Page 17 of Kiss Me Again
But by the time three rolls around, I’m still bothered by the whole thing. Thankfully, I’ve found a new dessert, so as far as productivity goes, I’m trying to count the day as a win. I have to keep pushing forward with the idea of a new restaurant, or I’ll go insane. Definitely not anytime soon, but still.
While trying to sort the logistics of a future fireproof restaurant that I might own, I drive to Billingsley Academy. Parents are lining up for the pick-up, and now I get to be one of them. Though I probably shouldn’t assume everyone else is a parent. Just as I start to wonder who is a nanny and who is a parent, I watch the teacher extend her hand with the iPad so that the parents can scan their phones at pickup.
Aria waves to me from behind a thick oak tree near the swings. I wait for her to walk over, since I can’t enter the gated property. “Ready to meet him?” She smiles at me.
I nod. She points behind me and I watch as a man walks up to us, his head buried in his phone.
Aria says, “This is Lily.”
He looks up, and the world stops spinning entirely as I fight my mouth dropping open as the scent of the sea washes over me.
It’s Cormac. My one-night stand is my new boss.
8
Cormac
The messy brunette bun isn’t messy anymore. Not a hair out of place. Nothing like the last time I saw it. Her clothes aren’t those baggy things. Today, they’re decent enough slacks and a casual blue blouse.
But that haunting smile is there. And the raspberries.
I had tried so hard to find her. But finding her at my kids’ school seems so wrong. Of all the luck…this is not what I had in mind when I told Abigail to find a nanny. I should just back out now.
But I never back out of anything.
They say in cases of extreme danger, your life flashes before your eyes. So why am I only flashing to the night we spent together? Her crooked smirk. Those dancing green eyes. The way she cried out when she came on my—
Stop it. Stop it right now. This is hardly the time or place.
Lily thrusts her hand out to me. “It’s nice to meet you…?”
She’s acting as though we’ve never met. I can do that. We can pretend nothing has happened and never speak of it. That’s probably best for everyone. But as our hands touch, electricity jolts up my arm. The chemistry we had is still palpable, even now, under these strange circumstances. “I’m—
“Are you Lily?” Aiden asks as he joins us. He has his mother’s sandy brown hair and her sense of timing.
“I am,” she says firmly, with a smile.
I tell her, “This is Aiden, and the girl about to join us is Franny.”
Lily nods, still smiling as she watches my daughter approach. “Twins, right?”
“Yes.”
Franny runs to Aiden. She has my hair and my sense of annoyance over trivial matters. “You were gonna wait for me!”
He shrugs. “You took too long.”
“Going to,” I correct her.
She huffs up at me. “He wasgoing towait for me.”
He ignores the complaint, instead looking at Lily with a gleam in his eye. “Do you play video games?”
Lily says, “I do, but I only play them with very special people. Would you two happen to be Aiden and Franny?”
Franny grins with a tooth missing. “Yes, ma’am.”
Lily squats down at eye level with them. “Then, if this guy allows it,” she points with her thumb over her shoulder at me, “I think there could be some video games in our future.”