Page 26 of Binding Their Hearts

Jay blinked, because fuck, man, crying was for at home and Danny’s office and not the dogs-and-nachos line at the arena. “But you’re here now. Stuff that happened happened. We can do things different from now on, though. That’s what matters.”

“Yeah.” Kevin smacked his back, rattling him a little. “We’re gonna do things differently from now on. Count on it.” He clapped his hands and ruffled the boys’ hair. “Okay, team, we’re on deck. What are we ordering?”

Jay settled into the familiar think-on-your-feet pace of being the favorite uncle. But tonight he got to be the little brother, too, and for once being in his brother’s shadow felt less like a punishment for failing to live up to Kevin’s accomplishments and more like a safe place to share his own.

Chapter thirteen

Jay

Oscar’s diner flitted between bright and dim with the passing clouds, but the sunshine poured on the power as the bell above the door chimed and Alice stepped inside.

The light exposed how tired she looked, like she’d been climbing a steep grade in the wrong gear and wouldn’t make the top.

Jay hustled up from his seat at their regular lunch table, extending his arms while she unzipped her jacket. She gave him a soft peck on the cheek and a “hey, stud” that was half a sigh as she reached him, then hung her purse over the chair.

“Hey yourself, most marvelous mistress of my”—shit, he’d run out of M words. “Uhh, of my many…” He swiveled her like Henry would, but wrapped his arms across her collarbones in a hug for a hot second before he pulled her coat off her shoulders.

“Cuffs.”

“My many cuffs?” He didn’t have a collection of cuffs. Unless she knew something he didn’t, and Henry had finally decided he was ready. Maybe because he’d been so spectacular—Alice’s praise—and exceedingly vigorous—Henry’s praise—during her rope bondage Friday. “Are they new? Is this a toy for”—he dropped his voice to reach just her ear—“room checks?”

Alice never used toys during their room checks, but they hadn’t even been doing them for six months yet—and his rewards always satisfied.

Her laugh counted as a reward too, a victory over whatever work thing weighed her down today. “No, but I’ll have to ask Henry about toys if you’d like that. I meant my windbreaker. The cuffs are elastic.” She wriggled and shimmied, her hands dangerously close to his junk. “Okay, all good.”

All good would be enough privacy for a nooner with Alice telling him how she wanted it. But getting her coat off and draping it around her chair as he pulled it back for her finished a close—middling—enh, a distant second.

“Not all good,” he whispered, scooting her closer to the table. “Sometimes we can be naughty.”

Winking, he took his seat across from her.

“Incorrigible.” She shook her head at him, but her smile held. “You’re racking up the bonus points today, Gentleman Jay.”

He tipped an imaginary hat. “All part of the service, bosslady.”

She peeled the paper wrapper off the napkin-silverware bundle, and her mouth did the little quirk that said ouch without saying ouch. “I wish my team felt that way.”

Whoops. Ix-nay on the osslady-bay for the foreseeable future. “Rough morning?”

“Rough week. I didn’t know it would be so…” She raised her shoulders practically to her ears and blew out a gusty breath as she dropped them. Her hair floofed in little waves of wheat. “The guys aren’t keen on me calling the shots. They like to conveniently forget that I’m the boss until Ryan gets back.”

The right answer for sure wasn’t to offer to knock them down in the playground and kick sand in their faces for her. “They suck.”

She waved her hand like the whole drama was nothing, but her dental-surgery grimace said things could’ve been way better. “It’ll be fine. We’re all adjusting. It’s only the first week. How’s your day been so far?”

He told her about Mrs. Eickhoff’s new granddaughter while they looked over the menu, as if they didn’t have the whole thing memorized after more than a year of weekly visits. “She showed me video. Scrunchy face, tiny fists, good lungs—you know, a baby.”

Alice laughed, so she must not have been too stressed—or he’d gotten amazingly skilled at making her comfortable. “She finally gave in and got a smartphone?”

“Oh hell no.” His favorite client would rail against those little nuisance boxes until the day she died. “Her son bought her one of those pads that sits in a cradle all the time. Like a TV. She says it reminds her of The Jetsons.”

Bonnie took their orders—pulled pork sammy and fries for him and the neat-as-a-pin club sandwich with chips for Alice. “Can’t risk anything that’ll spill on these clothes.”

She gestured toward herself, but nothing stood out as unusual, and the curve of her breasts was loads more interesting than the smooth, dressy under-top and the short sweater thing. He could’ve sworn he’d seen the same sort of outfit in the wash last week, just in different colors, but maybe not. “Are they dry clean?”

“No, I have to sit in on a pointless waste of time this afternoon. Quarterly planning meeting. Ryan did the advance stuff, and I don’t have to present, but I do have to be present. There’s so much admin—”

A ringtone sounded, jangly like a pinball game. Alice dug in her purse. “One sec, I’m sorry, that’ll be a troublemaker.”

---