Page 72 of Ugly Duckling
He tapped me on said nose with the ball before pulling himself to his feet, and bringing me with him.
“Lottie, my little Beanie Weenie, we don’t throw balls at people that aren’t lookin’,” he ordered sternly.
“Yes, Daddy.” Lottie had the grace to look contrite.
I tried to wipe off the bits of rubber off my sweaty body, but it proved pointless.
“Daddy, catch?”
“Don’t throw it at her,” I warned. “She can’t catch for shit.”
Gunner’s eyes flicked to me. “You know this?”
“Look at that little red dot on her forehead,” I said. “I tossed it to her lightly earlier, she bobbled it, and managed to smack herself in the face with it three times before it hit the ground. She did it two more times before I realized that rolling it was going to be our answer.”
“Noted.” He rolled the ball to her, then she tossed him a rocket.
He caught it, looked at me with wide eyes, and said, “Holy shit.”
Despite the flirting from earlier, both of us went to our separate rooms when we finished with dinner.
I shifted restlessly in the bed, my gaze going to the alarm clock that I’d had since I was fifteen, and I groaned.
“Shit,” I muttered darkly.
My bedroom door pushed open, and a sexy, half-clothed man filled the doorway.
“You awake?” he asked.
I scooted to the side and said, “Sure am.”
He walked up to me and dropped onto the bed like a tree.
I bounced so high that my body nearly fell right off the other side.
He caught me and pulled me in tight before saying, “You need a bigger bed.”
“It’s perfectly acceptable for a girl that’s my height and weight. Not for over six-foot behemoths like you.”
He turned over onto his side, and despite the darkness making it impossible to see my face, he said, “Thank you for taking care of my girl today.”
I snuggled deeper into my pillow before replying with, “It was a lot of fun.”
He was silent for a long moment before he said, “Think I could get you to do it again tomorrow?”
Eighteen
Sometimes I read a text and think, “what a psycho” and then hit send.
—Sutton to her mom
SUTTON
“Think I could get you to do it again tomorrow?”
I turned over onto my side to look at him. “Of course. What’s going on, though? You said you had a day off tomorrow when you were feeding us dinner.”
He hesitated for a few long seconds before he said, “One of my first hires, Yates, you met him. He has been calling in a lot lately, dropping the ball on the project that I let him lead. He’s been gone more than he’s been there, and I have a really bad feeling about him.”
