“Yeah.” I pat the pillow. “She’s probably going to kick you all night. It’s not as adorable as you think.”
With a nod, he removes what’s left of his suit, and I try not to eye-fuck him in his boxers during what should be a wholesome family moment.
I fail.
“You’re looking at me the same way you did that night at the gas station.”
“No, right now is worse. That night I was guessing how you’d look under your clothes. Tonight, I know.”
His lips twist as he approaches the bed, the light from the bedside lamp playing over every line in his chiseled body. He’s more cut than I remember. His abs, the line of his quad muscle down the front of his thigh as he places a knee on the bed. The long hours spent at Hamilton Athletics have somehow made him even more mouth-watering. His fists push into the mattress as he hovers over Vivi, muscles rippling on his forearms.
With a soft expression on his face, his dark eyes, deep like the darkest chocolate, flit to mine. “Thank you, Winter.”
Part of me wants to ask if he means for letting him sleep here, but I’d be playing dumb. I know he’s thanking me for so much more. I feel it in the way my heart pounds under the weight of his gaze.
Saying you’re welcome doesn’t seem right either, so I say what I’ve been thinking since the moment he showed up and made it his mission to make my life better. “Thank you, Theo.”
My tongue traces my lips as I stare back at him. “Get in and stare at your girl all night if you want to.”
I turn and click the light off before he responds. Only a silver-blue light filters in through the window, and slowly my eyes adjust to the darkened room. Theo’s on his side, hands folded under his cheek.
But I get the sense he isn’t only staring at Vivi. He’s staring at me too. His girls.
“Hey, Theo?” I whisper, reaching across to dust my fingers over his forehead and into his hair.
“Yeah?”
“You’re not an interloper. You’re her dad.”
When I wake up, sunlight streams through the windows. Theo is out cold on his back, that square jawline dusted in just the right amount of stubble. He sleeps peacefully with his lips parted gently, his dark lashes fanned down over golden skin.
My gaze traces the apex of his Adam’s apple, down over his toned chest, to where our little girl has full-on starfished over her dad’s chest. His broad palms encase her tiny ribcage, and her head rests right where I know she must be able to hear his heart beating.
I laid my head there once, almost two years ago. I remember trying to catch my breath, trying to wrap my head around how someone I barely knew could make me feel so good. So relaxed.
But this is different.
This is better.
I just lie here in a happy sunny bubble, letting my head and my heart work around it.
It feels good.
It feels like home.
29
Theo
Winter: Please don’t do something that will land you in prison.
Theo: Can’t make any promises.
Winter: Please? I’d still bail you out, but I’d be mad at you.
Theo: You being mad at me gets me hard. Angry sex is fun. This is not a deterrent.
Winter: Maybe I wouldn’t bail you out at all.
Theo: Nah. You’d miss my dick too much.
Winter: No. I’d miss you.
“Phone?” I place my hand on the conference room table where Kip and Geoff sit across from me. Kip is stone-faced and his employee is nervous—as he should be—when he places the phone in my palm.
“What did I tell you to do with my phone, Geoff?” I ask, voice clipped as I swipe into the phone and pull up the text messages without even glancing in his direction.
I search “T” and there they are. Tink. I glance through them, but they’re hard to look at. They gut me. Knowing Winter like I do now, I can’t help but think about how badly this must have hurt her.
Yesterday we spent the day in bed and really dug into those early days. We talked about her parents and her childhood. I cooked. We laughed. She and Vivi napped, and I lay next to them, watching them sleep.
For one day, we lived in the most perfect bubble.
And now I’m out for blood.
“To, uh, respond to your messages? Post some pictures on your socials?”
“And what about any important or personal messages that came through?”
“Forward them to you.” He gives me eager nods, like he’s proud of his work.
I slide the phone across the table to the two men and lean back in the chair, knitting my hands behind my head and crossing a booted foot over my knee as I wait for them to read.
It’s fascinating to watch. As they scroll, it’s like all the color that drains out of Geoff’s face is transferred into Kip’s by osmosis.
One turns white while the other turns red.
“That seems like a pretty important set of messages to pass along, wouldn’t you say, Geoff?”
“I thought—”
“You thought you’d respond as me? To a woman telling me she’s pregnant with my baby? And that’s how you responded?”
“I thought—”
“Nah.” I sit forward abruptly, my elbows hitting the table loudly enough to startle him. “You didn’t think at all.”
“I did you a favor! You wanted to clean up your image. You get all sorts of crass messages on that thing. Women asking you for stuff, sending you things I’d rather not see. This was no different.”
“This was my daughter,” I hiss, swiping the phone back from his incapable hands. “And I missed her birth along with the first nine months of her life because you’re a judgmental piece of shit who overstepped his boundaries.”
Geoff swallows and drops my gaze.
“You didn’t know?” Kip’s voice sounds hollow, his jaw popping as he looks between Geoff and me.
“Of course I didn’t know. What kind of asshole do you take me for?”
“Winter never told me.”
“She never told anyone because everyone always treats her like shit!” My fist slams down hard enough to rattle the table as I let them have it. “Her mom. You. Her shitty fucking ex, who is still harassing her. She’s convinced she needs to do everything alone because that’s what you showed her all her life. That no one will show up for her. That everyone always abandons her.”
The boardroom is quiet as I suck air in through my nostrils, trying to calm myself down. “Except me. I’m going to show up for her. Every goddamn time. So Kip, you’re fired. I used to like you, but I no longer respect you. And Geoff, if I could fire you twice, I would. You fucking suck.”
It was an immature final blow. But man, Geoff fucking sucks.
When I stand, Kip does too.
He meets me at the door and shakes my hand. Hard. “Theo, you may not respect me, but I respect the hell out of you, and I wish you the best. And I’m . . . I’m going to make this right.”
I don’t think he’s trying to make me feel bad, but he does. Bad for him. I don’t think Kip is a shitty person at heart, but he’s a flawed one. We all are. His best wasn’t good enough. Maybe he tried to be a good father to them both. I can’t say for sure. But what I do know is he failed. Monumentally.
And I think he just realized it. I can see the devastation on his face.
“Thank you, sir,” is all I give back before turning to leave.
As I go, I hear him say, “Geoff, pack your shit up and get the hell out of my office. I never want to see your face again.”
I smile to myself as I head to the elevator, because Geoff got fired twice today after all. And that makes me happy.
When I pull up into the driveway of Winter’s house, there’s a fancy car parked on the street, lined right up with the front gate. In my truck, I watch the vehicle through the rear-view mirror. I see movement, but the tinted windows on the car obscure any further detail.
Not that I need much more to make a guess. Winter has been tight-lipped about her ex, aside from mentioning he never went down on her. Which is enough to let me know he’s useless, no matter what the piece of paper hanging in a gaudy gold frame behind his desk might say.
I’m already fired up from my meeting with Kip, so I decide to roll with that energy. I grab my empty paper coffee cup and step down from my pickup to approach the car.
Three loud knocks on the window are how I announce myself. When the glass finally rolls down, I’m met with the face of a man who looks like he’s doing his best impression of the douchey trust fund baby ex-boyfriend in Legally Blonde.
I bet this guy has “the third” tacked onto the end of his legal name.
“Hey, man. You lost? Something I can help you find?”
His smile is greasy and terse. Not real at all. “Yeah, buddy.” He’s also condescending, but I’m not surprised. “Just here to see my wife.”
Wife. That word makes me want to break something.