I turned her and kissed her forehead. “Not yet. Soon, I hope.”
She pulled out of my arms and finished brushing her hair, and then she left so I could brush my teeth. When I came out of the bathroom, she was working the laces on her hiking boots.
While I laced my boots, I asked her about a discrepancy I’d come across when I looked through the painting firm’s records. “You told me you and your ex are partners in the painting firm.”
“We are.”
I shook my head. “It’s listed as a woman-owned business.”
“Oh. Yeah. I own fifty-one percent, just so we qualified for that. It’s given us a leg up on government contracts a few times. Legally, I could take advantage if I wanted, but I don’t want to. I paint and keep track of the money, and he’s the public face so I don’t have to argue and negotiate. Also, he runs the jobsites and manages the employees. We each have our specialties. We make a good team.”
We had a nice breakfast, though the waitress clearly thought we’d been doing drugs all night, since we ordered three meals each. While we ate, her phone buzzed and she checked her messages. She was troubled by whatever she read, so I asked, “Everything okay?”
“Nora’s a mostly good kid, but she’s pushing back against the rules right now. Gil let her boyfriend come over last night, but made him leave at ten. She got pissed at him, and after her boyfriend was gone, she shifted and attacked her dad. He’s fine, of course, but she’s grounded. He says the three can still come to my house for dinner, but he wants them all home by eight-thirty.”
“That was a long text.”
“Yeah. We handle personal shit through text when possible, and business stuff in person or on the phone. He isn’t a big fan of boundaries, but he doesn’t like it when I’m pissed off, so he’s been following them. Mostly.”
“I have a line in the sand I need to tell you about. Let me start by telling you how happy I am that you’d never ridden with someone else — that I got to teach you how to ride on the back of a bike. This also means that I don’t want you riding with someone else. If your ex were to get a bike, and I found out you’d ridden on it behind him? I’d be more upset than if I found out the two of you had down and dirty sex for most of the day.”
The muscles around her eyes and mouth tensed and then relaxed. The blood flow smoothed out. She liked the idea of me being possessive.
Well, that was a good sign.
“To balance that out, I’ll make you a promise.” I took a breath. This was important. “While I will probably find reasons to bitch about your ex, I will never do anything to come between you and those kids. They lost one mom, and I won’t make them feel as if they’re losing their second mom. Whether they accept me or not, I’ll accept them.”
Now, her eyes actually watered, and I wished she wasn’t sitting across the table from me. I needed to hold her.
“I’m not here to complicate your life,” I told her. “I’m probably going to, but I’ll try my best to keep it to a minimum.”
She nodded and took a bite of her hash browns.
The ride back to her house was amazing. No traffic, lots of wide, sweeping turns, and a passenger who leaned exactly with me, every time.
Even on the tighter, banked turns, she leaned with me, in and out, fluid.
I turned my bike off when I pulled up to her house. We’d made good time, so I wasn’t in a hurry.
We took our helmets off, and I strapped hers to the back of my bike before I leaned her backwards and kissed her breathless. Again. God, how I loved turning her world inside out with a kiss.
I stood her up, brushed some stray hair away from her face that’d come out of the braid, and told her, “I’ll be at your house at nine tonight to fuck your ass again, and you will not have changed. Want to make sure you feel it. I’ll bring clothes in case I’m invited to stay the night, but if you want to kick me out after I’ve fucked you into oblivion, I’ll leave without arguing.”