Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(64)

She obeyed, grasping the arms of the chair he prayed would hold them both, and he clutched her hips as hard as he dared, lifting her off his lap and slamming her back down while her cries rang out around him.

Not muffled. Not muzzled. Not controlled. Wild, crazy cries that turned into whimpers of pure satisfaction. When she pulsed around him again, he let himself go.

“Ace,” he growled, one arm around her waist the other wrapped around her front and clasping on to one of her shoulders. “Baby.” He kissed her bare back and, still encased in her warmth, pulled out and pushed into her a final time. She dropped forward onto the desk, her breaths heavy. He rested his cheek on her back.

“You…” she said, trying to catch her breath. “… have… a… dirty… mouth.”

Grinning, he said, “Sorry.”

Her body shook gently with laughter, and he lifted his head to see her cheek leaning on her forearm. She peeked at him through tangled hair, smile affixed to her face. “No apologizing.”





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN




Charlie had grossly underestimated how much Evan could eat.

For dinner, she’d made grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. He’d devoured the meal—with groans of appreciation reminding her of earlier—then went back to the kitchen and made not one more, but two more sandwiches and inhaled those, too. She also learned she’d cut them “wrong.”

Triangles, Ace. Lyon would never stand for this kind of shoddy craftsmanship, he’d joked of her “square-cut” sandwiches.

He gave her a bite of the pointy end of one of his halves and she agreed. Henceforth, triangles. They did taste better that way.

More quiet hours passed after the sex on her office chair. She spent them listening to the pencil scratches coming from his talented hands and thinking back on the completely amazing experience of making love to Evan Downey.

Both gruff and sweet, as concerned for her well-being as he was willing to push her limits, she’d never experienced a lover like him. She shouldn’t, but while she was at it, she allowed herself to imagine this was really her life. That she and Evan would work quietly side by side every day, and end curled against each other in bed at night.

But that wasn’t the case, was it? The thought made her heart hurt.

They were in a bubble. Like a vacation where you eat too much of the wrong thing, drink way too much, and have temporary consequences, then return home where you have to resume a normal, human schedule and eat responsibly.

Reality sucked sometimes.

She thought back to the day they returned from the farmer’s market. They’d been chopping vegetables for salad and Evan had been instructing a very uncooperative Lyon to set the table.


“I’ll do it,” she offered.

This earned her Evan’s frowning eyebrows. “We’re not on vacation, Ace.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think you do.”

Because he seemed angry, and because she found this unfair, she mirrored his stance, leaning a hip on the counter and crossing her arms.

“You’re catering to us as if we came to visit,” he said. “We’re not visiting. This is where we live.” He gestured around to the bright, airy, work of art that was his home. “He has to do things here same as he did at home. Go to school. Do his chores.”



His words echoed in her ears now.

We’re not on vacation, Ace.

They weren’t. Seemed they’d forcibly forgotten that for the meantime.

Finished with her photos, she e-mailed Tami Johnson to let her know her retouches were ready to go, when Evan’s voice sounded behind her.

“Hey.”

She started to respond until she heard him continue.

“Are you having fun?” His tone had changed, going soft, his voice dipping when he said. “The diving board? Poppa show you how to do that? Yeah? What else?”

She sat, back to him, listening to the exchange between father and son and feeling the recurring ping of longing in her chest. She remembered Rae and Lyon playing together when he was very little, and she remembered Evan and Rae together, exchanging diaper duties, or running to get their crying baby boy when poker night ran late. Charlie had watched them throw rock-paper-scissors to determine who would fetch Lyon. The memory made her smile. Rae only ever wanted her boys to be happy.

Charlie hazarded a glance over her shoulder at Evan, feet kicked up on her sofa, hand in his hair, phone to his ear. He chuckled at something Lyon said on the other end of the phone, and the scene both tugged her heart and her lips into a smile of their own.

Somehow, in spite of Rae’s not being here, her boys were happy.

“They’re okay, Rae,” she whispered to the ceiling.

“Brush your teeth, buddy,” Evan said, wrapping the call. “Love you, too. ’Night.”

Charlie had made a vow to Rae after she passed to look after Evan and Lyon, at the time never intending on replacing her. If Lyon knew she was with his father, would he see her as trying to replace his mommy? Would he reject her right out? Rae’s son had no memories of her that weren’t soaked in love, Charlie had seen to that. And now here she was, horning in on that relationship by getting close to Evan.

Her chest squeezed in a different way from before. A worried way.