CHAPTER 14
Josie
Finn’s arms circle around me from behind and his mouth goes to the back of my neck. I hit the egg on the edge of the bowl a little too hard and it explodes in my hand.
Laughing, I try to shrug him off me. “Do you want breakfast or not?”
His teeth graze the sensitive skin just below my ear. “I’m hungry but not for eggs.”
A thrill of lust skitters up my spine and I relax into him. “You just had your hunger appeased not five minutes ago in my bedroom,” I remind him.
“I can’t help it,” he murmurs, his hand sliding across my belly and then starting to inch up the T-shirt I’d thrown on along with a pair of panties. “I’m insatiable when it comes to you.”
I know the feeling, Finn. I know the feeling.
We’ve been pretending for approximately fourteen minutes that we’re going to make breakfast before we head off to our respective jobs, but we’ve got nothing to show for it.
The skillet’s hot and the butter is melted, well on its way to browning.
The bacon’s in the warming drawer because that part Finn did manage to handle before he came up behind me.
The coffee’s been poured but going cold and the morning light coming through the window is so bright and cheerful, I want to put the rest of my life on hold and just revel in this.
I’m happy.
So happy I don’t know what to do with my body.
“Eggs,” I say, holding up the carton.
“In a minute.”
“In a minute the butter’s going to burn.”
“I’ll buy you new butter.”
“You’re rotten and I kind of love it,” I admit.
He must take that as capitulation because he turns me by the hips and his mouth comes down on mine. I sink into the kiss, thinking Fuck the eggs.
But then he lifts his head, smiling down at me with that charming, boyish grin that weakens my knees.
“Eggs,” he says, pointing down to the crushed shell in my hand. “You’re falling down on the job.”
“You started it.”
“I know I started it.” His hand slides under my shirt, palm flat against my stomach. I’m going to fail at breakfast, and we are both going to be hungry, and it’s going to be entirely his fault, and well… I’m okay with it.
The key scraping in the mudroom door is not a sound I process at first. That small metallic click registers as something I should pay attention to, then I hear the door open.
“Josie-bug?” a man’s voice calls out.
I freeze and Finn’s hand stops mid-slide.
“Honey? I’m here. I brought your garbage cans up from the street for you.” Bill McAdams enters the kitchen. ”Did you get a new car? There’s a Range Rover in the—”
He stops mid-sentence and mid-stride, staring at me and Finn across the counter.
For a long, frozen, silent beat, the three of us are completely still.
Bill McAdams stands there, his eyes wide behind his wire-framed spectacles.
He radiates every bit the retired marine with close-cropped, iron-gray hair and a military ramrod-straight spine.
His eyes travel quickly over us, Finn’s hand under my shirt at my stomach.
I’m acutely aware that we’re both half dressed, Finn shirtless in a pair of jeans and…
did I put on panties? Yes, I did, but my T-shirt barely covers them.
Finn is the first to move, pulling his hand out from under my shirt.
My father is the first to recover his voice. “Oh, hell.”
“Dad,” I say in surprise, grabbing a towel to wipe the egg from my hand. “What are you doing here?”
“Honey, I—Christ, I didn’t mean to—” He turns away. Turns back. Turns away again.
He is, in this moment, less the retired marine general and more a man who has walked into a situation he doesn’t have a procedure for. “I knocked.”
“You did not knock.”
“I knocked in spirit.”
“Dad!”
“I’m sorry. I never thought you’d—” He stops, takes a breath and recalibrates. “I haven’t seen anyone here before. I saw the car but just assumed you got a new one. I guess I…”
“You should have called,” I admonish gently.
He looks thoroughly chagrined and embarrassed. “I’m just going to go—”
“Absolutely not,” Finn says, stepping away from me and rounding the kitchen island. “I’m Finn Marlowe.” He offers his hand to my dad who shakes it. “And you’re Bill McAdams. Josie’s told me so much about you. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
My dad can be protective and sometimes overbearing, but he’s never impolite. He takes Finn’s hand, appraising him with a mixture of confusion and suspicion. “Nice to meet you.”
Dad’s eyes cut between me and Finn.
I want to die.
I want to die approximately seventeen ways.
I’m also, in the part of my brain that’s still functioning, watching Finn handle my father with the kind of poise that suggests he’s been preparing for this exact moment his whole life.
My father, after a beat, pumps Finn’s hand. “Call me Bill.”
“Bill,” Finn echoes with a smile.
“Yeah.” My father studies him. “You’re going to want to find a shirt.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And probably my daughter’s going to want to find some pants.”
“D-a-a-d,” I drawl, my face flaming.
“I’m saying.”
“I’m going.” I scurry out of the kitchen, down the hall and into my bedroom. I run around like a madwoman, finding a pair of sweats, wiggling into a bra under my T-shirt. I refuse to look in the mirror over my dresser because I can’t bear to see my own face right now.
From the bedroom I can hear them. Their voices are low but the floors in this bungalow are 1920s hardwood and they carry sound back to me. I hear my father say something I don’t catch but then Finn laughs.
I run my fingers through my hair and risk that glance in the mirror—flushed cheeks, wild blond hair, mouth pink from being kissed for the last hour by the man currently talking to my father, and I take a breath.
“It’s fine, Josie,” I mutter to myself.
I snag Finn’s shirt and head back into the kitchen. When I round the corner, my father’s on a stool at the island and Finn’s at the stove where the butter’s been salvaged and the eggs, somehow, are in the pan.
“There she is,” my father says with a grin. “And she brought you a shirt, Finn.”
I roll my eyes, toss the shirt to Finn who puts it on, and cross to my dad where I kiss him on the cheek. “Hi, Dad.”
He pats me on the back. “Hi, kiddo.”
“This is not how I ever imagined you meeting someone I’m seeing,” I say, my tone exasperated but forgiving.
“I know it’s not,” he says with a chuckle.
“I was going to do it properly. With clothes.”
“Properly with clothes is the version we’re going to pretend just happened, Josie.”
Finn snorts.
I close my eyes. “I love you, Dad.”
“I love you too. So, I guess we’re having our breakfast date now.”
Finn plates the eggs while I get the bacon from the warming drawer. I pour more coffees and hand them out.
The four-stool kitchen island that usually just holds me now holds three. My father’s on the middle stool, I’m on the one nearest the window and Finn’s on the far stool, leaning a forearm on the counter.
“So,” my father says.
“So,” Finn says.
“How did you two meet?”
I open my mouth. The lie’s on my tongue before I’ve entirely thought it through. “Finn owns an art gallery. I went and we got to talking.”
I cut a glance at Finn, who cocks an eyebrow with a smirk. I can see he’s recalibrated to my version and picks up the thread without looking at me.
“She told me a painting was hung too low,” he says easily. “I took it down. Raised it three inches. Asked her to dinner.”
My father nods as if he’s following the story and accepting it. But he’s going to be nosy. “How long ago?”
“Couple of weeks,” I say, lifting my shoulder slightly when Finn tilts his head at me.
“And she’s already letting you in her kitchen,” my dad muses.
“Dad,” I say with a warning tone.
He holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m allowed to comment, Josie. It took me a few months before your mother let me in her… um… kitchen.”
The mention of my mother—the small, casual, present-tense way he drops her name—makes my throat catch for half a second before I recover.
Finn ducks his head, tries not to laugh. My father takes a long drink of his coffee and sets the cup down. He looks at Finn with the expression that says he’s going straight into intel collection mode. “Where are you from, Finn?”
“Portland originally, but I’ve been here in Seattle almost twenty years.”
“What brought you up?”
“Trouble,” he answers, and I’m stunned by the honesty of that one word.
But I’m also glad. My dad appreciates plain talk.
Still, it’s not the answer my father expected. I watch Dad register it and decide what to do with it.
He decides to laugh. “What kind of trouble?”
“The kind seventeen-year-old boys with no money and no parents around get into, sir.”
“Bill.”
“Bill.”
“No parents around?” My dad’s eyes soften with empathy. “That must have been tough.”
“It was,” Finn admits. “Never knew my dad and my mom did the best she could. Worked three jobs to support me and I was never grateful enough for it. She passed three years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But look at you now… you own an art gallery. That’s quite the success story. How did you get into that?”
“By pure accident,” Finn says, holding a piece of bacon in his hand. “An older art aficionado was selling the business, and it looked like a good investment to me.”
My father nods slowly and I’m wondering how much of that story is truth. We haven’t really discussed how he got his gallery.
I can see my dad constructing a picture in his head.
The picture’s most likely accurate, but I’m sure it’s also missing more truth Finn’s not ready to reveal.
He’s sitting at my kitchen island eating eggs, telling my father the version of his life that’s most likely to be received well and my father, who spent thirty years professionally separating real pictures from constructed ones, is being charmed by him, anyway.
I watch this happen with a mixture of horror and pride.
“And you know what Josie does for a living?”
Finn grins at my dad. “Pretty sure she wouldn’t have let me in her kitchen if I wasn’t enamored with all things that your daughter does.”