Page 47 of My Dearest Mackenzie

It felt heavy, and that wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to be a disappointment to Milly—and I wanted to impress Frances with my charm and my ability to be a better man. Sitting there talking about my dead grandmother’s letter to her long-lost love wasn’t accomplishing either.

“Do you have to work tomorrow?” I asked her.

“I have some late afternoon appointments,” Frances explained as we rode down in the elevator and walked outside in the Meatpacking District.

The city was still bustling and people walked in all kinds of directions around us.

“I want to take the morning off… Want to ride out to the Hamptons and wake up by the beach?”

It was presumptuous of me to want to spend the night together; we never had.

“I don’t have any of my stuff…” She looked around her as if her belongings would materialize.

“I can have Alex grab us and we can swing by your place.”

She swiped her hand behind her and let her ponytail down, shaking her head.

Impulse took over and I gathered her close and kissed her right there on the street corner for the world to see. Mackenzie Miller is a new man…

“It’s late,” she mumbled.

“We can sleep in, order breakfast or whatever, walk on the beach, and Alex can bring us back in time for you to work.”

“And what about you?”

“That’s Corey’s problem.”

“He is going to hate me.”

I kissed her again, our mouths dancing against one another. Pulling back, I asked, “Is that a yes?”

“Okay. If it saves your place from the dust bunnies, I’m in,” she said with a smile, and I pulled out my phone.

Alex grumbled a bit until I added I’d be bringing Frances, and all of a sudden he was on board with the idea.

With Frances asleep on my shoulder, we pulled into the driveway around a quarter after midnight. With a soft kiss to her forehead I woke her, and she looked up as if she wasn’t exhausted. I helped her out of the car, grabbing her duffel, and we walked to the front door.

“What about Alex?”

“He will stay in the pool house,” I told her.

My house might be a funky bungalow, but it was the separate quarters in the back that had sold it to me.

Inside the house, Frances slipped off her shoes, her pink toes matching the soft hue on the walls. “It’s so beachy here,” she said. “So different than your apartment. I like it.”

“I always felt like it had a few touches of Milly’s place.”

“It does.”

This time it was Frances who stood on her tiptoes and kissed me, her duffel falling at our feet. We stayed that way for a while in the hallway until our bodies were grinding and moving along one another, seeking friction.

“Does it feel too fast?” I didn’t want to push her, but my lower half was urgent to get involved with Frances’s entire being.

“No. It’s been a little rocky, but this feels right,” she told me, and I lifted her up immediately.

Not making it farther than the kitchen, I set her on the counter and continued to kiss her while my hand worked its way around the back of her pencil skirt, unzipping the fabric. “Lift,” I told her, and she did as she was told, her ass rising off the quartz.

I shimmied the skirt off, and before doing what I wanted, I lifted her blouse off. A button popped yet she didn’t seem to mind. My mouth came to hers again before I yanked back and took her in. In a mint green satin bra and white lace panties, she was perfection.

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