Page 49 of The Baby-whisperer and the Brute
I dropped the book and staggered backward, my heart thundering and heat blooming between my legs. Like the woman in the book, my nipples hardened and yearned to be touched.
Had Sully been thinking ofthiswhile I worked on his tie tonight?
Is this what he imagined happening? Hadwantedto happen—had his daughters not been there, of course.
I blinked a few times and looked around, searching for a clock. Red numbers glowed from a small device on Sully’s bedside table. I let out a sigh of relief.
It was still early—he wouldn’t be home for a while now. I’d completely lost track of time while reading. It was like I’d been transported somewhere else into someone else’s life.
As for my life, I felt like everything had changed in the past few minutes. What did it all mean?
On one hand, my nanny friends said the romances they read were escapism, fantasies they didn’t necessarily want to live out in real life but enjoyed visiting whenever they felt like it.
Maybe that’s all it was for Sully. An escape. A fantasy. A safe outlet for thoughts a single-dad training for a boxing match had no time to live out in real life.
On the other hand, he’d basically recreated the scene I’d just read.
Withme.
Chapter Fifteen
Twister
Angelina
I bent to pick up Sully’s book, planning to return it to the reading nook table and—if necessary—wipe it for fingerprints.
Oh no.The novel was closed—and the bookmark wasn’t in it.
Snatching the cardboard marker from the floor, I thumbed through the pages, trying desperately to relocate the place where Sully had marked his reading progress.
It was somewhere near the middle? Maybe. I wasn’t sure.
Unable to find the correct spot, I just stuck the bookmark, which bore the logo of Bonnie’s Bonny Books, between two random pages and set the book back down on the tabletop in the approximate location where I’d found it.
Before I went to my room to hide (and pray Sully had also forgotten where exactly he’d left off reading) I returned to his closet and took one of the other novels from the closet island dresser, from one of the lower cubbies on the back side.
If Sully was reading these books and imagining me in the scenarios they contained, I wanted to see exactly what I was dealing with.
* * *
Bad idea. Very bad.
I read the entire book in one sitting. The next day, I could barely meet Sully’s eyes. I managed to evade him nicely for most of the day, but unfortunately, that night was our weekly Game Night.
Sully had promised the girls we’d play anything they wanted. After several rounds of Go Fish and a game of Trouble, they begged for Twister.
“Please Angelina?” Skyla begged. “You never play this one with us, and it’s not as fun with only three people.”
“I’m not very good at it,” I said, scrambling for an excuse. “I fall down.”
The verylastthing I needed after reading that novel of Sully’s was to be in any twisty positions with him.
“Maybe you won’t fall this time. I want yoooouuuu,” Claire begged, dragging out the last word.
“Me too,” Sully said, then quickly corrected himself. “I mean, I’d love for you to play. With us. It would make the girls happy.”
“Please?” Skyla chimed in and blinked at me with her best puppy dog eyes.
