Page 85 of Defended By Love

I throw a pillow over my face and will the reset to start early. It’s funny to think that just a couple of hours ago, I was jumping off cliffsides while giving the finger to a man who probably has ‘evil deeds’ listed as a hobby on his dating profile. Now, I’m hoping to spontaneously combust rather than face Grant’s mom after she heard she yell ‘more’ god knows how many times.

“I’m sorry. I just went a bit crazy after you jumped and then I got inside you and really wasn’t thinking…” Grant babbles along with a hundred other variations on sorry.

His phone pings again.

This time, when Grant reads the message he groans—and not in the good way that he was doing earlier.

“What?” I ask.

He takes a deep breath before he answers me. “My mom says that she heard I have a friend over and wants to know if you want to come up for dinner.”

I freeze.

Is it too late for me to text Reinhold my exact location along with a list of my fears? If he kidnaps me and tortures me, I wouldn’t have to answer this question. Who knows? Maybe I’d even get lucky and he’d kill me right away.

Dead girls don’t have to attend awkward dinners.

“I’ll just text her and tell her you can’t stay.” He picks up his phone. “What was I thinking bringing you here? Stupid.” He mutters the last part to himself.

But I hear it.

No, I listen.

I listen and I see. His cheeks are fully flushed pink as he types away on his phone. He shouldn’t be embarrassed, though. I should be. Dr. Debbie has a whole chapter on shame. I should have picked up on this earlier.

Placing my hand over his texting hand, I utter the biggest lie I’ve ever told—which is saying something considering what I do for a living.

“I’d love to have dinner with your mother.”

Grant visibly relaxes, the blush fading from his cheeks. It’s a good thing too. Between his raging erection and his flushed cheeks, I’m not entirely certain the rest of his body was getting enough blood.

“You’re amazing,” Grant mutters, looking up at me with eyes so vulnerable, my heart breaks a little.

“So are you,” I answer. This time, there’s not a trace of a lie.

Chapter 37

When my grandma died, I had just got hired on at Felton & Nichols. I was young and eager to prove myself. While she was dying in the hospital, I took off just one afternoon to visit her in the hospital. One. True, I visited her after work, although I did stay later at the office than I should have. It wasn’t enough, though.

My parents called me at work to tell me she had passed. I sat at my desk—a hollow shell in a hollow office. The sounds of everyday business seemed impossibly far away. Like they were happening in another office. To another person.

Because surely I couldn’t be the type of person who didn’t even bother asking for a day off while her grandmother died.

But then Dominic walked by, rapped his knuckles on my desk and told me what a good job I did on his paperwork. And I thought I made the right choice.

Somewhere along the way, I got lost.

In the spirit of complete honesty, I know that I’m to blame for my lack of success with dating. It isn’t that I have such a terrible personality—or, at least, not totally that—it’s that I always had half a foot out the door. True, I requested my first dates bring a copy of their family tree back to a minimum of four generations (who wants to waste time on a secret distant cousin?), but it was the fact that I accepted work calls and showed up half an hour late because Dominic needed just one more thing from me that sealed the deal.

It’s like Dr. Debbie says in her preface: “Ultimately, relationships are transactional. You get out what you put in. If you put in time, honesty, and love, more often than not, you’ll get that back. If you put nothing in, don’t expect anything in return.”

Well, it’s time for me to start putting something in.

Starting with sitting down to dinner with Grant’s mom after she heard me proclaim my orgasm louder than a newsie announcing the daily headline.

Oh, well. There’s always tomorrow/today to make a different first impression.

“You really don’t have to do this,” Grant mutters now that we’ve finished washing up and are heading upstairs.

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