Unlawful Temptations (The Star-Crossed Series Book 1)

I didn’t sleep well that night. Shocker.

Though Charlotte stayed in Maya’s room last time we were here, I swindled her into bunking with me at least for the first night. With everything going on, I liked having her close and knowing she was safe and with me.

Even if that meant being kicked during the night about a dozen times.

Even if I hadn’t been battered by a five-year-old all night, I still wouldn’t have gotten a good night’s sleep. I heard every noise in this huge house as if it was on blast, and my haywire mind couldn’t stop wondering if it was Heather sneaking into the room to smother me or Tommy sneaking into the room to steal me.

Heather had stayed out of sight after we got here last night, and I hid away in Maya’s room with Charlotte most of the time until bedtime anyway. I had a sneaking suspicion Heather probably wouldn’t choose to spend her spare time hanging out with her daughter, and I would be safe in there.

And what do you know? I was right.

Dominic stayed away for the most part too, only coming in towards the end to tell Maya it was time to wash up and brush her teeth for bed. I helped with all of that and put her to sleep so Dominic didn’t have to see me again, and I didn’t have to see him.

Yesterday was hard, and this morning would be even harder for us.

That’s why I hid in the spare room as long as I did, tossing and turning in a lonely bed since Charlotte had gotten up about an hour ago. I stayed buried beneath mountains of soft sheets, pretending I could burrow there and no one would ever find me.

Technically, it wasn’t anyone that found me and finally dragged me out of bed, but a smell.

Bacon.

It carried all the way up the stairs, down the hallway, and shoved its savory smell right up my nose, making my mouth water and stomach grumble.

Groaning, I kicked my bare feet out from under the cozy covers and laid them on the floor. I didn’t bother changing before I went down, still rocking my plaid pajama shorts and gray tank top.

Throwing on a bra and some concealer, I made the descent.

My steps were weary as I padded down the staircase, muffled voices trailing up from the kitchen and turning my empty stomach over with bubbles of nerves. A velvet bass voice rose above two smaller ones, sliding over my skin and pulling goosebumps to the surface.

God, he sounded sexy in the mornings.

Sexy and perfect and not at all mine.

Pulling back a calming breath, I allowed the smell of frying bacon to guide me the rest of the way down the stairs until I made it to the kitchen. My feet got stuck in the entryway, refusing to move any further and risk disrupting the picturesque scene before me.

Both Charlotte and Maya were at the kitchen table, smiling and giggling as they half ate, half played with their pancakes—chocolate chip ones from the look of it. The sun was streaming in behind them both from the bay window, silhouetting their smiles and bliss. Dominic was standing at the stove, spatula in one hand and a frying pan gripped in the other.

His focus went back and forth between the girls and the food. He wasn’t facing me, but I could envision a lopsided crease on his full lips as he savored the simplicity of the moment.

Too bad my entrance on the scene shattered it all.

“Katty, you’re awake!”

I tried not to cringe too openly at Charlotte’s loud announcement but felt the reaction clamp up the muscles in my shoulders anyway. I gave a wave and a mumble, purposefully not meeting Dominic’s stare as he twisted around to me.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Uh…” I checked in with every part of my body and concluded that everything except my heart felt better. The cold was gone. The real sickness, however, remained and it fucking hurt.

“Much better,” I replied anyway.

I specifically did not look at Dominic as I told the lie.

“Daddy made chocolate chip pancakes!” Maya squealed. “He wasn’t going to put chocolate in them, but Charlotte made him.”

I arched a brow at my sister, sitting looking innocent at the table. “Made him?”

“She used that famous Sander’s charm.”

This time, Dominic used a voice I couldn’t ignore. Its low, dulcet notes pulled my head to him like one of his elegant fingers guiding beneath my chin.

He was looking at me over his shoulder, eyes glinting beneath curved brows. In a rarity, it was me who clenched my jaw, biting back all my comments on how attractive he looked and if he could please stop it.

We were supposed to be cooling it, not setting me on fire first thing in the morning.

Thankfully, Maya pulled my attention.

“Are you hungry, Ms. Kat?”

“She’s always hungry,” Charlotte answered for me.

My neck jerked back with her offhanded comment, blinking at her. “Thanks, Bugs.”

Deep, soft laughter came from Dominic who’d turned back to the stove. He was in a surprisingly good mood this morning given how yesterday went. I passed behind him, eyeing his strong back and fisting both hands so I didn’t give him a teasing slap for his laughter.

That, or flat out grab his ass.

He was wearing those gray sweatpants again, and they were hanging dangerously low on his hips.

I was going to burn every one of his sweatpants before I left here. I swore it.

“One time, she ate so much, um, what was it?” Charlotte turned to me, eyes wide and searching for help on a story that I had no clue where it was heading. Then those eyes brightened. “Oh! It was nachos. She ate so many nachos that she said she felt like a whale, and I laughed at her, and she squirted me with a water bottle and said it was her blowhole!”

Maya pulled a face. “That’s weird.”

“That’s comedy,” I countered, brow hooking upwards.

She shook her head, shelving a wild curl behind her ear. “I don’t think it’s funny.”

I sunk down in a chair at the end of the kitchen table, jabbing my chin towards her. “Want me to squirt you with a water bottle later and see if you laugh?”

Initially, her sweet face crinkled, and she started to shake her head. Then, slowly, light found her sapphire blue eyes, and she grinned a toothy grin, nodding fast. “Yes.”

Laughter sputtered free, and I kicked one of my feet up to rest on the lip of the chair adjacent to me.

“We’ll see.”

“I’d say we had more than enough water play the last time you were here, Ms. Sanders.” Dominic stepped up to the table, placing an overflowing plate of crispy, juicy bacon at the center. The smell of it was enough to make me salivate and ignore the multiple inappropriate comments piling through my brain about just how wet I was last time I was here.

Leaning up, I snatched a piece and brought it to my lips. “There’s always a killjoy.” Then I snapped off a bite between my teeth.

“Daddy’s a killjoy!” Maya shouted, going in for a piece herself.

My shoulders shook as I munched on the bacon, my lips twisting up on both ends. Dominic hovered at the table, sliding me an arched glance.

“Thank you for that.”

I snapped off another bite. “No problem.”

Our gazes lingered longer than they should have, eyes smiling and hearts suffocating. It took actual effort to break the connection, and that stupid bruise in my chest hurt worse when it was over.

I swallowed the rest of the bacon, throat a little drier, heart a little sicker.

Then Maya asked a question that made me cough it all back up.

“Daddy, did Ms. Kat give you an orgasm?”

Saliva-coated bacon bits spewed back up my throat, my eyes bulging out of my brain as I choked to what I hoped was death. Dominic wasn’t any better.

“Wh-what did you—what?” I’d never seen this man stammer before. Aside from his mouth, the rest of him had gone rigid, jagged as rock. Color rushed to his cheeks, flushing them a shade of red I’d only ever seen on tomatoes.

I smacked my chest again and again to get the choking to stop, and Maya’s eyes flew between us both, growing wide with fright as she took in our distressed states.

“Ms. Kat said it!” she defended herself, throwing me right under the bus. “She said you needed a drink and an orgasm the first time she was here! She said it!”

Oh my god. Fuck me.

She was right. I did say that, and here it was, biting me in the ass nearly three months later. Why did kids have to remember every little freaking thing?

All of my choking, coughing, and wheezing stopped in the same second Dominic flashed his outrage towards me. It all stopped, because my breathing malfunctioned and fizzled out on the spot. The flames in his eyes snuffed out any oxygen left in me, and I actually wondered if a glare could burn someone to ashes.

In the background of me being burned alive by a stare, Maya continued.

“I think she said it ‘cuz you were sad a lot, but you always smile more when Ms. Kat is around, so I thought—” She huffed, and both Dominic and I swiveled our attention back to her. “I just said it because you looked happy, Daddy.”

As if the atmosphere had been a howling windstorm of outrage and humiliation, it all pulled to a quiet with those words.

Everything slowed. Everything softened. All eyes were on Dominic, and his were on his daughter. It had to hurt, knowing she knew he’d been sad for so long. I was sure he thought he hid it well, but kids were perceptive as hell.

Then he twisted back to me, and I held my breath the entire time he stared at me.

A slight frown was knit into his forehead, outlining the intensive thoughts overlapping in his head—that ever-dissecting mind of his. He scanned my face down to my lips, and I didn’t move a freaking muscle. He worked his way back up, and I watched with a tightening heart as his handsome face carved itself in every shade of adoration.

He shouldn’t have looked at me like that. He couldn’t.

But my stupid fucking face didn’t get the memo and broke with this sheepish grin anyway. I ducked my head, rolling my traitorous lips between my teeth and scrunching up my nose. Dammit.

“Am I in trouble?” Maya’s tiny voice brought Dominic back to her. He smiled softly and shook his head.

“No, Munchkin.” He grabbed her face between his fingers, tilting her head up at him. “Just don’t say that word again, okay?”

She nodded, and he rubbed his thumb over the corner of her mouth, cleaning a spot of syrup off. He popped that thumb back behind his lips, sucking off the syrup, and Maya dove back into the half a pancake she had left.

About three seconds passed before—

“Orgasm.”

“Charlotte!” I scolded, trying so hard to keep the laugh out of my voice.

A deep sigh heaved from Dominic as he sat in the chair next to me, folding a hand around his waiting coffee mug. “She’s definitely your sister.”

Got that right.

Dominic lifted his mug to his lips, and I realized my foot was still resting on the lip of his chair’s seat and close to touching his thigh. I went to jerk it away.

His hand not around his mug stopped me.

It was a subtle thing—a light grasp around the base of my ankle, hidden by the tabletop. Dominic wasn’t reacting in any way that would let anyone know he was touching me. He kept sipping his coffee, watching the girls as they ate breakfast while passing a stroke of his thumb up my ankle.

Then he did it again.

My lightning tracked down to where he touched, sizzling and warming my skin against him. He wedged my toes beneath his thigh on the chair indiscreetly, keeping my foot where it was. The physical contact was slight—not even inappropriate—but I felt it everywhere.

Like he was holding my withering heart in his hands, and nothing had ever felt so overwhelming and underwhelming all at once.

My fingers trembled visibly as I reached out to grab another piece of bacon.

“What is it anyway?” Charlotte asked after a lull.

Dominic arched an eyebrow over the rim of his mug. “What’s what?”

“The word we can’t say.”

Dominic faltered. Like, super duper malfunctioned. His mouth popped open and nothing came out. He clearly was not ready for a conversation about orgasms with two five-year-olds before ten o’clock in the morning.

“It’s like a party.” All eyes at the table shifted to me.

Maya tilted her head, cheeks puffed out as she chewed a mouthful of pancake. Dominic’s mouth quivered, lifting to an upturned crescent, his gray eyes spirited. Okay, he had to stop looking at me like that.

My sister’s stare narrowed in suspicion.

“What kinda party?”

I broke my bacon in half, keeping my voice cool. “An adult party.”

Her chocolate brown eyes slid between Dominic and I. Her intensity was impressive, and her next question was a fucking riot.

“And you two had the party together?”

I had to bite my bottom lip really hard to keep from laughing out loud. Dominic’s face was goddamn priceless. His smile fell behind his mug, and he ripped his stare to the center of the table to not look at any of us. Even without eye contact, I could still see faint smile lines fading in and out of existence next to his eyes.

He was trying just as hard as I was not to bust a gut.

How in the hell this was the beginning outline for our stay here proved just how prone to catastrophe Dominic and I were. Our chemistry was determined to wreck us even less than a day after we agreed to go back to ignoring it. We were clearly doing a very shitty job given how easily we both bent to its addiction this morning, and I wondered if we had any hope at all of surviving it.

Like I had a death wish, I kept teasing it.

“We partied together once,” I replied. “It was great.”

His hand around my ankle squeezed tightly, breaking the seal on my laughter right open. That tension looming in my chest all morning evaporated as my amusement set free, soaring up to the ceiling and draping the kitchen in my surrender. The chemistry was fucking masterful, and a reckless part of me wondered if, as long as we weren’t really touching or alone in the same room, maybe moments like these were okay?

Dominic swallowed his laughter down with his coffee, but the diamond glint to his eyes was undeniable. He was a willing victim to it too this morning.

“How old do we have to be before we can have the party?” Maya perked up.

Dominic took this one. “At least fifty.”

I rolled my eyes back, finishing off the last half of bacon and dusting my hands of the greasy remains. Dominic picked up a handful of the breakfast meat and put it on his plate, producing an orange and cutting it in half and then into meticulous fourths.

He placed one on Maya’s plate, offered one to Charlotte which she accepted, and then turned to me with the second to last one, not bothering to ask before setting it on my plate. I cocked my head at the fruit.

“You didn’t ask me if I wanted one.”

“I did not.”

“What if I didn’t?”

“That’s too bad.”

“Why do I have to eat the orange?”

“Because you’re recovering from being sick.”

I scoffed with a light smile. “I feel fine.”

“You might not if you don’t eat the orange,” he replied, focused on peeling the fruit’s rind. That same smile teasing my lips was in his resonant voice, and I pushed myself back with a dramatic hand over my heart.

“Is that a threat, Mr. Reed?”

Eyes of liquid silver flashed up to me, stretching my smile even wider. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t fucking help it when he was looking at me in that roguish way of his, that way that said he wanted to steal me away to a dark closet and make me take back all my misbehaving words that he not-so-secretly loved.

I saw the ideas of what he would do with me play across his stare, and how those ideas dilated his pupils and made him a bit predatory, a bit untamed.

He parted his lips, drawing the anticipation out before slowly grinding his order out at the lowest register imaginable.

“Eat your orange, Ms. Sanders.”

At the corner of the kitchen table sat a napkin holder. White, frilly napkins bookended the thing, but in the middle was a section of pens with Reed Real Estate printed on the sides. I snatched both pen and paper, scribbling down a quick note before sliding it in Dominic’s direction on the table.

Stop flirting with me, it read.

A twitch danced on his mouth as he read it, and a flash of throwing myself at him to kiss it right off zipped across my brain. He plucked the pen I was using out of my hand, a grin across his mouth as close to boyish as Dominic Reed had ever come.

Carefully, he set the pen down and passed the napkin back.

How can I when you look so beautiful this morning?

A smile so big and fat, it actually hurt, peeled across my face.

Oh, we were so screwed.

Then, as if to prove just that, a door I’d never even noticed opened up behind me, and a fresh voice floated in.

“Morning, Crew!”

My hand holding the note fisted shut, crumpling the napkin and its forbidden words.

Dominic clocked the action and laid his eyes on mine that had blown wide and were drying out in my head.

I’d completely forgotten about her.

“Gramma, there’s chocolate pancakes!” Maya beamed as the woman I’d only met once before rounded my chair, kissing her son and granddaughter both on the cheek. Oh my god. I’d been so worried about running into Heather that it completely slipped my mind to be worried about running into his mom.

The older woman swept curls from Maya’s forehead, smiling sweetly. “That sounds absolutely delicious, Pumpkin.”

I ripped my foot from beneath Dominic’s thigh so fast I hit my knee on the edge of the table. He flinched as I hissed and inched his hand towards me, holding it out as if to offer help or support or whatever. I jerked away from him, the legs of my chair scraping across the wood floor.

“Is everything all right?”

Panic was stretching my eyes open, and I knew it was, but I looked up to her anyway. His mother was waiting for me with raised eyebrows and worrying eyes the exact shade as her sons.

“Yeah, I just…” Stealing my hand with the note beneath the table to hide it, I scooted from my chair until I was standing, all eyes on me as I came up with an excuse.

“I just forgot to brush my teeth. So, I gotta go do that.”

I didn’t wait for any responses or questions or anything. I just beelined it back upstairs, practically throwing myself in the guest room.

Oh god. Both my palms flattened against the door as if his mother was chasing me and about to break it down. Actually, the napkin I’d passed with Dominic was stuck beneath one of my hands, burning my skin, and I rushed over to my overnight bag and stuffed it to the very bottom.

Hiding the evidence and all.

Fuck. Dominic and I agreeing to go back to basics had actually been a really stupid thing to do. Colossally stupid. Basics for us still meant flirting. We’d done that before we kissed, and it had only become relentless after.

Remembering back to how it was with Dominic before we’d admitted and given into the addiction, I remembered how stupid being around him made me. I broke all the rules then, and I was doing it now when a lot more than a job was on the line.

I stayed in the room for another ten or so minutes, pacing and breathing and reminding myself what was at stake here. We had our first test this morning, and we failed.

Big fat F.

Next time we were around each other in this house, we would be cool, collected, and keep our fuckable parts in our pants.

Centering myself as much as humanly possible for someone as off their rocker as me, I marched up to the bedroom door and opened it with the determination to face my downstairs audience again.

Except, one of my audience members was waiting right behind my door.

“Shit!”

I smacked my hand over my gasped curse, my other hand fisting where my heart was and holding onto it with all I had. Dominic’s mother jumped back a step, her hands coming up next to her head as her eyes shot wide.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to scare you, hon.” She put a hand to her ample chest, her mouth pulling down with humor. “I guess that’s what would happen when I stand outside your door like this, wouldn’t it?”

She tittered a jovial laugh and I joined in, because what the fuck else was I supposed to do?

The last time I saw this woman, I was lip-locked with her son who was still totally married at the time. Still was totally married, and now I was crashing with him and his soon-to-be ex-wife like it was a normal thing to do.

“It’s okay.” I forced another laugh. “Nothing like a good jump scare to wake you up.”

She did that whole sweet frown thing again, still kind of laughing and nodded.

“I guess that’s true, isn’t it?”

I nodded back and pushed another chortle because I still had no idea what the hell was happening. I was a puppet with all my strings strung up high, being worked by a hand that had zero communication with my brain or mouth.

The situational laughter slowly died out, leaving a lonely and awkward as hell pause.

“It’s Kat, right?”

Oh shit. Here we go.

“Yeah. You’re—” Dominic’s mom.

Except she cut me off by saying, “Meredith. We weren’t properly introduced last time.”

She angled herself a little closer, lowering her twangy voice like it was a fun secret between the two of us; the fact that she caught me with her son’s tongue down my throat at his daughter’s birthday party.

An uncomfortable note strangled between my lips, another awkward chuckle following. “Yeah, that was probably my fault.”

“Oh, no. I—” She thinned her peach colored lips, a sharp sigh leaving her nose. His mom looked at me, the fine wrinkles embedded in her fair skin deepening around her eyes. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable that day or now, even.”

My lips parted in readied defense…

And then snapped shut.

What?

Those navigating puppet strings pulling me this way and that all dropped loose, whoever was orchestrating this interaction not even knowing how the hell to respond to that. I was on my own, free-falling, opening and closing my mouth like a freaking idiot.

My eyebrows pinched together, and I cocked my head at her, still not saying a goddamn thing. A slightly humored curiosity sketched an outline on her delicate features.

“You look confused.”

Yeah, no shit, I wanted to say, but refrained long enough to think out my words.

“I am. I just—” Say words. Say words, dammit. “I didn’t expect you to apologize given what you, uh, walked in on.”

“Oh, well.” She smiled down at the floor. Smiled. My confusion and wariness regarding this woman deepened. “I talked with my son for quite a long time after you left. I never would have expected to find him like that. He’s not…” A flustered look came over her, and she shook her head as if shaking the truth right out of it. “He’s not that type.”

Until he met me.

She didn’t say the words, but I heard them.

He wasn’t the type to cheat until I came along and ruined all his good. I already knew that though. I lived that knowledge. I didn’t need it spelled out for me by his mother that I’d tainted her precious little boy.

“He’s loyal and he’s dedicated, and he and Heather got married very young,” she said all at once, her tone oddly level. Almost like she’d said this all before. “He was convinced it was true love, and once that boy is convinced of something, there’s no deterring him.”

Mhm. I’m familiar.

She flattened her lips together again, and I got flashes of her son doing the same thing several, several times during our conversations. The resemblance was probably more in his father, but I could see bits of Dominic in her too. Little ways she moved her eyebrows, her mouth—though surrounded by tiny wrinkles now—had the same shape as his, and of course, their eyes.

The color and intensity in them both were unparalleled by any other

Every single one of her slightly familiar features loosened, a solemn sadness blanketing her expression. She kept her attention to the floor, nodding her head just barely.

“It’s been really hard as a mother watching their marriage break and him break with it.”

All of my moxie slacked.

The tension in my mouth did too, and it fell to an open frown. I blinked at her and her brutal honesty. This hadn’t been where I’d expected this conversation to go.

“After I found you two in that shed, he told me it wasn’t what it looked like, and then he told me about asking for a divorce.”

Oh shit. Okay. So she knew everything.

My gut loaded up in preparation to be stabbed at, gutted through, ripped apart for being the downfall to her son’s marriage. This had to be it. The blow she came up here to deliver. My abs locked together, readying for the assault.

His mom—Meredith—brought her pointed gaze up to me. “I imagine most parents when they hear their child is getting a divorce feel sadness or anger. You wanna know what I felt?”

“What?” I asked, on edge.

Meredith’s expression softened. “Relief.”

My reaction was as obvious as Dominic’s good looks and perfect ass. My eyebrows cranked high and my lips peeled apart yet again.

Okay, what?

She absorbed my clearly taken aback response, breathing a soft laugh. Her eyes were nothing but warm, and all that warmth was aimed right at me. I shifted against it, the heat sticking to my skin and slicking between joints and bones.

“My son deserves the world and the greatest love in it, and that unfortunately was never Heather,” she admitted, shaking her head of flaxen hair.

Out of instinct, I flickered a vigilant glance behind her shoulder. She was speaking so candidly; it shocked and terrified me. Heather could be lurking around any corner listening in on her mother-in-law spill the truth.

Instead of hushing or stopping, she kept on. “When I found you two, I asked him what the heck he was thinking shacking up with his daughter’s nanny. Like I said, that’s not him. He wouldn’t do that because he was bored or… because he liked the way you looked or whatnot. Which, you’re very lovely by the way.”

“Thanks,” I breathed, feeling lightheaded all of a sudden.

“And he said….” She held her tongue to smile a real genuine smile right up at me. “He said he wasn’t doing it because you were beautiful or because he knew he wasn’t happy in his marriage. He said it was because you were the most incredible woman he’d ever met, and he didn’t know how he’d lived so long without you.”

Air escaped my lungs and inflated my head.

My feeling lightheaded was now more of a dizzying sensation, my vision and hearing both sort of fading in and fading out to blurs.

I was in that same ocean Dominic helped me float in back at the hotel. The same one that I avoided all my life, but Dominic made it so I could breathe with him there, holding my head above water. His mom found me in that same dangerous ocean, except she didn’t give me a life raft to hang onto.

She shoved my head right below the cusp of salt-stained water.

“You look a little shell-shocked, hon.”

My eyes were already burning. “A bit,” I replied, throat and tone dry.

“You know,” Meredith closed the distance between us finally, dropping to a whisper. “My room isn’t very far from the kitchen, Kat.”

Oh, holy fuck me.

I sucked down just enough breathable air to ask, “So you heard…?”

She nodded, a knowing smile quirking up her cheeks. “The orgasm question is what initially caught my ear.”

“Oh, lord.” My whole body slumped into the doorframe, head knocking against it.

Good. I needed the throbbing to keep me awake and processing.

She shook in mild laughter, a smile brightening her whole face as she worked to catch my eye. “You’re very funny, and you’re very good with those girls… and I could hear it in my son’s voice that he is absolutely smitten with you.”

And there my head went again, plunging beneath the surface break.

“I don’t judge anyone on how they fall in love. My husband and I met at my first job. He was my manager,” she divulged like the hottest gossip in town.

I barely heard it over the roiling, rushing water filling my ears, lungs, drowning my world.

Fall in love. Fall in love. Fall in—

The sickness choked.

My heart vacuumed into itself as it tried to breathe, suffocating on its own skin and veins. My chest felt like it was caving in, taking ribs, organs, and oxygen with it. The sickness had never ever been so powerful, so enlivened and thriving at his mother’s words.

Dominic and I weren’t falling in love. Did Dominic give her that impression? Because he knew better. He knew that wasn’t where our story was headed. We were passing chapters in each other’s lives, but our endings were nowhere near each other.

We had chemistry. We didn’t have love.

However, the sickness preened at the very mention of us falling into it, sinking its polished talons in my heart and latching on.

“I’m just happy he’s found someone like you and I wanted to clear the air between us in case it was all weird from the shed.”

She pushed another hearty bout of laughter. This woman liked to laugh a lot. I didn’t try to match her this time. I couldn’t even try. Once she finished, she settled her kind eyes on me.. Her fingers reached out and touched my wrist, a conflicting sensation of cold and soft.

“I’m really looking forward to getting to know you, Kat.”

I nodded, forcing out a wispy response. “You too.”

She was one hundred percent unaware of the sanity spiral she’d just nudged me into, simply squeezing my wrist in her too soft hand before taking a step back.

“All right. Well, I only had two pancakes and I think I’m about to go get two more.” Another. Fucking. Chuckle. “I’ll see you down there, hon.”

She left, and I watched her go.

I watched her instead of following her because I couldn’t. I couldn’t move a damn muscle. Everything—every nerve, every fiber, every molecule had gone numb.

This was all wrong.

Yes, I knew the potential for love existed between Dominic and I, but because I knew the danger was there, I would get out before it got me. That had been the plan. Well, I’d actually had like five different versions of a plan by now, but falling in love was never one of them.

I knew that, and I made sure Dominic knew that. Though, if his mom got the idea from him that a chance at falling into stupid love still existed between us…

Then I needed a new plan.