Page 31 of Her Ex's Father
That gets me the barest flicker of a smile. “I’ll make sure he understands.”
I clap him on the shoulder, the way I always do before sending him out. “Keep me updated.”
He walks to the SUV without another word, and the engine hums to life a moment later. I stand there, watching the taillights vanish down the long drive, until the silence folds in again.
Inside, the house feels bigger than it should. The kind of big that isn’t about square footage but about absence.
It’s not just the ghosts that live here—Georgiana’s laughter in the hall, the echo of Derrick as a boy—it’s the ones I’ve managed to create for myself.
I shouldn’t have opened her door the other day. Shouldn’t have looked. Shouldn’t have let my eyes linger on the bare skin she didn’t quite hide with that sheet.
The memory comes back in sharp detail now: the flush high on her cheeks from unpacking, the soft line of her collarbone, the way she held my gaze even when she should’ve told me to get the hell out.
Dinner was a game of avoiding eye contact and making polite conversation.
I climb the stairs to my room, jaw tight. Close the door behind me.
There’s a perfectly good desk here, papers I could be working through, calls I could make. Instead, I sit on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, dragging in a breath that feels heavier than it should.
I think about her in the bath after I left—how her hair would float around her, how the water would bead on her skin, how she might tip her head back and close her eyes, the way she did when my fingers were?—
It’s wrong. Every part of it.
My hand slides over my thigh anyway, the pull too strong to ignore. I picture her mouth opening on a gasp, the way it did against mine that first night. The sound she made when I pressed her to the wall. The heat of her body wrapping around mine.
I work myself to the edge with those images, the guilt coiling tight with the pleasure until I can’t tell them apart. It’s been years of this, of taking care of theproblemmyself when my body decided it needed attention but now—now, nothing will ever feel as satisfying as feeling her lush ass press back against me formore.
When the memory breaks, I bite down on her name and swallow it, like that makes it less dangerous. My cock twitches in my tight grip, seeking heat and finding only disappointment.
When I finally lean back, breath still uneven, the truth’s right there waiting. I want her.
And no plan—no contract, no son to hand her back to—is going to change that.
I drag a hand over my face and lie back on the bed, staring at the ceiling until my vision blurs. I should be thinking about flightplans, about how to keep the press from tearing this situation apart before I’ve had a chance to fix it.
Instead, my mind goes back to breakfast this morning—to the brief, steady way she looked at me like I wasn’t the man who’d hijacked her wedding, but someone she’d been expecting all along.
At least, before she’d made a joke aboutoldermen waking up early, cracking a smile. It took everything I had to level her with a look instead of letting out the chuckle that rose in my throat. I’d bit back,A ranch girl like you is always up before the sun, isn’t she?
I shouldn’t enjoy it this much—talking to her, teasing her. Being teased about the age difference that the press will surely latch onto.
It’s enough to push me upright again. My feet hit the floor before I’ve decided where I’m going. I tell myself I’m just getting coffee, that I need the excuse to walk past her door.
But when I step into the hall, she isn’t there. Just a faint trace of her perfume in the air, leading back toward the far wing.
I stand there longer than I should, listening for her, before forcing myself toward the stairs.
The house is too damn big. I’ve thought that every day since losing Georgiana. But it’s starting to feel smaller now that Madeline’s in it.
Chapter 11
Maddie
The air smells like pine and snowmelt, crisp and sharp enough to sting my lungs as I step off the cobblestone drive and onto the narrow trail. The sky overhead is pale blue, the kind that looks freshly scrubbed, not a single cloud in sight when you catch it through the trees.
There’s a small watchman’s hut at the edge of the drive, and two men inside: one for security, I assume, and the other is a driver I recognize who must just be on call. They’re chatting and watching me closely as the toe of my hiking boot touches down softly in a bed of pine needles.
“Mrs. Bronson.”
