Page 7 of Father Knows Best (A Family Affair #1)
Sutton leans over his side of the kitchen island, sipping wine as he flips through the open folder. After we finalized the guest list in bed this morning, he got everyone's addresses for the invitations. “I don’t have an address for her. She’s the only one.”
“She’s between places right now,” I explain to him. “She’s got a new role in Paris in a few months, and didn’t want to lease a place she’d have to leave right away. So she’s couch surfing.”
Sutton, wearing a fitted v-neck white t-shirt and black track pants, his feet bare, moves to the oven where he pulls the stainless door open.
Heat fills the large kitchen, and steam clouds him temporarily as he pulls a dutch oven out, sliding onto the top of the stove.
“Coq au vin,” he says, abandoning his oven mitt to return to our planning while dinner cools.
“You made my favorite dinner?” I ask about the time-consuming French dish.
He nods. “Can someone who couch surfs at age twenty-seven really be considered a snob?” he comes around to me, pressing his chest into my back, stacking his chin on my shoulder.
Reaching across my body, he drags the blunt end of his finger along with faded white and blue paper.
That finger—hell, that hand—drives me wild.
Beneath the counter, I pull my legs together, softly and quietly aching for his touch.
I know Sutton well. If I were to take his hand and drop it between my legs, writhe against him and beg for him to make me come right there at the bartop with wine and wedding plans out—he’d look at me like I’d grown a third head. He’d say, “ we have a bedroom, Avery .”
I stroke the side of his cheek as he surveys the seating chart. “Do you think we’ll change as a couple, you know, after we’re married?”
He turns his head, and though our mouths are right there, he doesn’t steal a kiss. Instead, his eyes drop to my mouth for a moment that makes my belly flutter, then go back to the chart. He taps the spot where I’ve written “ Geo .”
“He’ll give her more than a couch to ride,” he says, drawing my focus back to the two seats around the table nearest us. “And I hate that I said that turn of phrase, but unless you want your friend to sleep with my father, I would not sit her there.”
Cool air stings my back as Sutton pulls away, tending to the dish of hot food waiting on the stove.
“And how so?” he asks, his back to me. I study the way his body looks beneath the thin cotton t-shirt, how the muscles of his back make my mouth water, and just how pathetically obsessed I am with my fiancée.
In my mind, I see my best friend Amelie, her chestnut hair pinned into a seductive messy bun, her long legs on display from one of her favorite pieces of clothing—tiny skirts.
I picture her laughing, Geo next to her, his shirt undone a few buttons, his effervescent charm permeating all of her barriers.
“I don’t know,” I reply, reverting back to my question about our relationship shifting.
“Are you fully comfortable with me? Maybe there’s something about a wedding ring that breaks down any, I don’t know, lingering hesitations? ”
I look back at the seating chart, trying to imagine Amelie next to anyone else, but seated with Geo, Ford, Cade, Kat and Juliette makes the most sense. “How long has your dad, you know, been like that?”
Sutton snorts as he plates the red-wine based chicken dish. “Been like what? A man who sleeps with anyone and everyone he can?”
I furrow my brow, confused by that categorization of George Mercer.
I mean, I’ve seen him go out with many different women over the last year, but something about implying he’s a heartless manwhore just doesn’t feel right at all.
Sutton’s not told me much about his mother Margot, who married Geo young, and passed away when Sutton was just eight years old.
Nodding, I say, “Yeah, you know. How long has he been a womanizer?” That feels like a more fitting term for what Sutt is describing, and I refuse to even once say “manwhore” aloud in reference to my future father-in-law.
He licks his thumb, cleaning the traces of food. “From what I remember?” he asks, arranging the food on my plate. “His entire life.”
I lick my lips, nerves curling my insides as I move my fingers over the edge of the seating chart.
Sutton is going to be my husband, and Geo will be my father-in-law.
Knowing about his mother isn’t outside of reason, still, I feel like I’m tiptoeing into a place I don’t belong. “Even before your mom passed?”
I don’t think Sutton would ever cheat on me. I’m not asking because I’m worried he’ll turn into Geo. His eyes lift from the beautiful plating of food, and come to mine. “I like knowing everything about you, including your past. And your family,” I respond quietly.
Sutton brings me my food, taking care to roll up the seating chart and push it away. He even drapes a linen napkin over my bare legs before sitting next to me, pulling my barstool as close to his as possible.
I smirk. “Our elbows are going to bump while we eat.”
He winks. “Good.”
He never answers my question about his father, and if he slept around on Margot all those years ago.
Maybe his silence is the answer, and verbalizing it is just too painful?
Or maybe not. We eat in relative silence, because the food is so good, but all the while I keep thinking– Geo Mercer is a man who cheated on his wife?
I didn’t know him when Margot was alive and when they were married, and I’ve only known Geo for a year but still…
that information leaves me more confused than before.