Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Fine,” I grunt as I navigate around the disaster she’s made of my kitchen.
It’s warm in here. Way warmer than the unseasonably cold weather outside in southern Virginia. I drop my jacket on the floor—fuck, that’s gonna be coated in flour too—grab the freezer handle of my side-by-side stainless fridge, then yank my hand back when it connects with something slick and not-supposed-to-be-there.
“Oh, sorry.” Meg drops her reindeer cookie cutter—side note, why are there reindeer cookie cutters in my kitchen?—and hustles to me, bringing with her the scent of hot chocolate and Christmas trees. She snags a towel and goes to town fisting her hand up and down over the freezer handle. “I must’ve had something on my hand when I opened it. Sorry. Should’ve wiped that down already. Here. Let me get your ice pack.”
She’s jerking off my freezer handle.
She’s jerking off my freezer handle with a reindeer towel, and now my dick’s taking notice, in the middle of a damn Christmas nightmare in my holiday-free-zone house.
And now she’s attacking me too, grabbing my wrist with one of her soft, warm, flour-covered hands while she flips my palm up and efficiently wipes the slime off my skin with a part of the towel that’s miraculously still clean.
Also, there’s a reindeer staring at me from that towel.
It knows what my dick is doing and it is judging me.
Shut the hell up, reindeer. Nobody asked you, and what are you doing staring at my dick anyway?
Also, I don’t need a reindeer judging me for an unexpected and unwelcome hard-on.
I’m judging myself for it enough.
Much like I have been every time I’ve gotten a hard-on when I’ve seen Meg in my house the past few weeks.
I blame the painkillers.
Safest that way.
Because I’ve spent the past too many years since college pretending like this doesn’t happen every time I happen to cross paths with my best friend’s little sister.
“Are you okay?” Meg, who clearly has zero reasons to care about the action behind my fly, asks. “Seriously? You look like you did that time when Jude hit that home run off of you the first time you faced each other in the majors. Oh. Sorry. Sore topic. Right. You struck him out way more times than he hit home runs off of you, if it helps. Here. Ice pack. Shoulder. Want a cookie? I just finished decorating the first batch. There’s something about your house that’s total magic. I’ve never had gingerbread cookies turn out this well.”
I snatch my hand back and take the ice pack from her. “Why are you here?”
“The Bergers have so much family in town that I was relieved of duty until after the New Year. Accidental paid time off, but I’m on call just in case. Awesome, right? Although, I’ll miss the babies.” She winks at me. “Don’t tell Zeus and Joey, but I’m totally making these for them as an excuse to give my little sweeties extra hugs and kisses since I’m not scheduled to see them again for so long.”
My cheek is twitching in time with the pulsing ache in my pitching arm and in direct opposition to the way my dick is still lifting sleepy eyeballs at Meg like it’s once again remembered we have a woman that we’ve been denying being attracted to for years living in the house with us.
It probably has.
She’s not around a lot.
And there are rarely women in my house.
Plus, Meg isn’t a woman. She’s my best friend’s little sister, which makes her not a woman.
Which is a message that my dick still hasn’t received, no matter how many times I’ve told it as much over the years.
I grunt again and turn away. Physical therapy drains me dry these days, and my bedroom, which shares a wall with the kitchen, is too far away. “So long sounds like a good time to look for an apartment.”
She doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t start singing again.
The oven’s not beeping.
Nothing’s catching on fire and setting off the smoke alarms.
She definitely heard me.
Fuck.
Meg and I have known each other tangentially since Jude and I met playing ball together in college. See her—saw her occasionally whenever our teams faced off once we both hit the big league too.
And it’s my fault she’s here.
I ran into my buddy Zeus at the grocery store a while back. When he told me he and his wife had lost another nanny for their baby quadruplets, I remembered Jude saying Meg was temporarily without a job after some incident at the preschool where she’d been working.
Bad fit, Jude had said. Meg’s a bit unfiltered sometimes, and the preschool was a little uppity.
Zeus is a little unfiltered.
Okay, a lot unfiltered. His wife even more so.
And Meg?
She never sits still. So having her crash here temporarily while she gets her bearings in the city was supposed to be like having an old friend-of-a-friend for dinner once or twice a week. There’s always somewhere she has to flit off to or something she has to do, which is also helpful with my mental attitude that she is not a woman in my house.