After You (Because of You 2)

“Let’s go get chicken tenders,” Cassidy says. “Can we go to the park, too? I want to go on the swings.”

Nine hours. Now I have nine hours of work left to do.

Taking a breath, I close my laptop. There’s nothing to save now, so I set it aside. “You know what? I think I need to head home.”

“What?” Derek asks, frowning. “Already?”

“I have so much work still to do, and… I just, I really don’t have time to go out to dinner.”

“But we gotta play tic-tac-toe,” Cassidy tells me.

Unbothered, Derek shrugs. “So keep working, I’ll make something here.”

“No,” Cassidy says dramatically, tipping her head back and looking up at him. “I don’t want home food, I want chicken tenders.”

Squeezing her, he says, “I can make you chicken tenders, little monster.”

“Not home ones,” she complains.

“How about I make dinner on the grill?” he suggests, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Cheeseburger? Hot dog?”

Flashing his big blue eyes right back at him, she says, “Chicken tenders.”

“You guys should go get chicken tenders,” I assure him, pushing up off the couch.

Derek’s gaze remains trained on me. Cassidy has snuggled up against him, but as I unplug my laptop cord and wind it up, he tells her to scoot, stands up, and comes over to grab my wrist.

“What are you doing?” I ask, as he tugs me.

“Come on,” he says, giving me a harder tug and angling his body to herd me. I know he’s going to try to haul me to the bedroom again, so I pull back.

“Derek, no. I do not have time—”

Ignoring me, he tells Cassidy, “We’ll be right back.”

“You gotta make the bed again?” she demands.

“Someone keeps messing it up,” Derek says with playful exasperation.

I sigh as he drags me away from my laptop and down the hall, then tugs me into his room and closes the door.

“You are not getting laid,” I inform him, as he puts his hands on my hips and walks me back toward his bed.

“I’m getting whatever I want,” he murmurs, leaning in to brush his lips across mine. “Why are you cranky?”

“Because I’m a mean person,” I inform him.

“Try again,” he replies. “Did Cassidy mess something up on your computer?”

I don’t know if he’s intentionally trying to minimize the hour of work that was lost—and that I have to do again promptly, in order to have a book for sale for my client, which is literally my job—but I decide he is. “I wasn’t playing solitaire, Derek. I was working. It may not be important to you, but it’s my job, and it is important to me. She didn’t do anything intentionally, it was just an accident, it’s obviously not her fault, but she just set me back an hour, and I was already behind.”

“I’m sorry about that,” he tells me.

I shake my head, glancing down. “It’s no one’s fault, it’s just… working here doesn’t work. I need my office, I need peace and quiet.”

“Your living room,” he corrects. “Your office is your living room. You’re supposed to live in there, hence the name.”

“I can live in your living room when I come here, but I think this whole… blending of our lives is not going to work. Our lives are too different. There’s no need to do this. I would rather keep work and fun separate. When I come here, I’ll clear my schedule so I can enjoy you guys. When I work, that needs to be all I’m doing. It’s too stressful otherwise.”