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.”
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.