Page 42 of Sweet Thing

Another strike came, this time to my mouth. I felt my lip bust open, the ooze of blood. Then someone was shouting.

Not me. I was too passive. Too absurdly quiet about this assault on my person.

Those yells were from Rosie.

By the time she reached me, he was gone, sprinting back up the hill toward the hostel, taking with him any self-assurance I’d possessed, any modicum of bravery I felt about striding out into the world.

“Addy! Oh fucking hell, what did he do to you?” She cradled my head and held me close. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let you go alone. I had this weird feeling and decided to call it a night.”

“It’s okay,” I muttered into the crook of her arm. “You didn’t know.”

Six weeks later after a visit to Lucca, Florence, and Siena in Italy, we came home, cutting the travels short by two months and pleading homesickness as our excuse. It wasn’t entirely untrue. I wanted the bosom of my family, the familiarity of home, the safety of being a Kershaw. I swore Rosie to secrecy because if my family knew, it would confirm everything they thought they knew of me: that I was weak, delicate, in need of protection.

It would confirm what I knew of myself.

I had taken on this nanny gig, not just to help Lars or to ensure Mabel was cared for, but to heal and find the one thing I needed.

A way back to myself.

ChapterEleven

Lars

Fuck,I was tired. I expected I could sleep for a week after the trip to New York. We’d had a good game, a 4-2 win, and the flight back was in a word, raucous. I tried to join in but all I could think of were my new responsibilities.

I was someone’s father and what I knew about parenting could fit on the surface of a puck. The last three days were spent in a fugue: practice, gym, run, skate, eat, sleep—barely—and start all over again. I was a wreck. I needed to get to grips with this monumental change in my life or my game was going to suffer.

Thank God for Adeline. Reaching out to me when she heard about the paternity test was not on my bingo card. I shouldn’t have called her from the locker room, but I’d needed to hear her voice, a calm I took with me into the game.

Just after four in the morning, I let myself in, reset the alarm, and tiptoed through the house. We had moved Mabel’s crib to the guest room, so I knew that’s where Adeline would be sleeping. She had said she wanted to be close as it made things easier when the baby woke up. All good. To be fair, I didn’t need to check in on the baby. I had no doubt that she was sleeping, in good hands, doing better without me—or a combination of all of the above.

I checked the guest room anyway.

Empty.

My pulse spiked in panic. Maybe Adeline had taken Mabel to her parents’ house, but surely, she would have told me. She’d texted about everything else, not that I really needed to know things like,Mabel sucked down her bottle like a champorMabel slept for four hours!My lack of excitement about this stuff affirmed I was a bad choice and the sooner I could get Vicki back in the mix, the better.

I whipped out my phone. No message. Stepping into my bedroom, I got the shock of my life.

Adeline, in my bed, like some sort of Goldilocks checking out the mattress situation. Beside her, on the same mattress, was the bassinet with a chubby little fist resting on the edge, playing peek-a-boo. Adeline’s hand was close, as if she was God reaching out to Michelangelo’s Adam to give him life.

My thundering heart calmed, relieved at finding them both safe, but that state didn’t last as my senses recalibrated and recalled that a very attractive woman was in my bed. The duvet cover was pulled back to reveal a shapely leg joined to an even more shapely ass, the curve of it enough to make my mouth water. Her underwear was that boy short type, but nothing about this woman’s form suggested “boy.” I’d never expected to see it and because of that, I wasn’t ready.

But my cock was. There it went, stirring up a storm, and it wasn’t just her ass that had me in tatters. One perfectly rounded shoulder with what I imagined was silky, touchable skin, just begged for my lips.

Why was she in my bed? What was wrong with the guest room? And was Mabel okay?

On cue, the baby made a gurgling noise and gave a fist pump like she was celebrating my win—all of them: hockey, fatherhood, a hot woman in my bed. The thought made me chuckle and the sound made Adeline stir.

She turned over, blinked, and pulled at the duvet, an instinctive move to cover herself. But there was more. She jerked her body away so quickly her head thumped the headboard. I got the impression she would’ve drilled through the wall if she could, so eager was she to put distance between us.

The light from the corridor highlighted more than shapely curves and soft skin. It shone on the fear in her eyes.

I took a step back. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you’d be here.”

“I—” She shook her head and turned to the baby. Relief passed over her features, though she didn’t relax. Her body remained on high alert. “I planned to be awake before you came back.”

“We made good time.” I leaned against the doorframe, aiming for casual. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

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