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Sullivan and Finn weren’t in the apartment, but the kitchen was cleaned up from their breakfast. Even the living room was tidied up. She’d left papers and water glasses and a sweater scattered all over. The plates with half-eaten snacks and all the dishes were gone, the papers neatly stacked, her sweater folded. The coffee table glass had been wiped free of water rings and crumbs. She appreciated that Sullivan was respectful of her space, though she was a little surprised he was so domestic.
Which was ridiculous.
What did she really know about Sullivan as an adult? He was great with his son. Why wouldn't he be domestic as well? Just because he liked to have sex with women didn’t mean he didn’t know how to wash dishes. The two weren’t in opposition.
Annoyed with herself for making assumptions, something she hated when it was done to her, she grabbed her phone and pulled the apartment door closed behind her. Finn and Sullivan were waiting for her in the driveway, doing leg lunges. There was probably a reason they were doing leg lunges, but it wasn’t immediately obvious to her.
“Hi, sorry it took me so long. Are you guys ready?” she asked.
“We were born ready.” Sullivan turned and glanced back at her, smiling. But then his eyes widened. “Whoa. That’s, uh…”
“That’s what?” Edwina put her phone in her pocket. Sullivan’s expression was hard to read, but he definitely was staring at her.
“Nothing. I’m just wondering how that shirt is even staying on your body.” He gestured with his hands. “It’s very complicated. Like origami.”
She glanced down at her shirt, which had a halter neck and ties that wrapped around her midsection. “It’s not as complicated as it looks.”
“That might be my new motto in life,” Sullivan said, with a grin. “Keep it simple. It’s not as complicated as it looks.”
She wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that. In her experience, everything was complicated. Her relationship with her parents, with her stepfather, with her step siblings, her business, her feelings about the business, her finances, her relationship with Nigel. Even her route to work was complicated. Walk fifteen minutes, take a bus to the subway, ride the train for twenty minutes, then walk another five. It kept her rent cheap to be further from transportation.
It also meant she had an hour and twenty-minute commute to go eighteen miles.
New York City was complicated. Life was complicated.
She eyed Finn softly singing to himself in his still babyish preschool voice and thought about the fact that Nigel had expressed concern about having children.
Emotion was complicated.
“If you can bottle that up and sell it, I’ll be your best customer,” she told Sullivan.
“I’ll give it to you for free,” he said.
Edwina didn’t think he meant that to sound sexual. He was reaching out to pull Finn out of the bushes and turn him toward the street. But somehow itfeltsexual to her.
Had she ever really beengiven it? The phrase made her think of hard pounding sex where drywall was damaged and beds were broken. Where the air was forced out of her lungs with each demanding thrust of a rock-solid cock and the only thing holding her up was his arms…
Unbidden, thehimin her wandering thoughts was Sullivan.
She sucked in a breath and crossed her arms over her chest to hide her suddenly firm nipples. What the hell was going on with her? Practically engaged women did not, should not, fantasize about single dads with crooked grins taking them hard.
She was losing it.
Fortunately, Sullivan was preoccupied with keeping Finn from drifting into the street and didn’t notice her flushed cheeks or inappropriately perky nipples. She should have worn a bra. Why hadn’t she worn a bra?
Because the straps of a bra would show and as a B cup, she didn’t need the support. It never made her self-conscious. That she was now both frustrated and flustered her.
As they turned onto Main Street and toward the shops just a few houses down from her father’s, she saw the town had turned out. There were tables set up all around, a firetruck on display with kids climbing all over it, and dogs and children everywhere. Her childhood friend, Winnie, ran a pet salon, and Finn’s eyes lit up when he spotted a fenced off area with puppies jumping and playing in front of Winnie’s storefront.
“Puppies! Daddy, puppies! Can I go?”
“Yes, but listen to Miss Winnie and be gentle with the dogs.”
They strolled together behind Finn as he took off for the enclosed area with the dogs.
“Damn it,” Sullivan said. “Those are dogs that need to be adopted. Finn is going to fall in love with one of them and I’m going to have to tell him no and then feel guilty as hell the rest of the day.”
“Did you have a dog growing up?” she asked. “We didn’t. Pet hair isn’t my mom’s thing.”
