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“Oh,” Alex blinks, looking slightly surprised. “Thanks.”
I dip my chin in a nod, and she walks a few steps ahead of me around the house towards the guest house in the back. The main house is mostly dark, telling me that Andrea and Lilah are asleep—as they should be, given that it’s one in the morning. A fairly early night for the guys and me on a night out, but too late for Lilah to be awake. The only light that is on, from what I can tell from the window, is the one in the foyer as Alex and I approach the back.
Cicadas chirp in the night, stars winking above us and the half-moon providing a silvery glow to our surroundings. Alex pulls out her keys from her bag, and I briefly bite my bottom lip, staring at her and admiring the sight of how well those jeans hug her. Fuck me. I tilt my head back, exhaling roughly against the sounds of her keychains clinking together, and the words escape me before I can think of the consequences.
“It wasn’t a date.”
I see Alex pause, turning to look at me in slight confusion. “What?” she asks, but I know she heard me.
I take a step towards her, dry leaves crunching beneath my shoes. “The. . . double date,” I say, pursing my lips. “Willow brought Jocelyn along but it’s not a thing.”
Alex’s throat works, blue eyes locking onto my light brown ones. “I didn’t say anything,” she says before pressing her lips together, and I know it’s because she can hear the breathlessness in her own voice, just as I can.
One corner of my mouth tilts up. “You didn’t have to,” I say, taking a few more steps closer, bridging the gap between us. She doesn’t take a step back, doesn’t move away. She just watches me with a look in her eyes that keeps me going towards her. The closer I get, the more prominent the scent of lavender hidden in her perfume gets. “I could see it in your face.”
“See what?” Alex asks, her head tilting back slightly to keep our gazes locked. We are only a foot away from one another, and the intimate closeness kicks my heartbeat up intensely.
I tilt my head ever so slightly, fingers itching with the urge to reach out and touch her. The air is charged, electricity thrumming to life in between us. My blood heats and my voice drops low as I throw caution to the wind and say, “It bothered you, the idea of me being on a date with someone.”
The air hitches in Alex’s throat in a quiet gasp. Under the moonlight, I can just slightly make out the pink in her cheeks. My words alone are crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed, but I can’t bring myself to care. Not right now—not when Alex is looking up at me with desire darkening her bright blue eyes, so clear and real and not at all something I am imagining. She wants me, maybe as badly as I want her.
“It’s none of my business,” Alex says a little breathlessly. Her gaze dips slightly, from my eyes to my mouth before flicking back up again. “Who you go out with. It doesn’t matter how I feel.”
She couldn’t be more wrong.
Inches separate us, and I wonder if it was just me moving towards her, or her towards me, or both of us closing the gap. “It matters to me,” I murmur, my head dipping. Her breath hitches once again as my lips brush against hers. The most subtle, gentle touch—barelya touch—but it’s enough to send fire crackling through my veins and blood to rush to my dick. Her familiar scent invades my senses, far more intoxicating than anything else.
Alex’s eyes flutter closed, sending my heart to my throat as she so subtly sways towards me. Everything else around me melts away until all I can see and feel is Alex, so close but not close enough. My gaze drops to her mouth, her lips parted ever so slightly, a pretty, rosy, pink color begging to be kissed and felt. I am distantly aware of my heartbeat thundering away inside my chest, wondering absently if Alex can hear it.
Just a tilt of my head, and my lips would be on hers. A subtle movement, and I would be able to feel her, taste her in another kiss like I have been imagining.
I hear her take in a shaky breath. “We—we shouldn’t do this,” she says, her words trembling as she gets them out reluctantly.
My jaw clenches, not yet moving away. My muscles strain, desperate with the need to close the last remaining inches between us. “I know,” I mutter, hating that logic and reason have shoved their way through into this moment, forehead pressing to hers.
Alex exhales slowly. “I should go inside.”
My teeth begin to ache from how tightly I had been clenching my jaw. “Yes.”
Alex lingers for a few seconds before pulling away, and I suddenly feel cold as she steps away and opens the door, stepping inside the guest house. My fingers curl into fists at my sides as she closes the door behind her, not looking back at me. Just as well that she doesn’t. Because if she did, I’m not sure either of us would be able to stop what would happen next.
8
ALEX
Ididn’t get a single minute of sleep last night.
How could I, when right before I crawled into bed, I had been seconds away from kissing Leo Mackenzie?
My boss. The father of the kid I nanny for.
All night, my lips tingled with the ghost of his, when his mouth had brushed against mine in a kiss that wasn’t a kiss. I still feel it deep in my bones, and I’m afraid that there is no getting rid of this sensation. In bed, all I did was lay there and stare at the ceiling, the moment with Leo outside of the guest house repeatedly playing through my head like a never-ending movie. A movie that made my stomach flutter and heart pound wildly in my chest, spreading heat throughout my body—that not even turning the air conditioner on could chill.
What the hell had we been thinking? What the hell hadIbeen thinking?
Never once, in all of the years I have been nannying, have I toed a line so fiercely. Shit, I didn’t even toe the line—I might as well have crossed it, with the way my lips very much came in contact with Leo’s. Fucking hell, if word got back to the agency, I would be fired on the spot and blackballed from other care taking agencies. I have never been so careless before, so callous. I know better than to get involved with a parent of a kid I am looking after. I know how inappropriate and unprofessional it is. I always thought that hooking up with a parent wasn’t something I would ever do.
Then again, none of the parents I have worked for have been Leo Mackenzie.
