by Susan Stoker
“Right,” Alicia stated firmly. “Just do me a favor…”
“What?”
“Don’t elope.”
“Leesh!”
“I’m serious. I want to be matron of honor. I want to stand next to my sister when she pledges to love her man through sickness and health and watch him do the same. Besides, you said his friends were hot…I want to drool over hot firefighters and cops in tuxedos.”
“I’m hanging up now,” Adeline said with a laugh.
“Wait…seriously, sis. He sounds like a good guy. I’m happy for you.”
“It’s only been a couple of dates.”
“All relationships start out that way. And I knew by the end of the first date that I wanted to marry Matt and have his babies. When it’s right, it’s right.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Yes, you will. Later.”
“‘Bye.”
“‘Bye, Adeline.”
Adeline hung up the phone and ran her hand over Coco’s head. She felt calm and mellow, and happy. It had been a long time since she’d felt this way. Douglas and her job didn’t seem as stressful and dealing with the seizures didn’t even seem to be that big of a deal at the moment. Hell, even the surgery was looking more and more like it was a good idea. All because of Dean.
She smiled. Big. And sent a short prayer upward. Please don’t let him turn out to be a douchebag.
The man paced back and forth, wringing his hands and rocking as he walked. He was agitated, and not even licking her coffee cup was calming him.
It’s not working. She’s not agreeing to eat with you.
She has to eat with you before you can move on to the next part of the plan.
Food first, then more dates. Then you can bring her to your house and she’ll be happy.
You have to stop letting him yell.
She doesn’t like yelling.
Keep control of him, and make sure you’re nice to her.
Nice is key.
He closed his eyes, remembering how nice she smelled. She always smelled nice. It wasn’t perfume, he couldn’t stand that. But whatever shampoo she used made her hair shiny and smooth and smelled like flowers. Every time she moved, he could smell her.
She does it on purpose.
Flips her head around so her hair brushes against your arm and so you can smell her.
She likes you. She’s just playing hard to get.
Keep at it.
She’ll give in.
She wants you.
She needs you.
Tomorrow.
And if she says no to eating again, that thing is coming up.
You’ll have lots of time to get her to like you more.
Lots of time.
Alone time.
The man smiled and relaxed, thinking about all the alone time he’d have with her. He calmly gathered up the pictures he’d taken, happy that there were more now, and carefully stacked them, putting the rubber band around them so they’d not get out of order. He grabbed her coffee cup and walked across the room. He pried up the board in the floor and carefully set the most precious objects in the world to him inside the space. Then he returned the board so the other one wouldn’t find his stash.
The other one was mean to her.
Yelled.
It wasn’t good.
He had to work harder to keep control.
She liked nice. She liked him.
He stood in the middle of the room and smiled. Big.
Chapter 12
A little over one month and too many dates to count later, Adeline smiled when she looked down at her phone and saw it was Dean. It was a Wednesday night and it had been a long day. She was sitting on her couch, thinking about getting up for some ice cream, when her phone rang.
Coco was zonked out on his fluffy bed in front of the TV and they’d both finished dinner about an hour ago. She’d changed out of her work clothes and put on a pair of sweatpants and a big T-shirt. She’d confiscated it from Dean’s house the last time she was there. It said Station 7 on the front and had a big Maltese cross…the symbol of firefighters.
“Hey.”
“Hey, beautiful. How was your day?”
“Good. I heard back from two of the places I sent my resume to. I have a phone interview next Wednesday and one on Thursday.”
“Great news,” Dean said in a soft voice.
“Yeah.”
“Douglas still acting like an ass?”
Adeline hesitated, then mentally shrugged. Douglas was acting weird, and she wanted to talk it through with someone. “He’s extremely hot and cold. I can’t keep up with his moods.”
“What’d he do today?” Dean asked in a reasonable tone.
Adeline appreciated the fact that he hadn’t gotten pissed. She really did need someone to talk to about him, and she wanted that someone to be Dean…as long as he didn’t fly off the handle. “He was in a bad mood in the morning, not saying hello to anyone, not answering emails, that sort of thing. But after lunch it was like he was a different person. Laughing, walking around and chatting with people. It’s just weird.”
“He ask you out again?”
“Sort of,” Adeline told Dean honestly. “He brought in the first pass at ads for the Wolfe campaign that he wanted me to review. We were in the big meeting room, but he sat right next to me instead of across from me, and I swear to God I heard him smell my hair at one point. I turned to look at him and he was sitting a respectable distance away. It wasn’t like I could ask if he was just sniffing me.”
“You should turn him in for sexual harassment,” Dean said in a flat, hard tone.
“I would if I was going to be there much longer. At this point, I just want to be gone. If I accuse him of anything, it will be my word against his. I have absolutely no proof, Dean. Nothing. What am I going to say…he was smelling my hair and it made me uncomfortable?”
“I hate this for you,” Dean said.
“I know. I just have to hang on a little bit longer. Then I’ll be gone and Douglass Hill the Third will be a memory.”
“Are you scared of him?” Dean suddenly asked.
“Scared? No, not really. He comes off as more desperate than crazy,” Adeline told him. “He’s weird, and he makes me uncomfortable, but he’s too much of a chicken to really do anything.”
“Don’t ever underestimate anyone, beautiful. If he’s obsessed with you, and it sounds like he is, then anything could set him off. You could look at him wrong, say something that he doesn’t like, or even just wear the wrong thing one day. You just don’t know.”
“I’ll be careful,” Adeline promised. “I’ll do my best not to be alone with him and I’ll make sure security walks me out to my car each afternoon.”
“Good. I worry about you.”
“I know, and I appreciate it. Enough about him. How was your day? Busy?”
“Unfortunately, yeah. I hate to be bored, but when it comes to my job, most of the time it’s better to be sitting around not doing anything because that means no one is sick, hurting, and there aren’t any fires.”
“Sorry, hon.”
“It’s my job. Anything else exciting happen to you today?”
Overall, Adeline found Dean to be fairly easygoing. He wasn’t overbearing, even though he could definitely be bossy. He didn’t always want to know exactly where she was every minute of the day. He was happy to meet her sister and parents, and of course they loved him. As she teased him, he certainly wasn’t perfect, he had some quirks that could be annoying…insisting on driving whenever they went out and not letting her do things she was perfectly able to do—like pick up Coco’s poop in the yard and talk to the Internet people when her wi-fi went out at home—but it wasn’t as if she was going to complain about either of those things, especially not when she was perfectly happy letting him take care of them.
But Dean did not like Douglas. He hadn’t ever met the man, but it didn’t matter. He tho
ught her boss was an ass. And he was, but Dean didn’t have to work with him day in and day out…Adeline did. At first, she’d tried not talking about him at all, but that didn’t work, as Dean got all pouty and she’d felt so bad, she blurted out all the smiling, arm touching, and compliments her boss had been throwing her way.
The last time they’d talked about him, and she’d told Dean how she thought Douglas had been looking down her shirt, she’d had to do some really fast talking to keep him from storming out of his house and tracking Douglas down to have a “heart-to-heart” with him. And that “heart-to-heart” would entail Dean laying it out that she was his, and Douglas had better keep his hands, and eyes, to himself. Of course, he most likely wouldn’t use words to get his point across, and Adeline didn’t feel like spending the evening trying to figure out how bail worked.
Adeline really, really didn’t want to tell Dean that Douglas had informed her today that in a month there was a conference in Dallas that he wanted her to go to. She’d skipped over that tidbit of news earlier when they were talking about her boss. The conference wouldn’t have been a bad thing, except Douglas was attending as well. And the last thing Adeline wanted was to have to explain to her extremely protective boyfriend—protective in a good way, a way that made her feel treasured and cared for, not a creepy, over-the-top, possessive way—that her asshole boss, who’d been hitting on her and acting extremely volatile, would be attending an out-of-town conference with her and most likely wanted to carpool both there and back.
Nope. She really didn’t want to tell Dean any of that.
“Adeline…” Dean’s tone was drawn out and questioning, as if he knew there was something she wasn’t telling him.
So she did what she usually did when she had bad news…or at least news that she didn’t think Dean would take very well. She tried to hide it in the middle of other stuff. “Hey, did I tell you that it’s been two days since I’ve had a seizure? I don’t really know why except I’ve cut out caffeine from my diet…you know that, of course you do, I’ve only been complaining about it for the last two weeks. But I think it’s making a difference. Of course, when I go up to Dallas for the conference next month, I might have to make an exception because the last thing I want to do is sleep through a presentation. Are you coming over—”
“Conference?”
Shit. Adeline didn’t know why she even bothered trying to slip anything by him. Dean was way too quick. She sighed and didn’t even pretend to not know what he’d asked. “Yeah, there’s a conference up in Dallas at the end of next month that I’ve been asked to attend.”
Dean was silent for a moment before he asked in a tone that Adeline knew meant he was on the edge of losing his shit. “With him?”
“Well, Douglas will be there, yeah, but it’s not like I’ll be rooming with him or anything. It’s not a big deal, Dean.”
“How long?”
“How long is the conference? I think it starts on a Sunday and ends on Wednesday afternoon.”
“So you’ll be in a hotel with this ass for three nights?”
“Honey,” Adeline soothed, “it’s fine. I see him every day at work; this isn’t going to be any different. I’ll try to make sure we’re on separate floors if that would make you feel better. I won’t even have to talk to him much once we get there.”
“You are not going to ride with him.”
“You’re right, I’m not. I can drive myself, but I was going to ask if you wanted to come up and stay with me if your schedule allowed it.”
“Oh, my schedule’s gonna allow it. It’s about time I met this boss of yours.”
“Dean, seriously.”
“Look. This isn’t a conversation I wanted to have on the phone. But here it is. You know I don’t like him nor trust him. You’re beautiful, Adeline. Fuckin’ beautiful. Not only that, but you’re smart and a good person to boot. And you’re mine. I don’t want him thinkin’ if he takes you up to some conference, he can get in there.”
“He’s not getting in anywhere. Gross,” Adeline said, getting pissed now. This was the reaction she thought she’d get earlier when she told Dean about how Douglas had been acting.
“Who made you come so hard it took you five minutes to stop shaking, beautiful? Him? Fuck no. Me. And just because I haven’t touched your hot, wet pussy yet, doesn’t mean you’re not mine. Giving you an orgasm by touchin’ you through your pants and suckin’ on your tit means that you liked it a fuck of a lot. I love that you gave that to me. To me. And because I’m a guy, I know he wants in there. He wouldn’t have stopped being a dick and started trying to impress you if he didn’t. I know you still aren’t really getting this, and that’s okay, because it’s really fucking cute how you introduce me to people as your boyfriend and you blush every fucking time, but Douglas Hill the fucking Third isn’t gonna even think about making a Douglas Hill the Fourth with you if I have anything to say about it. He needs to know you’re off-limits. You’re so off-limits you’re in a different damn zip code.”
Adeline knew she had to switch tactics. As much as his words made her feel good, they also kinda pissed her off.
“So you don’t trust me?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth. I trust you, beautiful. I know you don’t have a devious bone in your body, it’s that asshole I don’t trust. I don’t like that his moods have been erratic and that you’re not comfortable with him.”
“Can we talk about this later?” Adeline figured she’d better shut down the conversation before she really got pissed off and said something she’d regret.
“Yeah. But we will be talking about it again.”
“I don’t know what else there is to talk about. It’s my job. I have to go. Hell, I want to go. It’s a great opportunity for me to network and maybe make a connection that will get me out of my current workplace, and away from Douglas, all that much faster. It’s not like I’m going on an out-of-town date with him,” Adeline groused, not dropping it even though she’d been the one to suggest talking about it later.
“Adeline, you’re an adult. You can do whatever the fuck you want. I’ll always support your career. I’m proud of you and what you do. But I’m worried about you, beautiful. As much as I love the fact that you take no notice of men checking you out every time we go out, that concerns me too.”
“Men don’t check me out.”
“They do. And that’s okay. When you’re with me, I can keep that shit checked. But the fact that you won’t even admit that your boss has been coming on to you worries me. And it concerns me even more that it’s just the two of you goin’. Unless I misunderstood and Georgia or Robert from your office are attending the conference with you?”
“No,” Adeline admitted grumpily. “Just me and Douglas.”
“Right. So yeah, this convention shit with your boss worries me.”
He sighed hugely and Adeline could picture him running a hand through his hair in agitation. “Okay, we’ll talk about it later. I’m gonna hope like hell you impress the fuck out of those people in your interviews next week and they hurry the fuck up and make a hiring decision. Maybe you’ll leave your current job before the damn conference comes around and it won’t even be an issue.”
His voice got softer as he changed the subject. Adeline could tell he was making an effort to tone down his irritation. “Douchebag boss aside, I’m glad the no caffeine is helping with your seizures, beautiful. You talked to your doctor about it?”
Relieved he’d changed the subject, Adeline nodded as she spoke. “Yeah. He’s pleased and wants to see me in a few weeks. He’s been pushing for me to make a decision about the surgery.”
“I know, sweetheart. Okay, you were gonna ask me if I was coming over tomorrow night, right?”
“Right.”
“I want you over here instead.”
“But I have to work Friday,” Adeline said in confusion. “It’s a long drive to get back to my place, and if I have to leave earlier in the evening to get home at a d
ecent time, that’s less time I get to spend with you.”
“I love that you want to spend time with me. And I know we haven’t done this before, but I want you to stay all night. Call in sick to work. You have a ton of time saved up that you’ll never use, especially if you take another job. It won’t kill you to take a mental health day.”
“You’re off Friday, right?” Adeline asked.
“Yup. Friday and Saturday. Will you spend them with me? All night and all day?”
Adeline swallowed wrong and almost choked. Spend the night with Dean? She’d wanted to ask him to stay so many times over the last month, but chickened out every time. Even after he’d given her the most amazing orgasm the other night, she hadn’t asked him to stay the night, and he hadn’t hinted at it either.
“Is this because of Douglas?” she asked skeptically.
“Fuck no. Adeline. That fuckwad has nothing to do with me wanting you in my house and bed. But there’s no pressure here. I have a guest room. If you’re uneasy, you can sleep there, you can trust—”
“No,” she blurted, interrupting him. “I mean…shit.”
Dean chuckled low and it made her squirm in her seat. She tried again.
“I trust you. I want to stay with you…I’m just nervous about it.”
“No need. If anything, I’m the one who should be nervous.”
“You? Why in the world would you be nervous?”
“I’m a guy. Because this is the first time you’ll be in my bed and I want to do it right. I want to make sure you have not one moment of anxiety or fear. I want you to overlook all my weird quirks I don’t know I have and I want you to enjoy yourself so much that you never want to leave.”
“We’ll have to eat sometime.”
“Let me rephrase.”
Adeline could tell he was smiling.
“That you’ll never want to leave my house.”