Page 118 of Bottles & Blades

Lucky he showed me what a good man can be like, so that I recognized that same goodness in Jean-Michel.

“—if he hurts you, it’s game-fucking-on.”

Thirty-Six

Jean-Michel

I hangup the phone and sigh.

“What is it?” Tiff asks.

It’s Friday night.

These last two weeks have been remarkably uneventful compared to the previous one.

I went to work. Tiff went to her classes and her nannying gig.

I went to her place.

She came to mine.

We ate meals together. We made out and messed around and spent every night in each other’s arms.

We saw her parents. We had dinner with Chrissy and Rory and their guys at Chrissy’s house where my daughter’s prissy cat showed that, once again, she is an excellent judge of character.

Joan of (freaking) Arc—the cat—had jumped into Tiff’s lap and hadn’t moved all night.

Damn feline took two years to trust me, but one look at my woman and she fell in love.

I know the feeling.

Smothering my grin—because I’ve spent these uneventful weeks making a plan—I turn to Tiff and adopt my best frustrated expression.

It’s a long weekend.

Tiff doesn’t have school on Monday.

Stefan and Brit have done me a favor and made other arrangements for their daughter.

All of which means that my woman is free until Wednesday.

Andthatmeans I have five days.

Not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things.

But it’s enough for one small thing—or rather, a big one.

Tiff comes over to me, settling her hand on my arm. “Jean-Mi,” she says, “is everything okay?”

I shake my head. “I need to get on a plane.”

Her brows drag together. “What’s going on?”

“There’s a crisis in one of the overseas offices,” I lie. “I’m going to have to fly out and handle it myself.”

“Oh,” she says softly, disappointment crawling across her face.

Does it make me an asshole that I enjoy that?

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