She looked over her shoulder at the kid. “I am in high school. Starting this fall.” With that small fact apparently clarified to her satisfaction, she turned back to him to resume their stare-down. “And I’m not grounded. I’m allowed to date.”
“Bullshit.”
Her chin came up. “Call my mom.”
“You can bet your grounded ass I will.” With that guarantee hanging in the air, he took her arm, turned her around, and started walking. “My office,” he growled at Louis, not bothering looking back to see if the boy obeyed. No need. He knew where the kid lived. Holding the baby carrier in one hand, his prodigy of promiscuous behavior in the other, he followed Lilah down the alley, herding all the females currently turning his life upside-down to the street. Fuck it. When had he signed up for this? For trading in the peaceful, predictable bachelor existence he’d taken too much for granted into a harrowing series of calamities that promised to put him in an early grave?
When they reached Lilah’s Jeep, he handed the carrier over so she could latch it into the car seat. Mia pulled free of his hold and faced him. “You’re being a dick.”
“We can debate that in thirty years, after you’ve pulled your fourteen-year-old child out of a lip lock with a sixteen-year-old. Until then, I’m done.”
He meant he was done with any discussion centering around his alleged overreaction to what he’d seen, but the way Mia’s face paled, the way her mouth trembled, and her eyes grew bright, told him she’d interpreted his words in a much more final way. She stepped back, sank her fists into the pockets of her black zip-up Pirates hoodie, and stood there like a little island of hurt. big wounded eyes looked up at him out of a flushed face. “So, now that I’ve pissed you off, you’re done? You don’t want me anymore, either?”
Damn it, he’d wanted to see some hint of remorse from her, but now that he did, he felt like a bastard. Those eyes hit him like a one-two punch—a blow to the heart and to the gut. The solitary stance made her look even younger than she was, more fragile than she’d ever appreciate, and so alone it killed him. Going purely on instinct he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in for a tight hug. She pressed her face to his shoulder. “I want you,” he muttered against the top of her head. “I love you, Mia. That’s why I’m angry. And yeah,” he went on when he heard her muffled sob, “I know how fucked-up that sounds. You’ll just have to trust me on it.”
God, he was in over his head. Doing and saying everything wrong and screwing up so badly she’d probably need a team of therapists just to recover from this summer. He met Lilah’s gentle gaze over the open back door and felt some of the pressure in his chest loosen at her small nod of approval. She rolled her finger in a “keep talking” gesture.
Okay. Okay. Okay. He took a deep breath and sorted out his thoughts. “Nobody’s done with you,” he murmured to Mia. “Least of all me. I just got you, for God’s sake. But we are going to talk about this—about boys and boundaries—once I’m done—”
“I’m allowed to hang out with boys.” She raised her tear-streaked face to his as she said it, but he didn’t miss the fact that she’d already changed her tune by a note. Maybe Jen and Jack allowed her to “hang out” with boys, but to his mind there were many miles between “hanging out” with a boy and getting to first base with one.
“I’m going to talk with your mom first, but Mia”—he eased his hold and backed up so he could rest his hands on her shoulders, and they could look at each other face-to-face—“you’re under my care this summer. You’re my responsibility. This may be an area where your mom and I don’t see eye-to-eye, and if that’s the case, you’re going to have to go by my rules when you’re here.” Once I figure out what the hell they are. “If that means you’re done with me, I’ll live with your decision. I’ll put you on a flight back to Pittsburg. I won’t like it”—he gave her shoulders a quick squeeze—“but I’ll do it, because I have to be the grown-up.”
She sniffed and scrubbed her wet cheeks with her hands. “I don’t want to leave.”
“Good.” He pulled her in for another quick hug before opening the passenger door for her. “’Cause I don’t want you to leave.”
But as he stood on the sidewalk watching them drive off, he couldn’t help wondering how much the nervous kid sitting in his office right now had to do with her wanting to stay.
You thought she hung around here all day because of you. Ha.
Fourteen. Christ. Did she even…? He mentally winced. Just because she looked like a young adult in full bloom didn’t mean she was. Did she actually know about sex?
And why, when the word sex came up, did a memory of Lilah sleeping in his office with her long legs propped on his desk and her breasts bared to his greedy eyes automatically form in his mind? Why did his twisted imagination insist on embellishing the memory with a vision of him running his hands over her smooth thighs, running them all the way up and under her skirt and lingering there while he leaned in and closed his lips very, very gently over one tight nipple? And why, in this vision, did Lilah sink her hands in his hair and hold him to her while she moaned, “Yes, Ford. Yes”?
Fuck. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed Jen’s number before he turned to go back to The Goose and deal with the other half of this mess. Should he get his gun first?
Probably not. Louis already looked scared enough to swear off sex for the rest of his natural life. And at his age, the poor guy likely didn’t even fully understand what he was swearing off. Shit. Ford rubbed his forehead where a headache pounded like a bar-fight. If he ended up having to give two horny kids a birds-and-bees talk, he’d just as soon use the gun on himself.