“’Kay, Momma,” he said, then took off like a flash to catch up with his friends. Kyle and Jasper were a couple of little boys that he talked about nonstop each day when I picked him up from school.
“You’re a nurse?” August asked as his dark brows rose.
“Yeah. I worked in San Francisco after I graduated and got my RN. The drive was a real killer, an hour there and an hour back home. Mom watched Calum for me as I had to work the night shift. At Cedars, I’ll get the day shift and weekends off. Calum will be in school all day while I work, and he’ll only have to stay at daycare for a couple of hours before I get off. Things will be a lot better with the new job.”
“Color me impressed.” He looked me over without an ounce of shame in his game. “You and I should have dinner some time. You know, catch up.”
I agreed wholeheartedly and reached out my hand. “Give me your cell and I’ll put my number in your contacts. I’d love to catch up with you, August Harlow.”
As I typed in my number, my mind skipped back seven years to that fateful night…
Alone at home with my parents in Napa Valley for the weekend, I found myself looking out my bedroom window at the full moon that night. It called me to sit outside and do a bit of moon bathing.
Sitting outside in one of the lounge chairs in the backyard, I had no idea the hot guy next door would be joining me soon. “Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars played on my cell, keeping me company until the sound of the back door opening at the house next to ours took my attention.
I turned the volume down as my hunky neighbor stepped outside, his eyes on the moon before landing on me. August Harlow and I had a four-year age difference that separated us, but that’d never stopped me from having a huge crush on him. As he started making small talk, I got the feeling that he knew I’d turned eighteen a few weeks back—and that it mattered to him.
We’d played together when we were kids. But junior high had taken him away from being my friend anymore. He was always going after he left our grade school to go to what I had called The Big Kids’ School. I felt like he’d left me behind.
But after puberty changed my body, I had caught him looking at me from time to time, on the school bus, and in my backyard from his upstairs bedroom window. I’d fantasize about him coming over, asking me out on a date. But fantasy was all I thought I’d ever have.
In no time at all, my insides were on fire for him. Hell, they’d been smoldering for years. Equipped with the knowledge that he’d be leaving the next day to go to boot camp before heading to war, I lost every inhibition I’d ever had.
A part of me I never knew existed came alive inside of me, and suddenly I was taking the guy’s hand and leading him into my parents’ home. Once inside, he kicked the door closed and pulled me to him, turning us around before pushing me up against the door.
My heart was beating so hard we both felt it. “Seems I’ve excited you, Tawny.”
My name coming out of his mouth with him so close to me compelled me to trail my fingers over his lips. “They are as soft as I thought they’d be.”
Those luscious lips curled into a sexy smile as he moved them closer and closer to mine, until they touched, sending fire rushing through my veins. “Oh…” I moaned, making my lips part. He took advantage, and his tongue moved into my mouth to twirl around with mine.
My body, pressed as it was between the door and his strength, felt like it belonged to him. Every little touch he made had me aching deep inside. I’d never wanted anything more than I wanted him.
When one of his hands made its way under my t-shirt, cupping my naked breast, I gasped with desire, not understanding how the heat I’d already felt could continue to intensify. His mouth left mine, moving down to join his hand at the tit he played with as his tongue danced over my skin. “God!”
He bit my nipple playfully then held it between his lips as he licked it over and over before sucking on it. “You like that?” he asked, and all I could do was moan in response.
My hands flew to run through his wavy, dark hair, relishing how it felt. “Damn, your hair’s so soft,” my voice but a whisper.
“And you taste like heaven,” he growled before picking me up, bridal-style, and carrying me to the living room. He laid me on the sofa and put his body on top of mine.
The weight of his body on mine gave me a sense of ownership—like he was mine now. Like I’d hold part of him forever—at least in my head and my heart.
He kissed me hard as he pushed the top of my pajama pants down and moved his hand into my panties. Another gasp escaped me as his finger slid into my virgin hole. “Fuck, you’re tight as hell, baby.” He grinned at me. “I cannot wait to feel your tight pussy clamped around my hard cock.”
My head went light with his naughty words.
Holy hell, he’s fucking hot!
I grabbed the hem of his t-shirt, pulling it up and running my hands all over his muscular back. His finger pumping inside me only made me more eager to feel his cock within me.
He moved off me and began undressing right in front of me. When he reached down to pull my pajama bottoms off, I stopped him. “Let’s go to my bed, August. I’m a virgin, and I’m going to bleed a little when you break my hymen. If I get blood on Mom’s sofa, she’ll kill me.”
Gathering me in his arms, he kissed me once more, soft and sweet. “Point me to your room then.”
Pointing the way for him, he took me into the room I’d grown up in and put me down on my twin-sized bed. As he pulled my nightclothes off, his lips moved over every inch of flesh that he exposed. The panties were the last things to go, and then his lips grazed my sex. The moan that escaped me was deep and throaty. “August…”
Warm air moved over my pussy as he blew on me. I had no idea sex could be so great—no idea sex with August could be this good. And it hurt like hell that I’d only get the one night with the man…
“Mom!” the sound of my son’s voice tore me from my memory. Back to the reality that stood in front of me.
August’s hazel eyes peered into mine. He was real and right in front of me. The man I thought I’d never get to feel again stood two feet away from me.
By some miracle, I had another chance with him.
Chapter Three
August
My nephew Gino left work starving to death, so we stopped to eat before I took him home. I spotted my sister’s car in the drive, so I got out and headed inside to have a little chat with her about the day’s activities and my chance meeting with Tawny.
Seeing Tawny and her son had raised a lot of questions in my mind, and I needed to talk it out with someone. Leila and I have always been close, and she’s been my sounding board for most of my life.
We walked into the kitchen and were met by the rest of her brood of children. “Mom, I don’t like spaghetti the way you cook it,” her oldest, Jeanna, griped.
“Then cook it yourself, Jeanna. Damn!” Leila bitched as she slammed a monster-sized package of pasta on the granite countertop.
“Hi,” I called out to get my sister to look at me.
Her eyes ran over the kids who filled the kitchen before landing on me. “Hey, you.” She looked at her oldest daughter as she went to the wine chiller, grabbing a bottle and two glasses. “You’re on dinner tonight, my darling daughter.”
“I’ll help,” the youngest of the bunch, ten-year-old Jacob, shouted as he raised his hand as if he was in school.
“Great,” came Jeanna’s sarcastic reply.
Leila walked past me, jerking her head as a gesture for me to follow her. “Come on, little brother.”
Leaving the noisy kitchen, I followed my sister to the patio out back. She popped the cork on the bottle and filled her glass to the very top before only filling mine halfway.
“Feeling stingy, sis?” I asked as I took a seat on the other side of the small table that sat between two chairs. My sister purposely put only two chairs and the little table on this particular patio to discourage
the children from bothering her out there.
“No, you’re driving so you only get half a glass.” She sat down with a long sigh then took a dainty sip of her wine. “Oh, this is delicious.” A hearty gulp followed and then she sat back and looked relaxed. “So, what’s up?”
“You remember the Matthews from next door back home, right?” I asked then took a drink of the wine, finding it a bit on the bitter side. It seemed my sister could find any wine delicious.
“Sure, there were the parents and that one kid. A girl. Um, Tawny.” Another long drink took her to half a glass already. “What about them?”
“Well, I saw Tawny today when I went to the Science Center to pick up Gino.” I stopped as I contemplated Leila’s role in my chance meeting with the young lady I’d thought of often since our one night together. “Thanks for asking me to go pick him up, by the way. If I hadn’t been there at that exact time, I’d never have seen her. And man, did I enjoy seeing her.”
“She’s too young for you, Romeo,” Leila informed me with a snippy attitude. Always the older, wiser sister.
“No, she wasn’t.” The wine, although bitter, called to me and I took another sip.
Nope, still bitter.
Leila’s dark brows raised. “Wasn’t? Don’t you mean to say, isn’t?”
“She wasn’t, and she isn’t now either,” I clarified. “You see, the night before I left for boot camp there was a full moon. I went outside to look at it when I couldn’t sleep, and there I found Tawny. One thing led to another, and bada-bing bada-boom, I ended up having sex with her and ridding her of her pesky virginity.”
The wine glass nearly fell out of her hand. But my sister wasn’t one to commit party fouls and quickly regained her grip on it before so much as a drop could spill out of the deeply welled glass. “No! She was just a kid, August!”
“No, she was eighteen, and I was only twenty-one,” I corrected her.
“The day you left for boot camp you were twenty-one, but three days after that you turned twenty-two. You’re almost four full years older than that girl. August, you should be ashamed of yourself.” She stopped long enough to take a drink before going on, “And the fact that you took this girl’s virginity then left her is…well, it’s a shitty-ass thing to do is what that is.”
“Yeah, I know.” I looked up at the sky at the low-hanging sun—evening was setting in. “She’s got a son. He’s in first grade. How old is a kid when they’re in that grade, Leila?”
“Six,” she said without missing a beat. She had so many kids she didn’t even have to stop to think about that.
“Six?” I asked, as I thought about the kid’s age. “Are you sure they’re not, like, four or something? The boy was pretty small. I thought he had to be about four.”
“Kids are little, August. But if he’s in first grade, then he’s six or seven.” She drained her glass then promptly refilled it.
If the kid was six, and Tawny and I had been together approximately seven years ago, then could he be…? “It was seven years ago that she and I were together. Do you think he could be mine?”
“I dunno.” Leila looked at the red wine as she swirled it in her glass. She had a special affection for the fermented grape. “Does he look like you?”
“He’s got brown hair and hazel eyes.” I pushed my hand through my own brown locks as I thought about the little boy. “And he’s adorable, just like me.” I grinned at her.
Her brows raised. “Wow. You didn’t just ask Tawny if he’s yours?”
Was she crazy? “Hell no! That would’ve been rude. And the boy was standing right there most of the time.”
My response to her absurd question had earned me a nod. “You’re right…especially with the kid standing right there. Is she married though?”
With a shake of my head, I answered, “Nope.”
Leila’s eyes went wide as a thought must’ve popped into her head. “Is she aware of your billionaire status?”
“Nope.” I winked at her. “That’s not a thing I throw around, sis. Can you imagine what she’d think of me if I just blurted that out? Like, ‘Oh, nice to see you again, and by the way, I’m filthy rich now, so there’s that.’”
Still, my sister’s wheels turned. “Hmm, if she were to discover that information, do you think she’d go after you for child support if the kid’s yours?”
As if I’d merely give the fruit of my loins child support and nothing else! “If that boy is mine, I’ll gladly support him. Do you think I should call her up and ask her to join me for dinner tonight?”
“Why are you asking me?” She looked off to one side as the sound of a door opening took her attention. “If it’s not important, it can wait. Go back inside, Jenna,” she hadn’t even looked to see who it was, but somehow she sensed it. Leila shook her head as the door closed. “She’s my little tattletale. At fourteen, I thought she’d be done with that crap. But nope, still tattling. And Jeanna is the one she likes to tell on the most.”
“She’s probably out to get Jeanna because you named them almost the same damn thing, and it pisses her off,” I offered as an explanation. “Who does that, Leila? Jeanna and Jenna—were you stoned when you named your fourth child? Or had you simply run out of name ideas by then?”
“The latter.” She took a sip. “And some of the former, if I’m to be perfectly honest. So back to our conversation before the interruption—I’m way older than Tawny, since I’m three years older than you. I never really knew her at all. I have no idea if you should ask her out for dinner tonight or not. Maybe she’s holding on to some resentment towards you—I know I would. Whether you’re that boy’s dad or not, you screwed her, took her virginity, and then left her all alone. Man, that would’ve fucked me up.”
“She didn’t act mad at all—not seven years ago and not when I saw her today. I think taking her for dinner is a good idea, but she might need a babysitter. I thought you might volunteer. It’d give you a chance to see the kid who just might be your nephew,” I enticed my sister.
The fact was, I wasn’t sure if the kid was mine or not. Part of me wanted to jump up and down and shout it to the world that I was a father. But the rational part of me told me to stay calm, that the kid might not be mine. It was easier to make light of it all than to think too hard on that conundrum.
Putting the glass down, a smile filled her face. “I’m in! You know how I am about kids.”
She was a nut over kids. “You know, one of my business partners has recently become a father. Wouldn’t that be crazy if I became one, too?”
Leaning back in her chair, she looked up at the sky. “Crazier things have happened, August. But you should really think about this before you ask her out. Say the kid isn’t yours—do you really want to get involved with a single mom? It’d be cruel to Tawny for you to get involved with her and her son when all you’re looking for is a quick second round with her. And say he is yours—she’s been fine without you for six years; do you really want to take on such a huge responsibility right now? It’s hard enough becoming a parent when you’ve planned for it, never mind becoming a dad overnight—and you’ve got a lot going on right now with the nightclub opening soon.”
“Maybe you’re right.” The club had kind of faded to the far reaches of my mind for once, what with Tawny showing up in my life out of the blue. My business partners and I were all busy planning the grand opening of our club, Swank. We had set the opening night for New Year’s Eve, which was just a couple of months away. “Maybe I should hold off. But man, Tawny was pretty enough seven years ago when I last saw her, but now, she’s absolutely gorgeous. I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“My advice,” my sister said as she got up. “Put this off for a bit. See if you’re still thinking about her in…let’s say a week. Even if he’s not your kid, you should think about how it might be, dating a woman with one. It’s not always easy. We moms are weird about bringing men around our kids. It’s not always the easiest relationship when you have
to share your woman with someone right from the get-go, either.”
What she said settled in my brain. “Yeah, I think you’re right. I’ll hold off for a week and see how I feel then. If that boy is mine, I think she’d tell me anyway, even if I didn’t ask her out. I mean, why wouldn’t she?”
Thinking Tawny would’ve told me if he was mine, or at the very least told me we should talk, made me think Calum couldn’t be mine. No matter how much he looked like me.
Maybe Tawny just had a type. Or maybe she was just pining away for me after our night together. She could’ve gone out and found a guy with the same color hair and eyes I had so she could pretend it was me again. And the poor girl found out that not just any man could fulfill her like I could, so she broke up with the dude.
I chuckled at my arrogance, but a part of me hoped that was the case. It was better than thinking of the alternative.
Chapter Four
Tawny
The day had faded into night, and still August hadn’t called me. I supposed it was stupid for me to think he would call me right away. He looked to be a busy man—that suit told me he had to be some bigwig somewhere. Probably just very busy, is what I told myself.
After putting Calum to bed, I poured myself a glass of red wine and settled into my bed. Sipping on the wine, I tried in vain to read an e-book I’d downloaded, but the romantic scenes didn’t do a thing for me. What August and I had done that night so long ago was hotter than anything the writer had written in her book.
Putting my Kindle down on the nightstand, I laid back, closing my eyes and picking up the memory of that night, right where I’d left off when Calum distracted me at the Science Center…
August had undressed me, and he was gloriously naked as well. He’d taken me to my bed, and his mouth was on my mound—kissing, nipping, and licking me into a state of bliss I hadn’t known existed.
I’d given myself a handful of orgasms before, and they’d felt pretty good, but what August did felt out of this world. His tongue pushed into me, making me gasp with the odd pressure it gave me. “August!”
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