by Pippa Grant
“She says right where she’s supposed to before bed.”
“Okay. Okay, I’ll find it and bring it ASAP. Thank you. Tell her to hang in there.”
Levi lifts a brow as I hang up.
His security dude is looking pointedly between me and the door.
Right.
Because come to the back so no one sees you only works if we go inside.
And if we don’t bang each other’s brains out here for the office occupants in the building behind us lucky enough to have an alley view.
We were going to bang, my neglected vagina wails. C’mon, Ingrid. Four minutes in the back of the Buick. Piper can wait.
I shake my head again. “Sorry. School. Piper forgot her hearing aid, so I—”
“Hearing aid?” Levi frowns as he steps next to me, hands in his pockets, close enough that I can feel that warm bubble of light he carries with him, but not close enough to touch.
“Yes, she—why did you think we all talked with our hands all the time?”
“Because he’s not very observant,” the bodyguard mutters.
He takes my keys from me, miraculously finds the first one on the first try—maybe he learned that in bodyguard training?—and briskly shoves both of us into the stockroom.
“Tripp was teaching James sign language when he was little.” Levi shrugs as his bodyguard closes us in the small room. “Please and thank you and more and a bunch of others. I guess I thought…”
“Not very observant,” his security guy repeats.
I hold out a hand to him while I fight the urge to throw myself at Levi the same way I’d been afraid I would’ve if I’d taken his backstage pass all those years ago. “Hi. I’m Ingrid. I’m a disaster.”
“Chuck. I’m not here.”
“Does Levi hire you himself, or does he have an excellent human resources manager who likes to surround him with people who’ll keep him humble?”
I get a grin, but no answer. Warm hands settle on my shoulders, talented thumbs dig into the perpetual tension knots at the base of my neck, and I suddenly agree.
Chuck’s not there.
It’s just me and Levi and his magic hands. “Oh my god, that feels good.”
“I know.” He kisses the back of my head, pulling me deeper into his cocoon of happiness and safety, smelling different today. Like spiced cider and the first frost of the year. “You need help?”
Tease, my vagina grumbles.
It’s right.
No nooky until Piper’s hearing aid is found. I know she’s freaking out in the school office. She hates not hearing.
I don’t blame her. The number of nights I’ve lain in bed wondering how I’d cope if I couldn’t hear the bells jingle on the door, or hear a truck coming down the street, or if I just couldn’t hear music.
I reluctantly pull away from Levi, but I snag his hand and tug, and he follows me to the staircase. “It’s usually the first thing she grabs in the morning once she’s gotten out of her sleep funk—that child does not wake up well—but Hudson went flying into her room and woke her up with Skippy, and Zoe spilled her orange juice, and things were a little more—you don’t want to hear about that. Sorry.”
“Why does she need a hearing aid?”
I like that he asks. So often, people dance around it like we don’t want to talk about her disability. “Ear infections. So many ear infections. They eventually caused permanent damage. She was three when she got her first hearing aids. We don’t need the sign language, but we’ve all been learning anyway for cases like today—when her ears are lost.”
We push into the apartment, and I head straight to the girls’ room.
No hearing aids in the Thrusters coffee mug she keeps on her nightstand next to the bunk beds.
Which basically means they could be anywhere. “Dammit.”
I turn. Levi’s leaning in the doorway, warm blue eyes settling on mine, looking both completely out of place and completely at ease at the same time. He’s in jeans again—black today—and a loose Henley under that same trucker jacket, his five o’clock shadow thick, his hair freshly trimmed.
I wonder how often he has to fit in places where he doesn’t belong, or if he’s just gotten used to making himself belong everywhere.
Or possibly that’s a me problem—faking fitting in—and I’m projecting.
Either way, this wasn’t what I had planned for this morning.
Especially after everything he told me on the phone this morning.
The warmth in his eyes is melting into flat-out heat as his gaze drifts down my body. Hiding under a long skirt, a camisole, and a lightweight fall cardigan, I’m in my best bra and a pair of red cotton panties, which were the sexiest I could find buried in the back of my underwear drawer. A side trip to the lingerie store down the way was on my agenda for this afternoon.
I haven’t done anything special with my hair, which I used to keep cut within military regs since it’s easy to manage that way, but the past year or so, I’ve let it grow out, and now I basically wear it in a ponytail half the time.
Today it’s down.
My makeup is minimal—I didn’t have time to do much more. I look like a mom and a bookworm.
But he’s looking at me like I’m a sexy, desirable woman. One without stretch marks and boobs that laugh at the idea of ever being perky again. A woman who doesn’t come with a package that includes three kids with their own challenges and a bookstore that does a little better every single week, but still keeps me up at night for the same reason he mentioned early this morning—I don’t know when everything we’re doing here will quit working, and when I might have to start over from scratch.
He could have the world.
Yet he’s gazing at me like in this moment, I am his world.
I know this is temporary. I know it’s a short-term fling until one of us gets tired of the hassle, or until one of us finds someone better, but god, it’s so damn intoxicating and exhilarating to be wanted.
To be desired.
To be looked at like I’m something more than a frazzled mom.
“What am I looking for, and where do you want me to start?” he asks.
There’s no impatience. No let’s do this so we can bang in the timbre of his voice. It’s all how can I take care of you? What do you need? How do I fix this?
My ex would’ve been growling in frustration and yelling at me for this being my fault somehow.
Not Levi.
He doesn’t owe me anything. He doesn’t owe my kids anything.
But he’s here. Taking time out of his busy schedule.
Offering whatever I need.
My tongue doesn’t want to work. But my legs are fine, and they swiftly carry me the five steps it takes to reach him, to throw my arms around him, and to press my mouth to his.
I don’t know if I’m saying thank you or if I’m saying save me, but I know when his arms wrap around me and his lips part and his tongue touches mine, I’m not anyone’s mom anymore, and I’m not frumpy, and I’m not barely holding on to everything I have to manage.
I’m simply a woman.
Kissing a man.
My hands exploring the contours where his neck meets his shoulders, down his hard pecs, around his slender waist beneath his jacket.
Inhaling the spicy sweet scent of his soap that makes me think of Italy in the spring and feel young and carefree again.
Feeling the hard bulge growing against my belly.
I turn this man on.
He’s devouring my mouth like I’m his favorite dessert, his hands sliding to squeeze my ass, turning me against the wall in the hallway, his knee pressing between mine.
I want him naked.
I want him naked, in my bed, touching every inch of me while I lick every inch of him. I want to be wild and irresponsible and reckless. I want—
I just want.
“God, you feel good,” he gasps against my lips.
I’m riding his hard thigh while he grips my skir
t and pulls it up, rubbing my clit against him, getting wetter than I’ve been in years, waking nerve endings that I thought had died, or at least could only get excited by something powered by batteries, and it’s perfect and not enough and everything and a fairy tale all at the same time. “I don’t—usually—oh, god, do that again.”
The man has found my nipples.
He kisses me again, wet and hot, deep, while he thumbs my nipples through two layers of fabric and I ride his leg, heat coiling fast and hard in my core, everything building, sensations rocketing across my skin, making goosebumps erupt over every inch of my flesh, my nipples tightening, my breasts swelling while I grip Levi’s shirt and hit that peak moment when everything shatters inside me.
I gasp as the first wave hits, hard and thorough, my toes curling, my thighs squeezing to hold on to this exquisite, heavenly, thorough, bone-melting pleasure.
“Oh, please don’t stop.” I don’t recognize my own voice, and his is both foreign and familiar.
“So fucking gorgeous, Ingrid. I want to taste you.”
I picture his head buried between my thighs, and my body spasms harder. “Levi.”
He dips his head to my neck and nips at my straining tendons, and rational thought abandons me.
It’s all feeling, instinct, desperation to hold on to this moment, because god knows every moment of pleasure is so very, very fleeting.
My orgasm is already fading, my body slumping, my head falling back against the wall and knocking into a family photo.
He brushes a kiss to my neck, and a fluttery aftershock leaves my clit smiling.
Technically impossible, but I swear she’s purring.
“Oh my god,” I pant.
“You’re a fucking goddess.” He kisses my earlobe, and there’s another pleased flutter down below.
His hard-on is still persistently making its presence known at my hip.
I need to do something about that.
As soon as my eyes uncross.
“You—”
My phone buzzes, and I groan.
He chuckles, his stubble brushing my cheek. “You’re a very popular woman.”
“It can wait.” I trail my fingers down his back. “You—”
The damn phone double-buzzes.
Levi reaches into my skirt pocket and pulls it out. “Preschool?”
I let loose with a string of curse words I learned in the Army, and then the guilt settles in.
My daughter can’t hear, my son is probably missing something as well, and I’m standing in the hallway trying to get laid.
Levi drops a kiss to my nose. “I’ll get Chuck. More hands. We’ll find it.”
I drop my head to the wall again, this time completely dislodging the photo from the wall. I catch it with my back.
He grins, reaches behind me, and rescues my family photo that fell off the wall. “Never dull, is it?”
“I’m missing my afterglow,” I mutter as I swipe my phone.
I shouldn’t complain.
He doesn’t have an afterglow at all.
But he’s not leaving.
“Mrs. Scott? This is Adelaide. Hudson brought a squirrel to school this morning…”
Yep.
This is my life.
Sixteen
Levi
I hang around at Ingrid’s place while she heads to the preschool to pick up Skippy, then to the grade school to deliver Piper’s hearing aid, which Chuck found in a nest in the squirrel’s cage. My security agent heads downstairs to wait for the repair crew coming to give Ingrid a quote on fixing the water damage to the bookstore ceiling and to her bathroom floor, in case they arrive before she’s back, while I’m allowed to do exactly nothing where I might be seen.
Ingrid’s family deserves privacy. Therefore, I can’t be associated with her.
End of story.
But I snoop in her kitchen while she’s gone.
Fantasize about the things I’d like to do with the canned whipped cream in her fridge, and wonder if it’s hidden in back because she sometimes takes a hit straight off it when her kids aren’t looking. Resist the urge to jack off in her bathroom to relieve the pressure. Whip up a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and wrap them in baggies, since all signs point to her kids being lunch-takers, and the peanut butter and jelly were both still on the counter in her small kitchen, along with half a loaf of wheat bread.
Sing to myself. To my phone, really—never know when something good will pop out of my mouth, so anytime I’m singing nonsense, I record it.
Fold the blankets strewn across her couch.
Debate how weird it would be to sniff her sheets and decide that’s exactly when she’d walk back in the door.
Fix Skippy a fresh bowl of water.
Check out the escape window and rickety fire escape balcony before I remember I shouldn’t be near windows.
All seems calm outside, though, and Ingrid’s building backs up to another building without many windows on this side. At least, not in the first three floors. The next several floors are clearly apartments too.
She rushes back inside as I’m in the middle of serenading a scraggly houseplant. And yeah, I spin like I’m caught.
Her eyes are wide like she’s frazzled, but her lips part, and then tip up in a smile. “Were you—”
“Shh. Wynona’s sleeping.” I pet the plant.
“Wynona?”
“All plants need names.”
Her lips purse, and her eyes dance. “How many plants do you have?”
“Three. Elvis, Mr. Freckles, and Shithead, but I call him Poopsie when my niece and nephew ask.”
“Shithead?”
“He’s in the corner of my room. Scared the hell out of me the first morning I woke up and forgot it was there.”
“Who takes care of them when you’re gone?”
My ears get hot. “Housekeeper. You could say I’m more of a plant guardian than a plant daddy.”
“You know I’m calling you Plant Daddy for the rest of my life now, right?”
It’s impossible to not smile back when her amusement is lighting the whole building. “I can live with that. How’s Skippy?”
“Grounded.”
She lifts a small cat carrier. The squirrel is gripping the bars like he knows he’s in prison.
“He seems like a good squirrel. You should consider a work release program.”
Her laughter eases something deep inside me that I didn’t know needed easing. My shoulders relax and relief loosens my neck too.
And when she sets the carrier on the kitchen nook table and opens the door, letting Skippy climb up her arm to sit on her shoulder and nibble at her hair, eyeing the squirrel like he’s been adopted into the fold and he’s not just an obligation she’s taken on to make her kids happy, my heart swells with warmth and I subconsciously close the distance between us.
There’s something about seeing someone smile at another person—or animal, or plant, or rock, or whatever—and knowing that they want the best for them. That she’s spreading goodness outward instead of trying to keep it all inside for herself, even when she’s already given so much.
She deserves a break.
She won’t ask for it. Which means it’s up to me to make it happen.
I reach for her hip, ignoring the glare from the squirrel. “When—” I start, but Chuck sticks his head in the door.
“You back? Handyman just got here.”
She straightens and smooths her skirt. Skippy leaps for the table and uses the coffee pot as a springboard to get on top of the cabinet.
“Yes. Thank you. I’ll be right down.” Her gaze collides with mine, and I get a subtle scent of turned-on woman.
So much better than cheesecake.
“Thank you—” she starts the same time I say, “I’ll text about—”
We both stop.
Grin.
And meet in the middle for a kiss.
My bodyguard is watching, so it’s short. I’d consi
der firing him, except security is an unfortunate necessity. Last time I tried to grab a burger at home by myself…let’s just say it was the last time local law enforcement was willing to do me a favor.
“Later,” she whispers.
“Count on it.”
Chuck offers to chase the squirrel into his cage before my brain can recover from kissing Ingrid to do the same.
I would’ve.
I swear.
Just not while short-circuiting on everything about this woman.
I’m free until six—private concert tonight for one of my favorite charities—so I head the few blocks to Fireballs headquarters to bug Tripp at work.
It’s unusual to catch him alone in his office, but I manage it. “Not making out with your wife-to-be?”
“She’s handling construction issues at the field.” His goofy grin—very uncharacteristic of my overly-serious big brother—makes me both happy for him and jealous that he’s managed to find another woman in his life that he loves as much as he loved his first wife.
Hell, as much as we all loved her. Hurt worse than anything I’ve ever lived through when she died.
The jealousy isn’t explainable, nor is it familiar.
And it’s not something I have any intention of thinking about right now.
I kick back on the orange couch in his office, which he refuses to let anyone replace. Even after being completely and thoroughly sanitized by a forensic clean-up crew, it’s disgusting, inherited from the previous owner, who was a horny old guy with questionable taste in friends and companions and a terrible work ethic when it came to overseeing the ball team.
Considering my brother’s war with hypochondria, I know the couch isn’t here because he likes it, but rather because it’s his constant reminder of how bad the Fireballs were, and how much work they still have to do to keep the faith of the fans in Copper Valley again.
One successful season of not being the worst team in baseball doesn’t make a trend.
“You hiding from being told you picked the wrong layout for the seating chart?” I ask.
“Nope. Tied up with scouting reports.”
“Is that a subtle hint for me to leave?”
“Of course not. I want to know all about the woman who dropped by your place after she gave you a concussion, and you’ve been ignoring my texts.”