by Natalie Wrye
Right at the busty blonde and what can only be another baseball player. The man on the other side of the door frame looks like he just stepped out of an ESPN ‘This is 30’ episode.
I swallow thickly. “Actually he could use the company.” I glance at Sevin’s hard-lined face, searing my stare into it. “I was just leaving.”
He reaches for me, scarcely missing my wrist. But I’m moving too fast.
I hear my name called out into the hallway, but it’s barely a blip over the rush of blood surging in my ears and the sound of the suppressed sob on my tongue.
My brain has finally slowed down after Sevin’s kiss, and remembering that the bed-breaking athlete is my client is easier than ever.
SEVIN
It takes me five minutes to get rid of Sawyer and the blonde bunny from the party in my penthouse.
But it’s going to take a lot longer to get Emily to respond to me.
No amount of messaging her on the MyNeighbor app can get her to reply, and I decide after two hours of trying my luck to turn to something else.
Wrapping my head around how to get her out of the suite she shares with Kayla and Charlie? Well, that’s the hard part.
Finally dressed in a t-shirt, jeans and cap, I take the elevator down the several stories to her floor, feeling like a virgin on prom night, my heart pounding.
I need Emily.
I hate to say it, but it’s true. Getting a glimpse of the lawyer, the professional she is, has me convinced: She’s the only person who can get me out of this paternity scheme unscathed.
And I trust her. I hate to say it.
Despite her hiding the fact that she knew we were neighbors, I can see the resilience in her hazel eyes, the absolute dedication in her job.
Not to mention the adoration she has for the little girl who may be my own.
She stared at the eight-year old with the sort of innocent appreciation of a woman who actually likes children—a rarity in my career where female hangers-on care more about breast implants than babies.
Not that anything was wrong with either.
It’s just that… There was something protective in the way she hovered around the abandoned child and the hallway cat. Something sexily possessive.
She stood beside each, as if she’d shield them from harm in any way she knew how.
And I had to admit: It shocked me. Inspired me.
Racked me with guilt in ways that I’d never delved into exploring.
Would I ever be capable of that kind of caring?
It is all I can think of as I disembark the elevator on her floor, ambling down the hallway.
But that’s when I see him.
That damn cat. Dawdling there. Belonging to its own category of “pain-in-the-ass.”
I walk towards the small mewling beast, reaching for it when it runs.
Fuck.
I head after the scampering creature, turning the corner as he claws around the bend.
But I run into something else on the other side.
Her round green eyes peer up at me in surprise. I stop.
“Charlie,” I say her name, my voice a startled croak. “What the…?” I glance over my shoulder. “What are you doing out here? And by yourself?”
The little girl points down the hallway where the black cat is bunkered down, staring at us both.
“Felix needed some space. After that small plane we flew on.” Her little chin tips towards her collar with guilt. “But then he ran after I opened the door.”
I walk closer, my throat closing up. “And where’s Kayla? Where’s Emily?”
“Kayla is still asleep. Emily went to pick up some food for us.” She grins shyly but then it falls. “She’s nice. I was hungry.” She raises her chin. “I ate all the snacks she gave to me for the plane ride.”
“But you can’t just roam around here by yourself.” My throat almost squeezes shut. I try to swallow around the knot there. “Something could happen to you.”
She frowns up at me, a hint of anger touching those pine-like irises. She crosses her arms, her little wrists intertwining across her chest.
Looking eerily like me.
I swallow again.
“I can take care of myself, you know.”
I nod. “I’m sure you can.”
“I’m eight years old now. My mom says I’m more mature than other kids my age. They barely even let other kids into the sky boxes at the baseball games, but I’m so much more mature than other kids.”
Sky boxes? Baseball games?
I thought Deborah was a down-on-her-luck waitress. I try to shake the sentence off, but then I notice the long-sleeved t-shirt Charlie’s wearing.
It’s a New York Fever baseball t-shirt. My old team.
I bend at the knee to meet her eyes. “You like baseball, don’t you?”
“Softball, really.” She grins, her little teeth gleaming. “I’m the best player on my team.”
Her confidence makes me smile. “That right?”
“Yeah.” She nods. “We’re on Spring break now from school. But our last game, we creamed the other team.” She pounds one little fist into the other and I can’t hold back the laugh that leaves my throat.
“Of course you did. Baseball runs in your blood, grasshopper.”
The laugh stops as I realize what I’ve said. My head feels tight and my tongue goes dry.
Without another word, I head towards Felix, huddled in the corner of the hallway, and this time the furry feline actually lets me grab him, holding him close.
I return to Charlie, putting one hand on her shoulder, knowing that tonight is not the night.
It’s not the night to push this connection on Emily. No matter how damn strong it is.
I decide to get Charlie back to her hotel suite where she belongs…and my libido back to my own suite. Where it too belongs.
“Come on, softball champ.” I motion. “Let’s get you and Felix back to where you belong.”
And as Charlie walks in front of me, I notice the writing on the back of her t-shirt. Writing that makes me realize I’m in much more trouble with this blackmailing-paternity case than I thought.
Because it’s my name imprinted on the back of her small jersey.
Chapter 11
EMILY
Friday morning
The morning after my kiss with Sevin is no better than the sleepless night I spent last night.
After I left Sevin’s room, I was trying to avoid leaving my hotel suite for little else other than Kung Pao and a mental ass-chewing.
I came back to my room last night—post-make-out, of course—to discover a newly awake Charlie and Kayla, noticing that the shy little girl that had come into all of our lives with this case had, in a matter of a few hours, changed since our arrival.
With a (finally awake) Kayla as a co-partner in an effort to keep the mood light after Charlie’s clearly crazy mother’s abandonment, I showed the little soldier a series of my favorite cartoons—the Tiny Toon Adventures, the Animaniacs and more, laughing with the two sleepyheads over spicy sauce and fried rice, checking in with my boss Stephan before heading to bed to what turned out to be the most fitful night of sleep I’ve ever had.
It was almost impossible not to think about the disturbingly sexy athlete a few floors ways.
Almost.
For the rest of the night after our kiss, I managed to avoid the elevator, taking the stairs and keeping radio silence on the MyNeighbor app.
Until this morning…
As my mind replays the devastatingly sexy way Sevin nipped his teeth at my bottom lip last night, my phone blares, signaling the start of another day.
The morning sun stretches itself in Arizona-orange colors around the edge of my heavily-curtained hotel window, and I slowly sit up in the humongous, tousled bed, imagining all the different ways I’ll have to prevent myself from running into the bunny-attracting baseball pro.
But first…the phone.
I pick it up, hoping i
t will be my former boss, Violet, who still hasn’t responded to my last text.
“Hello?”
“Well, hello and a happy Chicago morning to my favorite whore,” Ben practically sings over the line, his voice a laugh. “How’s your A.M. going?”
“Just fine,” I sigh, “until you reminded me that I’m the stupidest woman on the planet.”
“You are not stupid. And I oughta smack you for saying that about my best friend. What?” He presses. “Are you still freaking about this whole Sevin deal? I thought we talked about this at an unreasonable length before.”
I exhale, feeling my body slump as I lay in the gigantic hotel bed. “And what if I am?”
“Then you really are stupid. And hush. I can say that about my best friend… Because she knows how much I love her. You listen to me,” he warns, “there is nothing wrong with you taking a second to step out of your perfect plans. What, did he reject you?”
I groan into my pillow. “No, the very opposite.”
He gasps, his voice a raspy croak coming out. “And how was it?”
“It wasn’t much. Just a few kisses.” I hesitate, warming at the thought. “But it was seriously incredible.” I sigh. “And it can’t go any further than that.”
He sniffs with a sudden haughtiness. “Dammit, Ems, you should have gone for it. Free yourself from the constrains of propriety. See how good a little chaos can taste.”
“No.” I shake my head, knowing Ben can’t see it. Knowing that he can’t know how badly I’ve screwed up. “No, Ben, I should have known better. I mean, for Christ’s sake, Sevin is a major player. I’ve heard his late night antics enough times to know. And in case we’re forgetting, the man is a freaking client of ours.”
“You’re human. And Sevin is one of the hottest men on the planet. It could have happened to anyone.”
“No, it couldn’t have happened to anyone…because a rational person wouldn’t have slipped up and forgotten that. A rational person would have stayed away.”
“Are you insane? A rational person would have slipped and fell on that immaculate cock of his instead.”
I scoff, covering my mouth. “You are the crudest person I know.”
Ben makes kissing noises over the phone. “And you love it. But if you love your sex or love life even a little, you will do it a favor and let yourself have this—have Sevin. I mean, what man have you actually tried dating this year?” His voice sinks. “And that jerk-off Jason doesn’t count.”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Uh huh. And before Jason?”
I think back, coming up empty. It’d been forever, actually.
I’d avoided men, choosing my career instead.
Ben expels a harsh breath, letting it reverberate over the line. “I’ll take your silence as a big fat ‘it’s been too long.’ And seriously, you can’t have only a relationship with your job, Em.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that the only late-nights you pull…are with a case file. I’m talking about the fact that you never let yourself get close to anyone. And the fact that the only ‘Favorites’ saved in your phone are me—a man who sleeps with other men and your boss, a man who, despite his great looks, seems depressingly asexual.” I can hear his frown from here. “Now tell me that isn’t true.”
“It isn’t true,” I toss back. Ben sucks his teeth as I keep talking. “My mom is also saved as a ‘Favorite,’ asshole.”
I chuckle, hearing Ben do the same, silently despising that what he’s saying is so true. We hang up shortly after, and afterwards I lay there, starfished on the bed, not ready to start readying myself for the day.
For Sevin’s game.
I have no choice. Babysitting our client of an athlete means I have to watch his, as Ben called it, perfectly formed butter pecan ass.
Sevin’s a job. And I’m in a relationship with my job. A serious one.
But that’s what’s keeps me going.
Because a job was simple. And it was safe. And it, in no way, shape or form, would ever break my heart.
Careers couldn’t do that.
They couldn’t ‘forget’ to call. They couldn’t stand me up.
A career wouldn’t shred my feelings into a million shards and leave me to pick up the pieces.
Which makes my decision to avoid Sevin seem smarter and smarter with every passing second.
So, why do I feel so damn lousy?
Even stretching my limbs out in every direction on the eight-hundred count sheets doesn’t help.
The silence wrapping itself around me in my empty hotel room would be complete…if it were actually silent in the room at all.
Because without a conscious thought, I perform my daily ritual of blasting whatever nineties girl rocker I can find (at the lowest volume so as not to wake Charlie and Kayla in their own rooms), and after everything that’s happened in the last week or so, Tracy Chapman’s throaty trill makes the morning bearable.
The thought of Ben’s words circle through my mind until, weirdly enough, my fingers float to the cotton between my legs, pushing the fabric aside.
I push the shame associated with my feelings for Sevin inside me far enough that the sound of my music overshadows it, and with a few slow swipes, I start fingering myself to the man I’m not allowed to want, a slow shudder sliding across my skin as I close my eyes, giving into sensations I’d long thought were forgotten or at least very much buried in some secret compartment I rarely saw.
I missed that compartment.
I haven’t seen it since I was a lowly secretary in New York City. Better yet, I don’t think I’ve seen the damn thing since college.
My once carefree love life was now stuffed between an Indigo Girls album and a Rocko’s Modern Life cartoon t-shirt that was worn down to the threads.
But then again so was my love life. Worn.
Or rather barely used. Not in years.
Daydreaming about a man I work for should be borderline weird, but with Sevin, it’s not.
And masturbating to him, imagining his face?
It’s dirty in a way I’ve never delved before. But I guess that’s what happens when you’re not going according to your perfect plan.
The man living in the penthouse above me has been my neighbor for less than a month and aside from MyNeighbor app I use and the regular rounds of his late-night sex, I may not have even known he existed.
What would my life be now a week later? Without Sevin in it?
I can’t even imagine it.
I was getting closer to the man behind the uniform, and it was terrifying.
I’d had an idea of who he was from the sound of his late-night antics. But experiencing them was very different.
And I was quickly learning just what kind of man Sevin Smith really was.
A man with talented fingers and an even more talented tongue. A man with deep kisses and dark stares, the kind that leave you panting in anticipation, waiting for just a hint of what’s to come and a sexy smile that drove me absolutely wild.
It would be nice…if I could be that woman he used those fingers and tongue on.
And in my mind, I am that woman. The object of his loud, scream-inducing desire.
A woman temporarily free from my corporate wake-up call. A woman free to desire.
I think of the way I’d thread my fingers into the hair of my off-limits neighbor and client, and my fingertips find the folds between my legs and part them. I imagine massaging the surface of his muscles, and I whimper.
Rubbing my palm across my clit to the rhythm of the song playing in the air, I let myself indulge in the absurd fantasy of bedding the irresistible athlete, and with every quiet thud, every squeak of the bed spring, with every muffled scream and tempered whimper, my hands grow more and more bold.
Parting and stroking and sliding.
I explore nerves I’d never taken time to know, and as Tracy Chapman’s warm, woodsy tones reach a peak
over the radio, I push myself towards my own, climbing higher and higher.
I see his face—Sevin’s—hovering over mine, his full lips connecting with my neck.
And I almost reach the brink.
Until I remember how that little scene ended with a buxom blonde on the other end of the doorway, and suddenly, I come crashing back down to the earth, the high that Sevin takes me on obliterated as I think back to the bastard he was before this case ever got started.
Before I broke my “common sense” button and I got close to a man who belongs to no one but the magazines.
I slam my hands back down on the bed, squeezing my fist, so my eyes won’t squeeze out emotion.
I won’t let them.
I need to be a professional right now.
Today more than ever.
Ruining an opportunity to inject life into my sex life was one thing. Ruining my career was entirely another.
Because I sure as hell wasn’t going to do that.
I’m tempted to call Ben back. To tell him he was right.
A rational woman might sleep with Sevin Smith. But I wasn’t a rational woman.
I was a woman with a job to do. And even if it killed any shot at a sex life, that’s exactly what I was going to do.
Chapter 12
SEVIN
Friday evening
The lights grow hotter and brighter at Scottsdale stadium as the sun begins to set over the Arizona horizon. And the anxiousness in my body settles with it.
The smell of fresh cut grass is in the air and all around me.
Headphones in, focus on, I’m the first person to leave the locker room fully dressed, and though the Cougar team clamors around me, I can barely hear them over the sound of my own attentions.
This is the moment where I lose myself. Every time.
The twenty minutes before a game starts is always the same—like clockwork, and with my baseball cap on, music turned up, I tune myself like a machine before the umpire even hits the field, every muscle in my body relaxing as I hit the zone.
Baseball is my first love. And, in some ways, my only.
The practice swings I take before the game starts always help, but it’s this time—this twenty minutes—where the real magic is made.