Page 25 of Protector Daddy

I traced his mouth again and this time, he gave the tip of my finger a light nip. “I like seeing you smile. I never have before tonight.”

“Didn’t have much reason to.”

“Are you just constipated naturally or do you have capital letter male baggage that means if I don’t hightail it, I’ll be writing bad song lyrics about you in a month?”

He turned his head to give his woeful dog a kiss on the nose and my heart turned over in my chest.

“Old, old baggage,” he said distantly. “Almost as old as you are.”

“The kind that lives on a hall tree in the coat closet for easy access or in a dusty box in the back of the garage?”

He tilted his head, clearly thinking it over. “Some of it is garage. Some is very much in the coat closet and I keep trying to wedge the door shut.”

I drew my lower lip between my teeth. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“On our first night together? Absolutely not. Especially when you’re already a flight risk—and that’s after I pulled out my A, B, and C games to try to win you over.”

I made a show of peeking under the covers. “If that’s your A, B, and C game, consider me won.”

“I wish,” he said lightly, dropping his forehead to mine before rolling away to land on his back on the mattress.

Boomer decided that meant the game was on once again and climbed on top of Christian, standing at his full height on his owner’s chest and groin while Christian fumbled his phone, groaning and laughing in agony from his dog’s tap dance on his torso.

On cue, his phone went off. I dangled over the side of the bed to grab it from where it peeked out from under the bed. Not a dustball to be found either.

A tidy housekeeper and a sex god? I should go play slots or something.

I snatched the phone, an older model iPhone, and realized not only did I not know the code to unlock it—duh—I wasn’t allowed to. Not because Christian wouldn’t let me answer his phone. I had a weird feeling he wouldn’t mind. But the rest of the world would ask questions and judge us and maybe I wanted it to be just ours for a little while.

“Am I being naive?” I asked him as I passed him his phone. “Thinking we don’t have to make our business public knowledge just yet?”

Rather than answer me, he just answered the call. “Masterson.” A pause. “Hey Chief, what’s up?”

Quickly, I grabbed the sheets and pulled them over my bare breasts as if he could see them. Which he could not, obviously. But he’d almost been my boss.

Until you mauled his officer. Good one, McNeill.

Oh, God, was he calling about my interview? Okay, probably not in the middle of the night on Halloween. He had a family, for Pete’s sake. A little girl and a baby on the way—

“Gina!” I exclaimed then clapped my hand over my mouth and prayed to be beamed up someplace soundproof where I couldn’t blurt out something inappropriate.

Christian started coughing. “Oh, that’s—that was just a friend. I mean, my sister. You know my sister, right? Maddie. Yeah. She wanted to come over for Halloween. Right. Family time.” Christian was turning three different shades of red at one time, and I was torn between hiding my own flaming face and watching his reaction in fascination.

Christian gave Boomer a light shove until his dog sighed and rolled off his father to barrel into me, knocking me over like a bowling pin. I ended up with a face full of black fluff as I sputtered and tried to flail my way free.

“What’s up, Chief? Oh, yeah, you know I’m a light sleeper.”

I wrestled with Boomer and filed that information away for another time. Waslight sleepercode for being a known insomniac?

Christian linked his fingers in Boomer’s collar, trying to restrain him while his tone went noticeably cooler. “The interview went fine. Better than fine. Is Gina okay? Oh, really? Contractions already? Yeah, I mean, I know some from Vee, but I’m hardly an expert. Do you want me to text my sister-in-law? She gets up to go into Brewed Awakening soon. Or…oh, Brady.”

My ears perked and I tried to calm the very excitable dog. Good luck there. But even with Boomer jumping on me, I heard Christian’s next words loud and clear.

“Are you serious? Mav and Van eloped tonight.”

FIVE

I clicked off my phone.“Gina’s resting. Seems like the contractions were a false alarm.”

---