Page 49 of One Last Shot

“I know the US naturalization process is really complicated. I’m sure Tom’s great, but maybe we should talk to an immigration lawyer instead?”

Even though it’s not actually possible and totally cliché, it feels like my heart skips a beat. “We?”

“Well,” she hedges, “yeah. We.”

I nod and hold in the smile that’s trying desperately to claw its way out of me.

“Okay. I’ll ask Tom for a recommendation.”

“Speaking of recommendations,” she says, “any progress on a new nanny?”

“Yeah, the agency sent over some bios earlier today. Want to see them?”

“Obviously.”

“You don’t trust me after Irina, huh?”

“Should I?”

“I want to do right by Stella,” I assure her.

“Then you need to find someone who’s going to love and support her, not some tyrant on a power trip.”

I both hate that she’s right and love that she understands what Stella needs and is telling me. I pull up the bios on my phone and move onto the couch cushion next to her, keeping enough distance that we’re not touching but that she can see my phone.

I reach across my body with the device so she can take it and look through the options, but instead she leans over, resting her head on my shoulder and looking down at the phone. I hold my breath, trying not to breathe in her scent, not to notice how warm her body is where it’s pushed up against mine, and definitely trying to forget about the fact that from this angle I can see right down her shirt and she doesn’t seem to be wearing a bra. I shift to rest my free hand under the arm that’s holding out the phone. Hopefully, she thinks I’m supporting my arm instead of trying to hide the bulge that’s growing in my pants as I soak in her proximity, her smell, and her amazing body.

She swipes through the bios, reading each resumé carefully and analyzing each person’s photo, then returns to a few for a second look. I try not to be the creep checking her out while she’s focused on important details regarding my kid, but I can’t help it. I’ve never been able to stop my reaction to Petra.

She tells me the three that would be her top choices, justifying each with statements like “she’s nannied for an only child before,” or “she really seems to love kids,” or “I like her approach to teaching self-discipline.”

“I’ll follow up with the agency and see if we can get interviews with them ... assuming you want to be part of that?”

“Of course I do,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say, resting my cheek on her head for a brief moment.

She burrows her head deeper into my shoulder, a shared armless hug that makes it feel like we’re progressing into trusting each other again. Then she stands abruptly. “I’m headed to bed.”

The disappointment flows through me like a heavy metal, making me feel lethargic and half dead. Then in response, my adrenaline surges. I want to fight to keep her here in this room with me.Let her go. You’re playing a dangerous game.

I know that in the end, Petra will leave. I know she has a life she loves and wants to get back to. I know that keeping her here with me and Stella, even in the short-term, isn’t fair to her. It’s like caging an eagle. She’s meant to be soaring somewhere else, not tied down here. And hoping for anything else is just setting myself up for disappointment. More importantly, the longer Petra stays, the more likely it is that Stella will be heartbroken when she leaves. That’ll make two of us. So I vow to keep Petra at a distance to protect both Stella and myself from the inevitable grief of losing her again.

“Goodnight,” I say, picking up my book off the coffee table. I refuse to look at her as she leaves, afraid that she’ll see what I’m feeling written plainly across my face.

CHAPTER14

PETRA

I wake up pissed off. Last night I claimed I was headed to bed, because I had to get out of that sitting room. Being around Sasha, just the two of us, was bringing back way too many feelings. The attraction and heat, which are so much more intense than when I was a teenager. The loss and devastation, which haven’t faded enough to fully heal. I was feeling them in a repeating cycle, like watching our history play out over and over again. It left me feeling vulnerable, and I don’t do vulnerable.

But when I climbed into bed after finishing up some work, all I could think about was that if I walked out the glass door and into the solarium, I could walk right into his room. I wanted that so badly my body hummed with the need to feel his hands on me, to taste his tongue against mine, to feel him stretch me wide open as he entered me slowly. And then I remembered all the reasons that was a terrible idea.

As much as I am still attracted to him, and even though I think he feels the same, our history and our present are both too complicated to further confuse things by having sex. So I settled for getting myself off to visions of him, which honestly has been the standard for a decade and a half—envisioning myself with the one who got away.

Except now that he’s back in my life, so much hotter than he was as a teenager and even better than I’ve been picturing as an adult in my fantasies, thinking about him while pleasuring myself no longer leaves me feeling satisfied. It leaves me feeling disappointed because I want the real thing instead. The man who now sleeps in a bed on the other side of my wall.

Fuck.In the early light of the morning, I’m feeling just as dissatisfied and sexually frustrated as I felt last night.

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