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irginia. A town called Hope Valley. Apparently Laeth, Jensen, and Gage were some kind of super soldiers back in the Army.”
“I—” I swallowed. “I didn’t know he was in the Army.”
Myra’s head quirked to the side, her curiosity shining through. “He didn’t tell you that?”
I shook my head, swallowing down the words that wanted to pour out. It was on the tip of my tongue to say that he didn’t really tell me much ofanything. I started my job working for a complete stranger, and in the first five days, that hadn’t changed much. He was gruff and grumbly normally, but it seemed to have gotten worse after that first night when I stumbled on him having a nightmare. I was almost certain he was going out of his way to avoid me as much as possible. And he was surprisingly good at it, considering we lived under the same roof.
I kept replaying the agonizing sounds he’d made that night in my head, and now that I knew he’d served in the Army, I couldn’t help but wonder if that played some part in that nightmare.
“Speaking of, how is the new job going?” Farah asked, leaning forward and propping one elbow on the table, resting her chin in her palm. Cannon kept his arm draped over the back of her chair casually, his fingers sifting through the length of her hair like it was the most natural thing in the world. Watching them created another tug in my chest just like the one I’d felt with Myra and Bennett.
In fact, seeing all three of these couples in love and affectionate had me feeling like I was the odd man out. It also created a pang of longing I had to force down.
Aside from escaping the Fellowship and starting a whole new life, the one thing I fantasized about the most was having a man who would look at me the way the three men sitting at the table were looking at their wives. It was just another in a long list of things I wasn’t sure were in the cards for me.
As I watched Jase’s hand stroke up and down Poppy’s arm, or Cannon use his grip on Farah’s hair to pull her back so he could place a quick kiss to her lips, my mind traveled all the way back to Laeth’s house.
I’d lost count of how many times over the past five days I’d scolded myself for daydreaming about my boss’s naked, sculpted chest. It was beyond inappropriate to think of him that way, but as the days passed, it only got worse. I couldn’t make myself stop, no matter how hard I tried.
I had been lying in bed the other night, reading one of the books Myra had lent me, and there was a scene between the hero and heroine that grew steamier with every turn of the page. It had elicited a reaction within my body that had me clutching my thighs tight together against the pressure building low in my belly, and as the two characters in the book had sex, my mind began to drift, the people in the book became Laeth and me.
By the time I realized I was fantasizing about peeking down my body to see my boss’s dark hair between my spread thighs, I was panting desperately as dampness pooled in my panties.
I had to force my mind back into the present, pinning a smile to my face as I answered Farah’s question. “It’s great,” I said honestly. I might have been thinking about Laeth in a way I had no business doing, but the silver lining was that I absolutely adored Cash, and the more time we spent together, the more he opened up around me.
He was a thinker, no doubt about that, but he was also incredibly bright and sweet as could be.
“Cash is the most precious little boy I’ve ever met. I’m lucky to be his nanny.”
“He really is the sweetest,” Farah agreed quickly. “It’s amazing how the whole thing came about, honestly. I wasn’t sure how Laeth would take to being a father at first.”
Poppy snorted into her wineglass. “None of us were sure,” she mumbled.
My brows went up, rising almost high enough to kiss my hairline. “Sorry?”
“You know,” Poppy continued, waving her hand in a circle. “About how Cash’s mom just showed up on Laeth’s doorstep one day a little over a month ago?”
My forehead pinched in confusion, and they both must have seen it because the table grew suddenly quiet.
“You didn’t know?”
I shook my head, feeling like I was missing something crucial. “Laeth hasn’t said a word about Cash’s mother.” I reached up, pressing my fingers into my temples to stave off the pain suddenly forming there. I couldn’t claim Laeth wasn’t a good father, or that he didn’t care about his son, but the stilted, almost awkward way they were with one another suddenly made so much sense. “He’s only had Cash for a month? How is that even possible?”
Cannon cleared his throat uncomfortably while Jase tugged at the collar of his shirt, looking around at anything but me.
“Um, well... because he didn’t know Cash existed,” Poppy answered. At my deep, confused frown, she explained further. “Cash’s mom was a hookup. They met at a bar one night, got drunk, and slept together. Cash was apparently a product of that one-night stand that Laeth knew nothing about until the womanshowed up one day and informed him it was his turn to play the role of parent.”
Something harsh and acidic slithered up my throat, leaving a burning trail in its wake. My stomach twisted into a million knots. I was all too familiar with Cash’s circumstances. I’d lived it myself, after all. But after getting to know that boy and growing to care for him, the fact that his own mother could do something so cold as to leave him behind made my vision grow red.
How dare she? Did she not see what an incredible little human she had in the palms of her hands?
I couldn’t wrap my head around a woman abandoning her own child, but especially when that child was so wonderful.
All I could think was that woman didn’t deserve him.
Chapter
Fifteen
