Chapter 5
GINNY
I’m not shocked to find the light on in the kitchen even at ten after midnight.
There’s no way I’m the only one in the house who is sneaking down for a second helping of pie.
Okay, so it’s my fourth helping. Who’s counting?
I am very surprised, however, to find that the person sitting at the counter with a fork in his hand is Everett.
After having dessert with him earlier and watching him eat half a piece of every single kind of pie, I am not surprised that he has the caramel apple pie in front of him, though.
He really seemed to like that one earlier.
Not that I was paying attention to every single thing the guy did all day long.
Ugh. I was. I totally was. No matter how hard I tried not to.
“My brother told my mom that you don’t like pie,” I say walking into the kitchen.
If it were any other incredibly hot guy, with whom I’d had amazing sex that I’m still not over, I would feel self-conscious about the short shorts and oversized sweatshirt I’m wearing.
But I am trying to convince Everett that he does not want me. Our physical chemistry is impossible to deny, so the more I do to be unattractive, probably the better.
I also have my hair pulled back and my makeup scrubbed off.
I really was trying to sleep.
And if anyone asks whether Everett is part of the reason it was difficult, I will absolutely deny it.
But fuck.
When he looks up at me with a smile, his fork held halfway to his very talented mouth as if pointing directly at those lips that I remember all too well, I take in the way his biceps bulge against the soft cotton of the T-shirt he’s wearing, the dark scruff on his jaw, his tousled hair, and those fuck-I’m-in-trouble glasses.
He’s also wearing gray sweatpants, but thank God he’s sitting down. I can’t take that too.
“I don’t like pie,” he says. “But your mother’s is the exception. Does she make anything that’s not amazing?”
I pad over to the kitchen cabinets and remove a plate. “No,” I say honestly. “It’s all fantastic. I went out for sports in high school just because of her and that bakery. I hate sports. Playing them anyway. I like watching most of them.”
I don’t go to the refrigerator for pie, though.
Despite the ridiculousness of her making cake for a guy who doesn’t like pie—who, it turns out, does actually like pie—I grab the apple-caramel cake pan and pull it toward me.
I didn’t sample it earlier because I had tried all of the pie, but it looked damn good, and I feel like any attempt that I’m making to lay down rules or put up boundaries or have even a hint of good intentions has all already gone to hell.
Having Thanksgiving dinner with Everett at my family’s table has only made me like him more.
The last thing I fucking need.
It wasn’t just the story about his family, or the easy way he fell into conversation with everyone I love, or how he ate as if no one had actually ever given the poor guy mashed potatoes before.
It was the way he watched everyone. He likes them.
Every single one of those people around the table, whom I love with all my heart, Everett legitimately likes.
He had this goofy, half-amused, half-fascinated look on his face the entire time.
How am I supposed to not want to kiss him when he becomes so easily infatuated with the bunch of goofballs I call family?
I fill a glass of water and cross to the breakfast bar with the glass and cake pan. I climb up on a stool, leaving one stool between us.
As if that’s going to make any difference. I am so aware of him, my body feels like it’s humming.
“You seem to be having a good time here,” I say.
“I’m having a great time,” he agrees easily. He meets my gaze. “In case you didn’t know, you have an amazing family.”
I can’t even tease or joke in that moment. I smile. “I do know that.”
I pull the top off the cake pan and lift a piece onto a plate. I replace the lid, push the pan away, pick up a fork, and take a deep breath.
“So, since you’re here, I have some questions,” I say to him.
“Anything you want to know.” He takes a huge bite of caramel apple pie.
I watch him chew. How can the bunching and relaxing of muscles be sexy? Especially throat muscles?
“You’ll answer them? No matter what?”
He swallows and I remember running my mouth and tongue up and down his throat and the low growling noise he made when I did it.
Oh yeah, that’s how throat muscles can be sexy.
I squeeze my legs together and take a bite of cake.
Fuck. That is good.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he says.
“A deal?” I repeat. “Like what?”
“Are these questions professional? About the business or your future job?”
“No.”
“So, they are nothing that you need to know the answer to. Nothing that could be construed as me withholding important information from an employee.”
I have no idea what he’s getting at. “No. I guess not. Just things I want to know.”
He reaches for his glass of milk and takes a long drink, then sets it down and pivots on his stool to look at me. “Then here’s my offer. For every question you ask and I answer, I get a kiss.”
I arch both brows. “You have to be kidding.”
He shakes his head. “Not even a little. You want answers, and I want kisses. We can both get what we want.”
Except I want kisses too.
I shake my head. “That feels like extortion.”
He chuckles. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Basically, if you don’t want to give the kisses, then you just don’t get to ask the questions. It’s a pretty straightforward interaction.”
It definitely sounds straightforward. But I do want to kiss him, and I do want answers, and I still feel like I’m going to walk out of this kitchen having lost something. Like my mind. Or maybe a piece of my heart.
Ugh. So dramatic. I need to stop.
“Also, I’m not your boss at the moment. And if you’re worried,” he goes on, leaning his elbow on the counter next to him. “If the kissing is bad, I promise that it won’t negatively impact your future employment.”
I’m so on to him. But I mock gasp for his benefit and say, “How dare you insinuate that my kissing might be bad.”
He shrugs. “I guess there’s really only one way to know for sure.”
He has a point. Not about the bad kissing.
There’s no way in fuck it’s going to be bad.
Hell, we proved that outside by my dad’s garage earlier today.
No, the point I’m interested in is the whole I’m not your boss yet thing.
That’s true. If we mess around right now, it has nothing to do with the job. It would just be fun.
I take a bite of cake, pretending to contemplate this proposal.
I chew and swallow, take a long drink of water, then say, “You said your dad was pissed about your mom trying to trap him with a pregnancy, so he took you and cut her off. How old were you when you met her?”
Everett grins as if he just won first prize in a championship spelling bee. God, he is hot when he smiles.
He’s hot no matter what, if I’m being honest. Which I probably should be. Pretending not to be attracted to him or that I can just ignore him and what happened in Denver is not getting me anywhere.
“In the agreement he came up with, he had full custody and got to determine what kind of visitation she had. She was not to tell anyone that she was my mother, and there were no public records.”
“She’s not on your birth certificate?”
“That’s two questions. I need a kiss before I answer the second one.”
I hold out my hand to him, wrist tipped so that he can kiss the back of it.
He gives me a little smirk, but takes my hand, leans over it, and presses his mouth against the back of my hand. But he doesn’t stop there. He drags his mouth back and forth across my knuckles, his whiskers scuffing against my skin and sending tingles all the way up my arm.
Then he kisses down the length of my middle finger till he gets to the tip. He sucks it into his hot, wet mouth, and I barely hold back a moan. Those tingles get much stronger and spread throughout my body as he swirls his tongue over the pad of my middle finger, and my clit aches.
He withdraws my finger, then meets my gaze, his eyes hooded.
“There is, of course, an official public record. But for the first few years, I wasn’t seen in public with either of my parents.
No one in the media or wider film industry even knew I existed.
By the time I was old enough to travel, I’d go along, but so would a whole entourage of people.
The media never wondered who I was, assuming I belonged to someone on the staff. ”
I open my mouth, then close it quickly. I already asked a question.
He smiles knowingly and goes on. “The public never knew she was pregnant or had a child, so no one ever went looking for records. She was between projects once she was far enough along to be showing, and she went and stayed at a private island estate through the final five months of the pregnancy and the delivery. It was a private at home birth, she stayed there for a couple of months for recovery, and by the time she was back in the public eye, she looked the same and it had really only been a few months. No one even blinked. Everyone around her were trusted friends and family, who not only had her best interest at heart, but who were threatened legally and paid very good money to stay quiet.”
“It’s really never leaked?” I ask, incredulous. But, of course, I know who his mother is and never knew she had a child.
He hasn’t let go of my hand, so he pulls it closer, extending my elbow. He pushes the sleeve of the sweatshirt up and starts kissing a path up my arm. When he gets to my elbow, he sucks lightly on the skin on the inside.
I did not know that was an erogenous zone, but it certainly is. At least for me when Everett’s mouth is there.
I squirm on my seat.
He shakes his head. “Never leaked. My father is a very powerful man, and honestly, my mother didn’t want it to leak either.”