Worth the Risk

by K. Bromberg

  “Luke gets attached to women too easily. He wants every woman who enters my life—even if it’s the mail carrier—to be my wife. And his mom.”

  “Poor guy.” My heart breaks.

  “You don’t know the half of it.” His chuckle is edged with sadness. “I’ll do anything I can to protect him from getting his hopes up and then having them crushed.” He rises suddenly from the bed in all his naked glory and stares at me.

  “What are—”

  “This isn’t exactly what you’re supposed to be talking about after I’ve rocked your world.”

  I yelp as he leans forward, grabs my ankles, and pulls me to the edge of the bed. When he leans over, his dick rubs against my thighs as he drugs me with a slow, mesmerizing kiss. “That leads me to believe you need it to be rocked again. Shall we?”

  And slowly but surely, Grayson has his way with me.

  Not that I put up much resistance.

  “Grayson Malone. I knew you couldn’t stay away from me for this long,” Devon says. “Come here and give me a kiss.” Before I can back away, he grabs my head and plants a big, loud kiss on my cheek that has me shoving him away.

  “Hell, you’re the reason I’ve been staying away.” I laugh, but then we hook thumbs and clasp our hands together and give each other a man-pat.

  “How’s dispatch?” he asks, but the smirk on his lips and shake of his head tells me he already knows.

  “Like Hell on Earth.”

  “No adrenaline. No high. No—”

  “No chicks asking to see how big your stick is,” Alyssa says as she walks into the room with a laugh and a quick hug. “Christ. Please tell us you’re here because you’ve been reinstated. All this overtime means momma ain’t getting any.”

  “First off, my stick is still big, just not getting any use,” I say.

  “That isn’t what we hear,” rings out from Christian before going back to talking on his phone.

  “Whatever.” I roll my eyes. “You need to get some because we all know how cranky you get during a dry spell.” I dodge as Alyssa swats at me. “And shit, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m still waiting for Cochran to tell me he loves me more and is going to put me up on that board.” I lift my chin in the direction of the schedule.

  “The only one happy you aren’t here is Christian over there,” Alyssa says as Christian raises his middle finger. “With you gone, he’s getting all the faint-hearted women giving him the googly eyes instead of you.”

  I laugh, knowing Christian is horribly shy and utterly devoted to his wife. “I’m sure he loves that.”

  “So, it’s really that bad over at dispatch, huh?”

  “Not bad. Just same ol’ day in and day out. I’m bored to fucking tears.” I miss flying. I miss my crew. Being here just reinforces both of those things more than I want to acknowledge.

  “But I’m sure Luke is loving that you’re home.”

  “He is.” I shrug. “But I’m going stir crazy.”

  “I bet you are,” she says with a knowing smile.

  “What?”

  She purses her lips and raises her eyebrows. “We all know what Daddy’s been doing while Luke’s at school.”

  I just shake my head as Devon stands behind her, pretending as if he’s slapping an invisible ass. They all burst out laughing. “You guys are jerks.”

  “So? Is it true? Are you hitting that hottie who was kissing you at the pub?” Jen asks.

  “They’re doing a lot more than kissing,” Christian yells from his corner.

  “Since when have you ever known the Gazette gossip column to be accurate? Last year, they had Devon pegged as dating Dixie.”

  “You’re an ass.” Devon laughs.

  “And Dixie was a pig.” I think back to how much we harassed the shit out of Dev when the column came out. And when the subsequent correction was published the next day. Needless to say, someone overheard Dev mention how he couldn’t wait for his date with Dixie and misinterpreted it as a literal date. Too bad he meant his appointment to pick the piglet up for his mom and take her to the family farm. The town laughed for weeks over it.

  “And you’re avoiding answering our question,” Dev says.

  “Why do I come here for this abuse?” I ask, but I know full well that the abuse is deserved. What I don’t like is how the simple question about a certain golden brown-haired woman sends my thoughts straight back to Sidney and what happened and how I can’t stop thinking about it. Or her.

  “Because you love us.” Jen shrugs and heads over to where she’s doing one of her thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles—there’s sometimes a lot of time between calls.

  “Sometimes.”

  “What’s this crap I hear about people thinking you’re a hot dad, anyway?” Devon says, but then he holds up a hand. “Wait, let me guess—you signed yourself up for the contest because you weren’t getting enough attention ‘round these parts.”

  “That’s exactly right,” I say as I shake my head no. “My damn brothers signed me up, and now I’m stuck in it.”

  “You’re stuck in something, all right. I hope she is at least worth the pain.”

  My middle finger is raised back at him as I make my way down the hall toward Cochran’s office.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll vote for you!” Jen calls to me.

  “At least someone loves me,” I say as I stop at Cochran’s office door. His head is down, his fingers are typing furiously. I knock on the jamb.

  He startles, but a smile spreads when he sees me. “Malone.” He nods. “I thought that was your voice out here.”

  “Sir. Just checking in to see if you’ve heard anything yet.”

  “I’ve heard, all right.” He chuckles, and it confuses me. “Getting a lot of phone calls at the station from women asking if you’re available to give mouth-to-mouth.”

  “There’s no accounting for taste,” I say with a self-deprecating laugh. “Sorry about that.”

  He shrugs and looks relaxed, when he’s typically anything but. “At least you’re being productive in your time off. Maybe your next photo should include one of the helos. Get us some added advertising with all this newfound publicity of yours.”

  “You’re shameless, you know that?”

  “Yeah, well, with High-Life setting up shop across town, we could use every little added bit of visibility.” He’s referring to the new medevac company currently encroaching on our turf.

  “It’s taking that much out of our business?”

  “Not the emergency side of it, no. But the medical transport side, yes.”

  “That sucks.” And it does, because now my mind is full of worries about layoffs. If they needed to let people go, the guy who’s grounded would be the first one on the block. “Maybe it’s because you’re missing your star pilot.”

  There is no shame in reminding him how much money I make him.

  “That’s exactly why,” he says through his laugh. “They want you before the board in a week or two and plan to reinstate you by the end of the month. You just need to make them all the promises they want to hear.”

  I lift my eyebrows. “I’ve learned so much about why we have rules while having desk duty in dispatch. I won’t take chances. I won’t save lives if risks are involved. I won’t, I won’t I won’t,” I say drolly as he shakes his head.

  “Try it with a little more enthusiasm next time,” he says.

  “Noted. Thanks.”

  He nods and puts his head back down, letting me know the discussion is over. “Advertising, Malone. Make sure you mention where you work when you do whatever it is for this cockamamie contest you’re in. That might win you some favor as well.”

  Fucking great.

  “What’s up with you? I’d think you’d be dancing on the ceiling with how well this round of voting is bringing in page visits.”

  “Huh?” I drag my attention away from the window I’ve been staring out of for the last I-don’t-know-how-long and turn to Rissa. “Sorry. I was just thin
king.”

  “About?” Her smile is wide and her eyebrows are raised as she looks toward the screen of my computer and then back at me.

  “Oh. No. Not him,” I stumble over the words as I alt-tab out of my screen, which was open to Grayson’s picture.

  “I’m sure you weren’t. Why daydream about him when you can have him whenever you want, right?” she teases and has me catching my breath momentarily. Does she know? Does anyone know? It isn’t as if our water fight couldn’t be fodder for Sunnyville gossip, but he left under the cover of night. After I put his clothes through the drier, he jogged right out the front door in time to get Luke from the movie Grayson’s mom took him to.

  Rissa’s words still give me pause. They make me question whether anything has been said. Instead, I laugh and decide to go with my assumption that no one knows. “You’re going to start more rumors, Rissa.”

  “If it’s in the Sunnyville Gazette, it must be true.” She winks.

  “What’s in the Sunnyville Gazette?”

  “That you and Grayson were seen out at dinner at McClintock’s the other night.”

  This time, I laugh for real. “Is McClintock’s the restaurant that overlooks the Hoskins’ vineyards?” I swallow over the bitter taste in my mouth at the mention of one of the many businesses Claire’s family owns.

  “The one and only.”

  “Well, I, for one, have never been there. Not even when I was a kid . . . so rumor away.”

  “Shush!” She waves a hand my way. “Let me pretend you were there so I can live vicariously through you and that fine specimen of a hot man.”

  If she only knew.

  I think back to the other night. To Grayson and everything he was more than capable of handling when it came to me.

  “Get your own man, Rissa. Better yet, let me spread rumors about you being with Grayson. That would be more believable since you’re a resident here. Since your kids are around the same age as Luke. I mean, you’re a match made in Heaven.”

  “First off, you’re the only one who could get away with sleeping with a contestant and not get fired.” I choke out a cough. “Your dad would can me in a second if our positions were flipped.”

  “Nice try, but the warning has already been not so subtly issued. Any fraternizing with the contestants could be perceived as bias as it relates to the voting,” I say, using my best impersonation of Frank Thorton all the while remembering my and Grayson’s discussion about bias and the sexy smile that was on his lips. “Didn’t you know? Life is never allowed to interfere with business when you’re a Thorton.”

  “We’re talking hypothetical here.” She lifts her eyebrows and holds a finger up to stop me from interrupting her. “Unless you have some juicy details you’re withholding.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say through a nervous laugh.

  “You better not be; besides, I think the town would turn against me if I went after him. They love the idea of you two together. Hometown hero who was wronged by his ex and the popular prom queen who returns to reunite with her long-lost crush.”

  “Oh Jesus.”

  “That’s what’s being said on the streets.”

  “You mean on Main Street.” I glance back out of the window and shake my head before looking back at her. “And I’m sure you have absolutely no part in the spreading of these new rumors.”

  “Who me? Never.” I can’t tell if she’s being serious or not. “All I did was get the ball rolling. You’re the one who pushed it downhill with that kiss. But I will tell you that the gossip hens in this town are already secretly planning your wedding.”

  “Yeah, well, that is not going to happen,” I say as that unsettled feeling hits me again. The same one that hit me when he left my house. The same one that got stronger each time my phone rang and it wasn’t him. I know that isn’t what she means. I know Rissa is playing in her pretend world, so I go along with it.

  “Oh my God! Could you imagine the story we could do if that happened? Modern Family’s hot dad contest nets him a wife.” She holds her hands up like she’s reading the words off a billboard.

  “You need help.”

  “Nope. It’s you who’s going to need help if he ever acts on the look he gets in his eye when he watches you. Pure lusty sexiness.” She wiggles her shoulders for emphasis, and I roll my eyes at her.

  “I’m going back to work now.” I turn to my social media account to check my ad statistics where click-through rates and impressions and organic reach figures litter the page.

  “And I want to know why you aren’t acting on it.”

  I sigh in exasperation and lean back in my chair, turning my head her way. “Didn’t we just talk about why? My father. His rules. Bias?”

  “So, you do want a little something from Malone.”

  I just walked right into that one.

  “It’s complicated.” Great answer, Sidney. Way to shoot her down.

  “Everything good is.”

  Don’t I know it? Grayson’s groan fills my ears. The way he bit into his bottom lip as he came owns my mind. “Leave it be, Rissa.”

  “You’ve seen him, right? Six feet plus. Nice ass. Great smile. Sexy as sin. Hell, you’re the one who wrote his bio. You know all about that fine package.” Package. I gulp down the laugh that bubbles up and will the flush on my cheeks to go away. “So, why don’t you want to act on it when he’s there for the taking?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Leave.

  It.

  Be.

  I’ve been on cloud nine since he left my house. Cloud fricking nine. Regardless of how many times I’ve told myself it’s just because the sex was incredible, I still don’t buy it. I’m obsessing. Over him. Over wanting him again. Over telling myself it was just sex.

  One time.

  Well, technically two times . . . but that was all it was.

  Sex.

  Not love.

  “Sometimes rules need to be broken. Sometimes that’s the answer you’re looking for,” she says after a few moments and has me freezing mid-motion as a myriad of consequences flicker through my mind, one more than all others. “What is it you’re afraid to lose if you act on it and sleep with him? Dreaming about that big job at Haute, were you?”

  I do a double take. Did I accidentally say that aloud? “How did you know about that?”

  “I figured it out.” She shrugs. “There’s no reason you’d accept a job here at a parenting magazine unless there was a serious upside to it for you. A week before you showed up, I heard rumors about the editor-in-chief position at Haute possibly coming up for grabs next year and figured that was what you were aiming for.”

  “How did you hear that?”

  “I keep tabs on positions within the company . . . I never know when I might want to live the high-journalism life again,” she says and winks.

  “Keeping your options open is always a good idea.”

  She looks outside at the kids who are getting off the bus and falls silent for a moment, her voice quiet when she speaks again. “Do you miss it?”

  “Miss what?”

  “Your old life. Your high heels that are meant for fancy nightclubs instead of the Main Street sidewalks of Sunnyville. The city life. The smells and the sounds of it.” She laughs, but it’s small and almost wistful. “That’s what I miss the most about working for The Post. How the city would come to life. The galas and the functions and the hobnobbing, even though none of them trusted me not to put their words on the record.”

  “My life isn’t as glamorous as everyone thinks it is.” I say the words but, sometimes, it actually was. They all acted as if that part of my life was something I couldn’t be without. Yes, I loved the galas and the functions and the social parts of my job, but I could take them or leave them most nights.

  “Oh, shush, and let this divorced mother pretend that it’s everything I think it is.”

  “Okay.” I smile when I look at her. Her hair might be pulled back in a clip, and her lipstick may h
ave faded with the hours of the day, but I can see how she once fit into that life. “In the meantime, I’ll be over here, trying to figure out how to make the next round of voting that much more spectacular.”

  “Well, if you look out that window right there, you might just get some inspiration.”

  I turn to look where she points, and my breath hitches when I see Grayson walking by with Luke sitting atop his shoulders. Luke has a cone of cotton candy from the farmers’ market in one hand while the other is resting on Grayson’s hat. Grayson has a hold of Luke’s feet so that his biceps flex with each step he takes.

  “Oh.”

  “Uh-huh,” Rissa says in that knowing tone that tells me that, if I were to look at her, she would see right through me to the fact that I’ve already slept with him. “Maybe you should start by getting a better picture of that man of yours for the site.”

  I sigh dramatically. “He isn’t my man.”

  “I know, but maybe if you do a photo shoot, you’ll get to spread oil all over that chest of his so those muscles of his shine better in the pictures, and then that would lead to some horizontal hallelujah with him.”

  Rissa is just as bad as Zoey is.

  I laugh. “You are seriously messed up.”

  “You’re telling me you don’t want to see him shirtless and wet?”

  I have.

  “He doesn’t have to be shirtless to win the contest. Some women look for other attributes.”

  “You just keep telling yourself that, and my Braden is going to win.”

  “You and your Braden.” I roll my eyes.

  “Then get a photo,” she says as she stands and moves toward her desk. “You could always put him into a sex coma and then snap a picture of him barely covered by the sheet. That would get him votes right quick.”

  I start to refute her and then stop. “I know, I know. You’re just living vicariously through your fantasies of me.”

  “You got it, girl.” She gives a glance out the window to where Grayson is no longer in view. “If you want to live vicariously through me—because let’s face it, everyone is jealous of my life—I can show you how to wear sweatpants and cook frozen freezer meals.” I snort. “See? I told you my life was glorious.”