I have the worst fucking luck on the planet.
Bridget jerked her head up, her eyes wide. “I’m not...I wasn’t—”
“Ask me another question.”
“What?”
“You said you wanted to know more about me. Ask me another question,” I said through gritted teeth. Anything to get my mind off how much I want to hike up that skirt of yours and find out just how wet you are for me.
Because she was. My long, recent dry spell aside, I had enough experience with the opposite sex to spot the signs of female arousal from a mile away.
Dilated pupils, flushed cheeks, shallow breathing.
Check, check, and fucking check.
“Oh, um.” Bridget cleared her throat, looking more flustered than I’d ever seen her. “Tell me…tell me about your family.”
Talk about splashing a bucket of cold water over my libido.
I stiffened, my desire draining away as I tried to figure out how to respond.
Of course she wants to know about the one thing I hate discussing.
“Not much to tell,” I finally said. “No siblings. Mother died when I was a kid. Never knew my father. Grandparents also gone.”
Maybe I should’ve left the last part out, considering her grandfather’s situation, but Bridget didn’t appear put off. Instead, her eyes flickered with sympathy. “What happened?”
No need to clarify who she was asking about. Mother dearest. “Drug overdose,” I said curtly. “Cocaine. I was eleven, and I found her when I came home from school. She was sitting in front of the TV, and her favorite talk show was on. There was a half-eaten plate of pasta on the coffee table. I thought she fell asleep—she did that sometimes when she was watching TV—but when I walked over…” I swallowed hard. “Her eyes were wide open. Unseeing. And I knew she was gone.”
Bridget sucked in a breath. My story never failed to elicit pity from those who heard it, which was why I hated telling it. I didn’t want anyone’s pity.
“You know what the funny thing was? I picked up the plate of pasta and washed it like she’d wake up and yell at me if I didn’t. Then I did the rest of the dishes in the sink. Turned off the TV. Wiped down the coffee table. Only after all that did I call 911.” I let out a humorless laugh while Bridget stared at me with an unbearably soft expression. “She was already dead, but in my mind, she wouldn’t really be dead till the ambulance showed up and made it official. Kid logic.”
Those were the most words I’d spoken about my mother in over two decades.
“I’m so sorry,” Bridget said quietly. “Losing a parent is never easy.”
She would know better than anyone. She’d lost both her parents, one of whom she’d never met. Just like me, except there was a possibility the one I hadn’t met was still alive while hers had died in childbirth.
“Don’t feel too sorry for me, princess.” I rolled my water glass between my fingers, wishing it contained something stronger. I didn’t drink alcohol, but sometimes I wished I did. “My mother was a bitch.”
Bridget’s eyes widened with shock. Not many people talked about their mother’s death, then turned around and called said mother a bitch in the same breath.
If anyone deserved the title, though, Deirdre Larsen did.
“But she was still my mother,” I continued. “The only relative I had left. I had no clue who my father was, and even if I did, it was clear he wanted nothing to do with me. So yeah, I was sad about her death, but I wasn’t devastated.”
Hell, I’d been relieved. It was sick and twisted, but living with my mother had been a nightmare. I’d considered running away multiple times before her overdose, but a misguided sense of loyalty held me back each time.
Deidre may have been an abusive, alcoholic junkie, but I was all she’d had in the world, and she was all I’d had. That counted for something, I supposed.
Bridget leaned forward and squeezed my hand. I tensed as an unexpected jolt of electricity rocketed up my arm, but I kept my face stoic.
“Your father has no idea what he’s missing out on.” Her voice rang with sincerity, and my chest tightened.
I stared down at the contrast of her soft, warm hand against my rough, calloused one.
Clean versus bloodstained. Innocence versus darkness.
Two worlds that were never meant to touch.
I yanked my hand away and stood abruptly. “I need to go over some paperwork,” I said.
It was a lie. I’d finished all the paperwork for a last-minute trip to Eldorra last night, and I felt bad about leaving Bridget alone right now, but I needed to get away from her and regroup.
“Okay.” She appeared startled by the sudden change in mood, but she didn’t get a chance to say anything else before I walked away and sank into the seat behind her so I didn’t have to face her.
My head was all over the place, my cock was hard again, and my professionalism had taken a twenty-story jump out the window.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, silently cursing myself, Christian, her old bodyguard for having a fucking baby and leaving his post, and everything and everyone who’d contributed to the mess I was in. Namely, lusting over someone I shouldn’t want and could never have.
I took this job thinking I had one objective, but now it was clear I had two.
The first was to protect Bridget.
The second was to resist her.