Now the thing has...shape.
Before, it was just aggravation. Attraction. A bad idea I could keep contained by pretending it wasn’t worth naming.But Cole made me give it a name.
I like her.
Or something close enough to it that the distinction doesn’t matter.
I head for my car, my jaw tight.I tell myself that it’s manageable, that it has to be, that Carly is moving into my house because Penelope needs stability and I need help. That’s it. End of story. No room for confusion.
I can want a woman and still keep my hands to myself.
I can be attracted to her and still act like a professional.
I can absolutely keep my thoughts in a place that won’t get me struck by lightning.
But my traitorous brain offers up an imagined image of Carly in my kitchen after Penelope’s gone to bed, barefoot and tired, hair falling over one shoulder, glass of wine in her hand while she leans against the counter in one of my shirts andnothing else.
I stop at my truck and shut my eyes.
Nope.
Not that.
Anything but that.
The image shifts, and I think I’ve batted it off well enough, but it’s morphing — the same scene, but she’s not holding a wine glass anymore, and she’s on her knees at my feet, batting those pretty eyelashes up at me with my cock shoved halfway down her throat and I?—
God.I’m fucked. I’m so, so fucked.
Chapter 10
Carly
The frontof Grayson Sparkks’s house looks less like a house and more like the kind of place that would have its own page in a glossy architecture magazine. The clean stone exterior looks like it was built into the side of the mountains, black beams framing the sides, huge windows that reflect the pale winter sky back at me like the whole place is too cool to care that I exist.
I stand in the driveway with my purse over one shoulder, my laptop bag digging into the other, and stare.
Then I look down at the sad little cluster of my belongings being unloaded from the moving van.
A few boxes. A couple of suitcases. A cheap standing lamp with a wobble in the neck. A duffel bag of clothes. Two tote bags full of books and random bathroom things. My life, apparently, fitting neatly into one humiliating little pile again, but this time in front of a house big enough to be crowned a small country.
Grayson comes out through the front door in a charcoal sweater and grey joggers, his hair loose around his temples, phone in one hand, and I swallow and force myself to look natural.Helooks unfairly good standing there, broad shoulders filling out expensive knitwear like he was personally engineered in a lab to make women sign over their souls.
Mine almost leaves my body.
He slips his phone into his pocket and walks toward me. “Penelope’s with her mother, Halsey, until later on tonight,” he says, glancing briefly toward the moving van before looking back at me. “She actually showed up for once.”
The words are dry, flat, and utterly casual for the weight they carry.There’s something clearly underneath them, something I’m definitely not qualified to poke at on day one, so I just nod like a sane person instead of asking intrusive questions about his ex-wife and whatever mess is clearly lurking there.
I make a mental note that her mom is probably flaky in case I ever need to interact with her.
“Got it,” I say.
His gaze flicks over my boxes, my bag, the entire embarrassingly tiny inventory of mine, and I have to fight the urge to explain myself. I almost blurt out that there’s more stuff at Zoe’s, except there isn’t really. Not enough to matter.
“This all?” he asks.
I force out a light laugh. “Yeah. I like to keep things minimalist,” I lie.
