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“Stay with Danielle, then. Maybe it’s best to be out of the apartment completely.”
“That’s a good idea.” She relaxes against me, hugging me tight. “How do you always manage to talk me off the ledge?”
“That’s my job.”
She smiles into my chest. “Okay, enough about me. Tell me how your day was.”
I stroke her back, telling her how Johnson’s improving in the ring, how Uncle Marty and I reconciled inventory today, how the Intro to Business class I took over the summer paid off because I understood what he was talking about when he kept going on about distributors and overhead and supply chain issues that I never would have known about previously.
“Mmm,” she says, snuggling further into me as I scratch between her shoulder blades, reacting the same way Boots does when I pet her. “My college boy is so smart.”
I laugh, trying not to tip her off my lap. “I’ve taken one class.”
“And you got an A. That’s a four-point-oh GPA. Higher than mine.”
My cheeks flush the slightest bit, even knowing the whole thing’s a joke. “Well, I could bomb these next classes coming up. I still can’t believe you talked me into taking two this semester.” I think I can handle Small Business Management, but Business Law? I don’t know anything about law.
“I’ll be here to help you every step of the way. And I promise what you learn will pay off one day if you take over for Marty.”
I nod, knowing she’s right, and stroke my palms down her arms, intertwining our fingers. I rub my thumb over her left ring finger, already anticipating the day I can put a ring on it. Once I make lead trainer at work, I’m putting anything extra I earn with my pay raise into a special savings account for her ring.
“I love you,” I whisper. The need to tell her that often still hasn’t abated, even six months in.
She doesn’t seem to mind, though, leaning back to smile at me. “Love you,” she murmurs, kissing me deliciously.
Things have come a long way since those first days of hiding how we felt, convinced the other didn’t feel the same. Sometimes it still doesn’t seem real that this amazing girl is mine, and I do my best to show her every day how much she means to me.
I deepen the kiss, enjoying her surprise as I pick her up and carry her into our bedroom to lay her on the bed. Her dark eyes gleam with anticipation, desire evident as her gaze rakes me up and down. She’s not at all subtle about what she wants anymore.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Want more in the Lessons Learned series? Read on for a sneak peek of the next book in the series, The Vinyl Frontier by Lola West!
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Do you love opposites attract? Then check out these other books by Smartypants Romance!
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Code of Ethics -- She's a super security badass, and he's the rich playboy in need of protection.
Sneak Peek of The Vinyl Frontier by Lola West
“Dick’s here!” boomed Richard “Dickie” Bartholomew Matthews as a handful of my fraternity brothers and I clambered through the doors of the campus community center.
Dickie lived up to his namesake. He really was a dick. He was blond and about six feet tall, wearing rumpled khaki chinos, an orange polo and brown leather docksiders. There was no boating adventure planned, but good ol’ Dickie was notoriously prepared for an impromptu sailing spree. Best case scenario, he was ready to captain a friggin’ frigate. Worst case, he wore ratty old inappropriate shoes everywhere, all the time.
I had the pleasure of Dickie’s company each and every day. He was a member of Sigma Tau Omega, a legacy brother, like me, so I pretended to like him. Honestly, I pretended to like most of my brothers. I drank beer from tapped kegs with them, listened to them talk smack about women they thought were hot, and knew, at any given meal, I could be eating from a plate covered in their germs. They all looked like they literally pulled their clothes from a dirty laundry hamper.
But Dickie was a particularly slovenly person and a moron to boot. I truly disliked him. And yet, like a starched marionette, tethered to my father’s wishes, I lifted a smile at Dickie’s dickish joke, maintaining my cover as the affable ruler of these circus buffoons.
When it came right down to it, that was my lot: king of those who thought themselves Spartans, the entitled soon-to-be rulers of other men born in less fortunate circumstances. My job was to wrangle them, to present myself as their squeaky-clean front man, a civilized human head on the writhing body of a pig. According to my father, who, with an air of pomp and circumstance, regularly referred to himself as a senior senator in the U.S. Congress, fraternity brothers were the foundational relationships that catapulted a political career.
Admittedly, boarding school buddies also contributed to this mythical foundation, which I was pretty sure was just a fancy way to say guys with bottomless checkbooks. But you could never be a hundred percent certain because my father often repeated himself. He talked in circles, hoping I wouldn’t notice his duplicitous nature or the ever-expanding guidelines dictating who and what was acceptable for a son of political royalty. I noticed, but I didn’t buck. Nowhere to go.
