Chapter 38

Andrew

 

I stared at the multiple grocery bags on the kitchen table, my head spinning.

“Okay. How many recipes are we following again?”

Raven inspected the laptop on the counter. “There’s the stuffing, the turkey, the green bean casserole, the cranberry sauce. That’s for Lanie. Um, sweet potatoes, salad. Course, any idiot can make that.”

I sucked in a long breath, wondering if I was having my first anxiety attack. “Salad. Okay. We can do that. Where’s the lettuce?”

Raven made a face. “That’s the last thing we have to make. We need to get the oven ready for the turkey. Did you thaw it?”

“Uh.”

“Dad!” Raven loudly clapped her hands. “Keep it together. Did you thaw the turkey?”

“Y-yes,” I stuttered. “I think so.”

“What?” She looked disgusted.

I opened the fridge and cautiously poked the turkey. “I think it’s thawed. How do I tell?”

“Drop it on the floor,” she sarcastically snapped. “If it breaks a board, it’s still frozen.”

“Don’t start an attitude with me, Raven. Not right now.”

As I spun around to stare her down, the front doorbell rang.

“Good.” Raven left the laptop and crossed the floor. “Maybe Lanie knows how to do this.”

“I could do it too,” I grumbled, but if she heard me, she pretended she hadn’t.

Staying in the kitchen, I pulled the turkey from the fridge and set it on the counter. It looked sad. All pale and soft.

We should have gone to the damn country club. They had a pianist there. Servers. Raven and I could have made dessert at home afterward instead.

“I’m sure we’ll figure it out,” Lanie said from behind me.

I turned around in time to see her and Raven enter the kitchen. She held a covered pie in one hand and unwound a red scarf with the other, and her eyes shone as they caught mine.

“Hi,” she breathed, setting the pie down on the table.

“Hi,” I repeated, unable to look away. God, did she get more beautiful each day?

“I’ll hang up your stuff,” Raven said, taking Lanie’s coat and scarf in the direction of the hall closet.

Lanie smoothed down the front of what looked like a cross between a sweater and a dress. Noting that the hem fell just a few inches above her knees, my fingers trembled. That would be very easy to take off.

As I continued to stare at her, she tucked one of her longer strands of hair behind her ear and looked past me at the turkey on the counter. “So what are we dealing with here?”

“I love it when you do that.”

“Huh?” She blinked in confusion. Moving fast, I stepped across the kitchen and pressed my mouth to hers. She inhaled sharply, her back arching and her tits pressing against my chest. I sent my tongue between her lips, and red-hot desire spun in my veins.

Knowing I had to stop before I took it too far, I quickly stepped back. Lanie licked her lips, a blush crawling across her cheeks.

“Oh,” she whispered.

I nodded, trying to convey with my eyes how fucking sexy she looked. Raven’s footsteps were already coming back, and I’d run out of time to say or do anything else.

“So, Dad might have screwed up Thanksgiving,” Raven announced, poking the turkey with a butter knife.

Lanie sputtered, coughed, and laughed all in the space of two seconds. “What?”

My face heated. “Way to throw the only father you’ll ever have under the bus. Need I remind you I’ve been a little busy building a company my whole life. Excuse me if I haven’t had time to learn how to cook.”

“It can’t be that bad.” Lanie squeezed my hand the slightest bit as she walked past me. My eyes drifted down to her swaying hips before I got a hold of myself and forced them to lift.

“Weren’t we supposed to put this in the oven hours ago?” Raven mournfully asked.

Lanie inspected the bird. “Well, no. Only if you want to eat right at noon. Judging by the size, it should take about four or so hours to cook.”

“Hallelujah.” Raven’s eyes lit up, and she smiled at me over Lanie’s shoulder.

Lanie rolled up her sleeves. “I’ve been helping my mom cook for years. Don’t worry. I could make a Thanksgiving meal with my eyes closed.”

“What can I do?” Raven asked.

“Let’s see.” Lanie popped her lips. “What are we making?”

“Here’s the list.” Raven showed her the laptop.

“Okay. Great. How about you get started on the green bean casserole? You can pare the beans, and then after that peel the sweet potatoes. If we have everything prepped and ready to go, the actual cooking and baking will be a breeze.”

“What about me?” I asked.

“Dad can set the table,” Raven cut in before Lanie had the chance to say anything.

“Hey!” I cried. “Come on, now.”

Raven rolled her eyes at Lanie. “He can’t even make toast. It’s sad, really. He’s always burning it.”

Lanie giggled. “He made dinner for me once.”

“He probably had it delivered and then threw away the boxes so you’d think he made it.”

“If that’s true, that’s impressive in and of itself.”

“All right, all right.” I waved my hands around. “Have you two had enough laughs yet? Raven, hand me that bag of sweet potatoes. I think I can at least handle those.”

“We’ll see.” She rolled her eyes again.

“Your eyes are going to get stuck that way.”

“Oh my god, no one even says that anymore. What are you, forty-five?”

Lanie’s shoulders shook with laughter as she cut the net off the turkey.

“Nice, Raven,” I sarcastically answered. “You should go into comedy. Stating the obvious always goes over well.”

Raven stuck her tongue out at me, but I could tell she wasn’t really mad. In fact, she was the opposite. As Lanie gave out instructions and checked the progress of our individual dishes, Raven watched the woman with a look that could only be described as admiration.

It appeared I wasn’t the only one constantly impressed with Lanie.

“This says to use small marshmallows,” I read from the recipe, once the time to bake the sweet potatoes arrived. “We got the wrong kind. I only have the big ones.”

Grinning, Lanie sauntered over, took a big marshmallow from the open bag, ripped it in half, put one in my hand, and stuck the other part in her mouth.

“Now they’re small.” She grinned.

My temperature rose several degrees.

Raven made a big scene reaching between the two of us to grab a cutting board. “Is that really kitchen talk?”

Lanie bit down on her smile and turned away, quickly getting busy with the cranberry sauce. “It’s cool that you decided to make this from scratch,” she said.

“Yeah.” Raven shrugged. “We don’t really like it. It’s for you.”

Lanie’s eyebrows flew up. “You don’t like cranberry sauce? Are you out of your mind?”

“It’s so sour.”

“Have you ever had it with orange juice in it?”

“Um, no? I don’t think so.”

“Ah, so you’ve never had it made the right way.” Lanie pointed at the fruit bowl in the corner. “If you hand me one of those oranges, I’ll show you my aunt’s trick. Oh, and do you have a grater? If we put some of the peel in it, it’ll be even better.”

Smiling to myself, I stepped back so the two of them could have the run of the kitchen. “Just tell me when I need to set the table.”

Lanie winked over her shoulder. “Okay.”

By the time the meal was finished, my kitchen was unrecognizable. Not even when Karen went on a cooking frenzy, as she sometimes did when stressed and made enough casseroles for a week, did the counters look like this.

“You have carving tools?” Lanie asked me as she took the turkey out of the oven.

“Sure do.”

“And never been used,” Raven added.

We moved with a rhythm, taking the dishes into the dining room, a place I only ventured into if a client was over for dinner.

“Can we light those?” Lanie asked, pointing at the tall, untouched white candles in the center of the table.

“Of course.” Grabbing the lighter from the fireplace’s mantle, I handed it over—making sure my fingers grazed Lanie’s an undue amount in the process.

She lit the candles, adjusted the angle of the turkey, and straightened the cloth napkins.

“I think you missed your calling,” I said. “Maybe you should have gone into home décor or the culinary arts.”

Lanie wrinkled her nose. “Nah. I like my life the way it is.”

Her eyes stayed on mine a moment after she finished talking, and a thrill went through me. I knew what she was getting at. Life lately had been pretty fucking great.

“Shall we?” Lanie gestured at the table, and the three of us took our seats.

Right away, I picked up the carving knife.

“Wait!” Raven cried. “We have to say what we’re thankful for. Right?” She looked to Lanie for backup.

Lanie’s gaze slid to mine. “Sure. Andrew?”

I smiled at them both. “Of course. Raven, do you want to go first?”

Raven laid her intertwined hands on the table. “I’m grateful for today exactly as it is.I’m glad that Miss Jacobs—Lanie—could come over.”

Lanie dropped her face in that way she always did when she was both happy and embarrassed. “Thank you, Raven. I’m grateful for ...” She trailed off, eyes searching the air. “You know what? I’m grateful for the exact same thing. Today. I can’t think of a way it could be more perfect.”

“Hear! Hear!” I raised my water glass. “I’m going to have to join in on that. Today is pretty amazing.”

We clinked glasses, the echo filling the room and striking a chord in my heart. I’d hoped that today would be great, but with it here, I found it better than I could have imagined. Though I’d suspected for a while that Lanie and Raven were forming their own special relationship, it wasn’t until that morning that I got to observe it.

What I saw, I liked. A lot.

As we dug in, and Raven and Lanie both shared news from school, the good feeling rising in me grew stronger. Was this what it would be like if Lanie lived with us? Not the feast that took several hours to prepare, but a meal together every day, just the three of us? Time away from all the craziness of work and school to enjoy each other?

We’d had those special evenings with Raven’s mom, and I’d cursed the world more times than I could count for taking Danica away. A few times, I’d thought about what it might mean to find another woman to join our family, but I’d never let myself take the musings very far. Daydreaming would only get my hopes up, and I’d never met a woman I could see living with me and Raven.

Not until Lanie.

“Do you want to go swimming?” Raven asked as we finished off the pumpkin pie Lanie had brought.

“Do you have a death wish?” I leaned back in my chair, resisting the urge to unbutton my pants. If I did that, Raven would never let me hear the end of it.

“I meant in a little while.” She turned back to Lanie. “If you’re not going anywhere after this, I mean.”

Lanie licked whipped cream off the tip of her fork, and it took every ounce of will I had to not lunge across the table and take her lips with mine.

“I don’t have anywhere to be.” Lanie shrugged. “It’s Thanksgiving, after all. Except I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”

An image of Lanie gliding through the water completely naked entered my mind. Clearing my throat, I adjusted myself in my seat. God, I was hopeless.

“You can borrow one of mine,” Raven offered.

“Okay.” Lanie’s smile lit up the room. “But your dad is right. We should probably wait a little while before swimming. Just to be safe.”
“Well, I’ll go get the bathing suits.” Raven stood and stacked our three plates.

“I’ll get these,” I announced, taking the dishes from her hands. “You girls can go get changed.”

The second I had the plates in the dishwasher—just the ones we’d eaten off of, as the others could wait till later—I ran upstairs, in the direction Lanie and Raven had gone.

“Raven?” I called, stopping at the landing. “Lanie?”

Music came from under Raven’s closed door. Just as I turned to go back downstairs and wait for them, the hall bathroom opened and Lanie stepped out.

“Hey,” she smiled.

I gulped, too busy staring at her black bikini-clad form to speak.

“Andrew,” she playfully chastised.

“I can’t help it.”

“You’ve seen me naked before.” She crossed her arms, which only made her breasts ampler.

“It must be something about having all the best parts covered up.” I reached for her, wrapping my arm around her waist and pulling her into me. “That is a very sexy … wait.” I frowned. “That suit is too sexy for Raven to have. She needs to get rid of it.”

Lanie swatted my shoulder. “What’s she going to wear to pool parties then?”

“A full-piece wetsuit.”

“God.” She laughed. “I don’t want to be around when you tell her that.”

“Here.” I gently took her hand. “I want to show you something.”

“What?”

In response, I pulled her into the library and closed the door behind us. Lanie started to look around herself, but I pressed my fingers against her jaw, stopping her. Her eyes snapped back to me, and I gently guided her face to mine.

Lowering my head, I swept my lips across hers, taking my time and making the kiss butterfly light.

Lanie sighed in pleasure, her exhale a trembling one. I landed another kiss, this one a bit more forceful. Dropping my hands, I trailed them over her naked shoulders. The bathing suit straps taunted me. They looked so fragile like they would come untied if I only flicked them.

“It’s definitely too sexy,” I affirmed.

Lanie laughed and opened her mouth, probably to protest, but I pressed my finger to her lips.

“Raven should not be wearing it,” I said. In a slower, more meaningful way I added, “And neither should you, but for another reason completely.”

Pressing my arms against the door on either side of Lanie, I lethargically licked a line from the base of her neck to her ear. Lanie trembled between me and the door, her breasts heaving against my chest. I could feel her nipples getting tight, straining against the bikini’s fabric.

Her hands found my shoulders, nails digging in before moving up and twisting through the back of my hair. I took her bottom lip between my teeth, tugging the slightest amount before releasing it and running my tongue across her front teeth.

Lanie’s hands pressed harder into the back of my head, and her hips drove forward. I ran my palms down her bare sides, swiveling them over her hips and across her ass. She was so perfect in my arms, soft and delicate.

“Lanie!” Raven shouted from down the hall.

With a pained inhale, I pulled my lips away from hers.

Lanie’s eyes went wide in fear. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “I don’t want Raven to think we were—”

I chuckled. “If she asks, I’ll tell her I was showing you my encyclopedia collection.”

“Is that what they’re calling it now?”

“Get out of here.” I laughed, landing a playful spank on her rear as she turned to open the door.

Lanie paused with her hand on the knob. “Are you coming?”

“In a minute. I need to go get changed.”

And wait for my hard-on to go down.

“Okay,” she whispered, slipping out as Raven called her name again.

The door closed with a soft click, and I ran my hands through my hair as I sighed in contentment. Pulling Lanie into the library and having my way with her had been a ballsy move considering Raven was in the house, but it had been well worth it.

As much as I wanted—no, needed—to get Lanie into my bed, I now knew I could wait. There was a moment and a place for everything, and I had a very good feeling my time together with Lanie had only begun.