Page 90 of My Forbidden Boss

“I have to admit, I’ve been back and forth a few times this year doing that,” Steph says.

“I thought you didn’t have a break for a month or so,” David says.

She lowers her eye to the ground. Something passes across her face and she draws her bottom lip between her teeth before forcing a smile back to her face. “Just needed to see my dad. Classes can be intense.”

“As a parent, I’m sure David is only too pleased to have you here,” Mom says.

Mom is being kind and she means nothing by her comment that’s meant to put us all at ease, but my mind instantly goes to her two-room apartment and the cold cinder block walls. Mom has been stuck there for years with no one to talk to when I was at school and then, after my senior year, at work. I never came home to see her conversing with a neighbor. Her face glows. Her eyes light and for the first time in a long while I see she’s interested. My knees buckle under the weight of my inadequacies. I never found a better way to care for her, even with my best efforts.

David places his hands over my shoulders, absorbing my attention. My gaze draws to his face. “You didn’t fail her, love. Everything you did was to protect her.”

A fireball slams into my chest. My eyes immediately heat and I blink back tears that appear from nowhere. I stare at David, wondering how he can understand me so well. How he can see what goes on in my mind without me uttering a word? Now I’m thinking this way, he’s always known right from the moment I bumped into him. So obvious, but I missed seeing it.

He sees everything about me.

He knows me.

His gaze tracks over my face, drinking me in, assessing, working out what he’s going to do, how he’s going to be. He stands so close his body heat sinks into me. My heart rolls, an enormous spin in bones and muscle that shakes my chest as effervescent tingles erupt deep in my abdomen. My skin prickles with heat and images streak through my mind; David kissing my mouth, my breasts, between my thighs. Me parting my legs to allow him to sink between them as he brings his mouth to my core. The fire that blazes through me at the wet heat of his tongue. The way he kisses up my body, captures my mouth with his as he thrusts into my willing body. The exquisite fullness as he slides all the way inside me.

David doesn’t let my shoulders go. His fingers curl around me, needing to hold me as much as I want him to.

How am I ever going to end this?

Why would I want to?

David’s mouth turns down as he reads my face. “Will you be all right for a couple of hours while I tie up some loose ends with Tristan before you meet with Max?”

“O…okay,” I say. A chill races through me, chasing away the lingering heat of my thoughts.

David gathers me against his chest, slides his fingers through my hair. One arm slides around my back, the other around my shoulders, anchoring me. Making me whole. I breathe in his scent. Male spice and comfort. A sigh eases through my body and I relax against him, my eyes falling closed.

Steph coughs and I’m pulled from my daydream. Her gaze tracks between her father and me and smirks. I pull away from David. Offer a smile. “I’ll be fine.”

“I discovered a show on Netflix. Watch it with me, Adeline. I need to know who Mrs Thistledown is,” Mom says.

“I love that show. Can I watch it again with you guys?” Steph asks.

“You’ve seen it before?” Mom asks.

“Yes, and it’s so good, but I won’t give away the secret. You’ll have to get to the end of series two for that,” Steph says.

I spend the afternoon watching David’s large screen TV with Mom, carefree and laughing. Margaret cooks for us and I eat because I’m worried. Steph engages Mom in easy conversation and peppers me with questions while David spends the afternoon in his office. The door remains closed and I ask Margaret to make some food for him and take it in.

The hours pass, and Margaret announces she’s made dinner for us. David joins us and time grows wings while I’m sitting next to him. I bury my worries beneath Mom’s bad jokes and David’s conversation. After dinner we talk some more until the day catches up with Mom.

I help her to bed, uncomfortable because she had to do this on her own and she never said a word to me. How much easier life would have been if we weren’t dirt poor. If I hadn’t had a dirtbag for a father.

“Was Max ever good to you?” I ask as she draws the blanket over her mangled legs. She’s never told me much about him, and I’ve never asked. When I was a child, he’d always been a concept rather than a reality. It was always me and Mom. After the accident, life was so hard I had no time to think about him at all.

Her lips tense and she smooths the wrinkles from the blanket. Her gaze flicks to me and drops again. “I never knew him well enough. It was just one night, sweetheart. One drunken night and then he left me. I thought there was more between us, but…” She shrugs, smiles and cups my cheek. “When I found out I was pregnant, I knew you were meant to be. You’re the best thing to happen to me. I just…I don’t want you belittled by your conception. Make you think less of yourself in any way.”

I sink onto the bed and take her hand. “Who am I to judge anyone, especially you? Life is filled with twists and turns, each bend forcing a choice. Some good, some questionable, but in the end, they’re only choices. It’s how we deal with them that counts,” I say.

She squeezes my hand. “There’s no wonder he’s besotted with you, sweetheart.”

I flinch. “I don’t…what I did…”

“Didn’t you just tell me it’s how we react to things that happen to us that counts? I see what he’s like around you. I don’t think a man like him would be like that if he wasn’t in love,” Mom says.

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