Page 52 of Under Control
She had a point. The work he’d put into finding the perfect way to introduce Olivia, Julia and Isaac in a way that enabled them to ease into it would be a waste if one of the kids walked in on them having sex. Since, as far as he knew, neither of them had done that yet, it would probably be a little traumatic.
“Can we at least turn the TV on and make out on the couch a little?”
She ran her hand up his stomach, making every muscle in his body clench, and hooked her finger in the neck of his T-shirt. “A little. And the clothes stay on.”
“I can work with that.”
Chapter Thirteen
Breakfast the next morning was cold cereal, though Derek made them each have a banana on the side, per their mother’s wishes. But he didn’t have the energy for making pancakes after a restless night of tossing and turning.
Making out on the couch with Olivia had been sweet. But not stripping her naked and then walking her to her car with an erection that wouldn’t quit hadn’t been as sweet. And the cold shower had not only sucked, but it hadn’t really helped.
He understood her reluctance—especially considering the way she’d met the kids’ mother—but he hoped she got over it soon because when the kids’ schedules got more rigid, so did his. Her not wanting to spend the night with him if his kids were there was going to put a serious crimp on things.
“Have fun yesterday?” he asked, sitting down at the table with his own bowl of cereal and a mug of coffee almost as big as the bowl.
“Yeah,” they both said at the same time.
“I like Wren,” Julia added. “She was funny.”
Derek had noticed that Wren seemed a lot more relaxed when she was talking with the kids than with the rest of them, and she’d seemed to particularly enjoy talking to Julia. His daughter could be shy at times and, though she’d met them over the years, she was still getting to know his current crew on a family level. A few families from the shift he’d worked before Jeff Porter retired had shown up, but Julia had still spent a lot of time sitting in the shade with Wren, reportedly talking about books.
Wren was still a little bit of a puzzle. He’d heard she could come off as reserved—almost walled off somehow—and he’d found that to be true for the most part. But over time she’d relaxed a little and he saw glimpses of the woman Grant had fallen for. When she was with Grant, she was more animated and everybody could sense the connection between them.
Then he wondered if the people around them could sense the same kind of connection between him and Olivia, which sent him back down the mental path to how hard it had been to say goodnight to her.
“When do you think we’ll see her again?” Julia asked and, for a moment, Derek was pleased his daughter sounded as excited to see Olivia again as he was. “She likes books a lot.”
Of course. They hadn’t been talking about Olivia. She meant Wren. “I’m not sure. You know we start doing a lot of stuff for the holidays with the fire department, so you’ll probably see her then.”
Did Olivia go home for the holidays? By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, they’d be well into meeting-the-parents territory, but he wasn’t so sure he wanted to meet hers anytime soon. And his family was hard-core into the holiday, so that might be too high-pressure a setting for Olivia to meet his mom and dad.
Soon, he thought. He’d told them he was seeing somebody, but not much more than that because his momreallywanted him to find somebody, so he was reluctant to get her hopes up. But now he wanted Olivia to meet them. To see the house he’d grown up in and, maybe on a second trip, meet his siblings.
“Dad, you’re not eating your cereal,” Isaac pointed out. “If you let it get mushy because you’re dawdling, you still have to eat it.”
Another of Mom’s rules, he thought, smiling at his son. “I’ll eat every bite.”
And he took a bite to prove the point, and barely managed not to cringe. It had definitely absorbed enough milk so he’d probably dump it if he didn’t have little witnesses he was supposed to be a role model for.
Maybe if he kept talking, they wouldn’t notice and he could toss it after they wandered away from the table. “Did you guys like Olivia?”
“I did,” Isaac said.
Julia only shrugged but her mouth tightened just like her mother’s did when she wasn’t happy about a topic of conversation. Or when she wanted to say something she knew Derek wouldn’t want to hear.
“She liked you both.” Then he stopped talking, not sure where to go from there.
Julia unpursed her lips long enough to talk. “Is she your girlfriend?”
Derek had hoped to ease into it a little slower, but he didn’t want to lie. “Yes, she is. Is that okay?”
Isaac’s expression said it was anything but okay. His eyes widened and his bottom lip got that soft look that wasn’t quite a pout, but sometimes became a tremble. “Are you going to have a new baby, too?”
“No.” The word seemed to fall out of his mouth in a rush to reassure his son. “I’m not having a new baby.”
But should he addright now? He knew Olivia wanted kids someday. They were a part of her written life plan. But what he hadn’t given a lot of thought to, until this moment, was ifhewanted more children. It wouldn’t be fair to her to continue a relationship if he didn’t want the same things in life that she did.
