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She smiled up at William. “Deal.”
They sealed it with a kiss, and then she was slipping on her shoes by the front door. Already, Sabrina regretted leaving. She’d wanted to sleep beside her guys. It was always the best rest she had, and anymore, sleeping alone was just plain lonely.
Oliver walked her out, and they took the Hargreaves’ private car back to her place first. With a sweet kiss good night, he let her go, waiting until she was safely inside the building before the driver pulled away.
Sabrina’s mood threatened to deflate. Being in her apartment alone didn’t feel right anymore. She missed the brothers’ presence, and they’d only been separated for a short time. It didn’t bode well for her if things didn’t work out in the long run. She may never sleep again.
Shaking off the disturbing thoughts that didn’t warrant consideration, she rode the elevator in silence, reaching her apartment door a couple of minutes later.
She’d been right. The apartment felt cold and lifeless without them here, and sadness began to creep in. It was late, but was it too late to gather a few things and run back to William’s place? Or maybe Ollie’s? Yes, it was. William was probably already asleep, and Oliver soon would be. She had no idea what Conner was up to, but she could imagine that he was burning the midnight oil. He just seemed the type.
As she got ready for bed, occasionally reaching down to run a hand down Binx’s back, as he’d been winding himself around her legs since she’d walked in, Sabrina imagined them all living under the same roof, what their routines would be like. Ollie would be the laid-back one, the one who was always up for a good cuddle. William would be a touch more serious, but just as playful as she’d come to know him to be. And Conner? Well, he’d probably be the one to come to bed late, after everyone fell asleep, always preoccupied by the coming day’s agenda.
Together, they’d balance each other out, show one another a better way of doing things, and together, they could be truly happy.
It seemed like such a fairy tale coming true, Sabrina was afraid to put too much thought into it beyond that. She didn’t want to get her hopes up only to be let down. For now, she wanted to live in the moment.
But as she pulled back the covers on the bed and prepared to get in, her feline roommate turning in circles at the foot of the bed in preparation for his own good-night’s sleep, she turned her attention to her phone instead. She had to see the picture of the four of them one more time first. With a couple of taps, she was looking down at their handsome faces, and then her own. She looked…happy. Not that fake kind of smile people put on for show, but genuinely happy.
She credited that to them.
Her guys were changing her, and, she felt, for the better.
Reenergized, she left the room with her phone in hand. She’d had an idea earlier what she wanted to do with that picture, and despite the hour, she didn’t want to wait a second more to bring it to reality.
Firing up the printer she kept at the corner office space she’d set up in a wedge of space between the dining and living room, she loaded up the picture paper and connected her phone with the device.
In a matter of moments, she held a physical copy of their budding relationship in her hands. On her way back to the bedroom, she picked up a sparkling gold leaf frame containing a generic picture of a puppy leaping into the sky to catch a Frisbee, and peeled off the backing. Once the picture of the four of them was tucked safely inside, she set it down on the bedside table.
There. The perfect image to go to sleep and wake up to. It would be her daily reminder of what she had and what she had to look forward to. Climbing into bed, she clicked off the light and closed her eyes, a satisfied smile on her face.
She had her work, respect of her colleagues, and three amazing men in her life who would do just about anything for her. Life didn’t get much better than that.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sabrina didn’t make it into the office as early as she wanted or expected. Not sleeping with her guys had, as she’d suspected, thrown off her schedule and she’d spent far too many hours tossing and turning. As a result, by the time the alarm went off in the morning, she couldn’t peel her eyes open, let alone pull herself from the bed.
When the pounding on the front door occurred, however, she took one bleary-eyed look at the alarm and bolted out of bed in a flash. The mad dash to the door had her heart racing in a panic, and when she threw it open, she didn’t spare a glance at the person standing in wait on the other side, expecting it to be one of the brothers.
“I slept through the alarm,” she explained as she hurried back to her bedroom and started stripping out of her pajamas and into a hastily selected outfit that she’d pulled from the closet.
As she raced through her morning routine, she called out, “I hope you brought coffee. I’m barely functional today. I didn’t get much sleep last night because you weren’t here.” She huffed a laugh, but no response from her visitor came.
“I’m sorry if I worried you. It wasn’t intentional.” She applied her mascara with a little more care than she’d ripped the brush through her hair and yanked it into a topknot, secured with bobby pins and a gallon of hairspray.
A quick look in the mirror and she decided to call it good enough. She wasn’t out to impress the masses. Just the four most important men in her life: her father and her lovers.
Sabrina slipped her feet into a pair of wedge heels to match her black on black knee-length pencil skirt and blouse and grabbed her clutch from the top of her dresser. She was wrist-deep in the small billfold in search of the tinted pink lip gloss she kept in there, on her way toward the main living area, when her guest finally spoke up.
“I hope you don’t make this a habit, but from the sound of it, you do.”
Sabrina startled to a standstill at the rough timber of her father’s voice. “Daddy! What are you doing here? I thought we were meeting at the office.”
“That’s what I thought too.” His round cheeks were ruddy and his crystal blue eyes intense. Standing sentinel beside the kitchen counter with his stocky arms folded across his barrel chest, he looked every bit the formidable man she’d grown up with. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d caused that look, always careful not to raise his ire, and this time was just as unnerving. Whatever she’d done to piss her father off, it was lost on her.
Feeling like a little kid about to be taken to task, Sabrina took slow steps toward him, stopping a few feet short and bracing herself against the counter’s edge. “I overslept. It’s not a habit, but it was a rough night.”
“So I gathered,” he grunted. “You’re seeing someone?”
