Chapter 11 #3
He was debating whether or not it would be okay for him to leave and go grab his truck and decided that would be the fastest, that way she could pack while he did, and she wouldn’t have to walk back in the cold. Plus, he knew a shortcut through the woods to where his SUV was parked.
“I’m gonna go grab my truck. Lock this behind me.”
A spark flickered in her eyes. “Yes, sir.”
Fuck. He knew she was being a smart ass, but even her being sarcastically submissive turned him on.
Who was he kidding? Everything she did turned him on.
He’d been at half chub since that kiss he’d gotten away with down by the river.
He hadn’t known what possessed him to kiss her.
Actually, that wasn’t true. When he heard her say she wasn’t his girlfriend, he had a knee-jerk reaction to prove to her that she was, then he got carried away and nearly lost himself.
When he came up for air, he had to think on the fly and come up with a ‘reason’ he’d done it.
Niko waited on the porch until he heard her click the deadbolt into place, then he dropped the flowers into her trash bin and took the shortcut in the woods to his SUV in under five minutes. The drive to her cabin took him less than five, so he was pulling up in just over eight minutes.
When he was climbing out of the driver’s seat, she was coming out of the door with totes and a duffle slung over her shoulder.
He walked around to the passenger side and opened the door.
Once he took her bags from her, he helped her up and then shut the door.
He put the bags in the back, and as he climbed in, he got a feeling of something close to déjà vu, but since he’d never experienced it, that would be impossible.
It felt so right, so natural. On the drive, she was quiet as she stared out the window.
“What’s the deal with—” he asked.
“Have you worked for—” she spoke at the same time.
“Sorry, go ahead,” he prompted.
“No, what were you going to say?” she countered.
He really wanted to know what she was going to ask, but he didn’t want to do the dance of no, you go, no please, you. “I was going to ask what the deal with Tiara was.”
His question caused her body language to change.
“Oh, that.” Her shoulders tensed, and she tucked a stray curl behind her ear.
“When Brock and I first got together, he called me his princess. Then after we’d been married for about a year, he started calling me a princess.
It was a subtle shift, but…” She took in a breath.
“Pretty soon, anytime I tried to talk to him about anything or bring up any issue, he would say, oh is the princess not happy, or some other derogatory slant on me behaving entitled. It was just his way of gaslighting me. By our third anniversary, he was calling me Tiara instead of Tiana.”
“What an asshole.” Niko hadn’t meant to state his opinion out loud, it just sort of came out.
There were a few moments of silence before Tiana asked, “How long have you worked with Fostering the Future?”
It took Niko a second to make the shift in the conversation. “Oh, um, since its inception. I went to school with the guys who founded it.”
He glanced over and saw her looking in his direction in surprise. If she knew who the founders were, then that was most women’s reaction to them. “Aren’t they all really—”
“Hot? Yes, but they’re taken, so you’re too late,” he teased her.
She stared at him for a moment and blinked before she started laughing and shaking her head. He loved her laugh. He loved that he could make her laugh. “No, I mean, I’m sure they’re hot, but I was going to say rich.”
“Oh, right. Yes, they are all gazillionaires.”
“Gazillionaires?” she questioned, her wide smile still in place.
Damn. She was really fun to flirt with.
“Okay fine, billionaires, but I think gazillionaires sounds better.”
“I read about them. Didn’t they all grow up in care?” she asked.
“Oh, you read about them?” he glanced at her.
She nodded.
“Are you trying to make me jealous?” he teased, sort of.
“No.” Her smile was still in place. “I’m just curious.”
“Yeah, Nick, Alex, and Maddox all grew up in foster care. It was not great, but they had each other. They all became very successful in their chosen fields and wanted to give back. As soon as I found out what they were doing, I told them whatever I could do, just let me know. I usually try and visit with the kids I sponsor every other month, but at minimum four times a year, and I keep in contact with them all the time.”
“Oh, you sponsor kids?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’d love to foster one day, but I can’t with my schedule and lifestyle. Or I guess, now I don’t know. But before I couldn’t, so I sponsor six to ten kids at any given time, sort of like a big brother situation. I’m there if and when they need me.”
Niko could feel Tiana staring at him. He glanced over at her. “What?”
“You would foster kids?”
“Yeah. Of course I would. I’ve always wanted to. There are amazing kids in the system, and they need families and people that love them just as much as anyone else—no, actually, more than anyone else.”
Tiana quickly whipped her head, turning to look out the passenger-side window. She was quiet for the rest of the ride to the Airbnb, which thankfully, was only about five more minutes. It only took that long because downtown was blocked off due to the festival, so he had to go the long way.
Niko knew that his views on fostering weren’t typical, so he wasn’t surprised that she seemed taken aback. It was a lot to take on kids that weren’t your own.
They pulled up to AJ’s Airbnb in the center of a quiet street in the affluent Hope Falls Hills community, which Niko would now be residing in alone since the newly engaged couple was going to be living in Poppy’s house across town.
When Tiana started to get out, he instructed, “Wait.”
He came around to open her door.
“You don’t have to do that, no one is around.”
“I’m not doing this for an audience.” It really bothered him that Tiana clearly thought he would only be a gentleman if someone was watching.
He grabbed her bags out of the back.
“I can take those,” she tried to insist.
“Not while I’m here, you can’t.”
For a second he thought she was going to argue with him, but then her lips pulled up in a tight grin. “Thank you.”
They walked up to the one-story craftsman that had a storybook coziness, all shingled siding and marmalade porch light.
Inside, it was the polar opposite, sterile, efficient, every surface either scrubbed to a high-gloss shine or made of some wipe-clean synthetic material.
It did have original built-in bookshelves that added a little bit of charm and character, but other than that, it was pretty sterile but very nice.
Niko walked up the steps, and he wondered if Brock had ever carried her luggage and she was only saying she could carry her own bags because they weren’t actually a couple, or if he never carried them. Asshole.
He opened the door, and as she walked inside, she asked, “Shoes off?”
“You’re good.”
Tiana yawned as she slipped them off anyway, tucking them neatly beside the door. He wondered if she did that everywhere, if she was always this careful about taking up space in someone else’s life. The thought made his chest tighten.
“Come on, I’ll show you your room.”
“Just for tonight,” she said, as if she needed to reestablish the boundary.
“Right.” He tried to keep his voice casual, but his pulse battered at his throat.
He opened the door to the main bedroom and flipped on the dimmable switch, casting a warm pool of light over the huge space.
There was a king bed, midcentury nightstands, and accordion glass doors opening onto a wooden deck with a fire pit.
He set her bag down next to the dresser.
“It’s got blackout curtains, a sound machine, and a memory foam mattress. ”
“This is a guest room?” Her arms spread out, and she spun in a three sixty, not even coming close to hitting anything with her arm span.
“Yep.” He wasn’t lying. She was a guest, and it was her room.
Her eyes narrowed, and she tilted her head. “Let me see your room.”
His lips curled. “You want to see my room?”
“No, that’s not…I didn’t mean…I was just saying that…”
“There’s water and juice in the mini fridge,” he interrupted her. “I’ll be down the hall if you need me. Goodnight, Tiana.”
She took in a shaky breath. “Goodnight, Niko. And thank you… for everything.”
Without thinking about it, Niko bent down and pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead, then turned, closed the door, and headed to his room two doors down.
He had no clue how he was going to sleep when all he could think about was that she was just feet away.
He felt that being with her, beside her, was both completely natural and right, yet also entirely wrong.
It wasn’t in a sexual way, not that he didn’t want that, he did.
But he just wanted to be with her, to hold her in his arms, to lie with her, which was not a feeling he’d ever had before, not even with Gianna.