It had taken a playboy millionaire to make me happy and repair what I thought was an unfixable situation. I couldn’t have ever imagined myself being here, laughing with my parents and the man I loved. Nothing in the world could have convinced me that this was how this story would end, but I didn’t care.
This was my happily ever after.
Mia’s Hot Seller - Dad’s Best Friend (Complete Story)
BLURB
Losing my parents was one of the hardest things that I’d ever been through. I was just a teenager and needed my mom. Through legal paperwork as well as love, I went to live with Dad’s best friend, Perry Adams.
They were friends since grade school, and I didn’t know anyone better than Perry. It was perfect.
Then came the years when I grew older and more aware of hormones and emotions. I knew it was wrong to want to sleep with a man that was twice my age as well as such a close member of my family.
It just
got harder, though. I knew so many guys at school that would take care of my needs, but they were crass and immature.
They weren’t Perry.
Before I knew it, I was graduating from college and more attracted to him. He suggested a trip together to celebrate, and I agreed, with no intentions of anything happening between us.
Then there was a kiss, and we couldn’t stop it.
Was there a future for Perry and me?
Could we get past all the wrongs in our relationship?
Could I start my life without him in it now that I didn’t have to stay?
Caroline
I braided my hair over my shoulder before I left my room and headed down the two sets of stairs to the kitchen for my coffee since no day could start without it. I had a mid-morning class at school today, but I was up late studying for the test I was taking in it. I needed the caffeine desperately. I looked into the sunken living room to see Perry sitting on the couch as he read the paper, and I smiled to myself. He was twenty years my senior but hot as hell, something that just sounded scandalous considering that he had been my legal guardian for eight years now. I thought about the time as I poured the smooth roast that he brewed every morning and grinned as he called out to me. “Morning, Caroline.”
“Good morning, Perry. How was your night?” I asked as I dumped some cream into the big cup and stirred it slowly, lost in the swirls of dark brown and white before they blended together. I knew that he was out late and didn’t want to think about him being on a date, or what might have happened on it if he was.
Perry would probably never look at me the way that I did him. I was just a scared thirteen-year-old when I moved into this house after losing my adoring parents in a plane crash, uncertain of my future and what was going to happen. It only made sense that I would move in with Perry since he was Dad’s best friend since they were in elementary school. I wasn’t close enough to the four siblings of my parents to feel comfortable going to them, and Perry offered before knowing that he was my godfather, to begin with. He offered when I was born, but who knew that it would ever happen this way?
“Good. I went to the bar with some friends after work.” No real date but who was I kidding? Perry looked younger than his forty-two years and with his dark tousled hair and cerulean eyes, women were likely falling at his feet daily. Not to mention the time that he spent in the gym near the architecture firm that he owned, making him muscular, toned, and insanely sexy. “Did you hide in your cave and study all night?”
“You know it. I live such a glamorous life,” I quipped as I felt him come to stand near me, smelling like the forest that we lived in along with that peppermint soap that he used. I silently inhaled the scent that promised me so much warmth, annoyed that coffee got in the way of my enjoyment.
“You’ve worked your ass off for this degree. Don’t ever feel like that isn’t an accomplishment, Caroline.” His voice was lightly reprimanding, and I smiled at him as I looked into his model perfect face. “You’re twenty-one now and graduating soon. There’s plenty of time for fun.” Did Perry realize that I was a mature twenty-one-year-old woman as much as he sounded like he did? I was skinny with acne when I moved in here, but now I had generous curves and my mom’s pretty caramel hair and Dad’s light green eyes.
The immature boys at UCCS told me that I looked like a pin-up girl as they looked me over as though I was a piece of steak. They compared me to Bettie Page or Dita Von Teese, but it didn’t work on me. I grew up with one of the most handsome and caring men in the world, so their words were not going to get them in my pants. Nobody ever had, making me the only twenty-one-year-old virgin on the planet; at least in my mind. I was saving myself for Perry, and he would more than likely never see me that way. “I know. I don’t mind sticking around the house since it’s amazing here.”
Perry built this place in Colorado when I was ten, tucked in the trees of the spread-out forest but close enough to get into town for whatever we needed. It was beautiful and private, but sometimes it felt like a prison to me. I started developing all kinds of feelings for Perry once I turned sixteen and hid them since that was wrong in every way. I should have probably slept with someone and gotten it out of the way, but no guy in school, high school or college, ever appealed to me. I just lived with my growing desire for the man that was something of a stepfather to me, using it to get myself off so much that I was satisfied with it in a sick way. It was like that for years, but once I was turning twenty, it made sense that it could happen for us. He was the only one that respected me the way that I needed to give myself to somebody.
I guess it went back to my mother telling me about having strong feelings for someone before I gave them that since it was meant to be so much more than physical. For women, it was emotional and no matter what, Mom warned that I’d have some attachment to the first person that I had sex with. I kept that in my mind after she was gone and the years flew by. Perry gave me a safe place to live and all the stability that a girl could ever want and I felt guilty that I wanted him so much.
Now that I felt like I was going to be a real adult soon, I found it hard to ignore this attraction. I wanted him to see me as more than a daughter figure even though he’d been raising me as such so long.
“Caroline? Where are you?” His voice broke into my thoughts as I blinked and realized that I was still staring at him. I was obsessed or headed there, and I laughed as I shrugged.
“I guess I’m in bed mentally. Studying and all,” I smiled weakly and sipped the coffee that suddenly didn’t taste as good. “I need to get to school and take that test. See you later?”
“I’ll grill some chicken and those marinated veggies that you like for dinner,” he assured me as I nodded and smiled again. I poured the coffee into one of the Starbucks travel cups that I kept myself stocked up on for the drive, grabbing everything I needed before I walked out to my early graduation gift.
Perry bought me a brand-new Lexus LX, telling me how proud he was that I’d kept my grades high through all the years in school, something that he was worried about after I lost my parents. He’d seen to it that I got the best grief counseling then and told me to talk to him whenever I wanted.