We were playing helicopter when my father came in, smiling wider than I’d ever seen him.
“There’s my little girl. Going to come say hi to Grandpa?”
She clambered down and ran over to grab him around the knees. He’d never been an overly active grandparent until the last year or so, and we’d all wondered why. Now he was positively beaming.
He could’ve had a change of heart. That happened occasionally. Even to hard-shelled Hamilton men.
Not that I knew anything about that.
Once Laurie ran off to the kitchen to get a juice box, I gave my father a quick hug. “How’s the baby?”
“Handsome, healthy, and strong. A Hamilton through and through.” My father grinned. “How are things here?”
“Fine. She’s been watching Trolls.”
“Again?”
I had to laugh. “It is her favorite. You’ve come to relieve me, I heard?”
“From who? Your brother?”
“Sage,” I said carefully, testing the waters. I didn’t know if he’d overheard the office brouhaha the other day—I certainly hoped not—but I was interested to see how he’d react to the idea of us in any case.
I got my answer swiftly.
“Are you dating her?” he demanded.
I started to say no. We hadn’t discussed this, and public was a word that wasn’t part of our relationship. If we even still had one. But my curiosity won out.
“And if I said I was?”
“I’d say it’s about time you got that right.” He clapped my shoulder hard enough to dislodge a bone or two. “She’s a good girl. You be careful with her, or you’ll answer to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
I said my goodbyes to Laurie and walked out more shell-shocked than I wanted to admit. My father hadn’t given Seth a hard time about Marj, Laurie’s mother, but he’d been reluctant to offer Ally the same seal of approval. He finally had, and now seemed to treat her as he would a daughter.
Sage had always been different. Somehow she was special to him. My father wasn’t exactly friendly, but when it came to Sage, he’d never had anything but smiles and warmth.
That was her power. She could turn foes into friends, enemies into lovers.
Players into men who wanted to fucking commit, even if they didn’t have the foggiest idea how to be worthy of her.
I arrived at the cabin and pulled into the driveway behind her car. I climbed out and walked up to the driver’s side door. Sage was still seated inside, her eyes closed as she sang along to something with the light of the makeup mirror illuminating her face.
Her beauty was staggering.
I knocked on her window and all at once, her joy disappeared. She turned off the car and opened the door, her expression wary. “Hi.” She passed a hand over her hair as I stepped back, giving her room to disembark. “I was a little early.”
“And I was a little late.” I rubbed my thumb over her cheekbone and she visibly shuddered, even in the near darkness alleviated only by the scattered security lights. “Are you wearing different makeup?”
“What? No. Why?” She took a minute step away from me, but it might as well have been a mile.
I’d never been this fucking greedy for contact before. The more she sidestepped me and sought distance, the more I wanted to pull her close and never let her go. Just bury myself inside her and sink into her kiss and forget the rest of the world existed.
Powerful? Hell, she was a goddamned titan.
“You looked luminescent while you were singing.”