Chapter 19
“W hen you started fucking Grace did that mess with your work?” I ask Carter when he answers his phone.
Grace was Carter’s resident and since they still work together, though he’s no longer her boss, he’s the one to ask.
Starting up my car, he switches over to Bluetooth and I set my phone down on the charging pad.
“Please tell me you didn’t.”
“I didn’t.” That is, I only fucked her with my fingers while she jerked me off through my damn pants, but we didn’t technically fuck.
Yet. Because while I told her it was only going to be there in that damn warehouse, that we were simply scratching an itch, that itch seems to be growing like a ferocious, unsated, still hungry as fuck beast. The only thing I can come up with to explain that is the fact that I didn’t actually fuck her.
“Jesus, Kap,” he hisses as I pull out of my spot, headed to pick up the object of my unnatural fixation.
“Yes. It messed with work. We said we weren’t going to let it and then Grace got all weird.
It got so bad that I had to eventually kick her out of the OR to get her to come and talk to me and then we ended up yelling and fucking again.
But somehow that seemed to do the trick. ”
“But you kept fucking her after that.”
He chuckles. “Obviously. But in case you forgot, I was in love with Grace for a year before I got the chance to be with her.”
“There’s something different about this one,” I admit. “I can’t put my finger on what it is.” It’s like those sweet, throaty sounds she made as she was coming against my fingers were a siren’s call. They’ve completely short-circuited my brain. Or was I already like this with her?
I inwardly sigh. I was definitely already like this with her.
Carter emits an exaggerated gasp into the phone. “Can it be? Has Kaplan Fritz finally found the woman to bring him to his knees?”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t be a sarcastic twat. I barely know her.”
“For real though. I don’t get it. I mean, I understand why you’re done with the random hookups, and I agree that the majority of women who come after you are looking for something from you that isn’t necessarily your heart.
I also know you’ve had crazy women do crazy things to get at you.
But if this one is different…” He trails off, leaving that hanging in the air.
It’s a question I haven’t directly asked myself though I’ve heard the suggestion of it knocking at the back of my mind. Well, and from my brothers and Raven.
“I have to marry a certain type of woman. I’ve always known this, and those certain types of women do absolutely nothing for me.
I don’t want that life, Carter. I never did.
And after everything that’s happened to me and to you guys with women over the years, it just became easier to swear off love altogether. ”
“There’s more to it than that.”
I sigh because there is. There always has been.
“How do you know you can trust it? Dad was so convinced that woman he loved in college felt exactly the same way, only she didn’t.
She was after his money all along. Oliver was ready to propose to Nora only to find out she had been cheating on him for six months.
Even Bianca’s ex was fucking her cousin the entire time she was with him, and she had no clue.
How do you know that any of it is genuine? ”
I have so much at stake.
“I don’t know, man. You just do. Usually, it’s a lot of small things that add up in the right way.
Or even the wrong way if it’s not. I wasn’t worried about Grace being after my money or my name because she’s Grace and we’ve known her her whole life.
It’s the same with Raven and Luca. But Oliver and Landon just knew about Amelia and Elle.
It’s a gut feeling, and I guess that feeling can be wrong sometimes, but I have to imagine that there were signs.
That things weren’t right in those other cases. They were either ignored or missed.”
“Maybe. Whatever. I’ve only known Bianca a couple of weeks and most of the time we’re fighting with each other. It’s too soon for any of that kind of talk.”
“But you’re thinking of dating her?”
“I don’t know. Mom and Dad are all up my ass about Millie.
” I bluster out a sigh as I get closer and closer to her building.
“As sad as it sounds, I’ve never done that before.
Dated someone. Not seriously anyway. Any woman I attempted something with showed their true colors pretty damn quickly.
But Bianca’s not the type of woman you casually fuck. ”
“Then I guess you have to figure out how badly you want to fuck her and if it’s worth what comes with it.” He laughs. “Besides, she might not even want your ugly, insufferable ass.”
“True. But I think she does.” I hope she does and that’s what’s sitting strangely with me.
“Anyway, I’m picking her up now. Thanks, man.
I’ll catch you later.” I disconnect the call and pull up in front of her building.
Staring up at the brick structure for a moment, I debate if I should text her or be a gentleman and go ring her bell.
Her building is nice. Secure, which I like.
Bianca Barlow has plenty of money. She didn’t even bat an eye when she bought her Jeep and considering her wardrobe and insane shoe collection, she’s not hurting.
I know her stepfather has big money, but she wouldn’t be the first rich princess to try and win over the king. But even as I think that, I don’t get that sense from her. At all. It’s not who she is. She’s so different from the Millies of the world. Not just physically.
Whatever. It’s too soon to think like this.
I go to hop out of my car when the front door of her building opens and out comes Bianca Barlow wearing a black figure-hugging long-sleeve dress that has silver studs going down the length of each arm as well as each side.
It stops just above her knee and she’s wearing those knee-high boots with the silver studs in them, matching her dress perfectly.
Her long, long brown hair is pulled up in a high, tight ponytail and damn her.
Her lips are a deep, rich red, matching the soles of her boots.
She’s a vixen, a goddess, and I’m a fool for thinking one small taste of her would ever be enough.
The door clicks open, and she slides in, hitting me full blast with her heady fragrance. “Good morning,” she chirps with a smile that brightens up this gloomy, miserably gray day.
“Morning. You’re all sunshine and rainbows today.”
“Well, I finished my necklace last night, slept like a baby after, and took a CBD gummy when I woke up to help with my anxiety. I’m feeling pretty damn good at the moment.”
I chuckle at just how adorable she is. “Are you sure there wasn’t any THC in the gummy?”
“I am. Only CBD, which is a shame, but THC never did well with me and my ADHD. It always made me more jittery than mellow.”
Huh. Okay. “No getting Bianca stoned. Noted. Are you ready to go?”
She crosses her legs at the knee, the hem of her dress riding up her creamy thighs. My eyes linger there for a moment.
“Stop staring at my legs and drive me to the damn hospital.”
I smirk. “If you don’t want me to stare then maybe you shouldn’t dress like you’re going to a club.”
“This is not what I wear when I go clubbing. I have much smaller outfits for that.”
“No taking Bianca clubbing then. Noted.”
She giggles and I drive us to the hospital while she fidgets in the seat the entire way. I’ve noticed she does that, always moving even when seated and quiet, but there is no mistaking that despite her blathering on about what is now the spring gala and other work stuff that she’s nervous.
I pull into the garage, park in my spot, and shut off the car only to be hit with the labored sound of her breathing. I turn to her. “Are you sure?”
Her wide eyes are on the elevator doors as she gives me one curt nod.
“Do you want me to distract you again?”
“No. Just…” A sigh. “This is a stupid request since you’re my boss and I’m not a child, but will you hold my hand as we go in?”
I hesitate because me holding her hand will be seen by colleagues and random people who work here and even people who don’t but recognize me all the same. Still, I can’t refuse her that. She’s here when she very obviously doesn’t want to be and she’s battling a serious anxiety like a champ.
Without answering, I get out of the car and open her door for her, extending my hand for her to take. She does, grasping it like a laboring woman pushing out a kid and I grimace, adjusting our hands. “Surgeon of tiny human hearts, Bianca. I need you to not break my fingers.”
“Oh.” She glances down at our hands. “Right. Sorry.”
Her ninja grip loosens ever so slightly, which I appreciate, but it does little to discharge the way my skin hums every time I touch her.
The elevator doors open immediately upon pressing the button and as we step on, she whispers, “Say dirty things to me so I don’t think about the fact that I’m in a hospital.”
And just like that, my cock goes from semi to rock-hard. “What? Are you serious?”
Except she’s trembling against me, her hand shaking so badly, I grip it tighter.
“No. Not entirely. But tell me something. Something about you. Something interesting.”
“My favorite place to be in the world is on a sailboat. I have one, a smallish catamaran, but when I took over the foundation, my father gave me our family’s sailing yacht.
If I wasn’t forced to be here working this foundation, I would have taken all last week that I wasn’t in the hospital and sailed around the Florida Keys. ”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
Her head tilts and her eyes find mine. “Are you lonely or just enjoy being alone?”