Wet (A Real Man #25) - Jenika Snow Page 0,27

You know Gio would treat Pyper well. He’s a good boy.”

I did laugh then. My father was the least threatening person I’d ever known. He wouldn’t even kill spiders we found in the house, and instead he released them outside. But what really struck me as surreal was the way he was talking about this.

He was fine with it. My mother was fine with it. I felt like I’d been shoved into a dream.

“Wait. Wait,” I said and shook my head, trying to grapple with this. I had expected them to try to explain why they thought it would be wrong to be with Gio. I expected them to maybe tell me how it was inappropriate, that we didn’t get involved with our employees.

What I didn’t expect was them having absolutely no issue with it. In fact… they seemed okay with it.

“You’re fine with how I feel for Gio?” I may not have told them I loved him, but either way, they seemed totally fine with it all, even my dad noticing Gio staring at me. He might have given some faux fatherly anger, but it had all been done with zero heat in it.

My mother tightened her hand on my shoulder and gave me a small smile. “Pyper, what kind of people do you think we are?”

I didn’t know where she was going with this.

“That we wouldn’t approve of who you were with because of how others around us think and feel?” she continued.

I nodded slowly. “I just assumed you’d feel the same about “being with the help.” I did little air quotes and made it sound degrading.

My father had this almost hurt look on his face. “Pyper, sweetheart, by default, we may associate with people who think that way, but that doesn’t extend to us.”

I felt a bit shameful in the fact that I’d thought my parents would have given me shit over this. “I just assumed… and I feel like an ass now,” I whispered.

“Gio is a good boy, is smart and a hard worker. He looks at you like you carry the sun for him, and when asking for someone to treat out daughter well,” my mother said softly, “we couldn’t have picked a better person.”

I felt myself choke up at the things my parents said, at the way they looked at me.

They loved me, and they cared for Gio and his family so much. I might have thought things could have been a fight with them, but I should have known better.

As I hoped, they just wanted me happy.

Epilogue One

Gio

One year later

It was a hot July day, the sun beating down on us, the water the perfect temperature to cool off. I sat on the edge of the pool, my feet immersed in the chilled liquid, my focus on Pyper. She was currently doing a lazy lap in the water, that little red-and-white polka dot bikini peeking out from the surface every so often. I was pretty fucking proud of myself for controlling my arousal. Well, as much as I could. I certainly couldn’t stand up or I’d risk giving everyone a show of exactly how hard I was.

But the rest, as in diving into the pool, chasing down Pyper, and kissing her until she clung to me? Yeah, I was controlling that pretty fucking well.

The sound of my mother laughing with Mrs. St. James had me glancing over my shoulder. It was really fucking hard to tear my gaze from Pyper, but the distraction was much needed to curb my fucking libido.

She’d told me to call her Maura shortly after they’d been informed of the relationship between Pyper and me, but I still caught myself being formal with her. It would be a hard habit to break.

Maura gave my mother a glass of sangria, and the two of them started laughing about something else. Off to the side on the other end of the patio stood Mr. St. James and my father.

They had a beer in hand as they hovered over the grill. I could tell my father was giving Pyper’s dad tips on grilling, and Mr. St. James nodded enthusiastically as if he’d just been given a secret recipe. I snorted at the sight.

Over the past year, it was insane—in a good way—how much things had changed, how the dynamic between our families had evolved because of our relationship. Although Maura always treated us like family, things were vastly more comfortable between everyone. We had Sunday dinners together, all of us, and we