Page 271 of Branded
Which I was quite desperate to do.
“It’s fine,” I said. “What did you want to discuss?”
He stepped a little closer, managed to rattle my world further while simultaneously making me realize I’d been wrong about the interest I’d thought he had. “It’s about Ethan’s dad.”
My mind still spinning a few hours later—and not because Mr. Philips had been too familiar and made me uncomfortable, but because of what he’d told me—I still had to go to work.
Still had to focus on work.
I’d gotten Ethan home and settled with an afternoon snack. We’d blazed through his homework (twenty minutes of reading and one math handout). Then I’d sent in my homework for the online classes I was completing.
Then dinner was ready, and Ethan was bathed and in jammies and ready to spend a couple of hours with Mary, who’d showed up at my door just as I had finished changing into my CeCe’s uniform—that consisting of a CeCe’s T-shirt, a pair of dark wash jeans that hid any inadvertent stains, and comfortable shoes.
I’d answered the door, said goodbye, gotten my last Ethan Hug of the night, and left, confident that Mary—who I’d met a few years before in an English class we’d both been taking at the local community college, and had moved in next door the previous year—had Ethan covered.
She was invaluable, short on cash as most college students, and Ethan loved her.
I thought she was great, as much family as anyone had ever been.
Mary would put Ethan to bed and stay at the apartment until I got home, spending her time studying, watching trash TV, and then eventually passing out on the couch until I arrived and woke her up to walk her next door.
All of this was the normal routine, one I could complete with my eyes closed. But this afternoon, it was a routine I’d completed with my mind a jumbled mess of thoughts, and considering my brain was still full of worry, I didn’t think the evening and post-shift one would go any better.
What the hell was I going to do?
What—
Loud laughter shook me out of my head, thankfully before the soda I was refilling could spill over the edges of the glass. Quickly, I pulled it away from the machine, set it on the tray. Focused.
Because the Breakers were in the house tonight.
And their women were in the house tonight.
And it meant…that Cas was in the house tonight too.
Also, why did I suddenly sound like I was a DJ in a club?
Everybody throw your hands up! Sexy Breakers players in the house tonight!
Losing it. Clearly, I was losing it.
And I needed more sleep and to spend less fantasizing about a certain hockey player and his yummy ass and his sexy, soft, rasping voice murmuring in my ear, his rough hands on my skin, his mouth brushing my skin, and?—
Cold liquid on my hand.
“Shit,” I muttered, yanking the next glass I’d been refilling away from the machine and using a paper towel to wipe the sides. Disgusted with myself, I set it on the tray, washed my sticky hands in the sink.
“Need some help?”
It was a question voiced in a sexy, soft rasp I instantly knew, a rasp that slid down my skin. Phantom lips trailing over my abdomen and belly and lower.
My head jerked up, eyes colliding with Cas’s.
They immediately filled with concern. “Are you okay?”
I tore my gaze away, went back to refilling glasses. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s just been a long week. Did Smitty decide to get another pitcher after all?”
Silence.
