The Good Father

Where his own wife—ex-wife—was lying in bed just feet away from him. They had never, not once, spent the night in the same place without spending it in the same bed together.

He’d barely slept the night before, and he’d been shut in a room with Jeff. But tonight? With Ella sleeping all alone? He was supposed to just curl up on the couch and relax? He couldn’t do it.

The boat had stopped.

He sat up. Glanced around. They were in the middle of the lagoon.

“I’m sorry.” Ella was standing by the crank that would lower the anchor. “I thought you were asleep and was just going to let you rest.”

She stood there, her hands raised as though she didn’t know what to do with them. Lower the crank. Drive.

Touch him?

God help him, he’d been reliving the touch of her fingers on his skin since they’d arrived at the cabin last night.

Hell, who was he kidding? He’d never stopped having fantasies about the woman.

He’d known he couldn’t be married to her. Had no doubts on that one. Even now his resolve didn’t waver.

But making love had never even come close to bringing out violence in him...

“I’ll just get us going again and head to shore,” she said, leaving the anchor. She turned, and the light of the moon gave him a bounteous gift.

A clear view of two things. Ella’s lips. And her nipples showing against her sweater where her wrap had dropped open.

She was chewing on her lower lip. All the sign he really needed.

But the hard points of her nipples were added fuel for his raging fire.

“Don’t do that with your lips. It makes me want to kiss you.” She’d wanted openness.

“Brett.” She chewed again, staring at him. Ella never had played coy with him. She knew he knew she wanted him.

Just as he knew she now knew about him, too.

“Would it be so awful, El?” He heard the craziness come out of his mouth. She was still standing closer to the crank than the steering wheel. She hadn’t made up her mind to go back, or she’d have walked away from that crank.

“It would just make it that much harder to get over you a second time.”

“Unless you don’t have to.” He was known for his instant solutions. But why in the hell hadn’t he thought of this one before?

With a stumble, Ella fell into one of the back seats. “What do you mean by that?”

He heard the hope in her voice. And rushed to quell it before this got out of hand, and everything was ruined.

“We don’t have to be married, or live together, to have sex.”

She didn’t say anything for so long, he wasn’t sure what to think.

She’d changed. In some ways he didn’t like.

For instance, this ability she’d developed to close herself off from him. He wanted that for her. Understood that it was necessary. Didn’t mean he had to like it.

“You think you could be satisfied with that? Sex without commitment?”

He couldn’t tell a damn thing about what she was thinking.

“I think that sleeping with you would be better than not sleeping with you.”