“I fear it may be a little more complicated than that.” Neil sat down on the sofa. He glanced up at me, guilt in his eyes. “Emma isn’t happy about my divorce. She grew quite fond of Elizabeth. Emma was one of the bridesmaids, actually.”
“I kind of guessed that she was Team Elizabeth.” I went to his side and sat down, my hands on my knees. It was a good thing Neil and I weren’t serious, because I couldn’t imagine Emma ever putting on a bridesmaid dress for me. Not after the introduction we’d had. “Maybe the ‘girlfriend’ thing just surprised her. I know it shocked the hell out of me.”
“Sorry about that.” He gave me a sheepish sideways glance. “I never thought we’d have to explain our relationship to anyone. Secrecy has kept us in a bit of a bubble this whole time. The only person in my life who knew about you was Rudy. I was unprepared, and I didn’t want to tell my daughter that you’re the woman I’m casually fucking.”
I nudged his knee with mine. “It sounds like she’d be more comfortable hearing that, than thinking you were in a relationship.”
“And I didn’t want to hurt you,” he added, looking into my eyes. “You mean more to me than just casual sex.”
My newly in-love heart squeezed super hard at that, and I had to give myself a split-second mental toughness talk: I was not, under any circumstances, going to scream out, “I-love-you-lets-go-to-Las-Vegas-and-get-married-right-now!”
The best thing I could do was make a joke out of it.
“The sex is pretty fantastic, though.” I leaned against him, rocking him slightly to the side, and he laughed.
“Next weekend?” he asked hopefully.
“Um... yeah.” I felt a weird pang at the thought that I wouldn’t see him until then. “Do you have a really busy week?”
“Not particularly, but with Emma here...” he grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine.” It wasn’t. I wasn’t fine with it at all. I was jealous and bitter, and I felt shitty because I knew I had no right to be. Neil was Emma’s dad, and if he were the kind of guy who would give his kid the brush off— no matter how old the kid was— I wouldn’t have had any interest in him, anyway. “I love that you have a good relationship with your daughter. At least, most of the time. You’re both really lucky.”
“Do you want to go home in the car?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Call me old fashioned, but I kind of enjoy the so-called ‘walk of shame.’ It’s really more a ‘walk of pride because I got some.’”
“That you did,” he agreed.
He walked me to the elevator, waited for it to arrive, and gave me a thoroughly sweet kiss. And I let it be sweet. Because it was foolish to fight what I was feeling. He obviously cared for me, he’d said as much. But we were both happy with what we had. We didn’t need to pretend it was anything more or less than it was. The elevator dinged, and I stepped out of his arms. Frowning, I reached up to brush my fingers over a smudge on his neck.
“What is it?”
Oh man. Now I really felt bad. “I think I gave you a little hickey last night.”
He clapped his hand over his neck, and he was actually blushing. “Bloody hell, woman, I have to go back in there and have breakfast with my child!”
Grinning, he leaned down for one last kiss, and I gave him a quick peck before I darted into the elevator. We could drag the goodbye out all day, and I knew it was because neither of us wanted to be apart.
I felt amazing. I felt like the Grinch must have felt when his heart grew three sizes.
Except, when I stepped out of the building and onto Fifth avenue, I missed Neil already.
Crap. I really had fallen for him, and hard.
* * * *
I was glad to have taken the train, instead of Neil’s offer of a car home. It gave me time to think about the morning in a neutral space.
Neil’s daughter was an animal advocate. All of the changes to the beauty department suddenly made sense. And the cuts to Jake’s story. Was this something Emma was asking Neil to do? He had to know it was a bad idea.
I considered what I knew of Emma. It wasn’t a lot, beyond the fact that she was Neil’s daughter, and she would now hate me for the rest of my life. I dropped my head in my hands, grateful that this train car was mostly empty. Listening to the tinny noise from other people’s headphones or being stared at by some creepy dude who was trying to see under my clothes would not have helped my mental state at all.