Chapter 28
Pepper: SOS. I think I’m dickmatized.
Jack: This is the best news I’ve had all week.
Pepper: He’s kind, funny, AND sexy. I mean, that’s not a thing, right? I’m under the influence.
Jack: Driving while in-cock-xicated.
Pepper: Dick drunk.
Jack: Too drunk to dick.
Pepper: Blowing over the limit.
Pepper: Wait, that one works as is.
PEPPER
A soft, pulsing disco beat fills the kitchen, a rhythmic chiming every few seconds.
Chase stands at the stove, naked except for his black boxer briefs and a white apron, his hips jogging to the beat as he flips eggs—the defined muscles in his back slipping beneath tanned skin.
“What the hell is this?” I wrap his zip-up hoodie tighter around myself and inhale the musky, masculine scent that envelops me, waiting for him to explain why he’s playing gregarious disco.
He jerks his dark head in my direction, a large hand pausing with the spatula above the pan. He stills, his eyes flaring with heat as they trail down my exposed legs. “Nice outfit.”
“Thanks.” I offer him a small twirl, popping my hip with a flourish afterward.
My body aches in the most delicious way, and even though I’ve barely slept, I’d fall right back into bed with him given half the chance.
Sex marathons with this man are like being run through by a bus.
He knows just how to touch, taste, and every other devious thing to have me breathless and my toes curling.
Light bruises spot my thighs where his fingers dug in just a little too hard in the heat of the moment, and my lips feel puffy and sore, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I push away the squirm as his eyes twinkle with a thousand unshed, filthy promises.
“Nope, can’t be distracted.” He gives his head a little shake and snaps his attention back to the stove. “I’m at a critical stage of operation feed-my-woman.”
My woman? I swallow roughly, my stomach flipped upside down. The female singer soars into a high note, the chiming disco chorus starting up again.
“What are you cooking?” I ask as I trace light steps across the kitchen tile toward him, hearing the early morning gull sounds seep in from the open French doors leading to the beach.
Sunny shouldn't be up for at least an hour, and Mr. Clay too. Weirdly, for a teenager and an octogenarian, they’re on the same sleep schedules.
“Just eggs, my culinary skills don’t extend far past that.” He slides me a sheepish smirk as I reach his side.
“I’ll say.” I point at the eggs in the pan that are starting to char.
“What’s wrong with them?” He uses the spatula to lift them again, looking for the problem.
“You see this color here?” I point at the thick line that traces the outside of each egg. “It’s called black. Do you know what else is black?”
“Your soul?” He grumbles sarcastically, moving the pan off the dancing blue gas flames.
“Close, but not quite.” I grin, lifting one eyebrow up at him. “Charcoal…charcoal is black.”
He groans, twisting the knob so that the flames die, the bitter burnt scent coating the air.
I laugh, sliding my hand down his back. “I appreciate the effort, but perhaps we should leave the cooking to me…or, oh I don’t know, the private chef?”
I lift a sarcastic brow as I highlight the reason this gigantic buffoon doesn’t know how to fry an egg. There is no escaping that this man is from privilege, it’s apparent in the glossy smile, the shiny watch, and the tropical vacation tan that he sports year-round.
He sighs, turning to wrap his arms around me. “I had good intentions.”
“I know.” I press myself onto tiptoes to kiss him, my hands cupping his biceps.
He returns it, soft and languid, the firm press sinking a tingling feeling right to the base of my spine.
He shifts his weight, and must lean over to turn the music up using the panel fitted into the wall by the stove, because the disco music amps up, blaring out loudly as the chorus hits again.
He pulls back, offering me his trademark crooked grin.
“What is this?” I laugh as he spins me around, the undone jacket I wear flaring to reveal his white T-shirt underneath.
The way his warm eyes catch on the hem tells me he likes me in his clothes as much as I like wearing them.
“It’s Anita Ward, “Ring My Bell”…obviously.” He rolls his eyes and grabs my hand, spinning me away from him and then back close into his chest.
My breath catches in my throat as my head spins from the sudden movement, finding myself tucked snugly against him. My body lights up like a Christmas tree, already primed to do so from the last couple of nights.
“And why are we listening to seventies disco?”
“Because, Peppercorn, it’s how I start my day.” He lets go of me and places one hand on his hip, grinning and reaching up to perform a jaunty disco finger, wiggling his eyebrows. “You can’t have a bad day if you start it by dancing to this song. It’s the rules.”
I clap a hand to my mouth, half stunned as my shoulders begin to shake. He moonwalks a couple steps back, pops his chest, and starts performing some of the most goofily dad-coded moves I’ve seen this century.
“Do you like this one?” he asks, moving his hands in a joint swooshing motion toward the floor. “I’m sweeping the floor.”
My eyes squeeze together, a laugh bursting out. I have to give it to him, the song is infectious, light, airy—one that you can’t help but feel good listening to. Or perhaps it’s watching the ultra-masculine six-foot-six male in front of me intentionally make an ass of himself.
My hip starts to bounce to the beat and he points at it whilst executing a move that looks like he’s turning on a pull-start lawn mower. “See! You’re getting it.”
If someone had told me that I would be dorky dancing in the kitchen with the grumpy billionaire I set out to destroy, I’d have laughed in their face, but here I am starting to rock my body to the beat, letting it do what feels good without thinking.
He sings the lyrics surprisingly well, grabbing my hip and scooping up my hand, beginning to whirl us around the open plan kitchen to the tinny beat.
My heart swells in my chest as we laugh together, moving to the rhythm of the song that seems to go on and on forever, him trying to hit the high notes without any care for how ridiculous he sounds.
On any other man this would give me the ick in three seconds flat, but somehow, with his carefree spirit and unwavering confidence it’s just… sexy as hell.
Bongos sound, building us to a steady crescendo before the music starts to fade, the catchphrase line fading with the synth and bell-like chimes.
When the song finally finishes, I’m breathless, partly from laughing, partly from dancing…but mostly from the heart-pounding realization that this man would be oh-so-easy to love. Faint alarm bells ring in my ears, but I push them away, too deeply bathed in the joy of this moment.
“Tell me you don’t feel good after that?” He beams, leaning down to capture my lips.
I cup his bristled cheeks and smile against his mouth, responding when he pulls away. “You might just be the biggest goofball I’ve ever met.”
He shrugs one shoulder, dazzling me with his white smile. “I’m okay with that, life is too short to take yourself too seriously.”
“I knew you were cracking my sister!”
I jump in his arms, twisting to see Sunny standing with her short hair sticking up at all angles and her hands on the black cotton pajama pants that coat her hips. Her expression is indistinguishably flat.
“Like an egg?” Chase asks in confusion.
I groan softly, attempting to get out from between thick, brawny arms that don’t budge. “It doesn’t mean that.”
Guilt tugs at my edges, that ever-niggling feeling of not being good enough—not responsible enough—threatening to snatch away all of the effortless light that filled me moments ago.
No one gives you a manual when you become a guardian, and I’ve got no fucking idea if it’s okay for Sunny to know that I’m screwing the hot billionaire.
Part of me wants her to know that it’s okay to be sexually empowered as a woman, but another big part of me wants to shelter her from all of the things grownups deal with—the little gap-toothed version of her I first met filling my mind's eye.
“Oh,” Chase drags out the single syllable as he catches up with her meaning. “Well…yeah, I guess I am. But I like her…a lot.”
Blood charges into my cheeks, heating them to volcanic levels. This is so fucked up. I’m about to try and wrestle myself out of his grip again, when Sunny’s face splits into a wide grin.
“Good, that’s settled then.” She nods and prances into the kitchen as if there is nothing more to say on the matter, not even giving me a second glance.
“Excellent,” Chase responds in kind, letting me go and picking up the pan again to dispose of the cremated eggs.
I squeak, my mouth dropping open as I stare between two people who seem wholly unconcerned with my input…about my love life.
“Just don’t expect me to call you Dad, okay?” Sunny throws herself into a chair at one side of the island, propping her chin into one hand.
Chase chuckles and places the now empty pan back on the stove. “I say we go into town for breakfast.”
“Flip yeah! Pancakes!” Sunny punches the air in victory.
Chase walks past, winking smugly and using one long finger under my chin to snap my jaw shut.
***
“And I think if you trace our family all the way back, there was a British marquis in the eighteen hundreds,” Chase muses, his chest rumbling behind my back.
“Why am I not surprised?” I scoff, reaching for the sunscreen on the side table next to the sun lounger that we share.
Lazy afternoon sun bathes the bright sand around us—the same stuff that’s somehow worked its way into every crevice of my body over the course of our beach morning. I knew Chase was Manhattan royalty, but I didn’t realize he was actually linked-to-the-British-monarchy royalty.
“Excuse me, that’s my job,” he growls in my ear, sending shivers down my spine as he plucks the bottle from my hand.