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  I took her elbow and guided her further down the sidewalk.

  “William, what’s wrong?” she asked, her face falling ever so slightly.

  There was no good way to do it, so I just dove in. “Listen Jess last night was a —”

  Her hands came up defensively, stopping me mid-sentence. “Don’t say mistake. Don’t you dare,” she said. She wasn’t shouting or crying. She was, matter-of-fact, like a woman who knew she was right. That confidence wrenched me.

  “I apologize. I know this is difficult and the fault is all mine. I took advantage of an employee. It was completely out of line and selfish on my part, and I regret it deeply. I can’t begin to ask forgiveness for such a gross breach in professional etiquette—”

  “Jesus Christ William, stop talking at me like we’re in a boardroom. ‘A gross breach in professional etiquette?’ What the hell is that? I’ve been taking care of your son, sharing dinners at your table, and last night, we were both worried about David’s welfare and took comfort in one another. We didn’t screw up a business acquisition!”

  “It was wrong, Jess,” I argued back. “I was worried about my son and in a vulnerable state and I reached for something I shouldn’t have. I don’t want to confuse David with any of this. He’s grown attached to you and I don’t want him to lose you because of my actions.”

  “You’re not taking David from me because you feel guilty and you’d rather not have to see me. I’m not quitting. You can choose to be a complete jerk about this—which evidently you have—but I’m not leaving that little boy. Not by choice. And not because you’re more than a little fucked up. That’s what wouldn’t be fair to David.”

  I was trying to hold my ground, but quickly felt myself losing it. “Regardless, I assure you that it will not happen again. My regret is strong enough, and my respect for you is strong enough, despite my actions, that I would not insult you like that again.”

  “The only insult is what you’re doing now, which is acting like you were some sleazy boss who chases secretaries around the desk. That cheapens what happened, and it makes me sick to hear you talk about it that way. Your version of last night is not what happened at all. I can only assume you’re trying to hurt me so I’ll go away. And if what you really want is for us to act like it never happened, then I guess I have to respect that, even though your reasons are total bullshit. You didn’t take advantage of me. I wanted to be with you, and whether you admit it or not, you wanted to be with me, too,” she said.

  She was so stubborn, her determination so strong that it made me want to throw up my hands and walk off. Okay, that wasn’t true. It made me want to grab her and kiss her breathless and tell her that she saw right through me. But I couldn’t allow that. I hadn’t achieved all of my success in life by giving in every time someone had a valid point, or every time someone knew they were being treated unfairly. This was about what was best for my child. It was wrong and selfish to have a fling with the nanny, make a cozy temporary family for David only for it to slip away when she wanted more than a casual affair. I wouldn’t set him up for that kind of loss. There was no place in my life for a relationship, no room in the safe and nurturing environment I’d created for David—no room for a temporary mother figure, a woman for him to attach to and be left by all over again. I’d rather die than put him through that. So I had to push Jessica as far away from me as I could.

  “You’re not the hero in this story, Jessica. You’re not the waitress with a heart of gold who brings love and light into the lonely world of a boy and his single father. This isn’t a TV movie. This is real life. I was tired and stressed. You were young and attractive. I wanted to fuck you, so I did.” I hoped my coarse language, my reduction of last night to something base and shallow would drive her away. It was bitter on my tongue to say it. I felt terrible for saying it. But desperate measures were called for.

  “You don’t believe that,” she said hotly, angry as she had every right to be. At the same time, I heard her voice waver, the scrape of hurt eroding the robust denials she’d been serving.

  “If you mistook my lust for some sort of deeper affection, I’m sorry. I can only say that it was not my intention to mislead you or to make you believe I felt more for you than a simple, animal attraction upon which I never should have acted given our respective roles,” I said, as stuffy and cold as I could manage. I had to put her off somehow. I was failing. I could feel it like barbs under my skin, like she had gotten under it and wouldn’t let go. Let the pain of this be mine only, I thought. Let her be angry, furious at how she was used. Don’t let her be hurt by it.

  When she lifted her eyes to meet mine, I saw pain and disbelief and shock. I had gotten through to her at last, convinced her that it had been nothing more than a hookup. She shook my coat off and handed it to me.

  “Here. I don’t want this,” she said.

  “It’s too cold out here,” I said, unable to keep the concern out of my voice. I held out the coat to her, “Please, put it back on.”

  “No. You don’t get to act like that, like you care about me. Not now. You’re an asshole William. A cold, callous asshole.”

  She stared me down, but I could see pain burning in her eyes. Something about it made me furious, not that she called me names, which I deserved. But that she had truly believed that I had only wanted her body, only craved her for one time, one night. Like it didn’t scorch me even now in the biting cold, with her shattered gaze on me. She trembled a little in the cold and tried to hide it.

  “Yeah, maybe I am,” I ground out.

  I took her by the elbows, gripping them as I hauled her against me, my mouth taking hers. I licked her upper lip and she opened for me, her tongue stroking mine as I slid into her mouth and feeling her tremble not from cold any longer but from desire I had stoked with my lips and tongue. At once I felt both masterful, commanding her responses with every stroke, and at her mercy as her fingers curved around the back of my neck, the softness of her body molding to mine. I wrapped her in my coat and held her closer, never breaking the kiss. I bent her head back over my arm to kiss her deeper, to take all she had to give. To give all I had. Heat surged through my body. The tight coil of want low in my belly, the spike of bliss I felt when I plucked at her nipple through her thin uniform and felt it pebble and harden to a point under my touch. I remembered that nipple in my mouth last night, the taut point of it like a pearl on my tongue. I had laved it, had sucked it until she mewed with longing, with ecstasy. I kissed her with all the passion I felt, all the passion I had to bury and lock away.

  When I released her, her lips wet and parted, her eyes glazed with desire, I set her on her feet and stepped back. She swayed toward me, wanting the heat of my embrace, the wicked kisses. But I shook my head.

  “The way you kiss me doesn’t lie. So don’t you ever even try to say that you don’t give a damn for me,” she warned.

  “I’m sorry, Jessica,” I said, rubbing my hands over my face, “I don’t know how to handle this. I can’t upend David’s world. I can’t risk any kind of relationship that could hurt him. And I know, I know you’d never want to hurt him. But it’s not only him, it’s myself as well. And you might well decide you’d had enough of me, and he’d be hit with the shrapnel.”

  “I’d never do anything to hurt him.”

  “Not intentionally, no,” I agreed. “But sometimes things just don’t work out that way.”

  “So you keep yourself locked in a cave for the rest of time and never allow yourself to try to be happy?” she asked. “What a cop out.”

  I shook my head. She made it sound so deceptively simple that I could almost believe it. But I knew better. Nothing like this could be simple. Not this craving I had for her, this growing obsession. I had seen the fallout of my obsession before, the only time I had indulged an attraction so strong, so impossible to resist. I had to resist her. Had to keep my hands out of her silken hair, keep my tongue out of her soft, questing mouth, keep my cock out of her tight, sli
ck pussy. That was going to be the worst part. Never having her like that again, when I felt like I’d been ripped apart and reborn by the way we had gone for it with abandon. It was like a drug, a sharp, sweet addiction that made me want more even when my cock was buried balls-deep inside of her. I could never get enough. There was no way I was risking what these feelings could do to my life. The kind of havoc that it could cause was beyond anything I could hope to control or contain. It would cut a swath through my carefully regulated life like a raging wildfire I couldn’t possibly hope to fight.

  I was almost hers. She had nearly claimed me once and for all in that bed. If I could escape at all, this was my one chance. My only shot at keeping my sanity and thinking rationally before I threw everything away to chase after her, to win her and keep her satisfied and then lose everything including the life I’d built for myself and my son. I had far too much at stake to allow myself to act on impulse again, to let my desire to slide my hand between her legs right now to feel if she was as aroused as I was.

  “Maybe it is a cop out, but I have to protect David. I can’t involve him.”

  “Then let’s not involve him right now. Let’s just see what happens between us and leave him out of it for now.”

  I looked at her, both terrified and intrigued by her suggestion. “So, what, we pretend all is business as usual in front of him and tear each other’s clothes off when his back is turned?”

  She smiled slyly. “Something like that.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, Jess. What if you decide you want more than I’m capable of giving?”She thought for a moment before answering. “Then I accept responsibility for that.

  You’ve told me how you feel, and I’ve told you how I feel. I’m an adult and I can handle myself. If you want to see where this could lead without involving David right now, I’m okay with that. What I’m not okay with is you telling me how I should think and act.”

  When I didn’t say anything, she continued.

  “We protect David no matter what. Is that a deal?” she said.

  Thank God, I’d never have to go against her in a conference. She’d bankrupt me in a heartbeat. “That’s a deal,” I told her, and I dipped my head, pressing my lips to hers.

  It was going to be a light kiss, something brief to seal the deal. But our lips, our tongues had other ideas, tangling together and questing, tasting, clinging together. It was soft, slow, passionate. The tenderness of it nearly undid me, her hand on my cheek. That gentleness, that grace from her after the ass I’d made of myself, the way I’d tried to cheapen what we’d shared. I turned, kissed her cheek and her forehead, and pressed her to my shoulder. I held her for a moment, just for the simple joy of holding her, of knowing she’d let me hold her in spite of everything.

  “See you tomorrow?” she said. I nodded, unable to say anything else.

  Jessica slid away from me and disappeared into the crowd moving along the sidewalk. Just like that she was gone from my arms, lithe and slippery. I thought of ridiculous magical things, mermaids, sirens, enchanted creatures. I was perhaps the one in most danger of being hurt. Not the waitress with the heart of gold. Not the motherless little boy. The lonely man whose entire life seemed to have cracked wide open at the merest press of her fingers.

  7

  Jessica

  I’m his employee. I’m too young. It’s nothing but physical attraction. It’s too complicated.

  He’d tried every argument he could think of. Maybe some of them were right. Maybe logic was on his side. He was in his thirties, established in his profession and rich, a single father. He’d seen more of life, had more experiences than I had. I was in my twenties, just starting, out, working toward my goals and waiting tables. I had a crush on him, as bad as any middle school girl who crushed on her math teacher. Except it wasn’t like that because we were both adults. We both wanted what we wanted, right or wrong.

  We both had so much to lose. I knew from what little he’d said about the divorce and David’s mother that she wasn’t in the picture, that letting another person like her into his life and his son’s life was basically the nightmare he avoided. Here was a man willing to be lonely all the time, willing to give up what his heart and his body told him, just to keep his son safe. He was noble certainly, but he was also acting out of fear.

  I had seen the twist of his mouth, the deep crinkle between his eyebrows when he said he wanted to fuck me so he did. It had pained him to say it as much as it pained me to hear it. I had wanted to howl and cuss at him, and I sort of had. But I held it together pretty well under the circumstances. What with the blossoming feeling inside my chest when I saw him, the longing and hope that tangled up inside me and threatened to make me speechless or weepy.

  He wasn’t the only one with something to lose. I’d spent the last two years focused completely on my goal of opening a restaurant. I’d worked extra shifts, saved my tips, taken a couple of classes online on setting up a small business and the best bookkeeping methods and time management and marketing. I didn’t splurge. I didn’t lose concentration over a cute pair of boots or a nice piece of jewelry. The only thing that had made my attention stray in over a hundred weeks of dedication had been an ongoing hangman game with a cute kid and the aloof attitude of his gorgeous father who stole admiring glances at me when I sat with his son.

  If I screwed up and got my heart broken, there would be setbacks. I’d have entire weeks where I worked fewer shifts, felt sorry for myself and bought name brand ice cream for example. Okay, that was silly. What I was really worried about was that I would fall so hard for William that when he broke my heart, I wouldn’t care anything about opening a restaurant or working double shifts to reach that goal. I was afraid my dreams would burn up in that disaster, and all I’d be left with was sadness, loneliness, and a total loss of purpose. I was scared of that.

  It had happened to me once before, when my dad died. I had quit college to take care of him, and he and I had planned for me to go back, to finish a restaurant management certification and then maybe do cooking school as soon as he was well. But he didn’t recover. And when I made my way out from under the life insurance forms and the bank repossessing his truck and everything, I no longer cared about restaurant management or being a chef. I cared about what I’d lost and how perfect my life had been when I looked back on it, when I hadn’t been completely alone in the world. I had rebuilt, little by little, from the time I was nineteen until now. I had never gone back to college or become a real chef. I was a waitress and my dad would be ashamed of how small and scared my life had become. The risk I took had been on pitching in as a nanny. I had stepped off my track, the track that was supposed to lead me to fulfillment, to a restaurant of my own and creating the ultimate self-care spot for comfort food in the city. To give people the feeling I used to have when my dad made grilled cheese then sprinkled garlic salt on top of it and made a smiley face of mustard on the paper plate. I got tears in my eyes thinking of it.

  I was giving another man the chance to destroy me. I had dated. I had fun from time to time. I was really close with my friends and loved their kids. But I didn’t take a lot of chances with my heart. Because I could be satisfied with taking care of others, with meeting their needs. That kept me safe, kept me from risking being alone like that again, that desolation and grief where every day is sawdust in your mouth and every step is trudging through wet sand. I had dragged myself through that at nineteen and it nearly killed me.

  I wasn’t sure I could put myself in danger like that again—to pin all my hope and all my happiness on him, to play ‘as soon as’ with myself. Only instead of ‘as soon as my dad got well’ it would be ‘as soon as William isn’t afraid for people to know about me’. And yet, I’d convinced him not to push me away when he’d tried his best.

  I hustled my tables and made good tips and tried to avoid talking to the kitchen girls about my long break with William earlier. What I wanted to do was fling myself into Tara’s arms and ask he
r to tell me what to do. To tell me it would be worth it either way. I didn’t want a promise that he would fall in love with me, that it would all work out. I wanted a guarantee that I could survive it if it didn’t. Instead I mumbled that it was about the schedule for the kid. It was a damn lie, but I couldn’t help it. If we were keeping secrets I might as well get started on it.

  When I got home and showered, I kept thinking of William. Of the way he had settled me in his lap so we were face to face when we made love, how my legs were wrapped around him, how his hand had pressed the small of my back and how he had come so hard inside of me, the hot spurts of his cum filling me as I clamped down on that heavy cock. I wanted him again and again, but there was so much tangled up in that memory, so much of how I’d longed for him, how I’d yearned for him during long, empty nights when my crush for him and a twenty dollar vibrator were all I had to keep me warm. I needed him again already, needed him filling me. I felt like a dirty junkie, wanting my next fix of him.

  The next day I was working for him. Maybe he would slip in for lunch while David was at school, I thought. I felt my toes curl up at the idea of him running into the house and calling for me, of me running to find him. How he would catch me in his arms, turn me so my back was against the wall, and take me right there. He’d just jerk down my jeans and have me then and there, my spine against the wall, pressing in hard as I took the force of his thrusts because he couldn’t wait, couldn’t be gentle. We would be reunited there, his cock deep in me as I sobbed with the intensity of him just pounding me. I’d cry out, and he’d stroke my face, give me a quick, breathless kiss as he drove on toward his own orgasm. Maybe he’d whisper that we’d have to hurry, slip his fingers between our writhing hips and rocket me to climax with urgent strokes on my clit. My head would fall back, and I’d moan his name. He’d kiss me as he came, would whisper that I was all he wanted. If I was fantasizing I might as well make him love me, too.