The demand for them was huge now, and it was another time consuming job.
But an idea hit me.
“On the days she’s not in here, I think I’ll train Jenny how to do them so y’all have enough for everything. That keeps her involved with Kleins, but gives her skills in other areas, too.”
“Only if we pay her,” Canon agreed firmly. “She’s doing it for us, so we get to be the ones who pay her wages while she does it.”
I could argue it, but he had a point. So, begrudgingly, I gave in.
Life changed so quickly. I thought I’d experienced that phenomenon when I’d found out I was pregnant, but now I knew that it didn’t just happen once to people. It happened when you least expected it—over, and over, again.
Bond hadn’t just brought that change in a positive way into mine and Nemi’s lives, him and his brother had done it for Jenny and her family, too. And that knowledge made another piece of my shield—which had already been weakened by him—shatter.
Chapter Thirteen
Bond
People talk about Hell as the opposite of Heaven, where all the sinners go to party with the Devil and live in misery for the rest of their lives. Depending on what books you read, what part of history and philosophy you believe in, there’s a multitude of sinister beings down there that add to your eternal suffering.
Well, I’d thought I’d discovered what actual Hell was during the date—how naïve was I?—but it’d ended up turning into Heaven. What didn’t was that, after that night, I’d spent hours kicking my own ass—mentally, of course—over treating Heidi as anything other than the precious she deserved to be treated as. I’d driven home with a smile on my face until I’d parked up, and then the realization of what I’d done had hit me fully.
Extraordinary women deserved to be treated like crystal, and Heidi was the finest crystal in the world.
After it, I’d made a deal with myself that I’d take her out on ten dates before I’d touch her like that again, and it’d be in a place where no one could stumble across us. When we finally had sex, I’d woo her with roses, petals, whatever other clichéd stuff I could find, just so she knew I was making an effort and thinking of her.
We were past date number four, and, so far, I’d stuck to that deal. Of course, it’d helped that Nemi was still at their house, with Cash watching her until Heidi got back, but it’d still been a lesson in self-restraint.
Tonight was date number five, and I was in a sweat mentally as I repeated my new mantra.
“No touching until date number ten. No touching. No touching…” Of course the memory of touching her on date number one burst into my head while I was doing it, meaning the sweat became a reality instead of being relegated to mentally.
Fuck my life.
I had to do this properly, though. Heidi wasn’t like any other woman in the world.
Rubbing my face exasperatedly with both hands, I picked my keys up and made my way toward my door to go and pick Heidi up.
I could do this. I could absolutely keep my hands to myself. I was a new Bond, a gentleman version of the asshole I used to be.
I couldn’t do this. Since the moment I’d picked Heidi up, had first seen her wearing the Devil’s creation that people called a dress, I’d been in a predicament. The torture was killing me now. And the way she smelled, her subtle perfume, was adding to it.
From top to toe, scent to appearance, fabric to skin, she was everything and more that a man would dream of having in his life, hoping he’d have a chance at just getting her attention. I had all of that next to me in the car, sitting opposite me in the restaurant, and then under my hand as I walked us back out to the vehicle.
“I’ve never been there before,” Heidi said, snapping me out of my thoughts of torture and contemplation about what I could have ever done in my life to deserve this level of suffering. “The food was delicious, but the dessert didn’t taste right.”
“Nothing tastes as good as—” the word ‘you’ was on the tip of my tongue, but I managed to get the right one out “—yours do.”
Smiling up at me as we walked across the parking lot, she whispered, “Sweet talker.”
That might be the case, but it was also the truth.
Just as I leaned forward to open her door, she obliterated my fragile control. “I don’t have to go straight home tonight, Bond. Sayla took Nemi for a sleepover so she could trim her hair and paint her nails. Apparently they needed aunty and niece girl time, whatever that is.”