by Natalie Wrye
“Thanks for your sympathy, Nome. It’s appreciated. And the good news?”
“The good news: Stephan and Kayla found your Deborah Jett. They called her NYC hotel room and she actually picked up. She’ll be in Chicago by Sunday morning.”
“That’s two days from now. And what the hell does she want now?”
“She wants her daughter back, Sev.”
The statement’s like a punch to the gut.
“She wants to drop the entire case,” Naomi tells me—as excited as I should be. “We’re having her sign an NDA and no-contact contract. And then this crazy witch will be out of our lives forever…”
I rub the back of my neck, repeating the words back in my mind. Because it doesn’t make any sense.
What does make sense: The thought that if Deborah Jett is out of my life forever, then that means a lot of other things too.
Means that Charlie will be out of my life forever.
Meaning that Emily might be, too.
Means that I’m getting exactly what I wanted. And I’m not even sure I want it anymore.
I hang up with Naomi, feeling sick and feeling nothing like the Sterling Sevin Smith I once thought I was.
Chapter 15
EMILY
Friday night
He’s back. The Sevin from before.
The minute after Sevin gets the call on his cell, that something warm, that something new that I watched grow inside the sexy baseball player, disappears right in front of my eyes.
The same cold, hard version that confronted me outside of my apartment is back, and even when we finally find Felix, letting Charlie wrap the easily scared cat in her arms, he remains frigid.
Walking back to our hotel suite, I try to make eye contact but he avoids it, and when we finally reach the suite, I usher Charlie into her room inside with all our game-time paraphernalia and goodies. All sandy hair and sleepy smiles, she hugs me quickly before heading inside.
With a small moment of hesitation, she decides to wrap her arms around Sevin too and when I glance up into his face, it’s as if he’s in pain, his handsome face pinched as he grabs her and lets go a few seconds later.
I wait until the bedroom door’s completely closed before I turn to him. But he is already heading to the bar on the other side of the suite, his hands reaching for the small bottles of alcohol.
“So?” I press as his fingers find a bottle of vodka and start pouring.
He doesn’t turn. “So what?”
I start walking closer. “You want to tell me what the call was about? The one that just turned you into a corpse?”
His shoulders are rigid as he brings the glass of vodka to his lips. He pauses before taking a sip. “It’s nothing.”
“Oh, yeah? And is it that ‘nothing’ that’s making you drink like a fish?”
Sevin starts pouring again. “Just a little after-game night cap.” He finally turns to me, the pain from earlier still in his eyes. “Care to join me?”
I glance at the glass and at his face, stepping closer. “Sure, I guess. I mean, we’re teammates, aren’t we? Teammates don’t let other teammates drink alone, right?”
“Damn straight.” He takes the second glass of vodka to the head, tilting the entire shot into his open mouth. I resist the urge to swallow as he wets his bottom lip. “Considering everything, you’re better than most teammates I’ve had.”
I blink, my stomach tightening as I look at Sevin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, nothing. Not a damn thing.” He scoffs on a laugh, turning back to the bar. “Just thinking of old memories for a sec.”
I glance at his back, muscular and rippling beneath his long-sleeved cotton shirt.
He’s dressed casually post-game, a simple t-shirt and sweats slung sexily over his chiseled frame. But there’s something wrong, awfully wrong, and I can’t help but think it has something to do with the phone call he got in the hallway.
The phone call he refuses to talk about.
I sip at my drink. “Care to share what those memories were, teammate?”
Sevin opens the vodka again. “Not particularly.”
I take a deep breath, this time my diaphragm tightening as I gaze at a slowly simmering Sevin, his anger heating just below his well-built surface.
“Does this have anything to do with Finley?”
He turns, his baseball cap still shadowing half of his face. But I can tell he’s furious.
That angular jaw of his gets to ticking, and all of that hidden anger, that slowly boiling ire, shines through his pine-green eyes. He puts down his glass for the first time since he started drinking.
“Who the hell mentioned anything about Finley?” It’s not a question, but an accusation. And I won’t back down.
I bite into my lip. “I read some things. Heard some things about your old teammate. You guys were roommates, weren’t you?”
He laughs, but there’s nothing humorous about it.
“Alright. Time’s up. That’s enough sharing for tonight, teammate.” He throws the word at me like an insult. “And that’s absolutely none of your business. You’re my lawyer, kitten. My fixer. Not my therapist.”
“Well, if you didn’t hold your cards so close to the chest, I wouldn’t have to try to be one. Like it or not, this is my business,” I assert, lowering my glass. “You’re my business. Charlie’s my business. How you act around Charlie is my business. And you weren’t acting like yourself tonight. Not at the end of it.”
He takes a step forward, swiping his glass from the bar so hard it sloshes. He stares at me. “What do you want from me, Emily? What else do you need? I helped win the game tonight. Helped secured my spot.” He scoffs. “Don’t worry. You’re doing a hell of a job at this case. Keeping it out of the spotlight. Just like I asked. And you and your firm will be handsomely paid. Because that’s all you care about, right? Getting paid?”
I glare. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. It was pretty clear that’s all you care about the night you called me your ‘job’ outside your apartment.” He raises his glass. “So, please: Go back to treating me like just your job. Because a job? That, I can handle. Because whatever this is,” he motions back and forth, “whatever this is between us? I can’t. So, please,” he exhales, knocking the rest of the vodka down his throat. “Tell me again how I’m nothing but business to you.”
I feel my eyebrows hit my hairline. “Would that make you feel better?”
“Yes, it would, actually.” Sevin drinks from his glass. “It would help me remember where we stand.”
Yup. There he is. The asshole side of Sevin we just spoke about.
But I see through his cover now. Unlike before.
It’s the same side of me—the one I’ve used before to keep people at bay.
It worked when Sevin and I were just neighbors. It worked when the annoying athlete hadn’t wanted a spotlight on his love-less love life.
But now?
Now I’ve gotten a chance to see the other side of Sevin.
The playful, caring, open side. And I’m not about to let it hide again.
I tighten my stance. “Yes, Sevin, if you are so rudely asking where you and I stand, then I will tell you again.” I blow out a hard breath. “You are a job to me, of course.”
Sevin toasts the air. “Well, then there you go. That’s a relief.” He finishes the drink, exhaling out loud. “Now I can properly see myself out.”
He tries to turn, but I won’t let him.
I shock myself when I grab his bicep, pulling him to a stop, and in a matter of seconds, I’m face to face with a six-foot-something wall of well-contained anger and hurt hovering over me with every inch of his muscular frame.
I inhale sharply, my words coming out stronger than I feel. I straighten my back. “You are a job to me, Sevin. Yes, that’s true.” I release a broken breath. “But I think I misjudged ‘my job.’ Just as you said.”
I lean closer. “
I think I was very wrong about my ‘job.’ And very judgmental about my job. I think that my job was right about me not trusting other, uh, jobs in the past.” I sigh, feeling it all the way in my toes as the silence stretches. I can barely get the words out I’m shaking so hard. “And if my job would give me a chance, I’d like to prove to…my job that I’m not trying to see him as a job….” A knot hits the back of my throat, and I clear it. “Anymore.”
The last word is like a dead weight.
And Sevin doesn’t make it any easier.
His stare is hard—stony beneath his Chicago Cougars baseball cap. Stony enough to make me squirm.
But I’m not going to let him dismiss me like so many other women in his life, writing them off at the first sign of trouble.
This is me. And this—between us—is more.
I’m a woman with probably too much mouth and more cartoon-adorned underwear than the law should allow.
But I’m also a woman who is not letting go. My hand remains wrapped around his bicep, which doesn’t move.
He gazes down at me, his skin hot underneath my own. “Are you done? Did you manage it?”
I relent, raising my jaw by an inch, meeting his gaze. “Manage what, Mr. Smith?”
“Convincing yourself that we haven’t been way past the point of this being about our jobs a long time ago.” He takes the cap off his sexily tossed hair and gives me a full view of those damning green eyes. Eyes that are stuck on my face. He bends closer. “I just needed to hear you admit it.”
And then he kisses me.
SEVIN
It takes a second before she lets me in, her full lips opening for my kiss. At last.
The first time I kissed her…was a mistake. At least, she thought so.
And I knew it.
The second kiss, I would make sure was no mistake, and though I feel like I failed some test the old Sevin would have passed, though I’ve pushed buttons inside myself I buried long ago, I knew the pay-off would be well worth the effort.
With Emily, it always is.
The ballsy brunette has bewitched me.
I can smell the salty-sweet sweat on her skin from the long day. By the time she glances nervously up and into my eyes as I lean in, I’m already staring back at her, my body itching, skin humming as desire sweeps into Emily’s gaze, clouding whatever resistance was already there.
I can’t resist any longer.
I lower myself towards her, every inch of me on fucking fire. I hesitate for the smallest of seconds before touching her lips to mine as she pulls me in, wrapping her arms around my neck, giving me all the permission I need.
And I kiss her, feeling hungry as hell, exercising every ounce of restraint the universe will allow as Emily’s mouth moves against mine, slow and tentative.
And we both give in.
The kiss starts off soft—even tender.
The question mark that has been in both of our minds is finally out of the way, but as each second passes, as our mouths slowly angle and passion builds, the touches grow faster—eager.
I hold back just a fraction until I feel Emily’s tongue, and I stroke the smooth length of it with mine, hearing her moan, the last of my control snaps as I press my body into hers, letting the kiss take on a life of its own.
And what a life it is—full of everything I didn’t know could even exist.
This woman’s kisses are an instant addiction.
Her ample breasts press against my chest, her fingers tangled in my mane.
She tastes of honey and a hint of mouthwash, and the exhilarating feel of her soft body against mine—squeezing close, her soft tongue and sweet moans mewling into my mouth is enough to leave me panting for more, my pants tenting at the crotch as a steel erection comes alive underneath my boxer briefs and sweats, making itself known.
I twist my body away from hers to stop myself from rubbing it against her, but when she lifts her body towards me, her hips circling across my dick’s tip for more, I rub her right back, shifting my hips to stroke my hardened cock at the center of her denim, loving the way the motion makes her squirm under my touch.
“Fuck, Emily,” I find myself moaning on her lips. “It was never just a job. You were never just a job. And I should have told you from the moment we met.”
She groans between licks and bites, her teeth sucking gently on my tongue as she writhes beneath my body, her words a gasp I can barely hear. “To be fair, you didn’t know who I was when we first met…”
“Good thing I didn’t. If I’d known you would be my lawyer, I’d have fucked you right there on the spot.”
She sighs softly, whimpering as my hands inch beneath her cotton shirt, stroking her stomach. She shudders when I caress her bare ribs.
“Goh.” She mutters over and over, the Farsi curse falling from her lips with ease. I chuckle.
“If I can do that with just a touch there,” I muse aloud. “Then I wonder what will happen when I put my thumb…” I inch higher to her breast, squeezing its edge lightly through the fabric. “Here.”
She moans loudly, and it’s enough for me to keep going, my thumbs circling the soft mound in search of her nipple. And when I find it, it is all I can do not to put my mouth there, not to slip my lips over the hardened nub and pull with my teeth.
But I can’t stop kissing her. Can’t tear my face away from hers long enough to pull it off.
Especially when I hear the sound of a door opening behind us.
I separate myself from Emily. Just before Charlie appears in her bedroom doorway, one hand rubbing at her eye.
“Emily?” The messy haired cherub calls from fifteen feet away.
“Yeah?” The breathless lawyer turns, her cheeks still flushed from my kiss. “Everything okay, grasshopper?”
She adopts my nickname for Charlie. And I couldn’t find either of them more adorable right now.
I clear my throat. “I must have woken her up,” I whisper to Emily.
She hisses back. “No, I think that was me. The last move you pulled put me over the top.”
But the debate ends right then because without thinking the two of us head towards Charlie, ready to make amends and put our grasshopper and her pet cat Felix to bed…and maybe all of our cravings with it.
Tomorrow and all of the hard decisions about Emily and me and Charlie’s mom can wait.
Tonight? Tonight I have to put a little girl back to sleep. And, unfortunately, for me, it may be one of my last chances to do it.
Chapter 16
SEVIN
The next morning
The only thing worse than wanting my lawyer is pretending I don’t.
After putting Charlie back to bed, I retreat back to my hotel suite, lying awake in agony at the thought that I won’t be spending the night with Emily.
And I could see it before I left.
The desire in her eyes.
I could practically smell it on her skin, and less than ten hours later, I try to beat the scent out of my head and body, heading to the hotel gym at the break of dawn to exercise the longing away.
But I’m not alone.
I enter the fitness center, neglecting to turn the lights on. I head towards the weights in the back when I hear the sound of a footstep behind me.
“Sev.” The voice hisses.
I turn, finding blue eyes on me. I balk. “Saw, is that you?”
The blue eyes are wrapped in shadow until my teammate steps forward. “Yeah, it’s me, man. You were expecting the Easter Bunny?”
“Please.” I rotate on my heel, picking up a few weights. I sit on the nearest bench. “The only person here concerned about bunnies is you, bro. The Playboy type.”
He grins, taking the bench beside me, reaching for a few weights of his own. He starts lifting. “I can’t help it if I’m the quintessential carrot—wanted by bunnies the world around.” He grunts, pulling a dumbbell to his chin. “Speaking of bunnies, what was that whole deal with Daphne?”
I groan, my ar
m straining with each bicep curl. I glare in the walled mirror at myself, feigning ignorance. “What? There was no ‘deal’ with Daphne.”
“Exactly,” he stresses. “And there should have been. The woman was damn near perfect, Sev. And for once, I was actually willing to turn over a woman to you. Doesn’t get more generous than that.”
“Wow. What a gentleman you are, Saw.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” He winks with a laugh, his lightly bearded face shaking. “I don’t get you these days, man. What happened to the good ol’ Sterling I used to know? My favorite fellow man-whore? My partner in pussy?”
“For fuck’s sake, Saw. Think you could be any more disgusting?”
“Sure, I could. Just ask the two women I woke up to this morning.”
I shake my head, remembering Naomi’s comment last night about Sawyer. The harem of women he’d brought back to bed, that he’d woken up to this morning.
Had I really been that bad?
Is that what I’d been all these years post-Kimmy? Like Saw?
I shudder to think.
Because if I had been, then it all made sense…
Why Emily had hated me as a neighbor. Why this Deborah Jett was now in my life. And why I didn’t remember her.
Sawyer moves to the other side of the fitness center, heading for the squat rack. And I try to forget.
Forget the man I’ve been these last ten years.
And just when I think I’ve finally found the solitude I need, the chance to zone out to Pink Floyd blasting from my headphones and pound out my frustration, the echo of strange footsteps pulls me from my trance, the sight of Emily Armand in a set of skin-tight leggings and tank completely obliterating any chance of focusing from where I sit.
Her dark silky hair in a high ponytail, her hazel eyes grow to the size of full moons, her long lashes fluttering slowly as she stutters. Her gait slows.
“Goh,” she murmurs, gazing down at me. “I…didn’t know anyone was in here.”
“Likewise.” I set my headphones in my lap, ready to say more, but I can see Sawyer watching us with curiosity. “Did you need this bench?”