Feeding him something delicious when I felt like it. That was one of my new rules.
Understanding lit his eyes with something steamy that I felt right between my thighs.
Jude opened his mouth, and I set the scone in. Before I could retract my hand, he gripped my wrist and held it in place, sucking lightly at the tips of my fingers.
Now that I felt in entirely different areas of my body. If I wasn’t nipping out through my shirt, it would be a freaking miracle.
“Delicious,” he murmured.
The way he licked his lips as we both settled back in our seats had me feeling all squirmy and restless, and judging by the smirk on his face, he knew it.
“I have to go to the facility in a bit,” he told me.
I nodded. I knew the drill, so it wasn’t surprising. “Meetings?”
“Not today. I need some work done on my hamstring, and I’m sure my manager wants to make my ears bleed, reminding me why I’m old and slow and can’t score goals anymore.”
He sounded so deliciously grumpy when he said it that I smiled.
“Oh, that’s funny?” he asked.
I swear, I tried to wipe the grin off my face. It was so tempting to climb on his lap and show him exactly how not-old and not-slow he was, and all the different ways he could score, but I also knew this was a bruise for every elite athlete.
“No.” I wiped scone crumbs off the side of my mouth. “Should I clear out when you do?”
Jude shrugged. “No rush on my end, unless you need to get your friend’s car back to Oxford.”
I shook my head. “She doesn’t need it until this weekend. I may work here while you’re gone, if that’s okay with you? Maybe get the phone call out of the way too.”
What a seemingly insignificant thing I was asking. But it wasn’t, and I think we both knew it. Allowing me into his space with no supervision was a big freaking deal.
He stood, taking a moment to tower over where I sat in that chair. Jude lifted his hand, brushing an errant crumb from the corner of my lips. “Whatever you need, it’s yours.”
Well, okay then. If he was trying to make me want to mount him like a bucking bronco, he was doing an excellent job.
That smirk, that warmth, it returned, and I think he knew exactly what was going on in my head.
Maybe we had a thousand unanswered questions between us, but whether we wanted each other was not one of them.
“I need to change and go,” he said.
I nodded. Good. I needed him to change and go too because now that my belly was full of carbs and coffee was hitting my system, I was feeling all sorts of feelings that I shouldn’t be feeling.
All of them complicated.
And I think he knew that too. He asked quietly, “Do you want me to be a part of the call with your family?”
Did I? Let me contemplate that for all of about one one-hundredth of a second …
Absolutely not.
Logan would have a heart attack on the spot. Paige would find a way to become the first human to physically burst through a FaceTime call and appear next to me, simply so she could castrate Jude. Just … nope.
And he did not need to know any of that yet.
Ididn’t need any of that yet.
“No, that’s okay. I think it’ll be easier if I do it myself.”
“Are you sure?”
“No,” I answered.
Jude smiled. “You have ten minutes to change your mind because after that, I’ll likely be gone until around four.”
“I won’t change my mind.”
Having him there would definitely make it harder. And telling them was already going to be hard enough.
LIA
Any strong offensive scheme had certain key components, and when it came to me telling my family the news, I was going to approach this exactly like it was coming straight out of a football playbook.
A good offense created smart mismatches, pitting your best offensive player with their weakest defensive player. Maybe I couldn’t do exactly that with Logan and Paige, but I could bring in my staunchest ally: Claire.
She was on her way to their house, ready to sit with them while I delivered the news and jump in if I needed backup.
It was also imperative if I had any intention of maintaining control, that I only tell Logan and Paige. At least for the first phone call. Molly and Isabel loved me, but I couldn’t gauge how they’d react, so for the time being, I couldn’t risk my offense being outmanned and overpowered.
In my head, I could imagine our scheduled phone call at seven in the morning Seattle time (three in the afternoon my time) as a play mapped out on Logan’s whiteboard in his office. Xs and Os and arrows, signifying who would run which way, who would run the post route, who would run the fade, and if it was a pass play or a run.
For today, I was the quarterback, and my family was in the strange position of being lined up in front of me, blocking some invisible goal line. I didn’t even know for sure what I wanted from the phone call, other than like, I didn’t want to end up bursting into tears.
No crying = success.
As the hands on the clock slowly circled closer to three, I felt a nervous tightening in my belly. Maybe I should’ve waited until Jude could be a part of it and fortify my O-line, if I was taking this sports metaphor even further.
Maybe it was because I’d spent the day in the quiet of his beautiful home, that the slow creeping of time felt particularly … well, slow. No one was around to distract me, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t focus on the work I was supposed to do.
My laptop had sat untouched on his kitchen table all day, and I’d moved from the couch to the teak furniture in his private garden a few times, managing some disjointed scrawling in my notebook. I read a few pages of the book on Charlotte that I’d brought from my flat, but the words bled together, and I found myself reading the same page for a solid hour.
It was that frustration that had me wandering slowly around Jude’s home. Was it low-key stalking? Yes.
But come on, I was having his child, so I didn’t think it was too strange to peek around a bit when he left me unattended in his private space.
All the rooms were immaculate, and it seemed like as much of a reflection on his personality as it did on the fact he had a full-time housekeeper. Who, he’d assured me, had the day off and wouldn’t randomly stop by.
The house was updated but still held the charm of almost all the buildings in England. It was in the slope of the ceiling in the guest bedroom decorated in sedate blues and whites, in the curling wood detail of the crown molding and the wavy spots of the glass in the windows overlooking that beautifully landscaped garden. Jude’s garden was separated from his neighbors by tall ivy-covered brick walls, and it gave the space a magical, old-world feeling that I liked very much.
I spent the most time in his bedroom, which was just as clean as the rest of the house, but there was an astonishing lack of personal details anywhere to be found. I stopped in front of the large dresser and slid open the drawers, finding everything neatly folded. In the bottom drawer were a few faded photos underneath a dingy gray shirt with a farm logo on it, probably his parents’ place—based on what he’d told me. My eyes narrowed when I saw something soft and white and fluffy peeking out from underneath the shirt. I tugged it out, smiling when I held the small little sheep in my hand. It was made of some sort of soft wool, and the tiny pink nose and black circle eyes were quite cute.
I found myself clutching it to my chest like a talisman.
“Do you think the sheep is cute?” I whispered to little Raspberry. “Maybe we’ll do sheep in your nursery.”
When I left the room, I couldn’t stop my brain from whirring with nervous speculation of how this phone call was going to go.
My phone buzzed.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.