The Boyfriend (The Boss 7)

I held his gaze firmly. “No. Listen to me. Valerie will always be in love with you. I accepted that a while ago. If you tell her about this, she will leave Laurence. And she deserves to be happy.”

“To be happy with a man who would threaten us?” Neil asked. “Who would...shame you the way he did? I won’t let that stand.”

While my heart swelled and I almost swooned at the idea of Neil defending my honor, we weren’t in a Jane Austen book or something. “There’s a lot more at stake here than whether or not Laurence thinks I’m a slut. It’s not like I respect him enough that his opinion would hurt me, anyway. If something’s going to happen to end their relationship it has to be between them. I don’t want us to be involved.”

Neil considered me silently for a moment. Then his shoulders slumped in defeat. “All right. I see your point.”

“Good.” I was usually very sensible. I didn’t know why he couldn’t just listen to me all the time.

He stroked his thumb over the back of my fingers and lifted my hand to his mouth. He kissed my knuckles and said, “But I still want to punch him for being so crude.”

“We’ve had the punching discussion,” I reminded him. “I don’t think you could do it.”

He grimaced. “I am a bit of a wimp, aren’t I?”

“You are.” I laughed and sighed, gazing up into those desperately beautiful green eyes of his. “Let’s hope El-Mudad is tougher than you.”

A blood-curdling squeak came to us through the open bedroom door, and we both flinched.

“It isn’t as though he’ll have teeth to lose in a fight if he keeps that up,” Neil said, one eye still squinted shut.

I motioned to the bedroom. “Yeah. I’m going to wake him up before he grinds his jaw into powder. Think you’re up for a late night skinny dip?”

He grinned at me, despite the dark circles beneath his tired eyes. “Darling, I’m ready for anything.”

Chapter Fourteen

In late May, Mom and Tony moved out of the guesthouse. I’d gone down to see them before they left, while the movers loaded everything into the truck. Mom had barely managed to look me in the eye. Our hug had been far too brief. And then they were gone.

I hadn’t expected it to hit me so hard. I spent the rest of that night lying on the couch in the den, alternating whose lap I put my head in, whose shoulder I snottily cried on between Neil and El-Mudad. And though they were very supportive, they were problem solvers.

“I think if we all sat down with your mother and she could see that we love each other, that you’re respected in this relationship, things would be much better between the two of you,” El-Mudad suggested, passing me a tissue. I rested my head on his knee and miserably blew my nose.

“As...uncomfortable as that would be, he does have a point,” Neil agreed. “Look how long it took her to accept me.”

“This is a lot more than just an age difference,” I protested. “This is like, my own mother constantly imagining me getting spit-roasted by the two of you every time she sees all of us in the same place together.”

“Spit-roasted?” El-Mudad asked in the very specific tone he adopted when he hit a language barrier. It was a cute mix of uncertainty at the term being used and bewilderment that something existed which he did not understand.

“Sophie’s being disgusting,” Neil half-explained. To me, he said, “We can’t control what might go on inside of your mother’s head. But as long as our secret is out with her, honesty looks like our best—our only—option.”

“You don’t want this to interfere with her wedding,” El-Mudad added. “Not just for her benefit, but yours, as well. If you’re angry with each other on one of the most important days of her life, on the day when you welcome your stepfather into your family, you can’t fix that later.”

“I hate when you have good points.” Especially when I wanted to be hopeless for a little while. The biggest problem with being in a relationship with two men was the male propensity to try to approach problems reasonably and fix them, rather than allowing room for irrational, but very valid and real, emotional responses, first.

“Will you be going to your mother’s dress fitting on Saturday?” Neil asked.

“As far as I know, I’m still invited. She mentioned it to me before they left.” It hadn’t been the warmest reminder of an invitation. She’d said, “I guess I’ll see you Saturday.” That didn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

“Why don’t you suggest she and Tony come to Sunday dinner?” Neil suggested. “We can drop the pretense of El-Mudad as our houseguest and have her over as a family.”