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“I know.” I cleared my throat and couldn’t believe I’d been stupid enough to say that. I knew their adorable meet-cute story; what the hell had I been thinking?
“We’re still waiting on a couple people, but let’s just get started since I’ve got to meet the city planner in an hour.” Brody Hart, the project manager leading the LFC buildout, started going through his status update, but since I’d already touched base with him on Friday afternoon, it was redundant information to me.
Which was why I started thinking—yet again—about the almost kiss.
It’d come at me out of nowhere. We’d had a fun, wholly platonic evening (aside from a flirt here and there) that’d been entirely in line with our “partnership.”
So what the fuck had happened at the end of the night?
One minute we’d been taking a selfie, and the next had been all electricity.
It’d felt like we werethisclose to doing... something.
Her eyes on mine, her lips so close.
I was like a fucking middle schooler, daydreaming about almost kissing.
Yes, it’d been a couple years since I’d kissed a woman, but it was pathetic how obsessed I was with what hadn’t happened.
A goddamn near kiss, for God’s sake.
I needed to snap out of it.
My phone buzzed, and when I took it out of my pocket, I saw a text from my mother.
Mom:How long have you been seeing your “friend,” Maxxie? I want to know everything.
Damn it. I glanced over at my dad, wanting to give him my best glare for running to Mom with fake-ass dating news.
But he was listening intently to Brody’s rundown, already having moved on from meddling to business.
Which wasn’t surprising.
My father had always been all business. He’d built Parks Construction from the ground up, and it was a part of him, a part of our family, the same as if it was an uncle or cousin. I’d grown up going with him to jobsites, spending snow days in the offices, and every summer job my sisters and I had during high school was with Parks or one of its subcontractors.
I sometimes thought I loved it as much as—or more than—he did, and I couldn’t wait to step up when he decided to step down.
Which should benow, damn it; the man was more than ready to retire. He and my mom built a house in Florida they’d been “wintering” at for the past three years, and he told me countless times that he was ready to make it a year-round home.
It was obvious he wanted badly to retire and let me take the helm.
So why hadn’t he, you ask?
Because my mother didn’t want to move until “all her babies” were taken care of.
Which meant me.
My two sisters were married, one with a kiddo and the other with one on the way. They had doting husbands and beautiful homes.
I was her youngest, so even though I was fucking great at my job, had a mortgage on my condo and a decent investment portfolio, she apparently considered me the equivalent of a college kid living on Top Ramen and Kraft Dinner.
Because I wasn’t “taken care of” yet.
AKA married or in a serious relationship, things I had no interest in whatsoever.
So my dad and I were basically hosed until I fell in love.
Which would be never.
