42. Justin
forty-two
“I’m gonna need some baby stuff,” the grating voice blurts.
I don’t remember her voice being that unpleasant. I wasn’t paying attention to her voice, I suppose. I must have had other parts of her anatomy in mind. I wish I’d never lain eyes on her. Too late for that now.
I wasn’t careful. I made a mistake. Now I need to fix it.
At least this is a mistake I can do something about. No one is dying.
This woman needs me.
I’ll be there for her, all the way. No matter how I feel about her.
Because the truth is, I feel almost grateful that this is a mistake I can actually do something about.
I can prove I’m worthy.
“Jusssstin!” Nails on a chalkboard.
“Yeah, I heard ya. And I told ya, we’ll go when we go see the shrink. Same strip mall.”
We’re driving back from the testing center in Burlington. She slept all the way down—thank god for that—but now she’s fully awake.
“I just wished you’d stop saying shrink. It’s a therapist. Don’t be crass. I don’t want our kid having bad manners.”
I sort of thought, and probably this was wishful thinking, that she’d bail out on the paternity testing at the last moment. But she didn’t. Not at all. She’s pretty sure of herself.
I guess she knows.
And this means I need to get used to the idea of her being in my life for… a while. This must be god’s punishment.
The child? I can’t even imagine what that’s going to be like. After we get the paternity test result, it’ll be time for me to have a beer with Christopher. He had to raise Skye all on his own from the beginning. He’ll know what I need to do.
Gisele started wanting to lay the groundwork for our co-parenting right when we left Burlington. Maybe it was because Chloe’s wasn’t here, and she feels more in control. Maybe it’s just because she had me captive for an hour. Anyway, we’re quickly realizing we don’t agree on anything, and we’ll need a third party to play referee. Enter the idea of a family therapist—the only thing we agree upon.
I do learn that Gisele’s been kicked out from her parents’ basement apartment—which she rented from them—for being pregnant. Apparently they’re religious, and she didn’t get the memo. Which means her bravado about not needing a place to stay was just that—bravado. According to her, Ms. Angela gave her a good deal on a bedroom at the bed-and-breakfast, so that’s taken care of. She doesn’t have a car, her job was next to her parents’ home, which means she lost her job. But with the leaf-peeping season starting, she should be able to find work.
I hope.
“Is she looking for daycare around here?” Chloe asks me as we’re having a beer on her porch before dinner. “I hear it’s hard to find a spot.”
I pull my phone out. “Texting mom to see if she has an idea.”
Chloe settles next to me on the porch swing, her lithe, subtle body molding perfectly against mine. I lift her so she’s sitting on me. We leave the lights out so the mosquitos don’t get to us and so Chloe can watch the stars and the moon. Since we spent the night in my truck, she’s all about that.
“I just wanna talk about something else,” I say in her hair. My hand takes on a life of its own and trails under her dress, up her naked thighs. “How’d it go yesterday and today?”
“Your parents had dinner at the restaurant last night,” she says with a huge smile. “They’re so sweet.”
It warms me that she fits so well with my folks already, but it doesn’t surprise me. She’s mine and they know it. They love her like one of ours, and rightfully so. My dick gets hard at the idea of spending my life with her, something I’d never thought was ever in the cards for me. Ethan coming back and the two of us talking things out put some things back in place, and the rest will sort itself out over time.
I mean, look who’s sitting in my lap. Sullivan’s own daughter, and I wouldn”t have it any other way.
That’s because she’s not Sullivan’s daughter to me.
She’s my Clover.
“How did the meeting for the renovations go?” I ask her, breathing her hair.
“Mmm…” she purrs, “it’s gonna look awesome. Alex is planning a ribbon-cutting already. We’ll have press and stuff.”
“Really?” That’s amazing.
“It’s gonna bring us a lot more business. We start demo on Monday.”
“That soon?”
“Un-huh. They wanted tomorrow, but we have a private event I didn’t want to cancel, plus a number of reservations Saturday. So, Monday.”
I breathe in her hair. “You have a private event tomorrow?” Tomorrow I’m closed, like every year on the same date. My staff already knows. Hell, the whole town knows we’re closed that day.
But suddenly I don’t know what to do with myself.
Correction.
I don’t feel like wallowing anymore.
“Can I take you out? Or will they need you at the restaurant?”
She trails her tongue along my neck, making my hips buck. “Mm, they can manage. Samuel will be working.”
I jolt. “I wonder if—”
She nibbles my ear. “Yup. We should make sure we come back early enough.”
Adrenaline courses through me. I’m taking my girl out on what used to be the hardest day of the year for me, and we might finally have an opening to catch that fucker Samuel. Because why else would Samuel agree to work on a day he’s off, other than to have an excuse for staying behind after close? “Okay then. It’s a date, tomorrow, on the early side.”
“Dinner’s ready,” she purrs in my ear then stands. “I made my lobster risotto.”
That sounds delicious, but then again… “Fuck. I dunno, Clo.” I set my beer on the floor and pull her back on my lap, facing me this time so she straddles me, her cleavage right below my chin. “I just wanna eat your pussy.”
She grinds against me. “Oh, I see,” she says with a shy smile, her cheeks getting rosy. Fuck but I like the way she’s coy about it.
“You little minx. I know you’re having dirty thoughts right now.”
She gapes and shakes her head, but a small laugh escapes her.
“Show me those tits,” I order her.
Biting her lip, she unbuttons her dress down to the waist and runs her hands on top of her bra.
“That new?” I growl. The bra is light pink, sheer, revealing, and barely containing her puckered nipples. I go to unhook it at her back, but she reaches for her cleavage and unclasps it there, her breasts spilling out, offered. “Fuck, Chloe, I like this one,” I say and take one nipple into my mouth, pulling on it.
She moans softly, grinds against me, runs her fingers on my scalp, keeping my mouth right where she wants it. I run a finger between us, and yeah. “You’re soaked for me, aren’t you?”
She grinds again.
“Aren’t you?”
“I dunno,” she mumbles. “I dunthingso.” And then she grinds harder.
I growl and take her other nipple in my mouth.
She lowers her head to my ear, as if she’s concerned someone might hear us, and she whispers. “Canyou chegagain… if I’m wet?”
I’d think it’s funny and cute if I wasn’t so wound up tonight. So needing to fuck her. So needing my own release. I unzip my jeans and jerk my hips up to free my cock, and register her gasp. “Yeah, babe, you’re soaked. Now take your man.”
She lets out a series of pants as she takes my throbbing cock in her. “That’s my girl,” I growl in her ear and at that, she comes. I watch the beauty of her features abandoned for me, her whole body shaking, her wet cunt spasming around me, sucking me in, sucking me dry as I empty myself in her. I give her soft hips a couple more pulls to impale her entirely on me and finish while she wraps her arms around me, and my face falls between her breasts.
“Fucking hell, best place on Earth,” I grunt as I dive again between Clover’s thighs and circle her clit. It’s after dinner, we’re in her bed, and I can’t get enough of her. Her sex juices are the best nightcap I could dream of, her whimpers a total turn on. I’m hard on her sound, her smell, her taste, her feel.
“Babe,” she says, and that’s all I need. I slide up her magnificent body and lodge my cock where it belongs. She wraps her legs around my waist and sucks me in, body and soul, and we both find our release, sweat and grunts and tangled limbs.
Once I’m on my back and she’s tucked against my chest and our breaths are slowing, I ask, “What was that all about?”
“What?” she asks with her sleepy voice.
“The new bra, the lobster risotto.”
She lifts her head. “You don’t like the new bra?”
I fist her hair and nudge her back on my chest. “I love the new bra.”
She stays silent.
“Clover, you didn’t answer.”
“You liked it,” she whispers, and it nearly kills me.
“Of course I liked it, and your lobster risotto could be on the menu at Per Se, but my question is, why?”
“I knew you’d like it,” she whispers, and I feel her smile against my heart, my skin tingling where her lips move.
I flip us so she’s lying on her back and I’m above her. “I love you, Chloe.”
“I love you too,” she says in a small voice.
“To me, that means you’re everything to me. You and only you. You get me?”
She nods.
“So that shit about going shopping and cooking for hours when you’ve had the most difficult days of your life, most of it because of me, it stops now. You take care of you. Yeah?”
She makes a little pouty mouth.
She went all out tonight because she knows I’m having a shit time and she wants to make my life better. And god I love her for that. Part of me wouldn’t want it any other way. But the better part of me knows she’s in as much shit as I am, if not more. And I want her to take care of herself too.
“I’ll take care of us,” she corrects me, her tone solemn, accepting no argument.
God I love this woman. She has no idea.