AllFreeNovel
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I meant what I’d said earlier—Iwassorry I’d ever doubted her. There was nothing to doubt. There wasn’t a person—man or woman—more suited for this job than she was.
The truth was, losing my job was a gut-punch. But losing Amara was a knife to my heart, and honestly, I didn’t deserve to work for her. She needed people around her she could trust, people who would believe in her one hundred percent, who wouldn’t pull shady shit behind her back and attempt to shove her out of her own company.
I’d never do thatnow, of course. But if she’d have me, Amara and I were about to enter into a new relationship—one full of love and navigating the wild and crazy world of parenting. I didn’t want a business relationship to put any strain on the family and life I wanted to build with her.
Now I just had to convince her of that.
I’d been trying mydamnedest to enjoy the day’s festivities. This was, after all, entirely my idea. I could at leastpretendto be excited to be there. But honestly, the heat was making me dizzy, my skirt was too tight, and my shoes were pinching my pinky toes.
Oh, and I had a hole in my heart about the size and shape of Calvin Ryder.
So when he appeared during my speech, his words preceding him into the middle of the crowd, I thought he’d been a mirage. He couldn’t possibly be that insane. To show up here knowing full well my dad wanted to kill him and my whole family hated him?
My heart stopped dead in my chest at the sight of his perfect face. Those thick eyebrows, that strong nose, full lips, sharp jaw. His hair was disheveled, more red than brown under the bright light of the sun. God, he was gorgeous.
And it began beating again when he spoke, like a defibrillator bringing me back to life, jerking me back to sense.
How had it only been two weeks since I’d last seen him, yet I felt like I’d gone years without his deep timbre filling my ears?
“Watermelon tutti frutti, right?”
Not only was he here, buthe remembered.He had to know what that would mean to me.
“Uhh, princess…” Cal said from behind me, his tone concerned. “What is this?”
I turned to face him, finding him holding a bag of candy—a bag of watermelon tutti frutti to be exact.
“They’re candy,” I said. “What does it look like?”
“I get that they’re candy,” Cal said. “I can read. I’m just wondering why there’s a giant bag hiding out in your nightstand.”
“I wasn’t hiding it,” I said with an eye roll. “They’re my favorite. I’ve got bags of them stashed all over the house…and my office.”
“Do youknowhow bad this shit is for your teeth? And you’re telling me you havebags, as in multiple, hidden around here and the office?”
“When did you suddenly become my father, worried about my oral health?”
“Since I discovered my girlfriend is a child trapped in an adult’s body!”
“It’s not that big of a deal,” I said with a laugh. “It’s just candy.”
“There’s gotta be a story here, Mar. You don’t just wake up one day suddenly addicted to fucking watermelon tutti frutti.”
I smiled as the memory came to me.
Oh, there was a story alright.
My sisters and I fought overeverythinggrowing up. Toys, what we deemed the best slice of cake, which one of us Mom and Dad loved most, clothes, boys as we got older, and, inexplicably, candy flavors. One Fourth of July, Chloe and I had gotten into a legitimate shoving match on the side of Main Street over the last of the tutti frutti a passing float had thrown that nearly ended with me being run over by a firetruck. The incident had snapped my father at last.
“We weren’t even allowed to go down to the park for the daytime festivities that year, he was so pissed off,” I chuckled, and Cal nodded solemnly; he was more terrified of my dad than ever, and we hadn’t even officially announced our relationship. “So he sat us down, dug into our candy bags, and withdrew five flavors of tutti frutti. One by one, he sat them in front of us and told us from now on, that was our flavor. We were stuck with it for life, whether we wanted it or not. ‘If you’re going to act like children, I’ll treat you as such,’” I said, mimicking my dad’s deep voice.
“How old were you?”
I grimaced, not wanting to say. Cal hauled me onto his lap and dug his fingers into my ribs, tickling me until I relented through fits of laughter.
“Chloe and I were sixteen and fifteen.”
“Amara,” he said sternly.
