19. Clementine
CHAPTER 19
Clementine
T he next morning I walked out to the kitchen to find Grayson cooking breakfast and Dad devouring a big plate of steak and eggs.
“He may be a dirty rat, but he can cook,” Dad said. “Thought I was going to get one over him by asking for a kosher breakfast, but this big brute said he was already planning on it.”
I couldn’t help smiling.
“Better than prison breakfast?”
“Oh yes,” Dad said, shuddering dramatically. “However, I had my ways of getting better food. Which reminds me. If you see any women outside . . . I’m not here.”
“Oh God. Why?”
“I may have been corresponding to more than one woman in jail.”
“How many women?” I asked.
“Oh, not more than seven, probably. Definitely more than two, though.”
“Now, look what you’ve done,” I told Grayson. “Your bad example has rubbed off on my impressionable father.”
My tone was teasing, but a muscle still throbbed painfully in his jaw. “Never. . .again,” he said, and I could tell he was struggling to control his voice. “I swear.”
The sincerity in his voice pulled at me. But I thought he was sincere before.
Grayson put a plate of steak and eggs in front of me, then went back to what he had been working on, bending over a bunch of wires that were running to a big screen he had set up on my kitchen shelves.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said.
I ignored the way his broad shoulders barely fit in the space between the table and the shelves as a zing of lust shot through my body, sizzling down between my thighs.
The memory of his kiss tightened my nipples against my T-shirt and I hastily crossed my arms over my chest to make sure he didn’t see.
“I know you don’t trust me, Clementine,” Grayson said, and I pressed my thighs together to try to stop the way my pussy throbbed.
It was his voice. Gravelly and deep, making my insides liquify.
“I wonder if it was the fact that you were lying to me and cheating on me?” I mused. “Or the fact that you were only pretending to love me.”
“I did love you and I do love you. So much, Clementine.”
Dad slurped his coffee loudly.
“You have a funny way of showing it,” he objected. “I heard about your mistresses. Back in my day, if a man had a mistress, he shouted it from the rooftops. Not went skulking about with one.”
“I don’t—I was a bastard, but she was not my mistress! Clementine is the only woman I’ve ever wanted to marry and share a life with.”
“What is this?” I interrupted when the screen lit up. I didn’t want to think about what Grayson was begging me to give him. And certainly not with my dad smirking at me over his coffee cup.
“It’s my phone,” Grayson said. “My only phone. It’s right here so you can see every single text I get, every single email I get. I’m not hiding anything from you anymore. I want you to trust me, Clementine.”
“This looks exactly like something a cheater would do,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “Probably keeping your Snapchat account in a secret folder.”
“My what?” Grayson asked.
“Never mind, grandpa.”
“My text messages are going to show up here all day long,” he said. “Feel free to scroll through my phone. Check every text I get. You are going to see every single text I get. I want to be an open book for you.”
Later that day, my dad was still sitting at the table and staring at the screen. Even though we had been in and out with errands for the play, even taking Dennis with us to help as a reward for how angelic he’d been behaving, Dad had stayed glued to his chair, calling it “appointment viewing entertainment.”
“If I wasn’t so entangled, I’d ask for a few of these numbers,” my dad said. “Since you claim you aren’t using them.”
“No,” Grayson said. “I am blocking every single number after I send the same message. And that message is I am not interested in anyone but Clementine Adler .”
He looked over at me, but my eyes dropped to my plate.
I knew what his message said. I’d seen him type it out over and over this afternoon as I sewed last-minute alterations on a few costumes and he worked on his laptop at the kitchen table.
I am not interested
I am in love with Clementine Adler
But I wouldn’t do it again.
I would not fall for Grayson Bentley again.
“What a waste,” Dad complained. “I am in the market for a new stepmother for Clementine. That’s the reason I was corresponding with so many women. She needs a lot of parenting still if she’s letting you hang around.”
“I think you just wanted them to send you money for the canteen,” I laughed.
“ I’ll take care of Clementine,” Grayson said firmly.
“What are your intentions with my daughter?” Dad asked, dragging his eyes reluctantly away from yet another “u want a blowjob?” text that Grayson blocked with a grim look on his face.
“I want to marry her,” Grayson said. “I want to have a family with her.”
My throat scraped with raw emotion.
That had been my dream for so long. Ever since I had met him, really.
I had known, just known with crystal-clear certainty, that he would make an amazing father.
And then of course, after his betrayal, I hadn’t trusted my own instincts at all. If I had been fooled by Grayson, I could be fooled by anybody. In that way, Liam had been safe. He hadn’t been what I really wanted, but he had been a pleasant distraction from the fact that I wanted more than anything else to have a family.
“There’s a few alterations we need to finish on the costume,” I said, avoiding the silent plea in his eyes and the constant thrum of his hope as I got up and moved to my sewing machine.
I bent down in front of Grayson Bentley. . . working on his Fairy Frogmother costume.
This position brought back a lot of unpleasantly arousing memories, me between his legs, looking up adoringly at him, his cock deep in my mouth, his big fingers gently stroking my cheek as the drool ran down my chin.
So instead I focused on my father and what in the world I was going to do with him. I had already had to turn away one of his romantic entanglements, a bleach-blonde woman in her 40s dressed in a sundress and cradling a teacup poodle. And who knew how many more women were out there? That was not to mention the $50 million dollars, and I knew he would not rest until he had embarked on some crazy scheme to get the money.
“You have the cutest little frown line between your eyes,” Grayson said, as I tried very hard not to touch his big, tree trunk like thighs. “But if you ever need anything, Clementine,” he said. “You only have to ask.”
“What happened the last time I did that?” I snapped, the mix of desire and anger twisting in my gut. “You were out there fucking Vivi on the day my father got arrested and you didn’t do shit to help me.”
Grayson’s eyes darkened, but he held my gaze.
“That was the worst mistake of my life. I see that now.”
“Fuck you, Grayson!” I said heatedly, falling back on my heels. “You don’t get to come back in my life five years later and think it’s all better again.”
“I don’t think that,” he said, his voice low with suppressed emotion. “I know I’ve got a long fucking road ahead of me to make you trust me again. But I’m going to do it.”
“Why Vivi?” I said angrily, holding the needle tightly in my hand as the bitterness seeped into my voice. “I know you were assigned to pretend to marry me. But why did you have to humiliate me like that? You didn’t have to do that, Grayson.”
The tears suddenly blurred in my eyes and I stared as hard as I could at his asshole shoes so the tears wouldn’t fall down my cheeks.
“It was never about her,” Grayson said, and his voice sounded scraped and raw. “It was just about denying to myself that I had fallen in love with you. I wanted to keep reminding myself that who I was undercover wasn’t real. When my feelings for you were more real than anything I’d ever felt or will ever feel again. That’s why I fucked her. It was a dumbass way to pretend like this was just a job to me. And she was just the closest and most available way to distract myself. I am so sorry.”
He sunk to his knees in front of me, his fingers gentle on my chin.
“She meant nothing to me. I am so fucking sorry.”
A hot retort sprung to my lips but I bit it back, stumbling away so I wouldn’t be tempted by the fire in his blue eyes, the heat of his proximity.
“Back into position,” I said severely. “This costume is never going to get done if you don’t stay perfectly still.”
“Of course,” Grayson said, stretching back to his full height.
I fluffed up the pink tutu Grayson would be wearing around his waist.
Fuck.
He still looked uncomfortably attractive.
“Oh, and did I tell you?” I asked. “There’s another piece to your costume. This play is educational, so I’m going to be adding some frog eggs to your costume. There will be some dangling globules attached to your head. Some very squishy large balls dangling in your face during your solo. It’s particularly important that the balls be dangling in your face during the solo, or the whole play will be shit.”
“Whatever you say, Clementine.”
His voice rolled over me like honey down a hill.
Was this man just as dangerous to me as ever?