Page 56 of The Perfect Mistake

And the guilt bursts free out of that drawer. I shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have thought that. It’s only going to make the inconvenient attraction that much worse… and I haven’t fantasized like that about a woman in years. Beat off to pictures of her in my mind. I came, because of her.

And yet it’s the best orgasm I’ve had in weeks. And judging from the way my thoughts are spinning, it won’t be the last time she’s my cock’s muse.

I run my clean hand over my face. Shit.

Kissing her twice had been… regret is the appropriate emotion, and yet, it’s hard to feel it when the kisses are that sweet. Maybe that only makes me worse.

She’s Connie’s best friend.

She’s fifteen years younger.

She needs a job and a place to live.

She’s already complained about guys coming on to her. And I’m her employer. And so far outside the lines I’ve set and maintained for most of my life.

And… my wife has only been dead for five years.

Nausea makes my stomach roll.

What are you doing, I ask myself bitterly. Isabel doesn’t want you. Not really, even if she had made it beautifully clear the other day that she liked the kisses. That made my ego swell to the point that I had to kiss her again, right there, in the bright daylight of my own living room. It had been sheer luck that stopped us before Katja arrived.

I pull back the covers and head to the bathroom. Getting into the shower, I turn the water temperature to cold, and colder, until the icy stream stings against my skin. It washes away the remnants of my orgasm and the lingering heat.

And it feels exactly what I deserve.

The kids will be awake soon. Saturday’s are our days, without Katja and without work, unless I’m traveling for business. Between Contron and my kids, it’s not like I have anything to offer Isabel. The thick rod between my legs might think differently, but it’s wrong. I’m not going to start an affair with my kids’s nanny.

She deserves infinitely better than that.

And it wouldn’t be right for me to cross that boundary.

Thirty minutes later, I’m clean and in the kitchen. I’m halfway through making the pancake batter when the first kid wanders in. It’s Sam, his eyes blinking rapidly and his superhero pajamas slightly askew.

“Dad?”

“I’m here.” I leave the bowl on the counter and pick him up. It won’t be long now until that becomes an impossibility. He smells like sleep and kid, and I walk us back to his bedroom. “Your glasses, buddy. That’s why you can’t see clearly.”

“Oh.” He rests his head against my shoulder as I gather the discarded frames from his nightstand. The optometrist mentioned Sam will likely grow out of needing glasses, but only if he’s diligent about wearing them.

“Can I watch TV?” he asks.

“Sure. Pancakes will be ready soon,” I say and halt by the couch. I raise an eyebrow. “Want to go flying?”

The smile lights up his whole face. “Yes!”

I toss him onto the couch, and he shrieks in delight, bouncing on the cushions. Again, again, and I do it two more times before turning on the TV and returning to the bowl of batter.

That’s the sort of thing Victoria would have disliked. I’ve stopped feeling bothered, but in the first few years of being a single father, I heard the ghostly traces of her voice every time around the kids. Don’t do that. Do it like this. You can’t let her get away with it. Alec, don’t hold him so high.

I don’t hear the admonitions anymore.

During some of the hardest moments, when both kids were small and crying at the same time, I would hear her berating me, and it would piss me off. If you wanted to be a mother so badly, you shouldn’t have died and left me to do this by myself.

Later, when the kids were calm and peace once more restored, those thoughts always made me feel guilty. She didn’t choose to leave their lives. Or mine. But when you’re sleep-deprived and toeing on the edge of sanity, fairness feels like a very foreign concept.

I watch the top of Sam’s head as I whisk the batter. He’s humming along with the intro song of his favorite show about crime-fighting dogs. I should have more weekends like this. Weekends with my kids. But the demands of Contron and my family feel like a never-ending civil war.

Willa wakes up soon after. She gives me a hug, and I kiss the top of her hair. “Blueberry pancakes?” she asks.

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