“I told you I could do it.”
“That was so cool, Maddie! Do you think you can teach me?” Ty beams. He thinks Maddie is a superhero, and I can’t blame him.
“Sure! Let’s give your chest another week to heal and we can start practicing.” She grins, lifting herself out of the pool.
Ty is thrilled with her answer, and starts paddling around the pool again.
I reach for the towel on the lounge chair and offer it to Maddie, mostly for my own benefit. Seeing her wet has my mind wandering into some treacherous places, and I’m still achingfrom the erection she gave me this morning. If I have to look at her like this much longer, I’ll be in some serious pain again.
Maddie takes the towel, standing only inches away from me as water droplets race down her body. She shakes her hair out, propping her foot up on my chair and rubbing the towel up and down those long, toned legs to dry off. I have to turn away to keep any semblance of composure. She has to know what she’s doing to me, and judging by the way she keeps at it, she likes it. When she wraps the towel around her body and covers up, I can finally breathe again.
“What did you think?” she asks, demanding my attention back.
“That wasveryimpressive.” My mouth is so dry I can hardly speak. “I didn’t think you were actually going to do it.”
Maddie sits on the other side of the chair. Now I’m positive she knows what she’s doing, because there are empty chairs on either side of me, yet she chose to set her nearly naked body mere inches from me. If the sun hits it just right, the thin material is practically see through.
Fuck me. Keeping this professional was hard enough, but with her putting the full court press on, it’s next level. Her confidence only makes her sexier to me. No man should be expected to have the amount of restraint I do.
“Well, he dared me.” She shrugs. “I’ve got two older brothers and I know you never back down from a dare. Especially a double dare.”
I chuckle, rolling my sleeves up a bit. Whether it’s the weather or Maddie, I’m about to work myself into a heat stroke.
Although maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea, because if I’m unconscious, Maddie will have to give me mouth-to-mouth, in a purely professional way.
“Thanks for hanging out with him this afternoon,” I say. “It looks like he’s had the time of his life.”
“He’s a good kid. Did your meeting go okay?”
I nod. “Went fine. But, uh, I wanted to tell you…I had Joe look into Russ’s story a little more.”
Maddie raises a curious eyebrow.
“You were right. He was stealing from us and tried to cover the whole thing up.”
“Really?”
“Yep. There’s surveillance of the whole thing. He cut his leg on the door of my storage unit while he was loading shit up.”
“Wow.” She bites her lip. “I’m really sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” I shake my head. “In fact, without you, I would have been down a lot of money before I knew what was happening. Let me take you to dinner tonight to thank you. You, me, and Ty.”
“Oh.” Maddie’s face falls a little, and she tenses. “That’s really sweet of you, but you don’t need to do that.”
“I want to. Plus, you stepped in for Ty today. Dinner is the least I can do.”
“Well, the thing is, I’ve got dinner plans with somebody...”
Her words hit me like a fucking freight train. She’s going out with somebody? Did I misread all of this? After all the sexual tension, the banter, the signals and she’s got a boyfriend?
Suddenly I feel like an absolute fool. It never occurred to me to ask her, and now I’ve had myself so tightly wound over a girl who is even more unreachable than I thought.
A twinge of jealousy twists through me, and all that does is make me angry. I shouldn’t feel as jealous as I do. I shouldn’t feel as possessive as I do. I shouldn’t feel a lot of the things towards Maddie that I do. And it needs to stop. She’s every color of forbidden, and I need to get a hold of myself before I have a real mess on my hands. Before I forget the entire basis of our relationship.
A job. A contract.
“No problem. Come on, Ty. It’s time to go inside.”