Swing (Landry Family #2)(9)

She rolls her eyes. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“I believe a little boy ran at me like a bullet. I had to catch him. Catching things midair is what I do best, if you didn’t know.” I slide my arms through the shirt and drop it over my torso. Her eyes don’t leave mine.

“Interesting,” she smirks. Her chin lifts a touch, enough to elicit an automatic shift in power from me to her. “I figured your best attribute was something . . . else.”

Her lips twist in amusement as she flips a strand of hair off her narrow shoulders, tosses me a wink, and heads down the hall. I’m not sure what she’s expecting, but I follow. Of course I do.

Left. Right. Left. Right. Her ass sways side to side in front of me, like a hypnotist erasing my mind from any thought other than the one she’s driving home.

God, how I’d like to drive her home.

Glancing over her shoulder, she flips me a look that makes me wonder if I growled out loud. I might’ve.

Stepping inside her office, I shut the door behind me. When I turn around, she’s sitting at her desk.

“Would you like to know what I’m doing here?” My chest is rising and falling to the beat of the sway of her hips from before.

“What makes you think I want to know anything?”

“Because you asked earlier, sweet pea.”

This time, it’s me leaning across the desk. It’s my eyes digging into hers, my energy rolling across the faux-wood desk. She feels it. The uptick in her breathing gives it away. Her lips are slightly parted, as she waits for me to speak.

“You can play this game, Dani—”

“It’s Danielle.”

“—but I can see right through you.”

“You think?”

“I know. But I do like your confidence. It works for me.”

“That’s so good to know,” she retorts. It’s almost a mock, a little edge of haughtiness cut stealthily along the ridges of the words. “You wanna know something?”

“What’s that?”

“I can also see right through you.”

“Is that so?”

“Sure is.”

The air is charged with our quick exchange, our bodies nearly buzzing with the excitement of the moment. We’re so close, near enough to reach out and touch the other, and that’s precisely what we both want. Our bodies, our gazes, our words are dripping with so much sexual frustration it’s palpable.

“Tell me,” I say, breaking the ragged-breathing-filled silence. “What do you see when you see through me?”

“I don’t think this is the place for that conversation.”

“Would you rather move this to a locked conference room? I’m so, so game for that.”

She laughs, her melodious chirp ringing through the room. It cuts through the tension and I find myself heaving in a fresh breath of air. Picking up a pencil as if she’s about to work, she smiles easily. “This was fun, but I really need to get to work.”

“What?” I don’t mean for it to sound as brusque as it does, but fuck it. What is she doing? She has me worked up to beat all hell and she’s going back to work?

A few seconds later, I’m still standing, trying to grasp what the hell just happened. She looks up from a notepad on her desk, seemingly surprised to see me still here.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say, shoving off her desk.

“And why is that?”

“I’m painting with Rocky.”

“We only paint one day a week. There won’t be supplies here tomorrow.”

I just grin. She sighs.

“You aren’t cleared to come by. There is protocol to follow, Landry, even for you.”

“Good thing I’m me then,” I wink, knowing I’m pissing her off. “I’ll have my people call your people, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I don’t have people,” she says through gritted teeth. “I am people.”

“Sounds good. You’ll like them. My people are good people.”

We stand off, each of us as determined to get our way as the other. She narrows her eyes. I widen my smirk. She throws her shoulders back, I shrug mine. This little game incenses her, riles her up. If I were the true gentleman my mother raised, I’d warn her that seeing her pissed off only makes me want her worse.

Good thing I’m not.





Danielle

THE WATER SPLASHES DOWN THE sides of my favorite teacup. I hold it under the faucet, letting my dirty chai tea wash down the drain. Sitting it in the strainer, I pad through the simple little kitchen adorned with sunflowers and into the tidy living room. As much as I try to make it feel like home, it doesn’t. It lacks a flourish of warmth or coziness that I can’t fill with all the throw pillows and candles in the world.

I glance at the handful of framed pictures on the mantle. There are two of me and Macie in college. One is of me and Pepper that was taken by a newspaper doing a feature on the Smitten Kitten. The other is of me and my parents, taken on the day I graduated high school. It’s one of the only pictures I have of the three of us. I’ve stared at it for hours over the years, dissecting how we look to the world. We are all smiling, my father’s arms stretched around my mother and I. We look normal. If only.