Playing It Safe (21 page)

“I don’t understand,” I say to him, genuinely confused. “But what does that have to do with you all these years later?”

“Guilt is a funny thing, Julia,” he replies with a forced grin. “As I said, my parents are still very close to Marisa’s parents, and I guess in their minds they think me taking Marisa out every so often is helping the situation. But it’s not, it just makes everything more …”

“Complicated.”

“Yes,” he confirms in a rush of breath. “Very complicated.”

“So that explains the invitation to the party and why she’s so interested in you. If I’m being too nosy with my next question, by all means tell me.” Alex nods as an eyebrow cocks upward in curiosity. “Should I be worried about her?”

He runs a hand through his hair and then starts to rub the back of his neck, and that alone makes me nervous of his answer. “Not really.”

Before I can ask him to clarify that answer, he says, “We kissed one time a few years ago, but I swear that is as far as it went. I had a few drinks, and in a moment of complete stupidity I let it happen.”

I want to believe him when he tells me there is essentially nothing going on between the two of them other than the one kiss and him escorting her out sometimes. I’m certain he’s doing it more out of guilt than anything else. Is it weird and creepy? A little bit, but I get it. However, that doesn’t explain why Marisa would be telling Aiden’s fiancée that there is more between them. But I make a conscious decision not to dig deeper. The way I see it, I have to believe Alex’s explanation versus Aiden’s because … well, Aiden’s track record speaks for itself.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, his voice quiet and unsure. “You’re awfully quiet.”

“Honestly? A bunch of things.”

“Care to pinpoint?”

“Well, I never thought I’d say this, but I feel sorry for Marisa, and even worse that I was kind of a bitch to her,” I say sheepishly. And it’s the truth. I can’t even begin to imagine what she’s gone through.

“So you’re okay with all of this?”

“As far as understanding it and why you’ve continued to take her out, yes, I am. But I have to be totally honest with you,” I say. “I’m not really okay with you continuing to do so if we’re going to be together.” I pause and take note of his expression softening, as if he was holding a breath until I answered. “I don’t share, Alex.”

“I haven’t been anywhere with her since that opening at the gallery a couple of weeks ago,” he clarifies. Then he adds with an impish grin, “And I’m glad to hear you don’t share, Julia, because I don’t either.”

My lips twitch to keep my smile in check. We sit there for a few seconds not saying a word. The pull I felt a little while ago of wanting to comfort him is still battling within me. It’s such an odd feeling to want to comfort a man I’m in a relationship with, and I would normally brush it off, but I don’t want to with Alex. Before I can chicken out, I stand up, his eyes tracking my movements as I walk around the small table to him. He pivots in his seat and makes room for me in between his legs. I take his face in my hands and tilt his chin up as I bend down and place a light kiss on his forehead. Alex closes his eyes at the contact, so I keep planting soft kisses down the bridge of his nose, eyelids, cheeks, chin, and finally his mouth. For some reason, this moment feels far more intimate to me than the ones we’ve shared in the bedroom, and I like it. A lot.

His arms encircle my waist, pulling me closer to him, and I weave my fingers into his hair until I’m cradling his head against my stomach. “I’m sorry I ruined this amazing dinner you made just for me with all of this, and that your stress ball exploded. I really should have told you sooner, and I feel terrible about it,” he says, his voice slightly muffled against my body. “Let me make it up to you.”

“The dinner can be nuked, so that’s easily fixed. As for the stress ball, it was about time I got rid of that thing anyway. So you see”—I stop and pull his face back to look into his questioning eyes—“you didn’t ruin a thing, and there is no need to apologize. But …”

“But what?” he asks with a smirk on his face.

“But I do know how you can make it up to me.”

“Even though you just said I have no reason to apologize,” he shoots back with a hint of sarcasm.

“Yup.” I bite my lip to keep from laughing.

“Go ahead, name it.”

Ah, this … this banter that I can do with my arms tied behind my back is definitely more my speed. I don’t regret the intimate moment, but I need to use baby steps with him because I know that I’m letting my guard down, and there won’t be any turning back.

“It involves the baseball hat and other things.”

Alex brings his hand up to hook his arm around my neck and pulls me down so my lips are level with his. His breath is warm when he speaks, causing all my nerve endings to prickle with delight. “Start heating up the food so I can show you other things.”

I whisper back to him, “With the baseball hat?”

“Most definitely with the baseball hat.”

I reheat our food, we eat, and move the evening along to other things that may or may not include him calling me Freckles in bed once.

Okay, okay, maybe twice.

CHAPTER TWENTY
-
FOUR

I
wake up in Alex’s bed, and we make love in a semi-sleep state that feels as if I’m suspended in a dream.

This isn’t out of the ordinary for me, seeing as how I’ve been having sex with him on a daily basis for the last month. But the fact that I set his alarm to go off at the ass crack of dawn for Josie’s birthday party today and the alarm hasn’t gone off yet has me wondering what the hell is going on. Not complaining or anything, just slightly disoriented, but in the best way possible.

Afterward, when we’re both coming down from our high, he nuzzles his nose along mine and starts to press featherlight kisses across my cheek until he reaches my ear. “Good morning.”

“Good morning to you too,” I answer on a contented sigh. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but do you think you can wake me up like that every day? I’d be forever grateful.”

He rolls over onto his back and takes me with him. Smiling as his hand trails up and down my spine while he’s still inside of me, he replies, “I’ll see what I can do.”

I tilt my head over to peek at the clock and notice the time. Ugh. It’s five forty-five a.m. Seriously, if it wasn’t for Josie’s party today, I could easily stay in this bed all day with him after taking a nice long nap.

We kiss and I start to move off of him, but he wraps his arms around me and pulls me back down. “Alex,” I say through a giggle, “I have to start getting ready. Some of the deliveries are going to be here in about fifteen minutes.”

“Two more minutes,” he says, sounding muffled against my neck. “Then you can get out of this bed.”

I’m a sucker for his two-minute request, so I stay right where I am and let him hold me in his strong arms. My hair blankets each side of his face when I pick my head up to look at him. I cup his face in my hands as a lazy smile sweeps across his lips along with the dimples.

My finger traces the outline of one before I kiss it. “I really need to get moving here, Alex.”

He tilts my head and kisses me softly on the lips before letting me go. I nearly tumble out of bed in a dead sprint to the shower and hear him laughing behind me. So much for trying to be graceful, but I literally have just a few minutes to get myself in gear before the delivery trucks start arriving.

When I finish with my half-ass shower and go back into the bedroom, he’s making the bed while wearing a pair of dark pajama bottoms and looking as yummy as ever. I swear to Christ on a cracker, watching his lean and muscular body move around the side of the bed is a sight to behold, and I don’t think I could ever get sick of it.

“If you keep staring at me like that, you’ll only have yourself to blame for being late this time,” he says over his shoulder, catching me red-handed.

I scrunch my nose at him, making him chuckle, before I go to my overnight bag to grab my clothes and get dressed as quickly as possible. Since I’m setting up the party, I don’t have to go all out yet with the nice outfit, makeup, and hair. Which translates to I’ll probably have to shower again after I finish and before the guest of honor arrives.

I turn on my heel and head into his kitchen to turn on the coffee machine. While waiting for it to start brewing, I rummage through my purse and pull out my iPad. I’m checking off the items I can easily take care of when Alex comes strolling into the kitchen and wraps his arms around me from behind.

His stubble tickles my neck as he says, “I think you’re more excited for this party than my niece is.”

“I don’t know about that.” My eyes stay focused on the list in front of me. “Last time I talked to her she was busting at the seams.”

“What time is she supposed to be here?”

“I told Vanessa to bring her over at noon, and no sooner, because the guests will start arriving about a half hour after that. By then everything will be set up, and I want to be able to give her a private tour of everything.”

My head pops up like a dog hearing a faraway whistle at the sound of the first truck pulling into Alex’s driveway. I tilt my head to the side and give him a quick peck on the lips. “Trucks are starting to pull up. I’ve gotta go.”

“I’ll be in my office if you need anything. Something tells me you won’t, but it makes me feel better saying it anyway.” He drops his arms and spins around to grab a mug of coffee for himself. “Go ahead, I’ll bring you a cup once it’s done.”

With my iPad in one hand and phone in the other, and smiling like an idiot because he’s right—I may very well be just as excited as Josie and want to get on with decorating the shit out of his house—I lean forward and kiss his cheek again before saying thank you and heading toward the door.

While I’m overseeing the delivery trucks, I’m thinking how much my life has changed in the last month. How this relationship with Alex has grown into something more than I thought it could ever be. I smile thinking about how much I’ve grown to care about him and how much I miss him when we’re not together. Sometimes it feels like we can’t get enough of each other.

And I love that.

I never thought I’d feel that way about someone ever again, but miracles do happen.

I feel it in his touch, his eyes, his words, and most importantly his actions. Because a guy can say just about anything, but it’s what he actually does that proves he means those words. Trust me on this one, I’ve heard and seen it all before.

“Here you go,” he says, sneaking up on me and handing me my cup of coffee. Just like he promised he would.

I say a quick thanks, and he kisses my forehead before retreating into the house.

A huge grin on my face, my eyes stay focused on the closed door long after he’s gone.

Yeah, Alex definitely isn’t just some guy.

Not by a long shot.

CHAPTER TWENTY
-
FIVE

I
’ve spent the last six hours knee-deep in Muggles, Squibs, wizards, and witches. But it paid off because Alex’s house and backyard looks like Harry Potter took a dump all over it and then some. In other words, it looks so freaking awesome that it might even give Universal in Orlando a run for its money.

From the makeshift brick wall in his foyer emulating platform nine and three-quarters and the broomstick parking spot affixed to it—since the children invited were told to bring a broom of their own for a Quidditch match later in the day—to the Sorting Hat area and a replica of Professor Trelawney's and Professor Snape’s classrooms just to name a few, everything looks amazing, and I couldn’t be more pleased.

All of this might have propelled me to super-duper geekdom status, but I’ll gladly wear the moniker because when Josie arrives in a few minutes she is going to flip her lid.

I leave Lisette running around outside directing the caterers while I duck inside to take another shower and get dressed again. This time though I put on something a little nicer in the form of a strapless black maxi dress with embellished sandals, and I work a French braid into the front of my hair that ends in a side ponytail. I am racing around Alex’s bedroom looking for my earrings when he steps inside and leans against one of the bedposts, watching me run around like a chicken with its head cut off.

“My parents just called me and said they’ll be here any minute,” he says casually.

Um, yeah, I kind of completely blanked out on his parents being here too and that I would be meeting them for the first time today.

I freeze in mid-step and throw him an
oh shit
look because now I’m all kinds of nervous. Granted, I’ve met his sister and obviously his niece, but
this
is pretty huge. Especially for me, since I never get far enough with a guy I’m seeing to meet his parents, and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named doesn’t count. In fact, let’s just forget about him, shall we? Sounds like a plan.

“What’s wrong?” Alex asks, concerned and coming over to where I’m standing.

I mumble something unintelligible under my breath, trying to play it off like everything is cool when it’s totally not.

He rubs my arms up and down as a small smile plays on his lips. “Are you nervous that you’re going to meet my parents?”

“Maybe a little,” I admit.

Truth be told, I’m scared shitless.

“Julia Boyd, the toughest woman I know, is afraid of my parents. Well, this just got all kinds of interesting.”

I roll my eyes and smack him lightly on the arm. “Alex, it’s not funny. This is kind of a big deal, and I’d like to make a good impression.”

With his thumb and index finger, he lifts my chin and brushes his lips against mine while still smiling. “You have nothing to be nervous about. I promise you that they’re going to love you.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

He cocks his eyebrow in response. It takes me a second, but I realize that I somewhat intimated that he loves me with my answer, and yeah, that would be a little presumptuous seeing as how we haven’t gone there with each other yet.

I hastily backpedal my response. “What I mean to say is
you
know me, truck-driver mouth and all. They don’t, so … yeah, that’s about all I got right now, and …”

Alex bites his bottom lip to keep from laughing while I ramble on. He pulls me into his arms, his lips poised over mine, and he quietly says, “Shut up, Julia.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up.”

“I just did.”

“Yeah, well, don’t do it again.”

“Are you going to keep talking, or are you going to let me kiss you?”

“Not if you tell me to shut up again.”

“Are you done talking now?”

“Are you really asking me that?”

“Are you answering my question with a question?”

I open my mouth to say something back to him that is not in the form of a question, but he starts to kiss me, and quite frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore because he can shut me up like this anytime he likes.

The doorbell rings, and we reluctantly break off the kiss.

“Remind me to pick this up later right where we just left off,” he says in a low voice that makes my insides squirm.

“You’ve got yourself a deal.”

The doorbell sounds off again. I grab the backs of my earrings and put them on as I’m walking toward the front door to answer it, Alex following behind me.

I peek through the side glass panels and see that it’s Josie and Vanessa on the other side. Without a minute to waste, I swing the door open to find Josie smiling so wide all I see is her braces. God, she is so freaking cute.

“Julia!” she squeals and throws her arms around my waist.

“Hey, girlie!”

Vanessa pushes her sunglasses up on her head and sighs. “She’s been awake and fully dressed since seven o’clock this morning, asking me every ten minutes if it’s time to go yet.”

“Seriously?” I ask her, but Josie answers instead with a resounding yes.

Alex appears beside me and bends his head down to Josie’s level. “You’re not even going to say hello to me, are you?”

“Don’t be silly, Uncle Alex,” she says in a matter-of-fact voice and releases me.

It gives me a chance to properly say hello to Vanessa while Alex scoops Josie up in his arms. Her feet dangle at least two feet off the ground, her blond curls bouncing down her back.

When he puts her down, Alex gives his sister a big hug and kiss on the cheek as Josie looks on impatiently.

“Okay, girlie, are you ready to enter Hogwarts?”

She clasps her hands underneath her chin and nods.

“Give me your hand and close your eyes,” I instruct her.

I walk a couple of feet to the end of the foyer where the platform nine and three-quarters wall is waiting to be pulled back.

“Open your eyes, Josie.”

She complies and bounces from foot to foot, staring in awe at the sign painted to look exactly like the one from the movie. If she’s this excited by a fake wall, wait until she sees the rest of the place!

“Can I open it?” she asks in wonderment.

“Yup.”

Josie’s hand inches up and snatches the end of the fabric, pulling it back slowly and peeking her head through to take a look at the other side. She drops the curtain, and it falls back in place, her face in a stoic expression.

I bend my knees until I’m at eye level with her. With my hand I brush back a loose curl from her forehead. “Is everything okay?”

She nods but doesn’t say a word. I look up at Vanessa and Alex, who are just as confused as I am. “Josie,” I say quietly, “why aren’t you saying anything?”

She wraps her arms around my neck and hugs me to the point of choking. Through choked-up tears, she whispers in my ear. “It’s amazing.”

I’m sure the PMS hormones have something to do with it because I start to get teary-eyed and all emotional by her display of gratitude.

Jesus Christ, what the fuck is happening to me? I’m turning into a mushy person, and I actually like it.

I peek up at Alex, who gives me a sweet smile with a wink, and I swear I have to avert my gaze to the floor before I start to really bawl like a baby. I quickly pull myself together and thank God I do before the waterworks really start for me. It’s one thing to see a child cry but quite another for a grown woman. And really nobody should have to see me cry. It’s downright frightening. I do the whole bottom lip quivering thing, and my nose gets as red as Rudolph’s. Seriously, it’s not pretty.

“But you haven’t seen everything yet,” I say, patting her back softly. “Come on, let me show you the rest.”

“Okay.”

She lets me go so I can stand up, and I grab her hand in mine again. I pull back the curtain and step over the threshold into party central, which has been separated into three specific quadrants. A Sorting Hat section that has a walkie-talkie attached to the back of the chair so that whenever a guest sits in the chair with the hat on, an actor I hired stationed in another room is signaled to speak. Once a guest has been assigned to his or her respective house, there’s a rack of rented authentic robes that have one of the four crests on it. The second quadrant is a potions section that has a giant witch’s cauldron filled to the brim with dry ice bubbling over and bottles lined up in front of it with the following ingredients: dragon’s blood, mandrake root, salamander blood, pickled slugs, eel eye, and goosegrass, to name a few.

To the left what was once Alex’s living room is now a large white fabric tent that has a small opening at the bottom left corner. I nudge Josie forward with my hand and crouch down, lifting the corner of the tent up so she can look inside.

“It’s Professor Trelawney’s Divination class!” she yells back to her mom, who is trailing behind us with a huge smile on her face.

Inside the tent is an array of eclectic pillows surrounding a table with a big crystal ball on it. The actor I hired looks so much like the real Professor Trelawney that it even freaks me out, so I can only imagine how Josie is feeling.

We step back out, standing up, and I walk us toward the set of French doors that leads to Alex’s backyard. The pool has several ivory candles floating around it, mirroring the look of the floating candles in the Great Hall. Past the pool and taking up the large open space of the yard is a Quidditch field with hoops on each end.

“Oh my God!” Josie yells. “It’s a freaking Quidditch field!”

“Hey,” Vanessa warns with a laugh. “Watch your mouth, kid.”

Through a laugh of my own, I say, “I can’t say as I blame you, girlie. It’s pretty freaking awesome, if I do say so myself.”

“Alex?” a woman’s voice calls out from inside the house.

We all turn around to see what I assume must be Alex’s parents walking toward us in amazement. Jesus Christ, no wonder their children are so good-looking. These two look like they just stepped out of the pages of a Calvin Klein advertisement. No, not the Kate Moss, emaciated heroin-chic kind either. I’m talking the elegant and perfectly put together kind of models—if they were in their fifties—which they aren’t usually, but whatever, you get the picture.

His mother is dressed in a white blouse tucked into a pair of black checkered capri pants, and her blond hair is cut in a smart bob that falls around her jawline. From where I’m standing, I can see where Alex gets his bright blue eyes as hers sparkle in the sunlight when she gives her son a hug and kiss on his cheek. His dad, for lack of a better way of putting it, is one smooth and handsome-looking man, and I can tell that’s where Alex gets his suave and sexy swagger.

“Grandma, Grandpop, did you see everything Julia did to make Uncle Alex’s house look like Harry Potter’s world?” Josie says in a rush, running over to them.

“I did,” Alex’s mom answers and looks up at me.

I take it as a signal that I should introduce myself, so I bite the bullet and pray to the deodorant gods that my pits aren’t sweating and walk over to her with my hand extended.

Before I reach them, Alex wraps his arm around my waist and says, “Mom, Dad, this is Julia, my girlfriend and the person responsible for all of this.” He tops it off by kissing my temple as I look down at Josie, who has both her thumbs up and a joker-like grin on her face.

Okay, up until this point I’d been thinking that he was kind of sort of my boyfriend, but I never publicly said that to anyone or even addressed him as such during any of our conversations. To hear him say it out loud is surprising, but in a really good way.

“Hi, it’s very nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Holt,” I say, my voice sounding way more calm than I thought it would.

Alex’s mom takes my hand in hers. “Oh dear, please don’t call me that. It reminds me of my mother-in-law. Call me Allison. I insist.”

I nod as she lets go of my hand, and his dad steps up and takes it in his for a firm shake. “Don’t listen to her or whatever she has to say about my mother. She’s still upset that she didn’t approve of our wedding color choices over thirty years ago.” I laugh in spite of myself as he goes on. “But she’s right, please call me Alex.”

My head turns to my right to look up at
my
Alex. “You never said you were a junior.”

“Because I never tell people that,” he answers under his breath.

Josie steps in then and commands the attention of her grandparents, taking their hands in hers and dragging them along back toward the house.

Over her shoulder as we watch them walk away, his mom says, “It was very nice to meet you, and we’ll catch up more later.”

Vanessa smacks my butt as she brushes past me, making me jump in surprise. “See, you had nothing to be nervous about, Julia.”

She laughs as she walks away, trying to catch up to Josie and her parents, and leaving Alex and me outside.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“You told her I was nervous?” I ask him in disbelief.

“I did.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I thought it was cute.”

“Listen up, Junior.” His eyes squint in jest, and he smiles. “Don’t be telling people things I say to you in private.”

“Even if I think it’s adorable and cute as hell?”

He turns me around and wraps both arms around me while waiting for me to answer.

“If I answer you with a question, will you keep asking me questions again?”

“Too late, you just asked me a question, so I’ll take that to mean it’s okay for me to tell people when I think my girlfriend is being cute as hell.”

“Yeah about that,” I coyly say.

“Here we go.” His voice drops to a low murmur. “I was waiting for you to freak out about that.”

“Actually, all I was going to say was … I like it.”

His eyes light up, and he grazes his lips against mine. In the background I hear Josie squealing again, signaling the arrival of her first guests. Which means she’s also probably just finding out that each guest received a personalized Hogwarts acceptance letter. I really outdid myself with those, and it might be my favorite thing out of all this stuff.

I let go of him, and we walk back toward the house. He goes off on his own while I catch up with Lisette, who is overseeing the catering staff in the kitchen. After getting the lowdown from her for a while and confirming she’s got everything under control as usual, I start to walk around and get a lay of the land.