AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It might be easier for me to get the splinter out if she sits on the counter,” he said as he picked Hannah up and set her on the vanity.
He had just started to grab the tiny sliver of wood when his cell phone sounded the arrival of a text.
“That’s probably the hospital. I’m late.” He nodded in the general direction of the phone, still trying to remove the offending particle. “Would you mind texting them back to say that I’ll be right there?”
Lily picked up the phone.
“Oh.”
Cullen looked over and met her gaze. “Is there a problem?”
Lily’s eyebrows rose and a faint blush colored her cheeks.
“Well, it’s not the hospital. It’s someone named…Giselle?” Lily cleared her throat. “She says—and I’m paraphrasing here—but she’s very eager to see you tonight. It seems she has quite the night planned for you.”
Oh, hell.
Heat warmed his face. He glanced down at Hannah to see if she’d caught on to the situation. But she was studying the finger that was now splinter free.
“Here—never mind.” Cullen held out his hand for the phone. After Lily gave it to him, he shoved it into his pants pocket as if the action could undo Lily having read the message, which was bound to be graphic, knowing Giselle.
He felt like a letch for having subjected her to it. Of course, if he’d known Giselle would pick that precise moment to offer a preview of coming attractions, he wouldn’t have asked Lily to pick up the text. In fact, he’d been so busy since the kids arrived that he’d completely forgotten he was supposed to see her.
Was that tonight?
He couldn’t bring a woman like her around while Lily and the kids were here. Before he’d taken the kids into his home, he hadn’t realized all the ways they might change his life. When had he ever recoiled from a spicy Giselle text or passed up a chance to see her? But given the circumstances, he didn’t have a choice but to decline.
“Does your finger feel better, Hannah?” he asked after he’d slathered it with antibiotic ointment and applied a bandage.
She nodded through a one-shoulder shrug. “Sort of. It would feel much better if I had a princess bandage.”
Lily took the little girl down from the vanity, held her good hand and led her out of the bathroom without looking at Cullen. “The next time I go to the store, I’ll make sure to get some princess bandages. A princess should always have a special bandage. You’re very brave to wear the ordinary one for now.”
Cullen stood alone for a moment, listening as their conversation grew faint. He certainly hadn’t thought taking in the kids would throw him into a crisis of conscience. After all, he was single. He and the women he dated were consenting adults and very clear about the no-strings-attached nature of their relationships. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.
So why did it feel as though he was?
He took a deep breath and reminded himself that it wouldn’t be this way forever. The kids would be living with him only until the end of December. Then he could resume life as he knew it.
* * *
Nothing said let’s be friends like a big stack of homemade pancakes. After Cullen made his awkward exit, Lily did her best to put the racy contents of the text she wished she’d never read out of her mind.
It wasn’t easy to erase the image of Cullen doing the things Giselle had so graphically described in her message. The only problem was her brain kept imagining Cullen doing those things to her.
Lily wasn’t a prude—she’d been engaged and had enjoyed a healthy relationship with her fiancé before everything turned south—but those thoughts were so inappropriate when she was supposed to have her mind on the kids. For God’s sake, the thoughts were inappropriate even if she wasn’t watching the kids. Cullen Dunlevy was her boss. And even as progressive and open-minded as she fancied herself, she certainly was no Giselle.
She forced the thoughts out of her mind—or at least relegated them to the very back, dark corners of her overactive imagination—and fired up the griddle she’d brought with her. She made cheerful small talk with the kids as she mixed up a batch of pancake batter for them.
