Page 75 of Never Bargain with the Boss
My cock surges in my pants. Fuck yes, I want to do naughty things everywhere with Riley. But I shift in my spot on the couch, willing my eager dick to calm the fuck down. Now is not the time, not with Grace upstairs. And not with Riley needing reassurance that this goes well beyond mere fucking.
Truthfully, I’ve come to enjoy our evenings on the patio and look forward to them all day, wanting to hear about her day, watching the sky turn black and stars come out, and slowing down in a way I don’t think I’ve done for a long, long time. I think these moments of stillness with her at my side are where I feel most thankful that I’m still alive, a concept I don’t think I’d considered a short while ago.
“You said you’re coloring your hair in the morning. I love the pink. Honestly, I hate how much I love it,” I confess, twirling a soft lock around my finger and staring at it appreciatively. “Like cotton candy I want to suffocate in.” She laughs as I press my nose into the strands and wiggle back and forth. “What color is it naturally?”
I’m not sure why I want to know. Maybe because it feels like a piece of the Riley puzzle and I want to accurately picture her through every phase of her tumultuous life.
“I don’t even know anymore.” She laughs. “When I was young, it was dirty blonde, but it’s been so many colors. Pink, black with white tips and white with black tips, every color of blue from pastel to navy, blonde, red. Don’t get too used to pink. I’ll change it at some point.”
As she lists out every color in the crayon box, I try to picture each and every one but fail. “When I met you, I thought the pink was strange. Now, I can’t imagine you any other way,” I confess.“But I think your hair could be rainbowed all over and I’d think it was perfectly Riley.”
She snuggles into my side, wiggling happily. “What else did you think about me?”
I chuckle. “That sounds like a trap.”
She peers up at me, her eyes earnest. “It’s not. Really, I’d like to know.”
I swallow thickly, amazed at how much has changed in such a short period of time. “I thought you were young, interesting looking, and your entire presence virtually shouted at me from across the room. Your hair color, the cute little fang-toothed smile, the frayed edges of your jeans puddled on your shoes, and the bracelets. Fuck, the damn bracelets drive me crazy,” I groan, teasing a fingertip over the stack on her wrist.
“So I’ve heard,” she teases with a sexy smirk. She twists her wrist back and forth, making them clink and clang, the sound virtually a song to me now. Looking at them thoughtfully, she says, “When I was younger, I survived in two ways—by being helpful and by being quiet. The helpful part I told you about, how I went from taking care of the other foster kids to taking care of kids as a nanny. The being quiet was a harder lesson to unlearn.”
She presses her lips together, but I can tell it’s not the end of her story, so I wait patiently for her to find her way back to the past she’s tried so hard to leave behind.
“One day, I met a woman with the coolest style. She was wearing bright red lipstick, thick black framed glasses, and loads of jewelry, more than I could ever dream of. I told her I liked them but asked her how she could manage being loud like that because you could literally hear her coming down the street. Like bells tinkling.” Riley smiles softly like she’s remembering the woman fondly. “She gave me this sad look and said, ‘Who told you being quiet was a good thing?’, and when I answered,‘Everyone,’ she got so mad. She said a few choice words but mostly told me it was okay to be loud, to take up space, and to be seen. That blew my mind.” She shakes her head, and I hate that something so basic seemed beyond her at one point.
“She was so confident and sure of herself and her place in the world. I wanted to be like that too, so I started looking for things I liked at thrift stores and slowly began collecting. Jewelry is also easier because it doesn’t take up much space in my suitcase, and if I don’t take it off, I don’t even have to worry about packing it in a hurry when I leave.”
“Jesus, Riley,” I hiss, horrified at how awful that sounds. No, not awful… fatalistic. Like leaving is a surety. I understand why she’d feel that way given we’ve both had people leave, but the cavalier manner in which she discusses it makes me want to destroy everyone who’s ever hurt her.
She shrugs, unbothered by it. “It makes me feel like that woman—confident, seen, important. So I always wear them. Especially since you never know who might be watching and thinking they’d love to be that seen too.”
“I love them even more now that I know what they represent to you,” I tell her, pressing a kiss to her inner wrist and several metal bracelets at the same time.
“Do you want to know what I thought of you at first?” she asks, a fiery glint in her eye.
I frown hard. “I’m sure I can guess. Old, uptight asshole?”
She tilts her head, unabashedly saying, “Yeah, but I could tell you loved Grace. That’s the only reason I considered this job. I’ve never worked for a single dad before. Always families, and Bianca was a single mom, but never a single dad. Until you.”
“And look how this turned out,” I joke, pulling her tighter against me and burying my face in her cotton-candy hair again.
We talk late into the night, and I’m painfully tempted to bring her back to my bedroom again, but the idea of hersneaking out in the middle of the night or in the morning before Grace wakes up feels disrespectful. I don’t want to hide her. I want to walk into every room with her at my side, proud to be with her.
But that requires a conversation with my daughter. A private, one-on-one conversation so I can see what she thinks and how she feels about my finding someone because that’s something we’ve never discussed. I never thought I’d need to talk about that with her since it wasn’t going to happen.
Until it did. Until Riley.
So for now, I’ll play the part of the good dad the way I have so many times before and deny myself for Grace’s sake. But feeling confident that it’s late enough that Grace is snoring away in her room upstairs, I pause at the back door.
Unable to stop myself, I wrap Riley in my arms, holding her tight. I tilt her chin up and steal a kiss. Her lips are soft, and when she opens for me, I slip my tongue inside to tangle with hers. But it’s not a kiss with a mission. We’re just enjoying the moment the way she’s taught me to.
Too soon, we both pull back.
“Good night,” she whispers. She understands, even without us saying it. It’s just another sign of how perfect she is.
“Good night,” I whisper back.
We put our mugs in the dishwasher and then stand at the kitchen doorway, delaying going our separate ways. “It feels weird to kiss you and then go upstairs,” she confesses.