Page 45 of Love Notes & Lifelines
“Yes, sir.” The smile on this kid is blinding.
“Okay. I’ll have Elijah make sure your office is ready for you tomorrow.”
“T—Tomorrow?”
“I may be distracted by family obligations, but I didn’t get to where I am by dodging the tough stuff. So unless you want to be witness to the bloodbath that will be getting Caleb out of the building, I suggest you take the rest of the day off and come back tomorrow ready to help dig us out of this mess.”
“Yes, sir.” He almost salutes me before hurrying to pack up his files with a red face. Now I understand why Stella likes him so much—he’s got a good head on his shoulders and a heart that’s in the right place.
I’m rooting for him—and that’s something new for me too. The Stella effect is real.
“Oh,” I say when he’s almost to my door. “Cut out thesirshit. I’m only thirty-five. My name is Beck.”
His eyeballs might pop right out of his skull, but I’ve made the right decision. Don’t ask me why I’m putting all my faith in a girl who lied about her identity for six weeks when I’ve spent my entire adult life avoiding trust and complications, but I am. I follow my gut with business, and following that same logic, for whatever reason, Stella Anderson is the easiest decision I’ve ever made.
I enterthe penthouse at quarter past ten every kind of exhausted there is, but it’s replaced with worry when faced with the family room. I spin in a circle, searching for a point of reference.
Is this my apartment?
Stella’s been here since seven this morning, but this is not how I left the place, and she’s been busy today. She sent updates in picture form throughout the day of the girls at the park, reading books, and even making freaking dinner. It softened the thorns that have been in my chest since I took custody of the girls.
But that’s not what has me backtracking to make sure I entered the right apartment. The place is spotless, and the cleaners don’t come until Friday.
I move through the quiet space to the kitchen, and that’s where I find Stella, standing on a kitchen stool, scraping macaroni off my ceiling.
“Elijah’s all I have.”Her admission locked around my heart, and I can’t find the key.
“What are you doing?”
She gasps, spins, and every cliched romantic comedy my big sister ever made me watch comes to life when she falls. I run to catch her, but Daisie Dog chooses that moment to run circles around my leg, tripping me up, so by the time I make it to Stella, we’re both tumbling to the floor.
It’s nothing like the movies.
At least I cushioned her fall, but she knocked the wind out of me, and I’m wheezing while she scrambles to untangle herself from my arms and legs.
“Dang it, Daisie,” I groan.
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry. You scared the crap out of me. You said eleven. I had forty-five more minutes. Geez. Warn a girl, Beck.” She scolds me as if I’m a toddler and I feel my cock thickening beneath her weight.
Horribly inappropriate and dizzyingly fantastic in the same breath.
She stands quickly and I’m thankful for it—mostly. Our situation is already complicated enough.
“Beck,” she snaps, while I lie there smiling like a buffoon with Daisie Dog preening behind her.
There’s something about hearing her full, beautiful voice that softens more of those thorns around my heart. It’s not the muted version, the one I got through a speaker phone, bad connection, baby babble, anger, or a whisper. It’s a reminder that she sheltered herself away from me, either to deceive me or protect herself—probably both.
And apparently, I don’t care about her motives.
I don’t immediately move from my sprawled-out position, but my smile widens. In the movie, I’d be the lovesick fool fawning over a girl way out of my league.
My life is getting messier than Ruby in a mud puddle.
“Your deception should piss me off,” I say, using a jovial tone that feels foreign on my lips as I sit up. “But hearing your voice makes me happy.”
She shakes her head and offers me a hand. There’s no way her tiny frame could possibly lift me from the floor, but I take it to feel her skin against mine, then rise to my feet while currents of electricity pass through our joined fingers.
She’s so damn soft, and her small hand is delicate in mine, but there’s a strength to her that’s sexy as hell. It’s difficult to let go of her, but I do before it becomes uncomfortable.
