The First Taste (Slip of the Tongue #2) - Jessica Hawkins Page 0,67

you had such a great girls’ sleepover a couple weeks ago—”

“It’ll be fine. I can come in early Monday.” She lifts Bell off her lap and stands. “Give me a minute.”

New plan. Go to dinner with Sadie, get her to invite Bell over, and then come back for Amelia. I plop into Sadie’s vacated chair and watch through the window. Amelia puts her call on hold. As she listens to Sadie, she shifts her eyes to me. I wink.

“What’s wrong with your eye, Daddy?” Bell asks.

“Huh?” I look back at her. “Oh. Nothing.”

Sadie comes out of the office and heads back toward us. “Good news. Boss says it’s fine.”

Amelia and I stare at each other. She arches an eyebrow at me, stands, and walks to the doorway. The bottom half of her suit isn’t the pants I expected, but a skirt. It stops just above her knees, showing off the long, slim legs that were wrapped around my waist just last week.

“I invited her,” Sadie says.

My fantasy skids to a halt, and I whip my head back to my sister. “You what?”

She shrugs casually, but her eyes are trained on my face. “I invited Amelia.”

After everything I went through to get here, I should be elated. I hadn’t thought this through. The woman I’m sleeping with and my daughter at the same table? The thought makes my stomach hurt. “What about Bell?”

“We can go somewhere kid friendly. Move.” She waves me away. “I have to shut down my computer.”

I get out of Sadie’s chair. This isn’t what I had in mind. I do want time alone with Amelia—somewhere my daughter isn’t. “Why would you invite her?”

“She needs cheering up.” Sadie packs up her desk, glancing at me from under her lashes. “Her ex ambushed her last week, and she’s been in a weird mood ever since.”

“Her ex?” My body flushes with heat. The ex. Reggie, the cheater, the almost ex-husband—what the fuck is he doing coming around? Here, I’d hoped she’d been thinking of me this week when she’d actually been dealing with him. “When was this?”

Sadie lugs her purse from the ground to the desk. “The night of the awards show.”

“Are you kidding? The one I was at?”

“Yes. Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” I say automatically, but my tone, my clenched fists, my racing thoughts prove otherwise. We were together that night, and she never mentioned him. Unless it happened afterward, which would’ve meant he was at the hotel. He was with her in what should’ve been my room. My bathtub. I look back at Amelia, but she isn’t in her office. I search the space around us. She’s gone. “I need to piss.”

“You know where the bathroom is.”

“I need to piss too,” Bell says.

“Bell,” Sadie scolds. “Don’t talk like that.”

“I’ll take you at the restaurant,” I say to her, walking away. “Stay there.”

I head through the office. The receptionist doesn’t even look up from his cell as he coughs and points toward a door by the elevator.

I check over my shoulder to make sure Bell didn’t follow me, then push through into the stairwell.

Amelia’s pacing the small space, a cigarette between her fingers. She looks up quickly. “What are you doing here?”

I ignore her question. “What happened last week? After the awards show?”

“Last week?” Her forehead wrinkles. “Do you really need me to tell you?”

“I mean with Reggie.”

She stops to stare at me. “Oh. Sadie told you?”

“Yeah. I don’t understand. He came to the hotel? Did you . . .?”

“God, no,” she says. “It was before I saw you. He showed up at my apartment when I was leaving for the event.”

I cross my arms, then change my mind and hold my hand out for the cigarette. She gives it to me. Her deep red lipstick has left a mark on the butt. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.

She shrugs. “It’s not your problem.”

“It feels like my problem,” I say without thinking, but it’s the truth. “I’m sorry if that bothers you.”

She studies my face a few seconds, her eyebrows drawn. “What do you mean?”

I take a drag, thinking about my answer and deciding I don’t have one that’s as cut and dry as I wish it’d be. “I don’t like the idea of him coming around after the way he hurt you, regardless of whether you and I are together.” I sound like a chick, and I should stop myself, but I can’t. Amelia doesn’t deserve to be dicked around, especially not by him. “What did