His Ever After (Love, Emerson Book 3)

by Isabel North

  “Stop looking at me like that.”

  Derek stepped closer.

  “Can we go somewhere private?” she asked.

  He took her hand and dragged her after him, heading for the office with long strides.

  Hurrying to keep up, Jenny laced her fingers with his. “Just to talk,” she said.

  “Not just.” He opened the office door and stood aside to usher her in.

  Jenny balked at the threshold. “Yes, just. Talk about pizza.”

  “Don’t forget the wriggling.”

  She marched past him. “I already told you I’m not here to wriggle out of it.”

  “Good to know. However, I was talking about the wriggling you’ll be doing when I get you on my couch. Or the desk. Haven’t made my mind up yet.”

  Jenny scooted out of reach, and he laughed, shutting the door and leaning against it. His laughter drained away when she stuck a hand in her pocket and drew out some cash.

  “Here.” She held it out. “I need to pay my bill.”

  “We’ve been over this,” he said, clenching his jaw.

  “I know. But things have changed.” She continued to hold out the money until she got the message he wasn’t going to take it. She set it on the cluttered desk instead.

  “Jen—”

  “Derek, it’s important to me.”

  He closed the distance between them, nudging her back against the desk. She bumped into it and he put a hand either side of her hips. This close, he could feel the body heat radiating from her, soaking into his front. “We agreed—”

  “I know. But that was before. Now it feels weird.”

  He studied her face. “Before what? Before I kissed you?”

  “Yes. And before I… You know.” Her eyes dropped to his jeans.

  He leaned in, bending to put his lips against her neck. He tasted her skin and murmured, “Before you made me co—”

  Jenny jerked her head back and clapped her hand over his mouth.

  Derek blinked. “The door is shut, the stereo is on, no one can hear us,” he said against her palm.

  “Good point.” She removed her hand. “I’m trying to say I need to pay the bill the right way, Derek. Before we were intimate, paying with pizza would have been fine. Like a friend thing. Now…it’s weird.”

  “You’re grasping at straws, trying to back out of us, aren’t you?”

  “No.” Jenny stunned him by looping her arms around his neck. “The opposite. I’m trying to clear the way. If you’d take the goddamn money, I won’t feel like I paid you with sexual favors.”

  He unwound her arms, taking care to avoid the angry-looking scratches. “I’d never ask that of you. Fuck, Jen. What kind of man do you think I am? I’d never ask that of anyone.”

  She patted his chest. “I know you wouldn’t. But the fact is, you fixed my car, and I gave you an orgasm.”

  “I—”

  “And I kinda want to invite you over for pizza tomorrow, and I want it to be clear that it isn’t payment pizza.”

  Derek broke away, reached around her and snatched up the money. He stalked around the desk, opened a drawer, threw the money in, and slammed it shut.

  “You get that this is ridiculous,” he told her, leaning into his bunched fists. “I was trying to be romantic. Take care of you. Not make you feel like a whore. Now I feel like an asshole.”

  Smiling, Jenny mirrored his posture and leaned toward him from the other side of the desk. “Derek?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you like to come over tomorrow night and have pizza?”

  Derek slid a hand under her chin and ducked his head until they were only a whisper away. “Yeah.”

  Jenny’s russet lashes drifted closed for a second before she pulled back, her eyes going to the window that overlooked the workshop.

  For fuck’s sake. Derek strode over to the window and snapped the blind shut. He returned to Jenny, scooped her up, and walked them over to the couch. He sat down, arranged her to straddle his lap, and held her there with a firm grip on the back of her neck. She was breathing fast.

  “Let’s have the rest of it,” he said grimly.

  She squinted at him.

  Derek relaxed his grip enough to curl his thumb around and stroke the sensitive patch where her shoulder met her neck. Jenny arched into his touch.

  “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” he said. “This is where you tell me you want to keep me as your dirty little secret.”

  She’d been supple and responsive in his hold, but now she stiffened. “That’s not what I want.” She bit her lip.

  Derek arched a brow, waiting.

  Jenny scanned his face, trying to get a read on his mood. He didn’t give her anything.

  Truth was, he was pissed, and he wasn’t going to make it easy on her. Not this time.

  She shifted in his lap. “Okay, maybe it is kind of what I want, but it’s almost certainly not why you think. It’s complicated.”

  “I’m a smart guy.” Except for when it came to falling in love with difficult women. “Why don’t you give explaining it a shot.”

  “Okay. The reason I had a… That thing with Gabe wasn’t…” She cleared her throat and tried again. “It was right for me because it made things simple.”

  “And you want simple.”

  She nodded. “I need simple. I don’t have the luxury of allowing complications in my life. It’s not just my life we’re talking about.”

  Derek rested his head back against the couch. “Kate,” he said.

  “Yup. My reasons for…the Gabe thing…they stand. Nothing’s changed. I have to protect her, Derek.”

  Derek understood. He admired her determination to be a great mom. Still, he was pissed. Jenny was also protecting her own heart.

  From him.

  Didn’t she get that this was it? He didn’t want to date her. He wanted to keep her. He didn’t want to be on the periphery of her little family of two. He wanted to be the foundation they built a new family on. Together.

  “Kate likes you,” Jenny was saying. “A lot. She was confused last time you were in our lives. She got used to you being there, and then you were gone.”

  “Not my fault,” he gritted out.

  Her cheeks were pink but she looked him straight in the eye. “I’m not proud of myself for pushing you away. That’s on me. I shouldn’t have let you get close in the first place. But I did. Her father disappeared, and suddenly Kate had three new guys in her life. You, Gabe, and Alex. Of the three of you, Gabe and Alex stuck around. You didn’t.”

  “I didn’t leave you.”

  Jenny tried to climb off his lap.

  His hold tightened. “Don’t even think you’re going anywhere,” he growled.

  To his surprise, she didn’t fight it. “I’ve struggled with this. I know that by trying to keep Kate from having another man fail her—” he winced, and she stroked his cheek, “—I made the wrong choices. I created the very situation I was trying to avoid, and I made you complicit in it. I can’t do it again. Not to Kate.” She ran a hand through his hair. “And not to you. I’m not okay with hurting you. See? Complicated.”

  “I think you’re making it more complicated than it needs to be.”

  She should marry him already. Derek opened his mouth to say it, then he got an image of a Jenny-shaped hole in the wall as she bolted, and bit it back.

  “Start slow with me, Derek. Please. I’m not saying I want you to sneak in under cover of night, or pretend we’re not friends. I suppose I mean I don’t want to go from zero to sixty.”

  “Lucky for you I don’t mind being a dirty little secret. I especially don’t have a problem with the dirty part.”

  He realized how anxious she’d been when the tension drained away at his teasing, and she slumped into him.

  “We can start slow,” he continued. “I respect and understand you needing to think about your daughter. Even though it hurts my fucking feelings that you don’t trust me enough
to know I can handle her with care, we’ll do it your way. I’m in your life, I’m in Kate’s life, and that’s not changing again. If you try to push me away, I won’t permit it. I shouldn’t have last time. And that one’s on me. So we’re clear, I’ve learned, and it’s not happening again.”

  “Sounding pretty bossy there, Tate.”

  “Not done.”

  “Extremely bossy.”

  “We can go slow. In public. As far as anyone else is concerned, we’re friends. Though, the way you look at me, I think the only person you’re fooling is yourself.”

  “Bossy and arrogant. Keep it up.”

  He grinned. “No problem. Friends in public. In private—and Jen, I’m making it my top priority to get you in private—we go my speed.”

  She chewed her lip, pupils wide. Then she nodded.

  “Kiss me,” Derek said.

  “Actually, now we’ve got that straight, I have to be going—”

  He growled and twisted, taking her down to the cushions.

  “You are a patient man, Derek Tate,” Jenny said, and kissed him.

  He broke away long enough to whisper, “Hope you understand quite how patient I am.”

  She didn’t. Yet. She would.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Then again, maybe he wasn’t patient after all.

  Derek’s cell phone chimed as he was closing up the garage and leaving the next night. He read the text message and let out a hard breath of irritation.

  Jenny had canceled on him.

  He finished setting the alarm and closed the gates, locking them. He crammed his helmet on and slung a leg over his bike. A quick stop at the pizza joint, and thirty minutes later he stomped up Jenny’s porch steps, pizza box in one hand, carrier bag with soda and sides in the other. He pounded on the door.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming! Calm down!” Jenny shouted. She opened up, and frowned at him.

  “Oh, good,” Derek said, taking in the faded plaid lounge pants she was wearing, the fluffy socks and oversized T-shirt. “You’re dressed for the party.”

  “What?”

  “Got your pizza pants on.” He thrust the box at her and muscled in.

  “Derek, didn’t you get my text?”

  “Yeah, I got your text.” He dropped the bag on the floor and hooked an arm around her waist. “And you’re not canceling on me again,” he said against her mouth. “You are mistaking being patient for being a pushover, and we already established you can’t push me around.” He nipped her lower lip and released her.

  “I’m not playing games. Kate really is sick.”

  “You invited me over to spend time with you.”

  “But Kate—”

  “Is not going to confuse me showing up with food as me showing up with my worldly possessions and moving in.”

  “But we can’t—”

  “I want to be with you, Jenny. Do I want to make you scream? Yes, I do. Do I also want to hang out at home, kick back and watch some T.V.? Yes, I do. If I stand by while you keep throwing up roadblocks, we’re never going to start this thing.”

  “I get that. But I don’t think tonight’s the right night to start.”

  “I don’t think the right night is going to happen. I’m making it happen.”

  “Hi, Derek.” Kate wandered from the living room into the hall. She drifted to a halt and leaned against Jenny’s legs.

  Jenny dropped a hand on top of her head.

  Yikes. Kate’s little face was wan, her hair was somehow both lank and sticking up in patches, and she was wearing dinosaur pajama bottoms paired with a unicorn T-shirt. “Hi, sweetheart,” Derek said.

  Kate wiped her nose on the ragged piece of tissue she was clutching, and coughed. Her glittering, red-rimmed gaze landed on the pizza box Jenny was holding, and tracked down to the bag with soda bottles showing. She brightened. “Do you want to come and watch my movie?” she asked him. “I was supposed to have dinner with Gargoyle and Auntie Elle tonight, but Ricky Berger gave me his cold and I wanted to come home.”

  “Bit early in the year for colds, isn’t it?” Derek said to Jenny. “Are you sure it’s a cold? Does she need to get checked out?”

  Jenny gave him a hard look. “Having been a parent for six years straight, I know a sniffle when I see one. But thanks for the suggestion.”

  Now Derek had two pairs of Finley eyes glittering at him; one with fever and one with annoyance.

  No, sir, this night was not going as planned. He was starting to get the feeling that the universe was testing him. He grinned.

  Jenny passed the pizza to Derek and switched Kate’s used tissue for a clean one she took from her pocket. “Derek can’t stay,” she said to Kate. “We don’t want him to get sick, too, do we?”

  Kate shrugged.

  “I’m sure he’d leave the pizza,” Jenny said.

  Wow, Derek mouthed at her. Jenny winked.

  “It’s a dragon movie,” Kate told him. “I guess you don’t like dragons anymore.” She flicked a cautious look at him, attention going from his tattoo to his face.

  “I love dragons,” he said promptly.

  “Me, too.” Kate tugged at the hem of Jenny’s T-shirt.

  Jenny sighed. “Go snuggle back down, Kate, and we’ll bring the food in.”

  “I’ll wait to press play!” Kate ran back to the living room, wobbled at the door, caught herself on the doorjamb, and swung out of sight.

  Derek watched her go. “Don’t kick me in the balls for asking, but are you sure she’s okay?”

  “She’s fine. It’s a cold with a low-grade fever. I gave her some Tylenol. You want to worry about someone, you’d better worry about yourself.”

  “Why’s that?” He followed her into the kitchen.

  “I hope your immune system is firing, buddy. Kids swap infections and viruses and diseases among themselves like they swap trading cards, or Pokemon, or whatever the latest thing is. Which is why I was trying to ease you out of an evening spent breathing the contaminated air of my delightful child, who has already thrown up once. My guess, more is coming.” She put the pizza down and turned into him, shuffling her socked feet between his motorcycle boots. She slid her arms around his waist. “I’m glad you’re too dumb to take a hint.”

  He grazed her mouth with a soft, teasing kiss. “I’d risk a cold for you, Jenny Finley.”

  “Let’s revisit that statement after thirty-six to forty-eight hours’ incubation time, shall we?” Her hands wandered to his butt. “If you can’t fight it off with your manly constitution, I will bring you chicken soup.”

  “Sounds nice. Will you bathe my fevered brow? Sponge me down?”

  “Of course.”

  Derek circled her wrists and pulled her exploring hands away. “You’re going to give me a boner if you keep doing that,” he said when she raised her brows.

  She grinned. “The logistics of this are starting to dawn on you, aren’t they?”

  “Derek!” Kate hollered from the living room. “I’m pressing play!”

  “Go get infected,” Jenny said. “I’ll sort the food.”

  She went to pat his ass as he passed, and he caught her hand with a warning look. “Remember what I told you would happen if you tried that again?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  He moved off, holding her gaze.

  She smacked him lightly.

  Derek heaved in a breath, crowding her.

  Jenny tilted her head to one side, her eyes dancing.

  “Derek!” Kate called again, sounding fretful.

  “You’re an evil woman. I’m starting a tab,” Derek told Jenny, and went to watch a movie about dragons.

  * * * *

  Halfway through the movie Kate crashed, her upper body in Jenny’s lap and her gangly, dinosaur pajama-clad legs sprawled over Derek’s. Jenny rested the back of her hand against her daughter’s forehead. Kate’s temperature was down, but she was still clammy.

  Jenny glanced up to find Derek watching her rather than th
e flickering screen. “What?” she asked.

  Derek shook his head. “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s fine. These things tend to die down as quickly as they flare up. She’ll be cranky for a day or two, but she’ll be back to normal by school next week.”

  “Good.” The screen filled with a flaming explosion, lighting the side of his face. “She likes dragons, huh? Is this new, or has she always liked dragons?”

  Jenny gave his tattoo a pointed glance. “You know why she likes dragons, Derek.” Kate had been fascinated with them from the day she met him.

  “Yeah. And dragons are better than bees, right?”

  “What?” It took Jenny a moment to remember the bee backpack Gabe had given Kate.

  “Dragons are better than bees,” Derek confirmed for himself. “She’s not into princesses and the like?”

  “Does this look like a girl who’s into pretty, pretty princesses?” Jenny gestured at Kate’s outfit.

  “It’s quite an ensemble.”

  “Tell me about it. All the other little girls are in fairy wings and princess dresses and having tea parties. My girl likes dragons and dinosaurs. She went to a birthday party a year ago, and they all watched Beauty and the Beast. The dancing spoons freaked her the hell out. Don’t get me started on the stove. I had to pick her up early. Then she had nightmares about the closet. The actual closet. She’s not scared of monsters in the closet. She thinks the closet is going to start talking to her, and sing, and make her wear dresses.”

  Derek smiled. “She’s a cutie. But then you know that.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Derek slid Kate’s legs off his thighs and started to gather the dirty plates.

  “You’re going?” Jenny asked, kicking herself for the note of disappointment that colored her quiet question.

  “Not a chance. I’m gonna clear up.”

  Jenny found the remote and stopped the film. “All right. Thanks. I’ll take her up to bed and get her settled.” She flicked through the channels until she found a game and left it on for him.

  Derek leaned forward and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. Their eyes met and held. Jenny caught her breath at his expression. She couldn’t quite work it out, but it looked a whole lot like…contentment.

  As if there was nowhere else Derek would rather be right now, on a Friday night, than right here, watching a kid movie with her and her clammy daughter.