Page 18 of One Snowy Seduction
Teesha never got to answer any of those questions. Not when they were finished in the pool room, or hours later when they’d soaked in the huge tub in Kendrick’s bathroom. And after that, she’d lain in his bed, his arms wrapped tightly around her and slept, deciding that all the answers to all the questions could wait. She’d only wanted to enjoy the moment, the good. And she prayed the bad wouldn’t ultimately destroy her.
CHAPTER8
For three mornings in a row Kendrick had awakened to the feel of Teesha spread over him. Cracking his eyes opened he stared down at the top of her head, wrapped in a purple paisley scarf. The side of her face rested against his bare chest, one of her arms fell across his waist. Her leg was on top of his, her knee bent so that it was dangerously close to his balls. This, he recognized now, was their morning position. And he liked it.
Sure, there was the one morning when she’d jolted awake at the sound of one of the snowplows and her knee had made unfortunate contact with his groin. But she’d spent a very pleasurable twenty minutes making it up to him. Then there was the ritual they’d fallen into after awakening each morning, with them sharing his bathroom before heading downstairs to breakfast. He cooked, she cooked—she’d actually made some fabulous brown butter cinnamon rum pancakes that he prayed she’d make again—and they ate at the table together like a husband and wife would.
He opened his eyes completely at that thought, not as surprised by it as he would’ve been four days ago when they’d first realized they were stuck in this chalet together. Four days, that’s how long they’d been together. After nine long years of being apart.
How many times had he thought “what if?” where Teesha was concerned? What if he hadn’t let her walk away from him that night so long ago? What if he’d made her listen to the reason why he’d critiqued her project so harshly? What if she’d forgiven him right then and there and they’d continued as friends? Would he still have moved on to build one of the top five enterprise software companies in the world? More importantly, would he still have married Natasha?
“Jazz cheated on me.”
Her voice seemed small in the quiet of the room. It startled him since he’d been deep in his own thoughts and had assumed she was still asleep. “Always knew he was an ass.” That was an understatement. Kendrick had always hated Jazz.
He disliked the type of guy Jazz was—the handsome jock with the smooth words that got him all the girls. The guy who would’ve failed all his classes if not for tutors and those girls so caught up in his big smile who simply did his schoolwork for him. The one everybody in the neighborhood cheered on to make it out, to get into the NBA and become a star that they could all claim they knew. Sure, that sounded like jealousy, but Kendrick wasn’t at all ashamed of feeling that way. It was a fact, he hated guys like Jazz who seemed to have it so good but still managed to fuck up.
“No,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “I was the fool. I forgave him the first time and the second time and I probably would’ve forgiven him again if he hadn’t been sleeping with my boss this time.”
“What? How stupid could the guy really be?” Apparently very stupid to mess up so many times with a woman like Teesha.
Kendrick had one arm already wrapped around Teesha’s shoulders and one tucked behind his head. Her rubbed his hand down her arm.
“Jessie and I had a shaky work relationship from the start. She had the title but none of the knowledge or degrees for that matter but that didn’t stop her from acting like she knew everything and treating everyone else like they were simply peons in her fabulous world.” She sighed. “Like being a supervisor of the tech department for the county was such a fabulous title.”
“So you ended up working for the county like your father and LJ.” He hadn’t meant it to sound like it wasn’t a good paying, steady job with benefits because he knew it was. They both knew it since her parents had said it, emailed the messages to her and then said it again each time she went home during summer breaks from college. Their pushiness with regard to her career had gotten so bad that Teesha had wanted that Yatlig internship as another way of escaping them. The internship would’ve taken her to Atlanta that summer to work at the Yatlig company there. But he’d won the internship and Teesha had been forced to return home to her family in Arlington.
She shrugged. “I thought it would be temporary. You know, while I polished my resume and pitched some new game ideas. But I ended up being there for eight years.”
“Past tense?”
She started to move and Kendrick kept his gaze on her. They’d agreed that it made sense for both of them to sleep naked. Especially after he’d added two boxes of condoms to their grocery order when the concierge had called them on the second day of the blizzard. She pulled the sheet that had been bunched at her waist up to cover her chest, clapping her arms down to hold it in place. Her actions moved some of the sheet that had covered him. Not that he was modest—that had been proven when he’d flashed her on day one—but when he sat up beside her, he had to readjust the other half of the sheets to rest in his lap.
“I quit my job a week ago,” she said and then looked over at him. “Jessie and Jazz are getting married.”
“So you let them cut off your only source of income?”
She frowned. “No. I did notletthem do anything.” Irritation was clear in her tone. “I wasn’t happy there. Fixing silly little tech issues. Running to each employee’s desk every time they hit the wrong button and something disappeared from their screen. Repeatedly sending out emails with the same reminders and warnings, only to have the same employees disregard them and end up with viruses on their computers one week after another. It was a waste of my talent and all the training I’d gone through.”
Kendrick sighed with relief. He was so glad she’d said those things so he wouldn’t have to be the one to say them. After hearing how she’d felt when he critiqued her internship project, he would’ve wanted to tread lightly on giving her career advice again. But he would have done it anyway, because what she’d said was exactly right—she was way too talented to be working at an IT Help Desk.
“I finished a project earlier this month and I think it’s ready to start pitching to gaming companies. I thought about waiting until I’d sold it, or had another position locked in before resigning. But then I figured no, it was time for me to step out on faith.” She said that last part with a conviction he’d always admired in her. When she believed in something or someone, she was all in, no doubts at all.
“I’m proud of you,” he said. “I mean, I know how big of a step that had to be for you. I’m sure your parents weren’t happy to hear that you’d quit.”
She clasped her hands in front of her and chuckled. “I haven’t told them yet.”
“What?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I’d won this trip and quit my job and I just wanted to come here and have some peace. Some happiness after the year that I’ve gone through. They were pissed off enough that I came on this trip at the last minute and told them about it via text. If I’d added the job thing, they probably would’ve met me at the airport to yell at me face-to-face.”
“They mean well.” She frowned at his statement. “Seriously, I think they do only want the best for you. Like any good parents would for their child. They’re just too stubborn to see that following your passion is what’s best for you.” He grew silent then, wondering if his mother would’ve been this way with him had she lived? His Aunt Renee just loved the checks he sent her every month.
Teesha took his hand then. “Your family loves you too,” she said. “They just have a different way of showing it.”
Now it was his turn to laugh. “Yeah, I know. My aunt actually loved Natasha the first time they met. That could be because I flew her to Milan to be at one of Natasha’s fashion shows. After the show Natasha had introduced Aunt Renee to one of the designers who’d then given Aunt Renee a few items. She was on cloud nine heading back to Temptation to flaunt her top fashion designer clothes.”
“I bet she was,” Teesha said. “Your aunt’s a trip. And she loves clothes.”
