Page 33 of The Secret

Consider me on fire and in dire need of an entire station full of hoses.

I tore my gaze away from his, almost running to the kitchen. Putting Bell in her bouncer, I leaned against the counter and attempted to make sense of the reams and reams of questions shooting through my brain while trying to still a succession of mini cyclones using my insides as practice for their destruction, whirling around my bones until my entire body was shaking.

I was in trouble.Bigtrouble.

I needed to pretend this wasn’t happening.

Because maybe this week the apartment had been too chaotic for me to notice; and maybe I should have paid better attention to how my belly did a little churning flip thing every time Murray walked into a room, which had nothing to do with a faulty thermostat. And maybe, if I hadn’t been so busy, I would have recognized sooner than ten seconds ago that I’d developed a Herculean sized crush on my boss.

But I hadn’t, and now it was only the three of us. Alone.

And as huge as the apartment was, I didn’t think there was anywhere I could hide.

7

Murray

Asoft, tuneless singing was coming from the connecting bathroom between Bell and Kit’s rooms as I walked into the nursery to wake the baby. The shower was doing a good job of trying to drown it out, but not quite good enough. Barclay was managing to sleep through the noise however, already lying on his bed in the corner of the nursery where he’d seemed to take permanent residence whenever Bell was in here.

I chuckled to myself, leaning over Bell’s crib to see her staring up at me with wide open eyes. It had been three weeks, and I knew I would never get enough of this, of gazing at my daughter.

“Looks like we’ve found something that Kit isn’t perfect at eh, Bells?” I lifted her gently, kissing her cheek and smelling her sweet baby scent as I held her for a little cuddle before putting her down on her changing table.

I congratulated myself on discovering that little nugget, because in the two weeks she’d been here, I had yet to find something that Kit couldn’t do. Every day there was something new that she revealed - another tantalizing part of herself - and I found myself impatiently sitting on the edge, drawn to her, jittery and impatient until the next piece of her was disclosed. It was like discovering a new and highly addictive TV show, only to find out the network was making you wait a week for the next episode. Or desperately needing to start the next chapter of a book you couldn’t put down, even though you should be sleeping.

But all it really did was serve the very necessary requirement for me to actively remind myself on the regular that she was off limits and I had to fucking behave. Couple that with the raging jealousy that surged through my veins the second that fuck, Foggerty, laid his eyes on her, or anyone laid their eyes on her, and I was a step away from writing it on my hand like I was still studying for finals. And I was struggling to come up with more excuses to stay away from her because my brain was actively defying me. It didn’t help that Penn and Rafe were in my ear all hours of the day and night, trying to make me crack.

Trying to make me admit they’d all been fucking right.

Something I was absolutely loath to do, because admitting out loud that I liked her, that I desperately wanted to touch her, taste her, smell her, wouldn’t just be a highway to Hell. No, that would be powering along theAutobahnin Rafe’s SCC Tuatara with no seatbelt.

But if I thought the first five days of not being around her was difficult, avoiding being alone with her as much as possible, distracting myself with work and spending obscene amounts of money on the most volatile investments just to replace the constant anxiety she put in my head with another, after we’d walked to the park it was nigh-on impossible.

Then my interfering family decided to desert me for a reason that had fuck-all to do with us settling in together, and everything to do with them pushing me further toward Kit.

They may as well have fed me to the wolves.

Except, I think-scratch that -IknewI was the wolf in this scenario, because every day my mouth watered with longing for her. It didn’t matter what she was doing or wearing, I wanted her more every day, like I’d lived in a cave for the entirety of my almost thirty-two years on this earth and never seen a woman before. I was a wank away from ordering her to wear a burlap sack, not that it would make any difference. She’d still look like an autumnal angel with her honey blonde hair and darkcafé-con-lecheeyes, peering at me through long thick lashes.

But that was nothing compared to her kindness and understanding; the way she played with Bell for hours on end, reading to her, talking, teaching – all of which was her job, but I hadn’t expected her to be quite so good at it, because, let’s face it, there’s no riveting two-way chat with a baby. Even the non-judgmental way she’d reassured me when I’d opened up to her when I’d almost lost it and bawled like Bell in front of her. Not to mention her sense of humor, her patience, her ability to make anything seem easy. Barclay was besotted with her. The doormen and building concierge were besotted with her, everyone was besotted.

Fuck, and she’d started baking.

Even the terrible singing was adorable. Terrible shower singing, where she currently was. Naked.

Wet.

Fuck’s sake.

I shook my head, hard, before my dick and my brain ganged up on me with a torrent of inappropriate thoughts. All before my heart got in on the action too; a piece of me I’d been ignoring, mostly because it now belonged to Bell. My heart had never been owned before. I’d never given it away freely, but Bell had carved her name into it the second she’d opened her eyes. And I’d almost succeeded in convincing myself that the tight squeezes and heavy thudding it gave out when Kit was with Bell was because of Bell, and nothing else.

As if to reinforce that theory, Bell let out a little gurgle, blinking up at me with her incredible eyes. The baby books I’d been reading said they would change color, but the pale shamrock green hadn’t disappeared. The only difference was the appearance of a delicate ring of navy around the outside, the one just like mine. She continued gurgling and staring up at me as I unwrapped her from the duck-covered swaddle she slept in, put her in a fresh diaper and opened the drawer underneath for her first outfit for the day. I’d very quickly learned that nothing stayed clean for long. I’d also learned how to properly fit a diaper, because if you didn’t, those things fucking leaked and that was something no one enjoyed.

I glanced down, seeing that Kit had organized her clothes by night and day, then color coded them all; a level of organization that I both appreciated and was secretly impressed by, and could probably do with in my life. I picked out a tiny navy blue cashmere onesie, made to look like a boiler suit, which Rafe had bought her, with Bell’s name embroidered on the front pocket underneath a little bunny. And I gave zero shits about how much I enjoyed dressing her, because my daughter was fucking cute. And beautiful.

I was a bona-fide girl dad and proud of it.

I froze as the shower stopped. While I didn’t expect Kit to walk into Bell’s room, the thought of her dripping wet, wearing only a towel, was absolutely too much for my brain, and dick, to cope with so early in the morning. I scooped Bell up and carried her downstairs as quickly as possible, Barclay hot on my heels.

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