"Like six weeks." She tilts her head to the side to allow me more access.
"That’s it?" I lean away, framing her face with my hands. "Sarah Erickson, I’m crazy about you. So crazy that, even after only six weeks together, the very idea of spending four days uninterrupted with you on a beach is about to push me over the edge of insanity. I can’t wait to get out of here and spend the weekend getting lost in you." I press a kiss to her lips, holding her tight against my mouth as I siphon off every bit of her anxiety.
She sighs as I release her. "How do you do that?"
"Do what?" I ask, standing up and pulling her to her feet.
"Always say the exact thing I need to hear." She drops her forehead to my chest.
"I’ve told you. It’s a gift. Now, go get naked. I’m going to brief Johnson. Then I’ll meet you in the shower. I plan to take full advantage of those extra twenty minutes you penciled in this morning." I squeeze her ass before walking away.
When I push open the door to my office, I find Johnson’s sitting at the computer, no doubt checking the business e-mails like he does first thing every morning. His eyes immediately flash up to mine.
"How did you end up meeting her?" he asks, rising to his feet.
"It was random." I walk around him to sit behind my desk.
He crosses his thick, tattooed arms over his chest. "Bullshit."
"It’s the truth. I ran into her on the street." I shake my head and begin absently staring at the computer screen.
"Okay, well, let me rephrase. How long did it take you to recognize her before you were taking her to bed?" he growls, and I continue to act unaffected.
If there were ever a person to call me on my bullshit, Aiden Johnson would be that man. He has a no-nonsense personality and feels zero need to pull punches. I’ve never heard him even partially lie. He’s honest to a fault. He might have a sketchy past, but without question, he’s one of the best men I have ever met. I have no secrets from Johnson. He knows me better than anyone else, including Erica.
"I swear. I approached her because she was gorgeous. She was all flustered and I was just going to help her out. It wasn’t until she started talking that I recognized her."
"Does she know that she changed your life?"
"No," I answer after a few seconds.
"Son of a bitch. This is fucked up, Leo."
"So people keep telling me," I snark.
"Is she the girl you’ve been seeing for the last few weeks, or is she just something new on the side?" He sits down on the couch, running a hand over his shaved head.
"Jesus Christ, I’m not that big of a dick. Of course she’s the one I’ve been seeing."
"She know about your past?"
"For fuck’s sake, can you stop with the twenty-question bit? I’m not a sullen teenager you need to reprimand."
"Oh good. Then being an adult who is not a prick, you’ll understand that I’m about to fill her in on all your fucking shit just so you can be on an even playing field."
I jump to my feet. "The hell you are!"
"Why not, asshole? That seems fair to me." He shrugs.
I walk around the desk and step into his space. Johnson is a big dude, and between the tattoos, piercings, and gauges in his ears, he’s scary as fuck. Hence why I hired him. But if he thinks he’s going to screw things up for me with Sarah, he has another thing coming.
"I swear to God, you fuck with my relationship, I will fire your ass so fast."
"You can’t afford to fire me." He lifts his eyebrows knowingly.
"Keep. Your. Fucking mouth. Shut."
"No problem—as long you open your fucking mouth and at least tell her that you know her. I’m not saying you need to bare your soul, but I think it’s a really dick move not to at least give her all the information. Sarah’s a nice girl. She’s made some mistakes, but last I heard, she was really putting her life back together. She doesn’t deserve to be blindsided by something like this."
"Don’t act like you know her like I do. I’ll admit that this isn’t the ideal situation, but it is what it is. If you think my informing her that I know about her rap sheet is going to endear her to me, you’ve lost your damn mind. She’d be gone before I even got the words out of my mouth. What I know changes nothing."
"You’re full of shit. It changes everything and you know it. So what is this with her, some weird obsession?"
"Fuck no. I genuinely like her."
"Right. And if you didn’t know every detail of her sordid past to make you feel better about your own, how would you feel about her?"
"That’s not fair."
"Oh, but it’s somehow fair to Sarah?" He throws his hands out to the side before running them over his dress pants.
I put my hands on my hips and start shaking my head. "I don’t know. Things have been going really well recently…and she’s going to flip."
"Probably." He shrugs. "But, hopefully, she’ll get over it. If you’re serious about her, you need to say something soon."
I laugh humorlessly. "That’s what Erica said."