Restraint (Mason Family 1)

His smile fills with mischief and promises of lots of sex. My ovaries combust.

“But we have time,” he assures me. “We don’t have to rush anything. We won’t rush anything. This is our life. We’ll build it the way we want.”

I rest my head against his shoulder and feel his arms around my body. Never once in my wildest dreams did I expect to be talking about having babies with a man who I met on vacation, let alone with a man who I had a one-night stand with.

The world is a weird place.

I close my eyes, and my thoughts drift to Nana. She’ll be so happy to meet Holt. She’ll be thrilled to hear him talking about babies.

I smile softly.

She always tells me not to block my blessings. She might be right. The first time I allowed the universe to work for me—look what happened. It gave me Holt. The biggest blessing of my life. So far, anyway. Who knows what could happen in the future?

“What are you thinking?” Holt asks.

I bite back a grin. “Just about all the blessings coming my way.”

“So many are coming your way, sweetheart.”

“I mean, think of all the Kelvin McCoy tickets.”

“Fuck,” Holt says, his body shaking with his suppressed chuckle.

I curl up against him even more and laugh. “I’m just kidding.”

“You probably aren’t, is the thing.”

“You know what I heard?” I ask.

“What’s that?”

“I heard he has an older brother who’s hotter and way sexier than he ever thought about being.”

Holt brushes a strand of hair out of my face. “Is that so?”

I nod. “And I also heard he closed a major deal today, and that warrants a celebration.”

“That’s all true. But did you hear that the brother’s girlfriend is the person who brought the deal home? She needs celebrated too.”

Pride fills my body and mixes with the heat pulsing through my veins.

We make such a good team.

I can feel Holt’s cock thickening beneath my hip. His gaze heats.

My body whimpers.

“In any case,” I tell him, “I think we definitely need to celebrate.”

He slips his hand up my shirt and cups my breast. “I like the way you think.”

I stare up at him and take in every inch of his gorgeous face.

I hope he likes the way I think. Because I have tons of ideas for the next fifty years.

Epilogue

Holt

Six months later …

“Good morning, gorgeous,” I say to Blaire as I enter the den.

She looks up at me from her seat on the chair and smiles. The glasses she got over the winter make her look so studious and so fucking sexy.

“Good morning to you.” She places the binder she’s looking at onto the coffee table. Her arms stretch overhead. The edge of my T-shirt she slept in rises and gives me a peek at a swath of skin at her hip.

Mornings are my favorite time of day. Waking up to the sun rising and reminding me that my life includes Blaire is like a little gift that just keeps on giving.

My life before her was busy. It was filled with motions and things and places and to-do lists. It was filled with people too—people I cared about. People I loved.

I enjoyed my life before Blaire. It was all I knew.

Now that I have her, I don’t know how I made it through a day without her.

We’ve been figuring it out for the past six months, traveling back and forth between Illinois and Georgia. We’ve met up for weekends in Nashville and Cincinnati, and she accompanied me to Portland for a trip too.

It’s been fun, and it’s worked out well. So far.

“What are you doing today?” she asks.

I take a sip of my coffee. “Not sure. Gramps wants to watch golf, and I promised him I’d come by and do something. I didn’t commit to watching golf, though.”

Blaire laughs. “It won’t kill you to watch a little bit of golf.”

“It might. It really might.” I take another sip. “What are you doing today?”

“I’m meeting your mother at her house this afternoon.”

I quirk a brow. “Again?”

“Your mother met a lady last week who said her son got an unfair trial. He’s been in jail for a year already, and the man’s mother claims he’s innocent. It’s really been on your mom’s heart. I’m sure you can imagine.”

I sit back and listen. It’s not hard to do. She’s so beautiful and so damn smart. But she also has a huge heart that makes me love her even more.

“I can imagine,” I say. “And I’d also bet that it’s been driving you crazy too.”

She blushes. “I told her I’d meet with them today and take a look at his case.”

“You’re amazing. Do you know that?”

“Hardly,” she scoffs. “I just try to use the tools I have to … do the right thing. It’s what everyone should do.”

I sit my coffee down and start to pick up my computer. But something in the way she’s looking at me stops me in my tracks.