by Piper Rayne
“Maddie and Lauren will be there. Well, Maddie will. Lauren might be in jail for domestic battery where Luca’s concerned.” He chuckles, opening the door for me.
“Is this weird for you? Having lunch with my dad?” I change the topic because I will figure out a way out of family dinner at his place.
“I like your dad. He’s always treated me well. He pushed me to go on the date with you so I suspect he won’t be upset if I’m with you today. I’m not going to jeopardize my chances of SWAT.”
He speaks so proper sometimes and I wonder if it’s because of his job. He can’t very well approach someone in a car and be like ‘Hey man, you were speeding. What’s the fucking rush?’
I have no time to respond as my dad and his girlfriend, Vicki, are in the foyer waiting on us.
“Vanessa,” my dad coos, his arms wrapping around me and kissing my cheek. “You look lovely as always.”
This is where my relationship with my father gets tricky. His eyes speak his truth. He steps back from me, his strong hands on my upper arms as he stares into my eyes. Eyes that match the ones of the woman he lost. The brightness in his own eyes dims for a moment, then he blinks, vanquishing the thought…I’m the spitting image of my mother, just a reminder of the heartache he felt for so many years.
Cristian steps up next to me, holding out his hand. “Commander,” he says.
My dad’s gaze bounces over to Cristian and then falls back to me, questioning what’s going on.
“Cristian,” he says, shaking his hand immediately. “I have to say I’m surprised to see you here.”
A woman clears her throat behind my father and he steps to the side, releasing Cristian’s hand.
“Oh, Vanessa and Cristian, this is Vicki Sheridan.” His hand falls to her lower back and for a second, I wonder if my dad gives her goose bumps the way Cristian does to me.
“Great to meet you.” She holds out a Tupperware container for me. “Pumpkin spice cake. Your dad said you love this time of year and I love to bake so I thought it might butter you up. Not that I’m some evil woman who needs to win you over through your love of sweets. I mean you’re not five…” Her face turns redder the longer she goes on and to my surprise, a warmness fills my chest.
“Relax, Vicki,” my dad says with a chuckle.
Once I take the container, my dad brings Vicki to his side, kissing the top of her head.
They stare at each other like they can hold a conversation without words. The same way I’ve seen Maddie and Mauro do.
“Thank you. My dad knows me well. Pumpkin spice is the way to my heart.”
A big grin lands on her face and although I was worried about today, I sense Vicki is as nervous as me.
“Is your whole party here?” the hostess asks, approaching my dad.
“Yes.” Again his hand falls to Vicki’s back so she walks in front of him.
I follow behind her. Her hair is short and dyed blonde and she’s wearing a nice pair of pants with a blouse. It’s a cute outfit and I can tell that she put some thought into it.
Cristian and my dad make small talk behind me about the weather.
When we reach the table, my dad holds the chair out for Vicki and whether or not Cristian is doing it because of my dad, he holds the chair out for me before taking his seat. The restaurant overlooks a small lake in the suburbs. It’s busy but we’re lucky to get a table in a quiet area with no kids around.
“So are you two?” My dad points between Cristian and me.
“Friends,” I answer.
“Friends? This isn’t the charity date, right?” He unwraps his silverware and places his napkin in his lap. Vicki does the same.
“No, Sir, we already did that,” Cristian says.
“Please, call me John.”
Cristian nods but doesn’t say his name. This has to be more uncomfortable than he let on earlier.
“So this is like a second date?” my dad presses on.
He’d love it if I was involved with a police officer, having never understood the downfall of the job himself. The late hours, the danger, the overtime and the fact you barely see one another. I’ve seen the strain it can put on a relationship and I don’t want that for myself.
“No, Dad, we’re just friends.”
He sits back, his gaze floating between me and Cristian. “Okay. Well, glad you could join us, Cristian.” His hand slides under the table and I notice Vicki’s hand is gone as well.
My heart pricks a little bit at seeing my father use the same mannerisms he did with my mom with another woman.
You wanted this, my inner voice reminds me. He’s barely been on your case since the charity auction.
“I have some good news, Vanessa.”
I look up at my dad after straightening my napkin.
“Vicki is going to run Stan’s Donut 5k with us this year.”
I swallow past the lump lodged in my throat and try to hide my surprise.
I don’t care what I wanted, this relationship of theirs is moving super fast.
“Oh. You’re a runner?” I manage to choke out.
“Well, I’ve been training with your dad. He’s a great coach.” Again, she looks at him and the mutual adoration is clear in both their eyes.
Be happy for him. It’s been years since Mom passed. Get over it.
I wish I could strangle the rational voice inside my head because I want to kick and scream like the eight-year-old who lost her mom. I want to pound on the table and scream at Vicki that she’ll never replace my mother.
Instead of acting like a spoiled brat, I smile. “That’s great. You guys will be way ahead of me.”
“Have you been training?” My dad accepts the coffee from the waiter. “Remember you have to work your way up to it. I know it’s only 5k, but Vanessa you can’t leave it to the last minute.”
My head is nodding, but he continues to talk.
“I’m sure Cristian could help you. He’s always the top runner in our fitness tests.” My dad smiles at Cristian like he’s his new son-in-law. Pump the brakes, Dad.
“I’ll be fine,” I assure him.
“When is Stan’s run?” Cristian asks, the last to unwrap his silverware.
“It’s next week.” My dad hands Vicki a creamer.
He knows how she takes her coffee. Why does that make me sad?
Cristian’s arm swings so it’s around the back of my chair. “I can help you. Do you normally run?”
I’m sure he’s offering because he thinks he can get in my pants afterwards. With the way his cologne has once again overtaken my senses, he might be right. After this lunch, I wouldn’t mind a quickie to forget Vicki and Dad.
“It’s fine, thank you.” I put the packet of sugar into my coffee and grab a muffin from the basket in front of us.
“If you change your mind, I’m here.” He winks and my insides turn to mush.
“Well, we have some more news.”
“John,” Vicki pleads.
Classic, I’m going to go full-on temper tantrum now because there are only four words that come from a lead-in like that.
“You’re getting married?” I ask.
My dad smiles.
Vicki nibbles on her bottom lip.
Cristian? Well, Cristian grabs my hand under the table.
And somehow that gesture helps to quell the tears forming in the corners of my eyes.
“We’re already married,” my dad announces, all smiles.
My dad raises Vicki’s hand, turning over a ring on her finger that’s five rows of diamonds. Just a band. He then holds up his own hand.
My stomach feels like someone has poured acid inside it.
He never wore a band for my mom. Said that it told the creeps he arrested that there were people he cared about. People they could seek out to take revenge on him.
Now he’s all smiles with a fucking gold band on his left hand.
Excuse me while I throw up.
I slide my chair out and place my nap
kin on the chair.
“I’ll be right back.”
I want some alone time, but do you think I got it?
Of course not.
One of the police officers at the table follows me right into the bathroom.
Chapter Fourteen
Cristian
“Excuse me,” I say to the woman staring at me in horror when I followed Vanessa into the ladies’ room.
Lucky for us, it’s a bathroom with floor to ceiling doors and each stall is like its own little room.
“Vanessa,” I knock softly on the door she just shut.
“I’m fine Cristian. I just needed to go to the bathroom and you following me in here is not helping my shy bladder.”
I’ve never met someone with more defense mechanisms to keep someone out. It’s like she permanently has her hand out at arm’s length.
“Let me in.” I lean against the wall in direct line of the door to the bathroom.
A woman walks in, stops in her tracks and stares at me.
“Please go ahead. I’m a police officer.”
She quirks her eyebrow, not moving from the tile she’s standing on.
I see this lady isn’t going to be okay with me here.
“It’s an emergency.” I point to the door.
The woman, still not convinced, turns around and starts to leave. She stops before she lets the door close. “There’s another bathroom downstairs. I suggest you lock the door.” She waggles her eyebrows to reference that she knows what’s really going on here. What the hell? She’s my Ma’s age.
But as Ma would say, ‘Ma knows best,’ so I head over to the door and lock it.
“Vanessa, it’s just us. Come on.”
She opens up the door and heads to the sink, turning on the water.
“Listen. I appreciate you coming today and following me in here, as creepy as it is, is a very sweet gesture. The news stunned me, but I’m good now.”
Her red-rimmed eyes suggest differently.
“It’s really ridiculous, I mean, twenty years and I’m hung up on my dad being with someone else.”
She wipes her hands, her gaze never reaching mine. I lean against the door and watch. She says she’s fine, but her body language gives her away—the slumped shoulders, the way the corner of her lips tip down, the set of her jaw…even her movements are more rigid and less relaxed than normal.
“It’s not ridiculous. I can’t even imagine how hard it must be.”
She stares at herself in the mirror for a moment and I can’t help but wonder if she sees the beauty I do. A girl who was raised without a mother and became a strong woman anyway?
She turns her head and meets my gaze for the first time since I came in here. “We’re alone?” she asks, arching a brow.
“Yes.”
Leaving her purse on the counter, she walks over to me at the door, her heels clicking on the tile.
“How long do you think we have?” She reaches for my belt, loosening the leather from the metal. “Enough time to…”
“No.” I place my hand over hers. “If your dad comes in here, I might as well be fired. I think he likes me, but I’m not about to screw his daughter in the women’s bathroom while he waits in the restaurant.”
“You were bold enough to walk in here.” She steps closer, her breasts pressing against my chest.
I can’t help it, my gaze dips to her mouth and I imagine what it would be like if she fell to her knees in front of me and wrapped those pink lips around my cock.
Fuck, quit it.
“We can’t,” I say and even I can hear that I only half mean it in my voice.
“Be that guy from the other night.” My hand falls to the side and she unbuckles my pants and slides the zipper down.
My erect cock springs out of my pants, a happy guy. The logical part of my brain reminds me that she’s hurting and I shouldn’t take advantage of her like this.
“Vanessa,” I sigh.
Her lips touch my neck, and I close my eyes as she works her way up my jawline. “You smell amazing,” she whispers.
I could say the same. From the moment I picked her up, I haven’t been able to get enough of her flowery scent.
My hands betray me and find her hips, molding around them as her fingers wrap around my length.
“You don’t feel like a man who wants to turn me down.” There’s a playfulness in her tone. One I didn’t hear that night at my apartment. One that suggests she uses sex in situations like this.
“Welcome to my constant state when you’re near,” I respond in a gruff voice.
I don’t believe in playing games. And although Vanessa is playing a game right now, I’m not going to join her.
Her lips meet mine and yes, judge if you want, I allow her to slide her tongue into my mouth. She’s a woman I can’t say no to.
My hands slide up her back, pressing her chest into my body until my fingers are threaded through her hair. It feels like a fucking fantasy right now—the sweet taste of sugar from her coffee, her soft body along mine, her firm hand on my cock.
I’m not sure how long I lose myself in her, but soon there’s a knock on the door.
Vanessa doesn’t stop. Instead, she strokes me harder, her thumb spreading the dot of pre-cum along my tip.
“It’s locked,” a woman says from the other side of the door.
“Why would it be locked?” another woman asks.
“I don’t know. If I knew that we wouldn’t be out here.”
“Don’t be callous to me.”
“Use your head, Ethel.”
These two women are arguing about the door, meanwhile, I’m halfway to seeing stars.
“Excuse me!” one of them calls to someone. “The door is locked.”
And that’s my cue because as much as I want to bend Vanessa over the counter right now and watch her face in the mirror while I sink into her, I don’t think her dad getting a glimpse of me fucking his daughter would make for a good lunch. It’s not even the traffic patrol detail he’d stick me on that scares me the most.
Placing my hands on both of her arms, I push her back. My dick hits me in the stomach in a clearly pissed off pout.
I ignore the sting of rejection in her eyes. Tucking myself back into my pants, I make myself presentable for when that door opens.
“You don’t want me, Vanessa. You just want a distraction.”
“I thought you were down for some fun.” She walks back to the counter and grabs her purse. “We could be friends with benefits.”
“Not when your dad is right outside. Banging me in a bathroom won’t change the fact that your dad is married.”
She tucks her purse under her arm and heads my way. “Thanks for being the disappointment I expected you to be all along.” She opens the door and steps out.
“Oh. Are you alright dear?” one of the women asks.
The door widens and they spot me.
“Yeah, she is. She’s probably on cloud nine right now,” the other woman says. “Look at him.”
“Excuse me. Sorry for the inconvenience.” I weave by them, keeping my head down.
“No inconvenience. I was hoping you were a perk of the restaurant.”
“Oh, Ethel!”
The two women laugh as I follow Vanessa back to the table where her dad is paying the bill.
What a disaster.
“So, hold up a second,” Luca interrupts me mid-story and stops doing bicep curls with Mauro’s weights from when he was in high school. “You’re telling me you actually denied her?”
We’re supposed to be down here in my parents’ basement talking about Ma and the fact that dinner was late getting started since she was too tired to get out of bed earlier. My dad didn’t inform anyone until Mauro and Maddie showed up.
“We were in the bathroom with two old ladies outside. Her father, who is also my boss and oh yeah, carries a loaded gun, was a hundred feet away. So yeah, I stopped her.” I pick at the ratty old plaid chair I’m sitting in
.
“You’re such a pussy.”
I roll my eyes because whatever. The only way to impress Luca would be to have a threesome tonight. He’s not worth my breath.
“I give you props.” Mauro sits down on his old bed. “If Maddie would’ve had her hands on my junk I’m not sure I’d have had the willpower to stop her.”
“Let’s see if we can bump up her appointment. One of us has to show up and drive her,” I say, trying to get us back on track. “You two have the most flexible schedules.” I point to each of my brothers who have the luxury shifts of twenty-four on and forty-eight off.
“Hey, Maddie and I are looking for our next property,” Mauro whines.
“And you?” I ask Luca who is back to doing bicep curls.
He doesn’t answer.
“He curls for the girls,” Mauro says.
Luca smirks and winks at us. “My thighs are as strong as my biceps, assholes. You need all the muscles to have the reputation I have.”
Mauro and I both blow out an exasperated sigh.
“Can you take Ma to the doctor or not?” I ask.
“When? This is a bad week. I work and Nico is having a party.”
I stare at him in disbelief.
“Okay, okay. Make the appointment and I’ll make sure she gets there.” He puts the weights back down in the corner with the dust bunnies.
“Now that the issue of Ma is taken care of, let’s talk about you and Vanessa.” Mauro raises his eyebrows up and down a few times.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I say.
“Why would you go with her to lunch?” Luca sits down on the plaid couch across from me.
“Because she needed someone. It’s complicated and really none of your business.”
The two don’t delve any further because they know I have a point. My brothers don’t pry into lives that aren’t theirs. Well, unless it’s mine.
“I told you not to go back for seconds, but that and the fact that you denied yourself a hand job makes me certain we don’t share the same DNA,” Luca says, putting his feet up on the old coffee table between us.
“And just think those hands that were wrapped around my dick are upstairs making ravioli.”