by Megan Hart
“Oh my God.”
“Do you want that?”
Shit. There were a lot of things he’d be willing to do for her, but being a pony was absolutely going to stretch his comfort zone. Relieved when she burst into laughter, he took the chance to kiss her again.
“As much as I’d like to take you for a ride, no. I don’t want you to be a pony. And I don’t think we need a notarized contract. I mean, what are we talking about?” Her laughter eased, and she gave him a serious look. “I told you, if you just want to fuck—”
“No. That’s not it. I’d like to see you.”
“You do see me,” she whispered and rocked a little against his cock.
Reese drew in a breath. “I want to see you, Corinne. Like dating. Like a relationship.”
“Monogamous?”
“Yes.” He paused. “Unless you want to see other people.”
“Like I said, Reese, my kids are my priority. I don’t really have time to go dating all over the place.” Corinne smoothed her hand over his cheek to cup his chin.
His eyes went instantly heavy lidded at the embrace. “I like kids.”
Her grip tightened until his eyes opened. “I haven’t brought anyone around to meet my kids.”
“I’ve met at least one already,” he pointed out.
“That was different. You were my boss. Not my boyfriend.”
Heat crept up inside him at the way she said boyfriend. They sat quietly for another few seconds as she let go of his chin to cup his cheek. She kissed him lightly. Tenderly.
“We can try it,” she said against his mouth. “This. Us.”
“No contract?”
“No contract,” she said. “But I think I’ll make you a list.”
Reese grinned. “That’s okay. I like lists.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
There’d been a few hours of homework, then some TV, and now bedtime was looming. Peyton had already disappeared into her room, presumably to get on her laptop with friends in the last few minutes before she was supposed to go to sleep, but Tyler was procrastinating.
“C’mon, buddy. You were supposed to be finished with this before TV.” Corinne scrubbed at her eyes, sleepy and more than a little irritated. “How long have you known you had to do this project?”
Tyler gave her a look that reminded her far too uncomfortably of the one his father used to give her when he was trying to keep the truth from her. “Well, I just remembered about it.”
“Uh-huh. And you didn’t work on it at all at your dad’s?”
He gave her another guilty look. “Dad said it was okay, I’d have enough time to do it later. We were going to the movies.”
Corinne frowned. “You’re supposed to do your homework first, Tyler. Before anything else.”
“Nobody else had any,” he protested. “They’d have had to wait for me, and Dad said it wasn’t fair that everyone should suffer!”
Corinne bit her tongue to keep herself from blurting out exactly how unfair it was that now she was going to be suffering because she had to oversee this busywork project that her kid really should’ve finished days ago but didn’t because his father was too selfish to give up an afternoon of fun. She sighed and flipped through the packet of information. At least she didn’t have to help him make a diorama. With a quick glance at the clock, she sighed.
“Okay, let’s get working on this. I’m tired and want to take a bath.”
“I can help him with it.” This came from Caitlyn, who stood in the kitchen doorway with a plate of leftover pasta in her hand. “I’m super good at doing last minute projects.”
Corinne laughed. “Auntie Caitlyn’s the queen of procrastination.”
Tyler frowned, looking back and forth between them. “Okay…”
“Relax, kid. We’ll get your project underway. Let’s go.” Caitlyn settled at the table with her dinner.
The three of them worked for a bit, Tyler typing up notes based on things Caitlyn pulled from the textbook while Corinne checked off the list of items he needed to include. When Corinne’s cell phone rang from where she’d been charging it on the counter, she glanced up but didn’t answer it. She caught Tyler and Caitlyn sharing a glance though.
“What?” Corinne asked, frowning.
Tyler shrugged. “You should answer that, it might be your boyfriend.”
Corinne’s eyebrows rose. “Who says I have a boyfriend?”
By the way Tyler looked at his aunt, Corinne figured it out easily enough. Her sister shrugged, giving Corinne a look of exaggerated innocence. Corinne sighed.
“Me and Peyton don’t care, Mom.”
Corinne carefully kept her voice neutral. “So you’ve talked about it, huh?”
“Sure. I mean, you and Dad got divorced and he got a new wife. If you have a boyfriend who’s nice to you that’s okay.” Tyler paused. “And to us too.”
“I wouldn’t be with someone who wasn’t nice to you, kiddo.”
Tyler gave Caitlyn another look. “Auntie says he’s loaded. Do you think he’ll buy me a new—”
“He’s not going to buy you anything,” Corinne interrupted sternly. “That’s rude.”
“Yeah, he’s her boyfriend, not an ATM!” Caitlyn waggled her brows, making Tyler laugh.
Corinne gave them both a look that did nothing to stop the giggling. “I’m glad you’re both amused.”
“Sorry.” Caitlyn sobered up, but barely.
It took another ten minutes or so, but finally the project was finished and Tyler packed off to bed with a reprimand not to let his work wait until the last minute again. Corinne came back to the kitchen to find her sister had cleared the dining room table and was wiping down the counters as the dishwasher hummed. She looked up when Corinne came in.
“He called again while you were with the kid.”
Corinne took her phone off the charger. “Should I even bother to yell at you for telling them?”
“I didn’t, actually.” Her sister turned to lean against the edge of the sink. “They asked me, though, if you were seeing someone after you left me with them that Friday night and didn’t get home until the wee hours of the morning. Peyton’s the one who guessed it was Reese, by the way. I tried to play it off, but they’re not so dumb.”
Corinne pursed her lips. “No. I guess they’re not. I should have told them, I guess.”
“Are you going to bring him around? Is he really your boyfriend now? You haven’t told me a damn thing, but you’ve been walking around all week like a cat that got into the artisanal yogurt.”
“Very funny.” Corinne rolled her eyes and swiped her phone’s screen to see if Reese had left a voicemail. Two missed calls, one voice message. She held her phone to her chest for a moment, helpless against the giddy grin that crept over her face.
“Look at you.” Caitlyn sounded surprised. “Wow. You’re really into him. Even after all this time?”
“It’s always like that in the beginning with someone.”
Caitlyn gave her sister a look. “This isn’t the beginning. You guys have had a thing forever.”
“You can’t count a thing that ended more than a decade ago as a thing, Caitlyn.”
“Tell me you feel the same about him as you would any brand-new beau, and I’ll believe you.”
“I do, it’s just the way you feel when you first start going out with someone. That’s all.”
“Liar,” her sister said. “You’re such a liar!”
It had only been three days since she and Reese had eaten Chinese food on the floor of his office. She’d promised him a list in place of a contract but hadn’t yet finished it. They’d both been coasting on the giddy thrill of what had happened between them, she thought. The list, a discussion, putting words to what they’d agreed to be to each other…that was going to make it all too real.
“We’re seeing each other,” Corinne said.
“Exclusively?”
“Yes.”
Caitlyn lowered her voice, looki
ng conspiratorial. “And you’re doing it with him.”
“Oh my God.”
“I knew it!” Caitlyn cried.
Corinne went to the fridge to pull out the bottle of seltzer water and poured herself a bubbly glass. She took her time sipping from it before she answered her sister. “It’s all so weird, Caitlyn.”
“Uh-oh.” Caitlyn also went to the fridge, but pulled out a can of cola and popped the top. “Weird like how? Like whips and chains weird, or…”
“No chains. No whips.” Corinne hesitated, then admitted, “Well, maybe chains? But probably not a whip. Maybe a flogger. Shit, I don’t know. It’s been so long since I did anything like this. I don’t know what I want to do, or what we’ll do. Shit. I can’t believe this is happening. Reese Fucking Ebersole. After all this time. It’s not real. Is it real?”
Caitlyn pulled a bag of pretzels from the cupboard and set it on the table, then waved her sister to sit. “You tell me.”
“I don’t know.” Corinne fished a handful of pretzels from the bag and nibbled one.
“Nobody ever does, to be honest.”
Corinne laughed. “Very profound.”
“Keeping it real,” her sister answered with a grin that faded after a second or so. “Look. It’s time you get back out there. Some people never get a second chance with their one great love.”
Corinne did not try to deny that description, though she wanted to. “He came back to me, Caitlyn. After all these years, he came back to me. That has to count for something, right?”
To her annoyance, she felt the rise of tears in her throat and had to clear it to hold them back. Her sister looked sympathetic. She didn’t want sympathy. Shit, she didn’t want this to be such a big deal.
But it was.
“Ride the wave, girl. Ride the wave.” Caitlyn shook her head slowly. “What else can you do?”
“I could break it off with him now, before it gets out of control.”
“You just got back together with him! What, are you crazy? Don’t you dare.” Caitlyn caught her sister’s look and scowled. “Look, you bitch, some of us haven’t had any sex in so long our vaginas have become a dry and dusty wasteland.”
“So what, it’s been like, a month?” Corinne had meant to tease, but at the sight of her sister’s face, she stopped. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I was taking a hiatus from the D. And the next thing I know, I can barely get a ‘hey lady’ from the guys hanging out in front of the mini mart.” Caitlyn wrinkled her nose. “Even my dating profiles are all dead, unless you count the guy who told me last week that he wanted to test my gag reflex.”
“Oh. Gross.”
“Yeah, I told him that his message made me puke, so there was that.” Caitlyn laughed, then looked serious again. “You’re not going to break up with him, are you? C’mon.”
“No. But I promised him a list of rules, and I really need to get on that.”
Caitlyn’s eyes widened. “So kinky.”
“You asked!”
“Well, sure. I guess I’m just curious, that’s all. I mean…you and Douglas never…did you? He wasn’t…?”
“No,” Corinne said a little sourly. “Definitely, he was not.”
“Did you know that when you got married?”
“I was in love with him when we got married. I thought it wouldn’t matter.”
Caitlyn was silent for a moment, before she crunched a pretzel loudly. “It did, huh?”
“Well. Yeah. Sex matters. But we didn’t get divorced because Douglas didn’t like kinky sex.” Corinne paused, thinking. “We got divorced because I wanted a partnership, and he wasn’t being a partner. Not in the way I wanted him to be.”
Caitlyn had heard enough stories about her sister’s husband that it couldn’t have been much of a surprise. She nodded, though. “But what you wanted was a guy who’d do what you told him to do. Right?”
“I…yes. I guess so.” Corinne’s brow furrowed. “When you say it that way, it makes me sound terrible.”
“No. I don’t think so. There’s a lot to be said for being up front with yourself about what makes you happy,” Caitlyn said. “If more people were honest about stuff in the beginning, they’d probably stay together longer. And I say this as someone who’s never had a relationship last longer than oh, about six months.”
Corinne was quiet for a moment or so, contemplating this advice. “Is it crazy for me to think that Reese knows me better than anyone ever has? Even after all this time? I mean, we’ve both changed, I think. I hope. And a lot of time has passed. But I still feel like he knows exactly how to push every button I have. The good ones and the bad ones.”
“I told you, he’s your one.” Caitlyn grinned.
Corinne shook her head, not to negate what her sister was saying, but more in a thoughtful way. “I don’t know about that. I’m not sure I believe in a one. But he’s something. He was from the first time we were together, and all these years, I never stopped thinking about him. He says he never stopped thinking about me. Maybe this time we can make it work, right? Not fuck it all up. Anyway, it’s way too soon to tell.”
“You know, I’m all right staying here with the kids if you want to go on over there and give him what-for,” Caitlyn said casually. “Get your list on, whatever.”
Corinne laughed, sort of, but not quite embarrassed. “I haven’t written it yet.”
“Make him take dictation. Get it? Dick-tation!”
“I get it. God. You’re like, twelve.”
Caitlyn fluttered her lashes. “What can I say, it’s a gift? But seriously, call him back, if he wants you to go over there, you can go.”
“It’s not a question of if he wants me to go over there,” Corinne said archly. “It’s a question of if I tell him I’m coming over.”
“Ooh, hotsy totsy. How could I forget, you’re the empress!”
Corinne laughed. Reese had sometimes called her his queen. “Something like that. Okay, you sure you don’t mind?”
“Believe me, I have Interflix and a gallon of peanut butter chocolate ice cream, and nothing else going on. Go on. Just be back before the kids get up for school in the morning so I don’t have to wake up early.” Caitlyn grinned and made a shooing motion with her hands. “Go on. Go. You know you want to!”
“You’re the best sister, you know that?”
Caitlyn preened. “Yeah. I know.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Reese had never felt as content as he did in this moment, his head cradled in Corinne’s lap. They were supposed to be watching a movie, but it had been playing the entire time, and they hadn’t paid much attention to it. Now, with her fingers running through his hair, he thought he might sleep—except that he didn’t want to miss a second of this.
She had promised him a list but had not yet given him one. Back during their first time around, he would’ve pestered her about it, but time had tempered him. Or maybe he was unsure about what, exactly, to expect from Corinne’s list. Uncertain if he was ready for it, no matter what he’d said.
“Tell me about the vacation company,” she said now.
Reese shrugged. “It’s a specialty thing. It started off catering to couples, honeymooners, that sort of thing. Over time the clientele became more focused. When I bought it, it was having trouble because the couple who ran it operated on good will, not written contracts, and they were getting screwed out of a lot of stuff by the venues that made promises and then didn’t deliver.”
“You can’t promise something and not deliver,” Corinne said.
Reese didn’t think she was talking about the vacation company. His fingers curled with a twinge, a sense memory. “No. You shouldn’t. What good is your word if you can’t be counted on to keep it?”
Silence.
He didn’t want to bring up the past, or the reasons why they’d broken up. Truth be told, Reese couldn’t have said exactly why it had ended so abruptly and so badly. Losing his parents had been hard, especially
because he’d never made things right between him and his dad before he died. Corinne had encouraged him to, and she’d been right. He’d refused to listen. He remembered being angry. Blaming her. Later, he’d come to admit to himself that he’d done his share of ruining what they’d had, if only because he’d learned there was never only one person at fault. He wished he’d have figured that out sooner.
“You never went on one of those trips?” she asked.
“Of course I did. I bought the business. I had to see for myself how it worked. Just like I need to be in the office here,” he said. “You accused me of being hands-off, but really, I’m more a hands-on kind of guy.”
“Yeah, your hands are on,” Corinne said. “I get it.”
Reese grinned at her sarcastic tone, then said, “Yes, I went on a few of the trips to see what they were like.”
She stroked her fingers through his hair again. “Alone?”
“Once alone. Twice with someone.”
She nodded, looking thoughtful. “What was it like?”
He wasn’t sure what to say to that. He’d taken three of the specialty trips, one to each of the locations his company sponsored. Two different women. Amber had been the last one, and he was certain that the trip had led directly to their breakup. Not that he cared, much.
“It was better when I was alone,” he said.
“Really?” She sounded surprised, not jealous. “Why?”
“More relaxing. The times I went with someone, it was a lot of work,” Reese said. “It wasn’t like this, with them. I wasn’t like this.”
Corinne studied him with a small smile. “What were you like?”
“In charge.”
She laughed. “Ah.”
Reese turned his face against her thigh, closing his eyes. “It was a lot of work, that’s all.”
“You dominated them?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.” Corinne’s stroking fingers paused for a moment, then started again. Soothing. Rhythmic. Reese pushed into the touch like a cat. “Tell me about it, puppy.”
“You won’t want to hear.”