Page 10 of The Homemaker

He won’t remind me. Not in this house. Not while he’s in love with another woman.I hope.

“You …” He swallows hard.

My breath stays lodged in my throat, strangling my reaction to the anguish in his eyes and the deep lines of indecision on his face, but I feel the emotion, and it pains me because I never meant to hurt anyone. Until this very moment, I didn’t know for sure that he was collateral damage.

Murphy forces a smile, and it feels like pure pity. “I don’t think it was you after all. Sorry.”

His manufactured response tugs and tears at the threads of my soul. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. “I guess I must have a familiar face,” I say.

This man could send me spiraling. I should resign and run. Nothing good can come from spending the summer this close to each other. My facade will break or his pity will diminish, leaving him with nothing but an uncontrolled need to demand answers.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” I say.

Despite his effort to look unaffected, I don’t miss his tiny flinch. “Yeah,” he murmurs.

Under his watchful gaze, I exit the back door.

One breath. Two breaths.

One step. Two steps.

When I’m behind the hedges, I sprint to the guesthouse.

“Hey!”

I gasp, slapping a hand over my heart when Callen grabs my wrist before I reach the door.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, eyes narrowed.

I shake my head a half dozen times. “Nothing,” I say through labored breaths.

“Why were you running?” He chuckles, turning his baseball cap around for a kiss while walking me backward into the door.

He’s here for sex. That’s our relationship. Callen is divorced, and he has two kids and a demanding job. Sex is all he’s looking for. And I’m emotionally empty most days, so sex works for me.

“How did you know I’d be done so early?” I ask as he kisses my neck.

“I didn’t. I was going to make dinner and surprise you.”

“Excuse me?” I push him away and grin. “Youwere going to makemedinner?”

“Yes. Occasionally, I can be thoughtful.” He hooks his arm around my waist again and continues kissing my neck. “It’s so fucked up that they make you wear this church dress. When you sent me that picture, I thought you were joking.”

I giggle. “I like the dress. What’s messed up is they hired some sought-after landscaping guru to give his thoughts on redoing the north side of the house. I saw the bill. They paid fifteen thousand dollarsjustfor his opinion.”

“Fucking rich people.” He opens the door behind me, and we stumble into the single level house with hickory wood floors and modern furnishings, a smaller version of the main house.

I lose both shoes before we pass the sofa.

“Don’t you want a tour first?” I mumble between kisses.

Callen partially unbuttons the front of my dress, kissing the swell of my breasts by the time we reach the hallway.

“Kitchen. Hall. Bedroom,” he says. “Got it.”

We make it two more steps before his jeans are unfastened, one more step before my underwear dangles around one ankle. And then he’s inside me.

I toss his hat to the floor, rubbing a hand over his buzzed, blond hair before closing my eyes and clawing at his firm backside as he pins me to the wall.