“OK, quiet now. Here they come.” Meeting Levi’s eyes as he approached, I smiled, my heart tripping faster.
He set my champagne and his Old Fashioned down and came around the table to kiss my sister on the cheek. “Congratulations, Skylar. You look beautiful.”
She flashed him her ten thousand watt smile. “Thank you. I’m so glad you’re here. You’ve met my big sister, Jillian, I see.”
He came back to his place beside me, standing a little closer this time, his body angled toward mine. “Yes. Actually, we met years ago.”
“So I hear.” Skylar gave him a smile that said I Totally Know What You Did, and I elbowed her. Did she have to be so obvious?
Natalie and Miles strolled up. “What’s going on?” Natalie asked, eyeballing me and Levi and then me again.
Skylar scooted over to make room for them between her and Sebastian. “Levi, this is the youngest Nixon sister, Natalie, and her fiancé, Miles Haas.”
While Miles and Natalie shook hands with Levi and Sebastian explained the connection, Skylar and I had a silent conversation with our facial expressions and eyebrows, the way only two sisters can. It went something like this:
Knock it off!
What? I’m not doing anything.
Yes you are, and you know it.
Relax, I’m only having a little fun. He doesn’t know you told me.
He’s standing right there! You’re making it obvious! Now stop.
But the glint in her eye made me nervous.
“So Jillian, Sebastian was just saying you and Levi met at U of M?” Natalie sounded curious.
“We were just talking about your time at Michigan, weren’t we?” Skylar turned to Natalie. “Remember, Nat? She was telling us about how clean the dorms were? How she loved the way they smelled like Pine Sol?”
If it hadn’t been her wedding day, I might have strangled her. I couldn’t even make eye contact with Levi, I was so mortified, but I thought I heard him chuckle.
“Pine Sol? Wasn’t that the hot guy from college, the one she—wait a minute.” Natalie’s face screwed up in confusion until she noticed the way that Skylar was tilting her head toward Levi. “Ohhhhh.”
“Is anyone else totally fucking confused?” Miles asked, looking around the table.
“Yes,” Sebastian said.
I cleared my throat. “So Nat, how are you feeling tonight? That baby kicking yet?” I knew it was way too early in her pregnancy for that, but I was desperate to change the subject.
She beamed. “Not yet.”
“Congratulations,” said Levi. “Do you know what you’re having?”
“Girl,” said Skylar with confidence.
“I think boy,” said Natalie.
“We’ll know next month.” Miles moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, which had just started to disappear within the last few weeks. He kissed her shoulder. “I can’t wait.”
“Levi has a son.” I smiled up at him over one shoulder. “Any advice for the parents-to-be?”
“Sleep. Now. As much as you can.” He shook his head and grinned wryly. “Once that baby comes, sleep will be a distant memory. Other than that…” He shrugged, and his smile softened. “Just remember you’re human. You’re going to have days where you’re like, ‘This is awesome, my baby is a genius and I’m the most amazing parent on the planet’ and days where you’ll go, ‘Fuck that, my baby is an asshole and needs to go the fuck to sleep.’”
Natalie laughed. “How old is your son?”
“Eight. But depending on the mood he’s in, he can act like he’s two or like he’s eighty.” He tipped back the rest of his cocktail and set down the glass. “Speaking of my little man, I should probably call home. Will you excuse me for a minute?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks. Be right back.” He placed a hand on my back before heading through the glass double doors into the winery’s tasting room.
As soon as the door shut behind him, Skylar whacked me on the shoulder. “I still can’t believe that’s Pine Sol!”
“OK, what happened with you two?” Miles pushed his glasses farther up on his nose. “I feel like there’s a story there.”
“There is, and you’ll like it,” said Natalie. “They banged in a broom closet.”
“Which smelled like Pine Sol,” Skylar added.
“My God, is nothing sacred?” I threw a hand in the air. “I’m never telling you two big mouths anything ever again.”
“What? We’re all family here.” Skylar gave me her innocent face. “And that was like ten years ago.”
“Eleven.”
“Whatever. Let’s talk about him now. He’s so hot! And so bearded! Plus he’s, like, mature and responsible. And single. And perfect for you.” Skylar ticked off his attributes on her fingers. “So you should marry him and have his hot bearded babies immediately.”
“Slow down, Aunt Irene,” I said, laughing. “I just learned this guy’s last name like half an hour ago, and I’m not having anyone’s bearded babies.” But I won’t complain if he wants to go through the motions later tonight.
“You’re no fun.” She stuck her tongue out at me and turned to Sebastian. “What do we know about this guy? Is he good enough for my big sister?”
Sebastian smiled. “He’s a great guy. Really devoted to his son. Smart. Talented.”
“Does it bother you?” Skylar asked. “That he has a son? Because it seems like he’s into you.”
“I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never dated anyone with kids before, but…” I bit my lip. “You really think he’s into me?”
“He’d be a fucking fool if he wasn’t,” Miles said.
Flashing him a grateful smile, I set down my glass half-full. “Thanks. You know what, I think I’ll go in too. I need to use the bathroom.” Maybe Levi and I could sneak out a different door when he was done with his call. Not that I didn’t adore my family, but I was dying to be alone with Levi again.
That fluttery feeling was like a drug.
I thought I heard his voice in the darkened tasting room, but I went straight up the stairs to the winery’s bridal suite where my sisters and I had dressed. After using the bathroom, I touched up my hair and makeup a little, frowning at the tiny lines around my eyes that had recently appeared. Leaning closer to the mirror, I scrutinized my face. I wasn’t nineteen anymore, or even twenty-five. Did it matter? What did he see when he looked at me?
Straightening up, I ran my hands over my breasts and hips, shivering a little at the thought of his hands on me. At the thought of his body beneath that black suit. At the thought of his body beneath me—and above me and next to me and inside me.
You’re so fucking hot, I wanna fuck you so hard, oh fuck I’m gonna come.
My mouth fell open, and I closed my eyes as a rush of arousal swept through me. God, I hadn’t had sex in so long, it would probably be me who went off like a cannon in less than three minutes tonight.
If there was a tonight—I was getting a little ahead of myself.
(In my defense, we’re talking a year-long dry spell and a hot bearded man here. I think I can be forgiven.)
As I came down the steps, I saw Levi standing off to my right, and the phone was still to his ear. He faced the tasting room bar, his back to me, and I wasn’t sure if I should wait for him or go back out to the patio to give him some privacy.
When my heels clicked on the stone floor, he turned and held up one finger, like he wanted me to stay there while he finished his call. I took a seat on one of the couches clustered near the fireplace, and he came closer to me. The minute I heard him speak, I could tell he was agitated.
“I know he does. But I—”
Whoever he was talking to cut him off, and he exhaled loudly.
“But it’s not behavioral. I’ve explained this. It’s—”
Interrupted again, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Listen to me.” Dropping his hand, he
turned toward the window so I only saw his profile and spoke quietly but firmly. “I don’t care what your friend the doctor says. He’s not Scotty’s doctor, and he doesn’t know the first fucking thing about him.”
Uh oh. It sounded like maybe an argument—with his sister?—and I wasn’t sure he wanted me to hear it. I kept my eyes on him, waiting for a signal, but he kept staring out the large windows, left hand at his side, fist clenching and unclenching. It probably shouldn’t have turned me on, but that hand looked so solid and strong. I bet if he did throw a punch, the other guy would go down hard and fast. But something about him made me think he knew how to be gentle too. Maybe it was the way his eyes lit up when he talked about his son. Maybe it was the way he called Scotty his little man. Maybe it was the way he’d leaned in to me, his lips barely brushing mine…
“Look, we’ll talk about this another time.” Levi faced me again, and I jumped up as if I’d been caught staring at his crotch, not his hand.
“I have to go, Monica. I’ll be home soon.” Holding the phone slightly away from his ear, he grimaced, then spoke again. “Fine. Thank you.” He ended the call and slipped his phone in his pocket as he came toward me, tension creasing his forehead. “I’m sorry about that.”
“That’s OK.”
“My sister, Monica. I love her, but she has all sorts of opinions about how I should be raising my son and she likes to lecture me about it. Drives me fucking nuts.”
“Sisters do that sometimes.” I gave him a sympathetic smile. “Everything OK at home?”
He exhaled, and some of the worry lines on his face disappeared. “Yes. Scotty’s finally asleep. For now.”
“He doesn’t sleep well?”
“Not really.”
“Have you tried melatonin?”
“Yes. With mixed results.” He hesitated before going on. “Scotty has autism, and routine is really important to him. He can be difficult at bedtime if the littlest thing is different.”
As a doctor, I could’ve asked a bunch of questions and offered some more advice, but based on the conversation I’d just overheard, he wasn’t looking for that. And I didn’t want to be Dr. Nixon tonight. I just wanted to be Jillian.
And Jillian found it hotter than fuck that he was raising a child with autism on his own and was so devoted to him.
“So,” he said, coming so near to me that the toes of his shoes met mine.
“So.”
He glanced out the windows to the patio. “You want to go back out there?”
“Not really,” I said, my pulse quickening.
A hint of a smile appeared as he met my eyes again. “You want to get out of here?”
My toes tingled. “Yeah. I do.”
Four
Levi
I watched her rush up the stairs to get her things, and as soon as she was out of sight, I adjusted myself in my pants. My dick had jumped to life the second she said yeah, I do, as if the question had been you want to get naked and fuck? rather than something much less suggestive. Not that I didn’t want to get naked and fuck—hopefully I’d last a little longer than I had in the broom closet eleven years ago—but I didn’t want to make her feel like that’s what I expected. She wasn’t a horny nineteen-year-old college student anymore; she was a doctor, for fuck’s sake. She was beautiful and smart and mature and sophisticated, and a woman like her did not want some Neanderthal who probably needed a haircut and a new pair of shoes to throw her up against a wall for a five-minute fuck.
A woman like that deserved attention all night long. She deserved someone who would undress her slowly and delight in each new inch of her skin as it was revealed. Someone who would run his hands all over her body and find out where she liked to be touched, how she liked to be touched, what she wanted to hear whispered to her in the dark. Someone who would wrap those gloriously long legs around his neck and use his tongue until she begged for his cock, then use his cock until she begged for mercy.
Fuck. I could be that guy.
Except I couldn’t be. Not tonight. Because I wasn’t a horny college student anymore either—I was just a horny single dad who didn’t have the luxury of taking a woman home and lavishing all my time and attention on her the way I wanted to.
As soon as I had the thought, I felt guilty. Scotty was the love of my life and always would be, and whenever I felt the slightest bit resentful about something I couldn’t do because of him, that resentment was immediately crushed by shame. He didn’t ask to be born wired differently, into a terrible relationship, to a mother who would decide she couldn’t handle being a parent, to a father who wasn’t prepared for any of it. He was completely innocent, and he needed me to be a better man.
You’re spoiling him, Monica had scolded me tonight, as usual. She’d tried to make him wash and comb his hair before bed, which had resulted in a meltdown. Granted, the kid’s hair was dirty and disheveled, but washing it was such a battle I permitted him to wash it only once a week, on Sunday nights. She’d also wanted him to change his pajama top, since he’d gotten chocolate milk on the front of the one he was wearing. But in Scotty’s world, there is no pairing the dinosaur pajama bottoms with a plaid pajama top. There is also no changing into the plaid pajama bottoms, because he’d already planned on wearing the dinosaurs. Plaid was for school nights.
You let him run the house. He’s the child; you’re the adult. He’s manipulating you.
I’d heard it from everyone in my family, which was a huge part of the reason Scotty and I had moved away. They meant well, but they didn’t understand that Scotty’s inflexibility wasn’t just him being a brat—he experienced physical pain when something felt “wrong” for him. I wasn’t letting him get away with things; I was making compromises the way all parents do, trying to find the right balance between being strict and being compassionate. Why couldn’t they understand that?
Running a hand through my hair, I exhaled and wondered if I should ask Jillian for a rain check on a night when Scotty’s usual sitter could be there. If he woke up again and I wasn’t home yet, he might never get back to sleep. We’d be up all night, tomorrow would be miserable, and the whole start to the week would be off.
But she was so beautiful. And I hadn’t been this attracted to someone in so long.
“Fuck,” I muttered, checking my watch. What was the right thing to do? If she were a different sort of woman, if her brother-in-law weren’t my friend and client, if we lived three states apart…if any number of circumstances were changed, I’d grab her hand, drag her out to my car, and spend the next thirty minutes fucking her brains out in the back seat. It would feel so good to take control that way, to lose control that way, to release some of this fucking tension. But was that fair to her?
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
“Hello?”
“He’s up again.” Monica’s voice was strained, and in the background I heard the familiar keening of a nighttime meltdown. My chest hurt, the way it always did when Scotty was upset.
“Shit. OK, I’m on my way. Twenty minutes, OK? Thirty at the most.”
“OK.”
“Tell him he can play on his iPad.”
“That’ll just rile him up more. He’s tired. He needs to go back to sleep.”
I clenched my fist. “Just do it, OK? It will help calm him until I get there.”
As I ended the call, I heard footsteps above, and then Jillian appeared at the top of the stairs carrying a small suitcase. I watched her descend, the tightness in my chest growing. Also the tightness in my pants. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said, her face concerned as she reached the ground and saw my expression. She set down the suitcase. “What’s up?”
Sighing, I put my phone back in my pocket. “I have to get home. Scotty woke up and he’s upset.”
“Oh.” She tried to hide it, but I saw the disappointment in her eyes.
“I’m really sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“That’s OK. I understand.”
<
br /> “Can I call you?”
“Of course.” She smiled, and her lips looked so soft and inviting, I took a step closer.
If you kiss her, it will be that much harder to leave.
I knew it was the truth, but I couldn’t help myself. One kiss. Just one. And then I’ll go. I moved even closer and took her head in my hands.
The curve of her smile deepened. “What are you doing?”
“I’m thinking about kissing you.”
“Stop thinking.”
I lowered my lips to hers and let them rest there, fully intending the kiss to be short and sweet, just a goodnight.
But I couldn’t break it off. I wanted more—I wanted to taste her. Slanting my head, I changed the angle of the kiss, teasing her mouth open with mine, slipping my tongue between her lips. A little sigh escaped her, and my dick jumped to life again.
You have to go, you have to go, you have to go.
But her hands were moving up my chest and my fingers were sliding into her soft brown hair and I could smell something sweet and citrusy on her skin and it mingled with the taste of whiskey on my tongue and oh God, I wanted my tongue everywhere on her body. I wanted to make her come with it just so I could hear that little sigh again and again and again. And I wanted to feel my hands in her hair just like this while she got on her knees and took my cock between her lips, looking up at me with those big blue eyes…
Groaning, I forced myself to take my lips off her before I completely lost my senses. “God, I wish I could stay,” I said, resting my forehead against hers. “I wish a lot of things.”
“I know.” She played with my tie again. “I wish I was taking this tie off you, not straightening it.”
“What a coincidence, that’s one of my wishes too.”
She laughed and kissed me quickly. “Another time, maybe. You better go.”
I sighed and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close. Her hair smelled good, too. I inhaled, trapping the scent of her in my lungs, memorizing the feel of her in my arms, so that later when the house was dark and quiet and I was alone in bed with my dick in my hand, I could imagine she was with me.
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