Chapter Twenty-Three

Noah

“I need to go,” she whispers, walking upstairs. How did the best two days of my life turn to shit so fast? I throw my head back, rubbing my hands over my face. Not waiting another second, I run up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Once I get to the bedroom door I see her scurrying around the room, packing not just what she wore last night, but everything that she has here.

“What the hell is going on right now?” I ask her, walking into the room.

“Um, I think we should have a little space,” she says to the bag, going into the bathroom to get more stuff.

Walking over to the bag, I start unpacking it and putting things back where they belong. She comes out of the bathroom, her hands full of her shit, and let me say I love her shit, stopping mid-step.

“What are you doing?”

I don’t bother looking at her. I just put her clothes back on the chair in a heaping mess, some falling sideways. “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory,” I say, walking back to her, grabbing her stuff out of her hand. “There is no little fucking space.” I walk back, dumping the stuff on the counter, turning and watching her at the door of the bathroom while I lean back on the counter. “My mother is a bitch. It’s a known fact. Fuck, even my father doesn’t like her. He tolerates her, but…” I stop when I see the questions in her eyes. “My parents had me because it was the thing to do. Two hotshot lawyers creating life. It took them into a new level, but once I was here it was a level that my mother didn’t want, so I was brought up by nannies.”

Her eyes turn soft.

“My parents aren’t loving like your parents, babycakes.” I walk to her, grabbing her face in mine. “My mother will be a bitch till she closes her eyes and even then she might come back just to fuck with me. Don’t define me or us because of my mother.”

She puts her hands on mine. “She really is a bitch. It’s a good thing my parents taught me manners because—” And I stop her there by bringing my lips to hers while I squeeze her cheeks in my hands.

“Now, can we go back down and do naked yoga, please?”

Her smile shines bright, her eyes light, and her giggle shoots straight to my heart, then my cock. Whoa, did I just say heart? Fuck. This is what it feels like. I kind of like it. Could be worse.

“We are not doing naked yoga till the locks are changed on your front door,” she says and I let her go, walking over to my night table where I pick up the phone. “What are you doing?”

“Calling a locksmith.” I turn and sit on the bed and forty-five minutes later I have new locks on the door and forty-seven minutes later I’m buried balls deep in her while we do naked yoga.

The next day I kiss her goodbye when we both leave for the day and I’m strolling into the office and stop as soon as I see Lauren walking in also.

“Look at you being early and shit.” I smile, holding the door open for her.

“We start at nine, right?” she asks, looking down at her watch.

“Yeah ish, give or take,” I say to her, nodding to the security guards in the entrance.

“Ish, what is ish?” she asks, pressing the elevator button, going up.

“Lauren, I’m not Austin. I won’t freak out if you’re ten minutes late. Shit happens. Now I have Norma coming to just show you the ins and outs. You have her for two hours because Leonard is coming back this afternoon,” I say, getting out of the elevator and showing her to Norma’s office. “I hope you’re a fast learner.” I wink at her as she takes a notebook out of her bag. I smile to both of them and then go to my office, checking my emails. Two hours later when I look up, Lauren is sitting at her desk with four, first-year associates. I don’t know what she is telling them, but it looks like she she’s telling them a super-hot dirty sex story. I grab my phone, snapping a picture and sending it to Austin.

My PA is better than yours!

Fuck off! He replies, making me laugh.

Dude, she is the shit. These chumps are eating her up.

I look back at her as she points to something on the computer screen.

All jokes aside, she just cleared my schedule in ten minutes.

He doesn’t answer me anymore. Instead, flowers arrive. Lots of them. I laugh, thinking well played. I pick up the phone, calling my girl. She answers breathless after the second ring.

I smile and lower my voice. “Are you playing with yourself?”

She laughs. “Most def. How did you know?”

“My cock has a radar for when you’re in the mood. He stands at attention ready for war.”

“That is a picture. Your cock dressed up ready for war with a little helmet.”

“Hey,” I snap, “there is nothing little about my cock. You never put little and cock in the same sentence.”

“Okay,” she says, giggling, “your head is so big they don’t have a helmet to fit.”

“Better, so much better.” I turn my chair, looking outside. “Now what are we doing for dinner?”

“I have to watch Rachel and Gabriel so Lauren can go get her car fixed.”

“Oh, okay, so I’ll come there. How about I grab some pizza? Do kids eat that?”

“Yes, Noah, kids love pizza. Can you get me a vegan one?” she says softly. “There may be a surprise tonight if you do.”

“I’ll make the pizza myself if they don’t have one.”

She laughs. “Okay, come by at five ish.”

“See, you get ish. Why doesn’t your sister get ish?”

“She will never get ish. Ever,” she sighs. “See you at five.”

“Later, babycakes,” I say, disconnecting.

The afternoon goes by uneventful. Lauren has everything organized and I don’t know what I did before her. The pizza is now sitting on the passenger seat. Not knowing what the kids like, I think I went overboard. Because now there are six pizzas. One just cheese, one pepperoni, one meat lovers, one veggies, one Hawaiian, and one vegan. Pulling into the driveway, I see they are all outside. Gabe is with a hockey stick, doing some stick handling while Kaleigh is doing some poses with Rachel. When I turn off the car, they all run to the car.

“Hey there,” I say, getting out, kissing Kaleigh hello and then bending to kiss Rachel.

“Did you get me epperoni?” Rachel puts her hands on her hips.

“I did,” I say, slapping Gabe on the shoulder. “Who is going to help me carry these in?” I say when I open the door and raise the boxes up.

“How many people were you expecting?” Gabe asks, laughing.

I shrug my shoulders, following them inside, carrying all the boxes. When I place them on the counter, we open them and Rachel scrunches her nose up when she sees the vegetable one. “I no want that one.”

Kaleigh goes to get plates, coming back and handing me and Gabe one. Then she grabs a slice of pepperoni for Rachel. We sit down at the table where I listen to stories of all the kids in Rachel’s class. Each and every one of them.

When it’s time to clean up, I tell Kaleigh I’ll take care of it so she can give Rachel a bath. I roll up my sleeves while Gabe goes to do his homework and I go about placing things in the dishwasher. I open it to see that it’s not even organized. I shake my head and start rearranging everything. By the time I finish, Rachel comes bouncing down.

“Aunt Kay said she is taking a shower and to not go show her your toy. What toy do you have?” she asks and I take in the little girl with fresh pjs and her wet hair combed and braided.

“Um.” I start to think of something.

“Can I paint your nails?” she asks.

“Sure,” I say if it’s going to get her to not think about what toy I have for her aunt.

She squeals with delight, clapping her hands and jumping up and down.

“I go get my spa tings,” she says, running back to the dining room corner, bringing up a bright pink square makeup case. She walks to the living room and puts it on the table. “Come sit, Noah,” she says and I go sit down. She opens this pink case, showing me that she has about ten nail colors. “What color you want?” she asks and I bend in, looking at the colors. Green, yellow, blue, orange, red, pink, brown, white, gray, and black.

“I don’t know,” I say, grabbing a bottle out of the case. “What color do you think I should do?” I ask her, picking another bottle.

“I love the orange,” she says, grabbing the bright orange out of the bag. “It means social butterfly.”

I pinch my eyebrows together. “Does it really?” I ask her.

“Yes, Google it,” she says, making Gabe laugh from the dining room where he is still doing homework.

I pull out my phone, searching for the information, and what do you know, she is right.

“Look at that. How about we do orange on my feet and pink on my nails?” I tell her, reading the description for pink.

She nods and goes to get a small stool to sit on while she paints my nails, or actually paints the skin around my nails, with my nails. One finger has polish all the way to the knuckles.

“Don’t move your hands or you’ll smudge it,” she tells me to put up my feet on the table.

Luckily I had taken off my socks when we started this adventure.

“You have big feet,” she says, painting my big toe. “Aunt Kay says big feet mean big—”

“Rachel,” Lauren shouts from the entrance of the living room.

“Mamma, you’re home. Look, I’m painting Noah’s nails. He doesn’t want anyone to know he’s a social butterfly, so I put it on his feet.”

She walks in, taking in the paint job. “Oh, isn’t that nice, you are doing a wonderful job.” She kisses her cheek while Rachel misses my whole toenail altogether and paints the top of my foot. Lauren comes in eating and talking to Gabe as I wait for my nails to dry. When Kaleigh finally comes down, I see that she is wearing her pjs and her hair is piled on top of her head.

“I guess you’re staying here?” I ask her as she sits next to me.

“Aren’t you sick of me yet?” She tilts her head to the side.

“Yet? Why, are you sick of me?” I mimic her move with my head and the question.

“Not even a little.”

“Good, so leave your car here and I’ll drive you back tomorrow. I have to be in court at nine. So it will work out,” I say, leaning in. “Plus, you owe me a surprise and I want to show you my toy.”

“Oh, yeah, is your toy a big toy?” She leans into me.

“Can you guys not talk about toys on my couch, please?” Lauren shouts from the kitchen.

“I didn’t see any toys,” Rachel says from somewhere else.

“Okay, let’s go,” I say, getting up and saying bye to everyone.

When I walk out of court the next day I drive straight to Austin’s to see how the bastard is doing.

“Hey there, stranger.” I go to his couch, unbuttoning my jacket and sitting down. I look at Austin. “Well, at least you won’t try to bang your new PA, right?” I laugh, brushing my hands into my hair.

“That really isn’t your color.” He points to my hand.

“Rachel painted my nails yesterday.” I inspect my nails. “You should see what she did to my feet.”

He throws his pen down and sits up straighter. “You saw Rachel yesterday?”

“Well, we had to babysit Rachel and Gabe so Lauren could bring her car in to get the radio fixed,” I say and then notice a change in his facial expression.

“What?” he yells.

“A CD of Frozen was jammed in her player and was stuck on repeat, so it played it all the time. You know this.” Surely he remembers he kept bitching about it for a month.

“I know what you mean. What I don’t understand is why you were babysitting.”

“She needed help.” I open my hands.

“Why didn’t she ask me?”

“I don’t know, maybe because you hightailed it right out of there the minute family shit started happening on Sunday night?” I stand up, now remembering the story Kaleigh told me in bed last night.

“Fuck off!” he yells back at me. Austin sits up in his chair a little straighter. “She was busy, so I left.”

I glare at him now. “You left or you took off, it’s the same thing.”

“Is that what she said?” He waits for an answer.

“She didn’t say anything. I just found it weird that she would ask us and not you. Kaleigh said to drop it, so I figured you didn’t want to.”

“I wasn’t asked. I didn’t even know.”

He gets up, grabbing his jacket, ready to run out of the office, when I grab his arm. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going to tell her that I’m not scared of her kids.”

“Think about what you’re doing. You are planning to barge into her workplace to profess this to her. Dude.” I shake my head and grab my phone to call Kaleigh. “Babycakes, are you home?” I smile and nod.

“Yup,” she answers. “Why? Are you going to come and feed me your toy for lunch?”

I look at Austin to make sure he didn’t hear.

“Okay. Austin needs to come over and do something. Can you go to my place? Pack a bag, or better yet, just bring everything with you.”

“Funny, if you’re asking me to move in this isn’t exactly the way to do it. I’ll leave the door open for him and make arrangements with our parents for the kids.”

I smile and then hang up. “Okay, Kaleigh is leaving the door open for you. Go woo your girl.”

“Woo?” he asks me.

How he has even gotten laid is beyond me.

“A meal, rose petals, champagne, lingerie, vibrators, cuffs. You know, romance.”

“This, I can do.” He taps his chin, thinking. “I’m going to woo the fuck out of her.”

He rushes out of the office while I laugh and follow him, stopping in front of his assistant’s desk. “Don’t make plans for him. He is going to woo.” I wink and walk away.