“I respect that, Sadie, I do, but I’m worried about you.”
“What do you mean?”
Hassan looked frustrated. “You’re an independent, strong woman, but a part of you still believes in the sanctity of a family unit, in bringing your child up with a mom and a dad, preferably in the same house. However you work this deal with Carrick, he’s going to be a very big part of your life. Are you going to meet and date and fall in love with anyone else or are you going to fall for him because he’s there and because he sets your panties on fire?”
It was a good question and one she didn’t have an answer for. Sadie thought about her response. “When the baby comes, I’m not going to have time to date someone else, even if I wanted to. What’s wrong with sleeping with Carrick as we coraise our child?”
“Because you are not the type who can separate sex from love on a long-term basis. If you don’t learn to do that, you will fall for him, Sadie. And he might end up breaking your heart.”
She was too smart to repeat past mistakes.
“He’s not going to make me cry, Hassan.”
“How can you be so sure, Sadie?”
“Because I won’t let him,” Sadie told Hassan, conviction in her voice. “There’s too much at stake for me to be stupid and allow the guy to hurt me. I’ve got this, I promise.”
“Oh, Sades, I wish I could believe you.”
Ronan asked Joa for a meeting to discuss his lack-of-nanny situation and, as per his instructions, Joa walked down the icy path running along the side of Ronan’s house and gingerly climbed the steps leading up to the pretty entertainment area off the kitchen. The steps were like oiled glass and her feet felt disconnected from her body.
She hadn’t been back in Boston long and she was already over the snow, the cold and the wet. Her uniform for the past few years had been shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops, and she found dressing in layers an absolute pain.
Northern hemisphere winters were a huge con on her “should I permanently move back to Boston?” list.
Joa stepped into the sunroom—funny!—off the kitchen and started to disrobe: coat, hat, gloves and scarf. Feeling ten pounds lighter and dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt and skinny jeans, she felt almost normal.
But damn, she did miss her flip-flops.
Joa walked into the kitchen, surprised by the quiet. In her experience, mornings in a household of kids was a madhouse and she’d expected the boys to be sitting down to breakfast with Ronan making their lunches or packing their bags. If he was anything like her other dads, then she’d expected to see him rushing around in an untucked button-down shirt, the ends of his tie on his chest, tailored suit pants and socks, talking to his kids, looking fine and yes, smelling gorgeous.
Joa tipped her head up to look at the ceiling, annoyed with herself. She thought she was done with behaving that way. None of her other dads could hold a candle looks wise to Ronan, but they were all good fathers.
And maybe that was the root of her fantasies, why she found herself so attracted to them: they were all about family.
Men who made being a good parent a priority was a huge turn-on for her and that was, surely, because she never had a father, or parents, of her own. Her mother had been useless and God only knew who her dad was.
But her crush on her previous employers had been more cerebral than physical, and her fantasies had revolved around what they represented: a family, having someone in her corner, a man who provided a constant source of love and security.
Safety.
Ronan wasn’t safe at all.
He was a stressed-out, terse, snappy man and...
And she was physically attracted to him. Brutally, horribly so.
And she’d rather swallow poison than ever admit that to him.
“Joa, you’re here. We are running late.”
Joa snapped out of her fantasy to be confronted with reality and...wow, reality was damn fine. Ronan, wearing only a pair of black exercise shorts and sneakers, stood a few feet from her. Joa could see the fine sheen of perspiration on his shoulders, dampening his chest hair, which narrowed down into a fine line that bisected a very, very nice set of abs. His shorts hung low enough on his hips that she could see a stupendous pair of hip muscles, and Joa felt her knees weakening.
Wow.
Ronan gestured her into his kitchen. “Are you okay?” he asked, his hands on his hips. She wanted her hands there, her chest pressed into his, her tongue on the ball of his tan, freckled shoulder, tasting his skin.
Yeah, think about that, Jones. That’s a marvelous way to take control of this situation.