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“I’m sorry, too, Merry. I also don’t want you to feel like you caused all these problems. I like you. A lot. I don’t know if that’s come across.” It made me smile when she chuckled softly. “But I’ve been burned by women, too. I can’t say I’ve had many relationships. But the ones I’ve had have not been good. I’ve encountered plenty of women who were only after my money and didn’t care about me at all. And I never thought that about you, but the possibility of it always makes me a bit jumpy. I came to work on your first day and saw you, and it just threw me for a loop. You were so young and beautiful, and I was instantly drawn to you. But I couldn’t help but put up a wall because of what’s happened to me. So, I’m sorry, too.”
She finished eating and stood. It felt like a punctuation to our conversation. We were good. Both of us had apologized to each other, acknowledged feelings that existed between us, and explained the issues of the past that had kept us apart. It was good progress, but maybe we needed a break now. This was phase one. We’d accomplished it, and in a few days, I could possibly broach the idea of trying to date.
We’re walking toward the door when Merry suddenly spun around.
“Fuck it,” she muttered, just like I did in her office our first time.
Suddenly her arms were around my neck, her mouth pressed to mine, and I was melting into the kiss.
38
Merry
Oh, hell.
This was absolutely, one hundred percent not the plan. I went over the plan with myself a dozen times before getting to the office that morning. I stood in my bathroom and looked in the mirror, practicing exactly what I was going to say to him. I’d even practiced on the way to work, saying it in my head over and over so Brandon couldn’t hear me. I was completely confident in how I was going to approach it. Just like I told Olivia, this conversation was not going to be about feelings. Feelings were a difficult and sticky subject that I had no interest in getting into with Quentin yet. I wasn’t good with feelings. They were hard and made things more complicated, and the very last thing I needed the right then was for things to get more complicated. No, I was just going to go into his office, let him know I was pregnant, and figure out where we were going to go from there.
And somewhere between sitting down on his office sofa to wait for him and eating the piece of apple turnover he inexplicably handed me when he sat down beside me, everything went to hell. The plan flew totally out the window, and before I even realized what was happening, I was knee-deep in talking about emotions and my past. Everything spilled out of me, and I laid it all out for him, vulnerability, trust issues, feelings, and all. Even with all that, I almost made it out of the office. I stood up and started for the door. He was walking with me, ready to send me on my way for the day.
But no. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to wrap myself around him again, so there I was kissing him like I couldn’t get enough of him. And I never did tell him about Little Bean. But he had his hands on my hips and his tongue in my mouth, and that was just more important at that moment. Not more important than the baby, but definitely more important than me having to share the news right at that second.
I let Quentin pull me to his desk. He took his mouth away from mine only long enough to call out to the puppy chasing a ball around the office.
“Rosie, bad!” he shouted, then dropped his mouth back to mine. He pulled his mouth away again. “Oh, God. I’m going to traumatize her.”
It was going to take a lot more than that to stop me.
My hands were clenching, grabbing at anything they could touch. The overwhelming need to feel his skin under the pads of my fingers drove me to slip them through the openings of his shirt, around the buttons. The tantalizing brush against his ab muscles filled me with even more heat in my core and a light-headed sensation rising up my neck and making everything outside of my eyes feel like cotton. Only his lips broke through the haze, and I focused on them, their softness and their fullness, his tongue slipping through them and dancing with mine. It soothed me and calmed me and focused me on his touch.
We’d backed up to the desk, and now he was working his way around it, guiding me with him with his kiss and fingers working their way down the front of my blouse. One hand slipped inside and cupped my breast around the bra. I wondered if he could feel how much fuller it felt as he gently massaged it. Quickly, he slid back to my center and unclasped the black, lacy cups, and they fell away to the sides, my heavy, plump breasts spilling out into my unbuttoned shirt.
