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But she could remember very keenly when her impossible crush on Walker had turned into something sharp, specific, and intense.
She could remember being seventeen and gathering her things to leave the house to go home for the night, and him walking her to the door. And for a moment, losing her sense of self. For a moment, wishing she could stretch up on her toes and kiss his grim mouth. It terrified her. But she gone home and turned the impulse over and over and over again until she’d been feverish. She had a difficult time looking him in the face the next day. Eventually, though, the shame that she felt over her attraction to him had just become a part of her.
By the time she was eighteen, her crush was far from innocent, and she knew exactly what she wanted from Walker. She wanted his strong hands on her body. She wanted to kiss him, and to have that kiss becomemore.
It didn’t. Of course it didn’t. He didn’t look at her that way. She’dwantedhim to. Desperately.
She also would never have done anything to jeopardize her position in the house. The boys depended on her. It felt like a part of her.
Walker did too.
It was all complicated.
It was more than just desire.
They became her family in a real and meaningful way. And the fact that she wanted Walker as more than a boss was a problem that she’d just decided she had to learn to cope with.
Sometimes she was more successful at that than others. She’d thought that losing her virginity at nineteen was a reasonable move on her part. One that proved she wasn’t a ridiculous idiot hung up on a man she could never have. She’d thought at least it would demystify some things and perhaps dim the intensity of her need for him. It hadn’t. She’d just been lost in the disappointment of that experience, completely forgettable and less hot than every fantasy she’d ever had about Walker.
Then when she was twenty-one, she’d met Chad and she liked him. They had a lot in common, and she thought he was handsome. When she’d slept with him for the first time—and second and third—she’d decided that she had to accept the problem was maybe her.
That she couldn’t have an orgasm with a guy was perhaps a flaw in her wiring. A side effect of the years of fantasy she’d indulged in, perhaps more than the man himself.
But being in a relationship with Chad made her feel safe, and that she didn’t feel so dangerously close to blowing things up with Walker.
But now everything with Chad had blown up.
At the end of the day, Walker was the person she had to depend on. Which perhaps reinforced the wisdom of having never tried to kiss his mouth, no matter how grim it was. No matter how badly she wanted to soften it.
No matter how heated her fantasies of him were.
“Frankie...”
She decided best practices would be to say everything she possibly could before Walker could mount objections. “I can be a housekeeper. I can clean and cook and take care of you. You’re really busy, Walker. And yes, mostly I’ve taken care of Carter and Sky, but theyaregrown-up. I’m not saying that it has to be forever, me living with you. But just for right now...”
He looked defeated. She found that encouraging.
She wasn’t aiming for enthusiasm here. Defeat would do.
Walker sighed.
“Let’s go into the house, Frankie,” he said.
“Okay.”
She hightailed it after him, having to take two steps to his every one as they went into the house, a well-worn ranch-style home with a broad porch, and a living room with a couch that had seen better days, but that was comfortable for the spaces worn into it.
The house was more familiar to her than her own. She’d spent almost all day every day, five days a week at this place. For the past eight years. Every Christmas, she came over after Christmas at her own place, brought presents and stayed for the afternoon. When her parents had lived here, she’d gone home to have dinner with them, but when they’d moved four years ago, she’d ended up spending Christmas day entirely with Walker and the kids. Chad may have had some points.
She couldn’t deny them.
But theyhurt. Especially... The ones about her and sex.
“Frankie,” he said. “Carter is in college now, and that’s... It’s expensive. I don’t think I can afford a whole housekeeper.”
“I’m not asking you to up my pay. In fact, you can decrease it if I’m going to stay here. Or keep it the same, and I’ll pay the rent.”
He shook his head. “I’m not charging you rent and I’m not paying you less. But I was just thinking that...the boys are grown-up. Before you showed up today, I was thinking we might need to have a hard talk about the fact that I don’t reallyneedyou anymore.”
