Page 27 of Vegas Daddies (Forbidden Fantasies #17)

CADE

I was an hour deep into a complex sketch of a custom bed frame someone had commissioned from me when I heard the doorbell.

It knocked me right out of my concentration spiral, which had me already a little annoyed when I answered the door, and then I found Allie Tate standing on the porch of our rental house, and there was a whole new riot of none-too-pleasant feelings settling into my chest.

“Allie,” I said gruffly, not the most elegant of greetings even without the addition of my unpleasant tone, which I was sure would make her bristle. “What are you doing here?”

She frowned. “I’m…here for Gavin, actually.”

“He’s not here.”

She frowned again. “Oh. That’s…I thought he’d be here.” A pause she seemed to expect me to fill, but she jumped in again when I didn’t. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

Like I was the guy’s keeper. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “No.”

I stepped back from the door, gesturing into the house to invite her in despite the urge to send her away. Allie’s shoulders relaxed as she stepped into the breezy beach house living room, and I closed the door behind her.

“I guess I’ll wait for him for a while,” she explained, though I didn’t ask. “We were supposed to…work more. On my music career, I mean.”

I gave her another wordless nod and moved back to the couch, where I could return to my sketch.

I felt rather than heard Allie move closer, peeking over my shoulder to get a look at what I was working on.

It was like she’d touched me, run her fingernails over my sensitized skin, when I heard her small intake of breath.

“Wow,” Allie breathed, leaning closer. I could feel the warmth of her even though she didn’t make contact. “That’s…not what I pictured when you said you did woodworking.”

“The sketch is just the first part of the process,” I explained, though any idiot could figure that out. I added a clarifying “it’ll end up a little different in wood” as I shuffled the papers away, not quite hiding them but certainly not encouraging her to look.

“Still, even being able to draw like that…” Allie trailed off, a tone of reverence clear in her words. She surprised me with her next words, spoken after a short pause. “You’re really talented.”

For the first time since we’d briefly spoken about art that day at Marv’s Diner, I felt a relaxation in the air.

The tension that usually existed between us dissipated in the mutual joy of creativity.

When I thought of Allie as a musician, a fellow artist who understood what it took to create something out of nothing, it was a lot harder to fend off my dumb romantic fantasies.

This sudden visit had the potential to be very bad.

Against my better judgment, I turned, looking into Allie’s face. So effortlessly pretty, with those damn endearing freckles and eyes blue enough to hurt me, my own blue eyes notwithstanding. She had me beat in this way and any other way she wanted.

Enough, Cade. Don’t be an idiot. I decided to find a safe topic, something that could diffuse the alluring tinge of desire in the air—which surely Allie had to feel too, since it was so potent that it threatened to choke me—and get us to someplace other than hostile or horny.

I cleared my throat, shuffling all of my papers together into a neater stack. Then I met her eyes and asked, “How’s Daphne?”

I watched her soften even as the question surprised her. Allie’s lips tilted, a gentle smile she couldn’t fight off when the topic of her little girl came up. “She’s…really good. Doesn’t know about all of the chaos going on with me, and I plan to keep it that way.”

“Naturally,” I agreed. Allie cracked a crooked smile.

“Right. And, um … well, she’s just … the sweetest kid. I’m really lucky.”

My heart gave a painful squeeze. “I know she’s pretty young, but…is she a budding artist? A musician?” Is she like you? Like me, maybe?

“She does love to draw, actually,” Allie admitted, her eyes darting briefly down to the stack of sketches in my hands. “I know I’m biased, but I think she’s pretty good for her age. And she loves when Mommy sings to her. I’m not looking forward to her getting older and thinking it’s annoying.”

“Maybe she won’t. I hear you’ve got a pretty killer voice.

” Gavin had said as much, and he’d even shared the video he’d recorded of Allie that night at their open-mic fame-seeking orientation.

But I wasn’t sure she’d want me to have seen it, or if she even knew Gavin had taken footage of her that night.

Watching her on stage, hearing her melodic voice float over the crowd even through a less-than-perfect cell phone sound system, made me a little envious that I wasn’t there to see her sing in person.

But that could have been because I knew what happened between the two of them afterward too.

Allie looked down, humbly avoiding the compliment I’d given her.

“I can carry a tune,” she said. She glanced up at me through her lashes, almost flirtatious, a flash of pearly teeth.

She was teasing. That made more sense with the picture of her I’d had in my head since Vegas, and as much as I wanted her confidence to rub me the wrong way, to strike me as an unappealing arrogance, I couldn’t help but be charmed.

I’d always found that kind of fire exciting in women.

A passion that matched the innermost parts of me I usually hid behind stoicism, only revealed in my art, my secret romanticisms. I liked the contrast of a bold woman, even when I suspected that my ex-fiancée’s own embers were part of what made her leave me, even bigger than her snobbishness about my career.

I was too steady, too boring to be worth a lifetime of marriage, money or not.

“I, uh…I found your ring, by the way,” Allie surprised me by saying. As if she’d somehow sensed the direction of my thoughts. “I didn’t bring it today, since I was here to see Gavin. But…I’ll give it back to you soon. The next time I see you, I guess.”

I blinked. “Oh. That’s … thank you. I … that’s really cool of you.”

“It seemed important,” she shrugged. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to explain it, but I did.

“Just because of the money,” I explained. “I mean, it’s not…sentimental. I was happy to be rid of it. I just…I’m hoping to sell it for a little cash that I can put toward a deposit on a storefront. To, uh, sell my woodworking.” Cool story, Cade. She literally didn’t fucking ask.

The laugh that burst out of Allie had a touch of relief in it.

“God, is that all it was? I was so dramatic about it before, thinking you…well, clearly money is a sore subject. I’m sorry for flying off the handle when you asked for it at the diner.

I guess I’m living up to the redhead reputation. ” She grimaced.

“It’s not a problem,” I told her. Still stuck on the thoughts she’d inspired moments before, I went on to add, “I actually admire it. That fire. I’ve been accused of being cold, especially with new people.

So that heat…” God, why was my face heating as I said this?

And why couldn’t I shut up before I finished with, “It’s got a certain appeal. ”

“Fire and ice,” Allie murmured. “Makes sense that we clashed so hard. Even after…well, we had no issues in Vegas.”

“The liquor helped,” I quipped. She snorted, and damn it, even that was kind of sexy somehow. Every new piece of Allie Tate that I uncovered, no matter how hard I tried to keep her hidden from my overly romantic heart, made me want her.

And now that she’d brought up Vegas, I was seeing that younger, tipsy, sparkly dress version of her in front of me, feeling everything that I’d shoved down for all these years.

A warm, sensual heat threatening to turn my dick hard in my pants.

Sure, she looked delectable in the short lilac romper she wore, her long legs smooth and seemingly endless.

Any man would want those legs wrapped around his waist as he plunged into her heat.

But there was also something fluttery and rose-tinged about the feeling.

The romantic view of her I’d held onto all these years was making itself more known than ever, especially now that we’d cleared the air and she was as sweet as I thought.

I wondered if her wet heat was still as sweet too. The memory of how her pussy tasted all those years ago had gotten me off more times than I could count, and now that she was so close to me, looking at me, near enough to touch…fuck, I wanted more than a memory.

“Gavin might be a while yet,” I heard myself say to her.

My heart was thudding harder in my chest. I was painfully aware that we were alone.

That we had this whole beach house to ourselves, since Luca had traveled back to the city to attend an event with his youth soccer team tonight.

“Would you…want to see some more of my sketches? Maybe some things I’ve actually made? ”

As far as pickup lines went, it wasn’t terribly original.

I was bad at this—always had been. So I didn’t expect her easy agreement, the soft tone of voice she used to say, “I’d like that.

” The sultry note in it that told me her mind had wandered in a similar direction to mine.

Of course it had. Allie was the girl who hadn’t batted an eye at the idea of sharing three men in one night, after all.

That insatiable desire in her lived so close to the surface. It was impossible to resist.