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I heard the door at the top of the stairwell swing open and bang against the wall. “Chelsea!” A deep voice called. “Wait.”
I thought about all the times I’d watched in agony as some dumb heroine in a movie ran off instead of standing still for ten seconds to listen. As much as I wanted to be exactly that sort of dumb, I waited with my hand on the knob of the door. Damon came down a few seconds later.
He turned me gently to face him, but I pushed off his hands.
“Hey,” he said softly. “She surprised me in there. I had no idea she was going to try to kiss me. I was only standing that close to get her to stop from pulling her dress over her head.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Unfortunately.”
I frowned. “Why is it unfortunate?”
“Because my life would be a hell of a lot simpler if I wanted to fuck a woman like Tia Klein. Instead, my dumbass only seems to want you.”
“Did you just try to romance me while leading with the fact that it’d be better if you wanted to sleep with another woman?”
Damon lifted my chin with his knuckle. “Words were never my strong suit.”
“What is your specialty, then?”
He took a half step closer. A faint grin curved his lips on one side. “Making you come seems to be a strength of mine.”
The man had a point. “How are you with forgiveness?” I asked.
Damon was stroking my hair, and it felt like heaven. “Normally? I’m shit. But once again, you’re a pain in my ass. I can’t seem to stay mad. Even if you should’ve told me I got you pregnant. Even if you should’ve let me help you with money. Even if you made me wait five years to meet my daughter.”
“If it makes you feel any better, she was in my stomach for nine months of that. So…”
“Smartass.”
I smiled. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Apologize for bailing on you in Savannah. And maybe if you give me a chance, I could give you another demonstration of my strong suit.”
“Wait, which one? The one where you make me come, or the one where you are a grumpy asshole?”
“It’ll be a surprise.”31DamonDick swung by the office to take us to Chelsea’s apartment. Grant would be there with Luna, and it’d be my first time meeting her as my daughter—not just the kid of the woman I was infatuated with.
Chelsea and I sat in the back seat.
She was watching me extra closely, I noticed. She was also constantly fidgeting with her hands in her lap.
I’d learned a lot about Chelsea lately, and one of those things was how well she hid her real emotions. She was nervous as hell, and she couldn’t hide that from me.
She was likely worried I’d disappoint Luna somehow. I could only imagine how nervous she was to see how I’d be around her daughter—our daughter. She’d been through hell to protect Luna from me all this time, and now she was putting mountains of trust in me not to fuck it up.
Dick whistled. “The sexual tension back there is through the roof. Smells like prom night at a middle school. Hormones so thick my nose hairs are gonna get singed off.”
Chelsea cleared her throat and shifted.
“Richard, I pay you to drive, not for commentary.”
“Richard, Richard, Richard,” Dick groaned. “What is it, anyway, boss? You afraid to let a little dick touch those lips?”
Chelsea choked on something.
I sighed. “He thinks he’s being funny. He wants me to call him Dick instead of Richard.”
Dick nodded. “If you ask me, you ain’t gonna know if you’re into that till you try it. Anyone who has never sucked a little dick doesn’t really know which team they’re batting for. How can you say you don’t like watermelon if you never try it, for example?”
Chelsea snorted. “I think he has a point.”
“Please don’t encourage him. He only gets worse if you egg him on.”
“Goes both ways, Miss Chelsea. If you’d like, I could arrange for an experimental partner. Little ditty sucking never killed anybody is all I’m saying. And I know a woman with a pair that would’ve gotten two orphanages through the Great Potato Famine of ’42.”
“Now you’re just making up dates,” I said.
“Like hell I am,” Dick protested. “I was there.”
“And if you try to get my—” I paused. I was about to say my girlfriend. What were we, even? Parents. That was a thought. “Please don’t advise my employees to suck any “titties,” I said after a brief pause.
Chelsea was smiling, but still fidgeting. Even Dick’s ridiculous behavior wasn’t quite enough to get her mind off me meeting her daughter, and I couldn’t quite blame her.
“It’s going to be fine,” I said.
She surprised me by taking my hand and squeezing it on top of her lap. Neither of us seemed to be in a particular rush to break contact.
