Hours after her locker room interlude with Nolan, Bridget could still feel his hands on her, his fingers inside her. She wanted to do it again. She wanted him to take her, make her his, make her scream his name. She touched herself as she lounged in the bathtub, lazily rolling her clit between her thumb and forefinger, but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same.

Her phone chimed, and she dried her hands off and checked the message.

Thanks for the floss, babe.

Bridget laughed. She’d slipped the horribly uncomfortable but very sexy thong underwear into Nolan’s pocket after he’d walked her to her door and given her a kiss. If she hadn’t stripped those things off in the locker room, she wouldn’t have crashed into him and therefore wouldn’t have had the hottest sex she’d ever had. Holy shit. What was going to happen when they actually got naked and horizontal? She didn’t think she was going to be able to handle the hotness that was Nolan Harper. The man could make her body sing.

She sent him a flirty text back, including a selfie of her making a kissy face, which prompted a flurry of texts from Nolan inquiring about clothing and ending with a good-night selfie of him in a T-shirt, his eyes soft and heavy like he’d either just woken up or recently climaxed. She couldn’t wait to see that face in person.

She was eating a pre-bedtime snack of yogurt when her father called. He got right to the point.

“How’d the presser go? I saw some stills but haven’t seen any tape.”

Bridget sighed. The question brought an end to her dulling post-orgasm high.

“Birdie, talk to me, honey.”

“It was okay, good even.”

“Kowalczyk behaved herself?”

Bridget snorted. “Yeah, for the most part.”

“But?”

“Did you know they were engaged?”

“Oh?” Her father sounded carefully nonchalant. He knew.

Bridget dropped into a kitchen chair and closed her eyes. “You could have warned me.” You should have warned me.

“I’d heard a rumor, but you never know about these things.”

“Ma and Kevin’s mother are tight, Dad. You could have gotten confirmation.”

“I know, Birdie. I’m sorry. I should have said something.”

“Maybe it’ll finally sink in to Ma’s thick skull that we’re not getting back together.”

“Now, that’s not fair to your mother . . .”

“Not fair? Not fair? What’s not fair is having your mother interrogate you about all the things you could have done differently to keep your husband from sticking his dick in another woman. That’s not fair.”

“You’re right.”

“He gave her my engagement ring.”

Bridget heard Liam suck in his breath in surprise. “What?”

“She shoved her hand in my face, and my ring was on her finger.” Bile rose in Bridget’s throat, and she pushed the yogurt away. “I gave him back the rings and told him to sell them to get money for his precious demo tape.” She hated the bitterness she heard in her voice, because really, she shouldn’t care about the rings or if Kevin and Hanna were engaged, or really anything at all. That was the beauty of being divorced with no children: the ability to not give a flying fuck about what your ex was doing.

“Oh, Bridget. I am so sorry.”

“Why do I care, Dad? Why?”

“Because you loved him for most of your life.”

“I suppose.”

A few seconds of awkward silence passed before Liam spoke again. “How is everything else going? You having a good camp so far?”

Bridget answered his questions about her training camp, and Liam caught her up on happenings in the neighborhood. But Bridget sensed her father wanted to say something else to her, and she wasn’t quite sure if she wanted to listen to his advice right then. She waited for him to broach another subject, but he didn’t until the very end of the conversation, right as they were saying good-bye.

“You should really get out there, you know? It’s time, Birdie.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Then do it.”

Visions of Nolan “doing it” filled her head, but she wasn’t quite ready to share the quiet man with her father just yet.  At the very least, she wanted to make sure that what happened earlier in the day wasn’t just a random fuck. Though, somewhere deep in her heart, she knew it wasn’t, at least on her part. She was falling for Nolan, hard, and she hoped he felt the same way, because if he didn’t, she didn’t think she could stand it.