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I looked up at her and saw that she’d dropped the towel and was staring down at me. As close as we were, I could see that her eyes were more gray than blue and a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks. I was still holding her calf, my thumbs pressing the edges of the Band-Aid down.
Mistaking my silence for refusal, Ada frowned at me. “I mean it. Kendall was just playing around. If you punish her, I’ll quit.”
I barked out an unexpected laugh and then shook my head. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
Smile back in place, Ada gently eased her leg from my hands and stood up. I had no choice but to rise with her and when I did, I realized I was too close to her. I could smell the sweetness of her hair or body, whatever it was that was scented of honey and vanilla. I felt a wave of arousal as I glanced down at her full mouth.
Ada looked like a deer in headlights for a moment as her eyes flicked to my mouth and back up to my eyes. Then, she pasted one of her go to smiles on her face and reached up to tap the end of my nose with the tip of her finger. “Boop.”
I brushed her hand away and scowled. “What is wrong with you?”
She slipped out of the bathroom and was gone, like a strangely neurotic ghost that made my dick hard and my brain ache.
Collin showed up in the bathroom doorway a few moments later, a deeply unhappy look on his face. It was such a juxtaposition of Ada’s smile that it took me a beat to readjust. She was fucking with our normal and I didn’t like it.
“Jud has decided to return to the land of the living.” He looked around and crossed his arms over his chest. “Looks like the nanny might have a crush on our little brother. She got weird when he showed up.”
Ignoring information that I didn’t need rattling around in my brain, I shrugged. “She’s always weird.”
“When Jud fucks her and leaves her heartbroken, what are we going to do for a nanny?” He sounded harsher than normal and it was clear something was eating away at him. He shook his head and threw up his hands. “What am I saying? We’ll get a nanny who isn’t insane. Problem solved.”
I was in the shower, washing Ada’s vomit off my skin not even ten minutes later, when Collin’s weirdness finally broke through the haze Ada had me in. It wasn’t like Collin to be so harsh about Jud. Yeah, Jud had issues, but we all did. We usually just ignored each other’s shit.
Unable to stop thinking about it, I finally sat down at my computer once I was back in my office and pulled up the security footage. I figured something would show me what Collin’s deal was and I wasn’t wrong. Ten minutes into flying through the footage I nearly broke my finger slamming the button to stop the recording. As soon as I clarified I was seeing what I thought I was seeing I deleted the file and leaned back in my chair as unwanted feelings assaulted my brain.
Annoyance and frustration at Collin for touching Ada and then being so careless as to leave the fucking evidence where someone could find it and use it to hurt our family. Anger at him for breaking our routine for Ada. I’d also seen him going to the lake with her. There was also jealousy. The few seconds I’d seen of Ada’s bare body had sent guilt smothered desire raging through my veins. I shouldn’t have seen it, but I did and I didn’t think there was any forgetting it.
I thought about finding Collin and asking him if he wanted to spar in the gym but I knew it was a bad idea. I stared at my computer screen that had gone dark and stood up. Bad idea or not, I was doing it.
20
***Ada***
Sittingbythelakewith the kids again the next morning, I stared across at the beach I’d gone to as a kid and thought of my parents. I’d called them early that morning and updated them on everything except the sex with Collin. I was going to carry that secret to my grave if I could. They were so excited for me, even though what I was doing was crazy, but they were always that excited for me. From the day I was born my parents had been showering me with attention and love. We afforded the vacation to the other side of the lake while the kids I was watching lived and grew bored of their private beach and I felt sorry for them.
My parents poured love into me nonstop. They took time out of their day, every day, to talk to me and find out what I was thinking and feeling. The kids living in the Carrington Mansion didn’t have a clue what that was like. I hadn’t seen any of the Carrington brothers spend any significant time with their children. Even Collin had managed to pay more attention to his phone than his kids when he’d joined us at the lake.
Kendall, sitting beside me on her phone, scrolling through social media, had opened up to me in a matter of days. I wasn’t under the illusion that I was so amazing that I drew kids out of their shells that quickly. They were all just starving for attention. Kendall had come out to me while she believed her father would put even more distance in their relationship if she told him. The twins had given me hugs the night before. Milo was glued to my leg, even though his dad was out of hiding. They were sad kids and it made me far angrier than getting fired had.
Alex and Avery went running by as they chased each other with the water guns I’d found in the garage and kicked up sand on Kendall. She screamed threats at the boys and dusted herself off. Milo mimicked her, his new favorite game, and then cackled as he fell back in the sand. They were fun kids. They weregoodkids. They had shitty dads, though.
Kendall realized I was staring at her and raised her brows. “What?”
“Nothing. Just thinking.” I smiled and stretched out on my towel. The guys had no idea the storm heading their way.
“You’re doing an evil laugh. Should I be worried?” Kendall flicked sand over my legs. “Weirdo.”
I raised my sunglasses to the top of my head as I sat up. “Did you just kick sand at me?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Give me one of those guns, boys! Kendall is about to get it!”
We played so much on the beach that we were all exhausted that night. We ate our dinner in the theater room while watching a silly kid’s movie and I interacted with the dads exactly zero times and it was great.
That night, while I showered and got ready for bed, I thought about how I was going to force the guys to step up as fathers. I was an optimist til death but even I knew that my luck would run out at the Carrington Estate sooner or later. I wanted to help the kids before I left. I still wanted to torture the guys, but my priorities were shifting.
I had to get the guys to spend time with their kids before anything else. There was no way I could start to bridge the gap between them all if they were never together. Before I fell asleep that night, I came up with a few plans for how to make it happen.
