Chapter Twenty
Cate
One week.
Seven days since Gabriel had told me to “stay” and then ruined me completely for all other men forever.
Not that I was complaining.
Okay, I wasn’t complaining at all.
I was actually—and this was terrifying to admit even to myself—happy. Like, genuinely, stupidly, giddily happy in a way that made me want to break into spontaneous song like some kind of deranged Disney princess.
Except Disney princesses probably didn’t have sex in hall closets while their prince’s daughter was taking a bath twenty feet away.
Oh my God, the closet.
That had been Tuesday. Day three of... whatever this was.
Gabriel had come home early from the hospital, found me folding laundry in the hallway, and the next thing I knew, I was pressed against the wall between the vacuum cleaner and a stack of towels while he fucked me with his hand over my mouth to keep me quiet.
“You’re so wet,” he’d whispered against my ear, his fingers working me expertly while his cock filled me completely. “Did you think about this all day? About me?”
I had. God help me, I had.
And then there was Thursday night. Or technically Friday morning at three AM when my phone had buzzed with a text.
Gabriel: I miss you.
Three words that had me creeping out of my house in my pajamas. Okay, fine, one of his old T-shirts that I’d stolen from his laundry—to find him in the kitchen, shirtless and dangerous and looking at me like I was the only thing he wanted to consume.
We’d had sex on the kitchen counter.
The kitchen counter where we eat breakfast.
Where Megan ate her cereal every morning, completely oblivious to the fact that her nanny had been bent over that same surface seventy-two hours earlier, gasping Gabriel’s name while he—“Cate! CATE! Are you even listening?”
I jolted back to reality, blinking at Megan, who was currently covered head to toe in what appeared to be... glitter?
Oh no.
“Sorry, sweetie, I was just...” Thinking about your dad’s hands on my body. “Planning our next activity! What were you saying?”
“I said, do you think we have enough glitter?”
I looked around the dining room.
There was glitter on the table. Glitter on the chairs. Glitter on the floor, the walls, somehow on the ceiling, and—oh God—glitter in Megan’s hair, on her face, and coating both of her arms like she’d been dipped in a vat of sparkly fairy dust.
“I think,” I said carefully, “we might have used all the glitter in Connecticut.”
“Perfect!” Megan beamed, holding up her current project. A papier-maché volcano that I found online thinking it would keep Megan occupied. Though now it looked like a disco ball had exploded on Mount Vesuvius. “Dad’s going to love it!”
Dad’s going to have a stroke.
Gabriel was particular about his house. Everything had a place. Everything was organized, clean, and controlled, and I just let his daughter turn the dining room into a glitter bomb crime scene.
“Maybe we should clean up a little before he gets home?” I suggested, already reaching for the paper towels.
“But we’re not done! We still have to add the lava!”
“The lava?”
“The red glitter! For the lava flow!”
There’s more glitter?
“Megan, honey, I think we’ve achieved maximum glitter capacity.”
“Please, Cate? Please? It won’t be a real volcano without lava!”
She was giving me the eyes. Those big, pleading, impossible-to-resist eyes that she’d clearly inherited from her father because they had the exact same effect on me.
“Fine,” I sighed. “But after the lava, we clean up. Deal?”
“Deal!”
She bounced off to find the red glitter, and I surveyed the damage, trying to calculate how long it would take to make this room look less like a craft store had vomited everywhere.
This is fine. This is totally fine. Gabriel’s a reasonable man. He won’t fire me for a little glitter.
A lot of glitter.
An apocalyptic amount of glitter.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Gabriel: Leaving the hospital now. Home in 20.
Twenty minutes.
I had twenty minutes to transform this sparkly disaster zone into something that wouldn’t make Gabriel question every life choice that had led to hiring me.
“Found it!” Megan announced, returning with not one but three bottles of red glitter. “Let’s make it EPIC!”
I’m going to die.
Gabriel’s going to come home, see this mess, and realize that sleeping with me was a huge mistake.
That I’m chaos incarnate.
That I can’t be trusted with his daughter or his dining room or his...
“Cate? You okay? You’re making that face again.”
“What face?”
“The face you make when you’re thinking too much. Dad says you do that a lot.”
Gabriel talks about me?
Gabriel talks about me to Megan?
What does he say? Does he tell her that I’m—
“Earth to Cate!”
“Right! Sorry! Let’s add that lava!”
We spent the next fifteen minutes creating what Megan declared was “the most amazing volcano in the history of volcanoes,” which was generous considering it looked more like a sparkly tumor than a geological formation.
But she was happy.
Beaming, actually, as she carefully arranged it on the table for maximum impact.
“Dad’s going to be so surprised!” she said.
That’s one word for it.
I heard the front door open.
Oh God.
He’s home.
He’s home and the dining room looks like a stripper exploded and I’m covered in glitter and...
“Megan? Cate?”
His voice carried from the entryway, and I felt that familiar flutter in my stomach. The one that happened every time I heard him now. Every time I saw him.
Every time I remembered what it felt like when he...
Focus, Cate. Focus on the glitter crisis.
“We’re in here!” Megan called, bouncing toward the doorway. “Come see what we made!”
I braced myself.
Gabriel appeared in the doorway, still in his scrubs, his hair slightly mussed from the surgical cap, his eyes finding mine immediately.
And there it was.
That look.
The one that made my knees weak and my brain short-circuit, and my entire body remember exactly what those hands felt like on my skin.
Then his gaze shifted to the dining room. To the glitter.
So much glitter.
His expression didn’t change. Not exactly. But I saw his jaw tighten slightly. Saw the way his eyes tracked across the sparkling devastation.
“We made a volcano!” Megan announced proudly. “Cate helped!”
Cate enabled this disaster, you mean.
Gabriel’s eyes came back to me.
I tried to smile. I probably looked deranged.
“It’s... impressive,” he said finally.
“Do you love it?” Megan asked.
“I love that you worked hard on it,” he said diplomatically, which was very Gabriel. Never lying, but also never crushing his daughter’s enthusiasm.
It was one of the things I—Don’t finish that thought. Don’t even think about finishing that thought.
“We were just about to clean up,” I said quickly. “All the glitter. Every single sparkle. I promise.”
His mouth twitched. Almost a smile.
“I’ll help,” he said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I’ll help,” he repeated, and something in his tone made it clear this wasn’t about the glitter.
Megan had already run off to wash her hands, leaving Gabriel and me alone in the sparkling war zone.
He stepped closer.
Close enough that I could smell his cologne. Close enough that I had to tilt my head back to look at him.
“Hi,” I said stupidly.
“Hi.”
“Sorry about... everything.”
“She’s happy,” he said simply. “That’s what matters.”
God, why is that so attractive? Why is everything he does attractive? Why am I like this?
His hand came up, and I thought he was going to touch my face, but instead he plucked something from my hair.
A piece of red glitter. “You’re covered in it,” he murmured.
“Occupational hazard.”
“I like it.”
He likes it? He likes me covered in craft supplies?
His thumb brushed my cheek, and I forgot how to breathe.
“Gabriel.”
“Tonight,” he said quietly. “After Megan’s asleep. Come to my room.”
Oh. “Okay,” I whispered.
He stepped back just as Megan returned, completely oblivious to the fact that her father had just made my entire body temperature spike fifteen degrees.
“Let’s clean up!” she announced cheerfully.
We spent the next hour vacuuming glitter—which, for the record, is impossible because glitter is eternal and will probably outlive humanity—while Megan chattered about her volcano and Gabriel asked questions about her project with the kind of focused attention that made my chest ache.
He was a good dad. A great dad.
And I was sleeping with him.
What are we doing? The question had been circling my brain all week, getting louder each day. We hadn’t talked about it. About what this was. What we were.
We just... existed in these stolen moments. These secret touches and midnight texts and closet quickies that made me feel alive and terrified in equal measure.
But what happened next? Did we keep sneaking around forever? Did we tell people? Did we...
God, what if he doesn’t want anything more than this? What if I’m just convenient? What if... “Cate?”
I looked up.
Gabriel was watching me with that expression. The one that said he knew exactly what I was thinking. “You okay?” he asked.
No.
Yes.
I don’t know.
“Fine,” I said, smiling too brightly. “Just tired. Glitter is exhausting.”
He didn’t look convinced, but Megan was there, so he just nodded.
I caught sight of myself in the side mirror. I was covered in glitter. Literally sparkling in the late afternoon sun like some kind of deranged fairy. And I was happy.
Terrified and confused and completely out of my depth, but happy.
What are we doing, Gabriel?
I didn’t have an answer. But tonight, maybe I’d find the courage to ask.