Page 8 of Snow Harm, No Foul

She’s too young. Travis’s ex-girlfriend.

Ex.

Maybe if they hadn’t hit it off the way they did that day, or I had made more of an effort to speak with her before he swooped in and stole her?—

Fuck. He didn’t steal anything. Ivy was never mine to begin with. If I repeat those things to myself enough, maybe they’ll start to get through my thick skull.

Ivy crosses her legs beneath the table. “You don’t think it’s unprofessional for us to work together, considering how we know one another?”

“No. We’re adults.”

Narrowing her eyes into a fierce glare, she asks, “Travis hasn’t made you believe I’m an evil cunt? Or has he, and this is your way of getting back at me? By sabotaging my new job?”

I flinch, and her glare softens slightly around the edges.

“No. And don’t call yourself a cunt.”

She shifts in the chair, obviously uncomfortable. Her thick black lashes flutter as she stares out the frosted window, sighing heavily.

“Do you know why we broke up?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Because if you do, I . . . I don’t think we can work together. I’ll have to excuse myself from the project.”

The pain in her voice has me on high alert, my protective instincts flaring. I hunch over the table and fix my gaze to her cheek, silently begging her to look at me again.

“What did he do to you?” I ask tightly, my jaw straining with the effort it’s taking not to let my anger show.

She shakes her head once, still avoiding looking at me. “He’s your son.”

“That doesn’t give him a free pass.”

“To most parents, it would.”

“I’ve never been most parents.”

And maybe that’s why my son turned out to be such an asshole. I let him get away with too much in an attempt to get him to choose me over his mother. Even after everything I gave, he still chose her. I raised a man who takes the world around him for granted because I was immature and reckless myself. The opposite of the kind of father I wanted to be.

Ivy turns her head, and our eyes catch. My head empties of everything but one simple word.

Mine.

The way it should have been all along.

She sniffles, and I zero in on the tear hanging from her lower lashes before it’s wiped away with the pad of her thumb. Her tongue slips along her bottom lip, wetting it. I clench my hands beneath the table to keep from reaching for her.

“He—Travis, he would text his friends things about me.”

“Like what?” I grit out.

Her cheeks turn so pink I can see it through her makeup.

“We don’t have to talk about this. If you don’t know, then we can still work together. I brought a folder of all of my ideas, and we can?—”

She reaches for the purse on the table, but I move quicker. Flinging my hand out, I wrap it around hers, the warm weight of her fingers soothing something inside of me. Her lips part on a silent gasp as she focuses on where we connect.

I slide my thumb over the ridges of her knuckles, entranced by her smooth-as-silk skin. I’d never have dreamed of touching her this way months ago, but now . . .fuck. I’m horny for a simple hand holding with a woman sixteen years younger than me. What kind of man does that make me?

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