by Ella Miles
His eyes are wide as he looks at me.
“You’ll be fine.”
“I don’t do parents.”
I laugh. “Well, my mother isn’t really a parent. Technically, I lived with her when I was growing up, but I wouldn’t call her a parent. I usually refer to her as Catherine anyway instead of Mother. Especially when I’m at work. So, I really don’t care if you impress her or not. Just keep her out of my hair and keep her from drinking anything alcoholic—at least until after lunch.”
He sighs. “Fine. But you owe me the dirtiest sex ever on your desk or pressed up against this window after this.”
“Well, at least wait until I’m gone for that. Although I would be happy to take you up on that offer if my daughter doesn’t,” Catherine, my mother, says.
I frown and take a deep breath, trying to calm myself before I get up.
Asher, on the other hand, doesn’t bother to apologize for his words, which is one of the things I like about him. He doesn’t apologize unless he feels he is actually in the wrong, and it turns out, that isn’t very often.
I give my mother a quick hug, like I actually love her and am happy that she is here.
“This is Asher, my husband,” I say.
Asher finally stands and extends his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Catherine. I haven’t heard much about you, but I’d love it if you would catch me up over some coffee.”
Catherine lights up. “I would love to.”
I wink at Asher and say a silent, Thank you.
He smiles back, conveying that I owe him.
I nod and grin because I actually think he is going to be good at talking with my mother. All he has to do is flash some muscles, and he’ll be good.
As they leave, I realize I need one more thing from him.
“What’s your schedule for the week, Asher? Do you have any competitions or training that I need to work around?”
“I usually train for at least three hours every morning. After that, I can do whatever for you, sweetheart.”
I smile.
Then, my mother grabs hold of his arm, and I know he isn’t going to get another word in for the next hour. I turn back to my computer. But at least I can get some work in instead of focusing on my husband who isn’t really my husband. I feel myself caring a little too much about him at the moment, but it’s nothing a long morning of work can’t fix.
* * *
After working for almost three hours and getting through most of the urgent emails, all I can think about is Asher.
Shit.
I shouldn’t want him. I just had him last night. And, on the plane, we did hand stuff under a blanket. I’ve gone weeks, months, without sex in the past. Why am I this needy now?
Because I never had sex with Asher before. Because I never knew what I was missing before him.
I get up from my desk, stretching. I’m surprised that Asher hasn’t texted me that he can’t take my mother any longer and I need to come rescue him or that he’s calling the whole thing off and asking for a divorce. That’s what I would have done if I were him. Nothing is worth having to deal with my mother—or father, for that matter—for this long. It makes me wonder who has murdered whom.
I slip my heels back on that I kicked off while working, and I make my way down to the café where I told Asher to take my mother. I search for five minutes, but I don’t see signs of either of them. I walk over to the barista behind the counter.
“Have you seen my husband or mother?” I ask, hoping that she knows who the hell I am. “My husband is a surfer who would be hard to miss, and my mother is dressed like she is going to a ball later today.”
The barista smiles. “They were here earlier. Your mother left in a car about an hour ago. And your husband asked for something more fun to do. I sent him across the street to talk with the kids.”
I nod. “Thank you.”
I run outside into the warm air. I immediately feel drenched in sweat every time I step outside. It makes me wonder why I even bother to wear nice clothes. Maybe Asher has it right. It does make sense to always be wearing swim-type clothing while in Hawaii.
I make it into the building across the street, and thank God for the air conditioner. I’m actually surprised that I didn’t see any press waiting for us outside.
But, after I emailed Marissa, she must have kept to her promise to help get rid of the press. I don’t know how she managed it. Maybe she allowed them to pick up the piece as well. I don’t know.
I run my hand through my hair as I search the home that holds somewhere around a hundred kids on any given day. The age range of the kids varies. But all of the kids here are in need of a fresh start. It’s expensive to fly them to Hawaii. But we have found that most of the kids thrive after they come here because it is so different from the environment they were in before. They can actually see a future after coming here. They see the beauty in the world again. So, the money is well worth it.
They come here and heal while we work to find them new homes. And, with the older ones, we work to get them jobs, college scholarships, or anything else that they need to make it in the real world once they graduate high school. We become their substitute family.
I start walking down the hallway, looking for Asher. I don’t have a lot of time to look for him. I need to find the couple of kids on my list and spend the afternoon with them, so I can figure out how to help them. I stop dead in my tracks when I see Asher sitting with one of the teenage boys, playing a basketball video game on the TV. I stand in the doorway and watch them.
“You’re kicking my ass, Jordan,” Asher says.
“Fuck yeah, I am,” Jordan says back.
“Do you cuss like that in front of the ladies?”
Jordan thinks for a minute. “Yeah. But they love it.”
“Do they? Then, the chicks must have changed a lot since I was your age. Because most of the women I know don’t love it when I cuss. Not the ones I hope to spend more than an afternoon with anyway. If you want a woman you can take out on a date more than once, you are going to have to reduce the amount of cussing. You feel me?” Asher asks.
Jordan nods slowly. “Yeah, I feel you, man. Thanks.”
“Now, if you really want to impress a girl, then you should take her surfing.”
“But I’ve never surfed before in my life. I would look like an idiot.”
“Well, I can help you with that. An athletic guy like you, I could have you up on a surfboard in no time.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. What does your school schedule look like?”
“I have classes until three and then free time after that.”
“I’ll come by around three then, and I’ll teach you how to surf and how to get that girl to go out with you. But you have to go to classes, or the deal is off. Understand?”
“But why do I need school? I want to play professional baseball. I want to be an athlete. Look at you. You are a surfer. What do you need school for?”
“You don’t think I needed an education to do what I do?”
“No, all you do is surf all day and get paid for it.”
Asher laughs. “No. It isn’t that simple. I don’t make a lot of money off of my competition wins. I make most of my money off of sponsors and advertising, which means I have an agent. I spend a lot of my day signing contracts. I have to read contracts and understand them. Otherwise, I’d get screwed out of money that I deserve. I have to be able to protect myself. If not, I don’t get to be a surfer anymore,” Asher says, looking up at me. Like he knows how stupid it was for him to sign a prenup without actually reading it. But it also says that, above everything else, he trusts me.
“And what is your genius plan if you get injured in your first year? You will need a degree so that you could work as an agent or do something else related to baseball, if that is your passion. But you need education.”
Jordan nods and is seriously thinking about everything that Asher said.
“So,
do we have a deal? No more skipping classes.”
Jordan takes his time but holds out his hand to Asher. “Deal.”
Asher shakes it. “Good. Now, get your ass to class.”
Jordan smiles, gets up, and then walks past where I’m standing with my arms crossed, leaning against the doorway.
“You married an awesome guy, Mrs. Calder,” Jordan says.
“Thank you, Jordan.” I consider correcting him, but it seems that everyone is going to start calling me by Asher’s last name.
Once Jordan is gone, I walk over to where Asher is sitting on the couch and take a seat next to him.
“How did you just do that?”
“Do what?”
“Jordan is one of our most troubled kids here. I was actually coming over here to talk to him. How did you not only pick him out of all the kids here, but also get him back on track?”
“I don’t know if he is back on track or not. It’s up to him to decide if he really wants and is ready to be back on the right track. But, hopefully, I gave him a good push.”
Asher grabs my legs and drapes them across his body. “And, as far as how I picked him out of all the kids here, I guess I could see a little bit of myself in him.”
I cock my head to the side as his lips softly kiss me. Far too soft for what I want. I want passion, the kind where he is going to carry me to the restroom and fuck me.
“What do you mean, you see a little bit of yourself in him?” I ask, genuinely curious now about his childhood. I honestly don’t know much about him.
He shakes his head. “I’m not going to spill my guts until you tell me more about you. Because, after spending two hours with your mother, I have a better understanding of how you turned into a wild child. So, tell me a story, and maybe I’ll tell you one from my childhood.”
I frown. I don’t like sharing anything about myself. But I guess it’s only fair.
“My parents were never there for me, growing up. They basically left me, and…I mean, they left me to my own devices. They didn’t even bother to hire a nanny or cook. I was just on my own. That’s why they sent me to Hawaii to live with my grandmother every summer. They didn’t want to deal with me, and my grandmother was the one who actually straightened me out. Anyway, my parents would have all of these parties where their fancy friends came over with their fancy jewelry and money. I kind of got good at pickpocketing.”
He raises an eyebrow at me.
“I know. I would pickpocket them and take any cash they had. They usually had a couple hundred dollars. But I never spent the money on myself. I would always donate the money or give it to friends who had less money than I did.”
“So, you were kind of like Robin Hood? Stole from the rich to give to the poor.”
I laugh. “I guess you could say that. I think running this nonprofit kind of became my penance. My parents gave me plenty of inheritance. Enough to comfortably live off of without working another day in my life. So, I live off of that money and don’t take a salary from the nonprofit.”
He nods.
“Your turn,” I say.
“My story isn’t really that exciting.”
“I don’t care. I want to hear it anyway.”
He sighs. “Fine. I never knew my mother. She left me when I was still a baby. My father raised me. And, honestly, much of my childhood was amazing. My father was the best. We didn’t have a lot of money, but it didn’t matter because we loved each other, and we were all either of us needed. But then he died.”
“How old?” I ask when Asher stops talking.
“Eleven.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He shakes his head. “It’s okay. It happened a long time ago.”
I hold his hand and kiss him on the cheek, hoping that I can somehow take his pain away even though I know I can’t.
“I moved from California to Hawaii to live with my coach until I was old enough to live on my own. I didn’t realize it then, but he only let me live with him so that he could have a say in my competition and sponsorship earnings. Even though I won a lot and should have had more than enough money to survive on by the time I was sixteen, with him being my legal guardian and signing all the contracts, he got control of my money. I eventually figured it out.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran away and lived on my own for a while. I didn’t really have a home, so I was couch-surfing for a while. But, after I won one competition, I suddenly had enough money to buy an apartment, and the rest is history.”
I tilt his chin up to me and kiss him on the lips, letting him know how much I appreciate him sharing and how much I wish I could take away the pain from his childhood. Within seconds, the kiss turns to more. More kissing, more need, more passion. Asher’s hand tangles in my hair, and mine goes under his shirt as Asher pushes me on my back. We make out on the old couch like two horny teenagers.
“Excuse me, Mrs., uh…um…”
We both freeze. We stop kissing. But our hands stay on each other. Because it doesn’t matter who is standing in the entryway. We need each other. We are desperate for each other. And, even though he is going to ruin our make-out session, we can at least still cling to each other for a few more seconds.
“You can still call me Ms. Hart,” I say with my eyes closed as I press my forehead against Asher’s for a little bit longer.
We each suck in a breath, and then I open my eyes back to reality as Asher does the same.
“I have to go,” I whisper.
He nods. “I’ll meet you back at your place.”
I lean forward and kiss his lips one last time. Then, I get up to meet one of my employees who needs me at the door before returning to the hustle and bustle of the office.
“Ms. Hart, I need you to look over some plans, and then I need…” Kenny keeps telling me what he needs as he walks down the hallway, expecting me to follow him so that we can talk and get things accomplished at the same time.
I have to stop though for just a second and look back at Asher one last time before I enter the real world again.
He has a heart. Honestly, I wasn’t sure he had one. But it makes my heart ache, just thinking about his.
I turn and hurry to catch up with Kenny. All the time, I’m thinking, Asher has a heart. And it’s a good heart that is capable of love. Who knew?
My week is almost up, and I can tell that Asher is getting restless at my place. He’s accidentally broken a wine glass, a picture frame, and a glass figurine I had sitting on a shelf. It’s not that he’s clumsy; he’s just not used to having so many nice things, and he didn’t realize that one wrong movement could cause so much damage.
But Asher has done everything that he was supposed to do. He hasn’t complained once about staying in my condo. And, anytime that he was close to complaining, he would just fuck me, and then he’d seemingly like my condo again.
He has spent most of the week at my office other than the few hours a day that he is surfing. He has taken I don’t know how many of my kids out for surf lessons.
But he has also spent a lot of time talking with the kids. And, as much as I thought that I should be afraid of what he was telling the kids, I’m not afraid at all. I thought he would tell them that it was okay to drink, party, and do drugs. That it was okay to steal what you needed. But he didn’t. He didn’t exactly tell the kids that they needed to be models of perfection. He didn’t sugarcoat and say that their life was going to be easy. He was completely honest and real with them. He’s been doing a better job at connecting with them than many of our counselors have done. I would hire him full-time in a heartbeat if I thought he would say yes and if it wouldn’t complicate things further.
Right now, it’s a lazy Sunday afternoon. I’m working on my laptop, sitting on my comfortable couch, with my feet stretched out across his lap while he watches some baseball game on the TV. And all I can think about is how I can’t imagine how we are going to spend our time at his place. I’m not even sure if his couch ca
n support our weight for this long.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” Asher asks without taking his eyes off the television.
“How do you know I’m looking at you?”
“Because your typing on the computer stopped, and I assume it is because my body has distracted you. I need at least twenty minutes though before I can fuck you.”
I laugh. “You’re telling me that, if I stripped naked right now, you wouldn’t fuck me?”
“Nope,” he answers quickly.
“If I wore my black lace lingerie, you wouldn’t fuck me?”
“Nope.”
I frown. “If I rubbed oil all over my body?”
“Nope.”
“If I brought in a model for a three-way?”
“Not even for a three-way. They are way overrated anyway.”
I chuckle. “And when did you have a three-way?”
“A couple of years ago. After I won my first international competition. I won half a million in prize money alone. I had my choice of women after that.”
I huff. “Why won’t you fuck me? Why do you need twenty minutes at least?”
“Because this baseball game is tied, going into the bottom of the ninth, and I want to see who wins.”
“I thought you didn’t care about watching baseball.”
He jumps up and starts yelling at the TV. “Homer! That’s a homer. Go, go, go!”
I watch as the ball flies up and then lands in a guy’s glove, inches from going over the fence.
“Shit,” he says, slowly sitting back down, his eyes still on the TV.
“I thought you didn’t care about watching baseball.”
He shrugs. “Now, I do.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, now that I have a nice TV to watch sports on every day, you’ve got me hooked to the thing. And there is a kid I’m helping tutor who is a Cubs fan, and I want them to win for once.”
“You are tutoring a kid? I didn’t know you were smart enough.”
He tosses a pillow at me. I catch it with my hands.
“I’m not just a hot body—as much as that is all you use me for.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t blame me for your newfound TV addiction.”