by Liz Meldon
But she was all by her lonesome.
Cue the entrance of her white knight, just when she least expected him.
No. Her chocolate knight. Skye hadn’t touched any Rai’s Sweets products since that awful day, and yet there was Finn, grinning down at her before whipping out a packet of her favourites—chocolate balls stuffed with salted caramel. How did he know chocolate was precisely what she needed in this exact moment?
Wait—how did he even know she was here? Did he have a secret love child checked into her waking nightmare who was causing everyone a world of misery? Skye stood and swept her hair out of her face, then took a quick count of the kids. All accounted for—and none that resembled a miniature Finn.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, finally striding toward the door, Cassandra at her heels. The little girl barely gave her an inch of space as she shuffled along after her, grabbing hold of the fold in Skye’s jeans when she stopped.
Handsome as ever, Finn’s dark eyes swept over her. Skye had missed the way he studied her, like she was a living, breathing work of art that he desperately needed for his private collection. He had a knack for making her feel special, like the only woman in the world, without saying a word. Her cheeks burned at the thought, and she bit them, hard, in an effort to distract herself.
Clearing his throat, he gave a slight shake of his head, as if to refocus, and then leaned over the kiddie gate.
“Well, hello,” he crooned down to Cassandra, whose face went beet red as soon as their eyes met. “Who is this charming creature?”
“Finn—”
“Would she possibly be interested in a bit of chocolate?”
“Finn.” As soon as the pack of hyenas inside caught wind of chocolate, they’d tear Cassandra apart to get it. Like any of them needed additional sugar.
“All right, all right,” he said, straightening with a chuckle. “I brought them for you, anyway, but it’s always polite to share.”
“And why,” she said, forcing a smile at the feel of Cassandra’s huge round eyes peering up at her, “are you here, bringing me chocolate?”
“Oh, get over yourself.” Finn picked a nonexistent bit of lint off his navy suit jacket, a garment perfectly tailored to highlight every delicious curve of his muscular, towering frame. “I’m here for the fair. I’ve invested in six of the museums attending… Figured I’d check on things in a less official capacity.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Her blush darkened. Of course he was here on business. Both he and Cole had probably slipped right back to their high-class lifestyles in a flash without her. They’d probably already found new women to fill their free time with.
Well. Not Cole. But he could certainly afford to take on a new sugar baby now that Skye had severed ties.
The very idea made her stomach twist, even though she knew it had no right to.
“But,” Finn murmured, leaning in just slightly, as though whispering a wicked secret, “I thought you might be here. At the fair. So, really, the chocolates were intended for you. I planned ahead.”
“Why?” Behind her, the shrieks and laughter had reached a crescendo. She had to get back in there. Skye winced at the sound of something crashing to the floor.
“Consider it a peace offering,” Finn told her, albeit somewhat distractedly as he peered over her. “What on earth is happening in there?”
“Chaos,” she huffed. “Pure, unbridled chaos. I’m not a nanny, but apparently today I…” Skye pressed her lips together, only just processing what he had initially said. “Finn, you don’t need to give me a peace offering. I… owe you one, if anything.”
“Water under the bridge, darling,” he said, still distracted. “Would you like a hand?”
“What?” Skye opened and closed her mouth, but no words of protest came when he shoved the chocolates into her hand, then reached over and unlatched the door. Finn slipped into the room, body no more than a breath from hers, and she tried not to inhale too deeply at the first hint of his intoxicating cologne wafting over her.
“You look like you’ve lost control,” he noted. “Are you all by yourself?”
“I’m just here because we volunteered to help for an hour. The girl who actually captains this sinking ship is on her break.”
“Unacceptable.”
“Well, it’s been a long day—”
“Find a place for this where no one will touch it with what I suspect are sticky little fingers,” Finn instructed, slipping off his jacket and holding it out to her. Bewildered, Skye took it and hung it over her arm, then watched as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his collared dress shirt, rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, and squared his shoulders. A steely glint appeared in his eye as he surveyed the scene. “Fortunately for you, children love me.”
He shot Cassandra a quick wink and a dazzling grin, and Skye held back a smile as the little girl hid her flushed face against Skye’s leg.
Don’t worry. He has that effect on everyone.
“Finn, you really don’t have to…”
But he was already off, marching into the eye of the storm, clapping loudly and calling for everyone to meet him by the jungle gym. Much to her surprise, the horde of tiny shits listened.
Mystified, Skye watched as Finn settled everyone down, made a few of them giggle, and then explained the nuanced gameplay of Red Light, Green Light. Within two minutes, he had all the kids heading to one side of the room, himself included, while a volunteer raced to the other and faced the wall. Her eyebrows shot up when the game went off without a hitch, leaving her biting her cheeks to keep from smiling at the sight of a grown man in notably expensive attire creeping alongside an army of elementary-aged kids, freezing in silly positions when RED LIGHT was shrieked from the other side of the room. Anyone who moved on a red light was out. The goal was to make it to the other side and touch the wall without the red-green announcer catching you.
Finn had been right.
Kids loved him.
Skye would kill for that kind of credibility.
He had also introduced an additional callout: Godzilla. As soon as the announcer on the other side of the room said it, everyone shrieked and went running back to the wall they’d started on. The kid who’d been tagged took over the announcer’s duties, and the game started again.
The first round lasted about two minutes, and at the commencement of the third, a soft, feminine voice called out for Cassandra, who was still glued to Skye’s hip.
“Mommy!”
Sure enough, after an ID check and a signature, Cassandra’s mother checked her out. Skye recognized the woman as a museum employee from another booth, not a fair visitor, but she didn’t stick around long enough to chat. With her shadow gone, Skye gently placed Finn’s soft, warm, delicious-smelling jacket on an unused hook by the gate, then started to tidy up the area after the whirling tornadoes had turned it upside down.
“Come on, Skye,” Finn called as he charged back to the other side of the room, jogging beside the herd of mad-dash kids. “Join the fun!”
After a chorus of encouragement from the horde who had blatantly ignored her attempt to assert her authority less than ten minutes earlier, Skye slipped off her kitten heels and entered the arena. She purposefully situated herself as far from Finn as she could, still unable to process what the hell was happening, but was soon lost in the game at hand—and found herself enjoying it.
And, as usual, enjoying Finn. Not only was he excellent at wrangling kids, encouraging them, exciting them about the other games he had in mind—he could throw down the gauntlet when challenged, too. When the ringleader of the little boy terrorists pushed a girl and laughed when she fell, Finn marched him right out of the game, sat him down on a comically tiny stool, and had him face the wall for a five-minute time-out. When he’d served his time, his minions had fled and his power was gone, and that was the last bit of trouble they got out of him.
Skye eventually withdrew from an intense game of Blob Tag—kids who were tagged held ha
nds and hunted down everyone else as a blob-like unit—when Janet, the attendant who was supposed to be minding the madness, finally returned from her break.
“Hey,” Skye said breathlessly, noting the way the woman’s hawkish eyes assessed the situation over her shoulder. “How was your—”
“Who the hell is he?” Janet demanded, her gaze fixed on Finn—and her tone unnecessarily snippy. Skye crossed her arms, incredulous at the unsaid accusation.
“He is a friend of mine who stepped in to help with the mess you left me,” she replied coolly. “I look forward to mentioning that to your supervisor… You know, that you left me alone with—”
“Yeah, whatever,” the woman muttered, tossing her purse by the door and sighing. “You think I get paid enough to care? I’ll take over if you can handle the check-outs. The fair’s closing in a half hour and we’re done in ten minutes. Parents’ll be here all at once, as usual.”
“Fine.” Skye’s curt tone earned her no response from the attendant, and she watched the woman charge in, break up the game, and re-introduce unorganized chaos—also known as free time. Within seconds, the screaming, shrieking, and crashing resumed. Oh yeah. Skye would definitely be speaking with this woman’s supervisor. She wasn’t the type to report some poor underpaid employee if they were just trying to do their shitty job, but this was ridiculous.
“Well, she’s a peach, isn’t she?” Finn muttered after stalking back to Skye’s side, watching the scene unfold with crossed arms and a scowl. “Is she the one who was supposed to be watching the children?”
“The very same.”
“Right. I have a few choice words for whoever is actually in charge here.”
They exchanged glances, Skye’s lips twitching into a smile before she forced herself to look away. Now that they didn’t have the kids to distract them or change the subject, she couldn’t ignore the absurdity of the situation.
“Finn, why are you here?” She gestured toward the madness, trying not to roll her eyes when the attendant pulled out her phone as kids ran haywire around her. “Why did you… stay to help?”
“Because I saw a damsel in distress,” he remarked with a shrug. “There were an awful lot of dragons to slay by yourself.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he held up a hand. “Look, I’m not trying to be slick with you. My sister did the whole scout-troop-leader charade with both of her kids when they were younger. I’ve been roped into similar situations before, and I like it. I just thought you could use a hand, that’s all.”
Skye swallowed hard as all the time she had spent agonizing over whether she had made the right decision a month ago, if it had been right to cut Cole and Finn loose cold turkey, came flooding back to her. Right now, as Finn stood watching the madness, his body exuding its own gravitational pull that Skye was still fighting with every fiber of her being, she wasn’t so sure it had been the right thing to do. Long-term, yes. Or maybe no. Should she have just tried her luck with Finn?
No. That would never work. She couldn’t look at him without some little voice at the back of her mind bringing up Cole, and then she’d remember how much she cared about him too.
“Finn…” She touched his arm, an electrical current racing along her skin from her fingertips to her shoulder, then straight to her heart. When he looked down at her, eyebrows up, she lost her nerve. “You don’t have to stay. I think we’ve got it under control.”
The muscle in his jaw flickered slightly, but just when his lips parted, someone cleared their throat from the other side of the gate. As Janet had bemoaned moments earlier, parents were starting to line up, and Skye had no choice but to busy herself with the checkout procedures. Finn could leave. There was no reason for him to stay.
But, of course, he did. Because Finn wasn’t that kind of man. Instead, he was the kind to pull kids out of the chaos and walk them back to the door, their little faces red and smiling. He did it for each and every checkout, exchanging some back-and-forth with the parents for good measure as Skye handled the paperwork.
And each time he returned to her side, charming everyone within a five-mile radius, she found herself edging closer to the realization that she had, in fact, made a mistake.
A mistake of epic proportions.
One that was probably too late to correct, whether she wanted to or not.
So, for now, she contented herself with the smell of his cologne, the sound of his voice, and the barely-there caress of his talented fingers on the small of her back whenever he stood beside her.
Knowing it was probably the best she could hope for, that she shouldn’t want more.
But deep down… she did.
3
Climactic Reunions
“Absolutely ridiculous,” Finn grumbled as he stacked a pile of teeny-tiny chairs on top of each other to make them easier to carry. “She ought to be getting fired, not given a stern talking to.”
“I think you’re being a little hard on her,” Skye told him. “I mean, yeah, it was shitty to leave me here by myself, but I don’t think it’s a fireable offense.”
“That paired with her horrible attitude ought to at least be worthy of a suspension.”
Honestly, that awful cow worked with children. If she was really so blasé about her duties, she ought to seek employment elsewhere. Finn scowled at the mere memory of his conversation with the day care’s supervisor, who had seemed just as nonplussed by the incident as her employee had. Although he’d been assured the issue would be addressed, he had serious doubts anything would come of it—and he planned to check with the weekday staff to ensure this wasn’t a common occurrence. Parents put their trust in these people. It was a good thing Skye wasn’t the type to sit around on her phone and let chaos reign, or someone could have gotten hurt.
Never mind the fact that the woman’s absence had all but ruined his plan to reconnect with Skye in a meaningful, perhaps more salacious way. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, realizing that that was primary reason for his frustration—and now he was taking a snippy tone with Skye because of it. Exhaling, he pushed his ire to the side; it ought to be unleashed on the appropriate person, after all, and not the woman he was falling in love with.
“Regardless of all that, I hardly think it was your responsibility to offer to stay and clean while she’s being reprimanded,” he said, straightening up to stretch his lower back. It had been some time since he entertained children under the age of ten. He’d forgotten what a strain it put on his body—a body he considered in rather fit shape at that. Not that he minded the achy twinges: Finn had enjoyed horsing around with the little ones, even if they cut into the time reserved for winning back Skye.
“Well, she’s had a long day, and I feel bad that it’ll be even longer because we tattled on her,” she insisted as she piled a bunch of inch-thick mats on top of each other, then hoisted them up. “You don’t have to stay. I mean, I’m getting paid to be here.”
“Like I would let you undertake this mess by yourself.” Finn grabbed the two piles of stacked plastic chairs, one in each hand, and shot her a grin. “Besides, your company is payment enough.”
Something in his chest tightened at the way her cheeks flushed, and he cleared his throat, trying his damnedest to play it cool.
No matter what he had told her earlier, Finn was here with the express purpose of talking to Skye. He and Cole had spent the last month working like madmen to allow themselves the time off to pursue her again. After all, as much as they would have liked to spend all their waking hours in Skye Mode, they both had jobs. Cole, as usual, buried himself in work; Finn had hardly seen him, though they were in virtual contact almost every day.
Finn had been in LA for much of the month, preparing for the launch of the customizable edible chocolate creations line his father had charged him with, along with opening a brick-and-mortar location in Beverly Hills. Things were on schedule and running smoothly, but mostly because Finn knew how to hire the right people for the right job. Cole, meanwhile, had
every iron in every fire, and Finn could never understand why. Sure, the man was a workaholic, but that didn’t justify the insane hours he put in on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
All those crazy hours, however, had allowed both men to take a full two weeks off now—no shop talk, no conference calls, no factory inspections. Cole was down to a single phone. Finn had told his people not to bother him unless something was literally on fire.
They had given Skye a month to cool off after her decision to sever things, and hopefully, now that some of the more taxing emotions had settled, Finn and Cole could start to rebuild. Slowly. Neither wanted to frighten her off by being too bold, too presumptuous—Finn had had a lot of other ideas that fit both adjectives perfectly, but Cole had nixed them before they even got off the ground. They wanted to assure Skye that her opinion was respected, but also show her that her fears were unnecessary.
A relationship between the three of them could work.
He and Cole had hammered out the details.
Now all they needed was to bring the lovely Miss Summers into the fold—and not scare her off in the process. She had already bolted once. Her reasons for doing so, while frustratingly inaccurate to the situation, were valid. She hadn’t wanted to hurt either of them, not realizing that they had no intention of making her choose or allowing her to sully the friendship between them. Both he and Cole admired her for what she had done, even if it had, at the time, felt like he’d stepped on an active landmine.
Both of them had needed to find ways to casually run into her, the plan falling in line with their don’t-make-her-run-again theme. Having learned from their mistakes, they had decided her workplace was off-limits. Cole had something rather secretive up his sleeve, and given how excited he was about it, Finn hadn’t the heart to demand all the details. If Cole was throwing himself into something other than work, Finn wasn’t about to stop him.
Unfortunately, that had meant he needed his own way to casually “happen” upon Skye out in the real world. Bars were no good; she’d be with friends and more likely to seek shelter in them. Work was out. Cole had already used the “oh, you take yoga classes here too?” excuse. When Finn had learned from a social peer that today’s museum event was taking place, he had looked up the details immediately. Pleased to find Gallery Sens in attendance, Finn had brought Skye’s favourite chocolates and wandered around aimlessly all day hoping that he might bump into her. It had been Skye’s boss who eventually sent him in the direction of the children’s day care.