed. But it doesn’t stop him coming closer. He pulls back the covers, and I hold my breath as he slides in next to me.
His hands are warm as they wrap me up. His breath is hot on my face.
“How about we cuddle up awhile?” he asks, and I jump when I feel his hardness against my thigh.
He’s huge.
Scary huge.
Much bigger than Calvin.
“I know you’ve been thinking about cuddling up to me, too,” he whispers
, and I can’t hide how quick my breaths are.
“We shouldn’t…” I whisper back. “We shouldn’t cuddle up, because of Calvin…”
But he doesn’t care.
Harrison doesn’t care.
“Calvin can fuck off,” he growls. “He doesn’t deserve another second with you. You’re worth way more than that slutty Christy bitch will ever be worth.”
His words make me feel so warm. And I haven’t realised. Haven’t realised just how hurt I’ve been by the way Calvin chose her over me.
It’s a little lurch of a sob, and I feel so young and so small as Harrison wraps me up tight in his arms.
“It’s alright, little girl,” he whispers. “I’ve got you. You can cry it out now.”
But I don’t want to cry it out.
His hands feel so warm and so big as he holds me close. His hardness is throbbing against my leg, and I find I’m squirming to feel more.
I want more.
I shouldn’t want more, but I do.
“What do you want, little girl?” he asks. “You tell Daddy Harrison what you want now.”
Daddy Harrison.
I’ve never heard him say that.
I’ve never thought of him like that.
But it’s so true.
He really could be my daddy Harrison.
I don’t know what I’m saying until I say it.
“Please…” I whisper.
And he knows.
He knows just what I want.
His fingers slip down, right the way between my thighs. But it’s different than when Calvin does it. He doesn’t rub fast. He doesn’t grab my hand and make me touch him right back.
He’s so soft. So gentle. But it feels so… right…
So good…
“That’s it,” he breathes. “Let Daddy show you how nice it can feel.” He pauses. “I’ve heard Calvin trying to please you, but he’s just a boy. A boy who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.”
LOVE IN LOCKDOWN: A Charity Anthology Page 16