22. Miles

22

MILES

S omehow, something huge had happened between my nanny and my best friend, and it had happened right under my nose. As someone who wasn't great with dealing with his own emotions, I certainly had no idea how to handle those of the people around me. Not when they were this explosive, or this mysterious to me.

I wasn't sure I was even allowed to ask, no matter how badly my scientific curiosity begged to understand every detail of what had occurred on Felipe's brief visit to the house. There was no doubt in my mind it was some kind of lovers' spat, but I couldn't make sense of the last angry declaration he'd made before he stormed out of the house. What could kind, gentle Lila have done to cause such ire?

The evening passed as I worked on a few simple work tasks in my office, and then it was bedtime for the kids, and thanks to Lila's interventions, I found it in me to kiss Olivia goodnight and tuck her in. Jamie was all Lila's, of course, and after the excitement today, he was a little harder to put down than normal. But when I left Olivia to her dreams and walked into the room where Lila had set up Jamie's makeshift stay-over nursery, I found her watching him from the side of his portable crib, making sure he was asleep.

I stepped carefully into the room, approaching Lila. She turned over her shoulder to meet my gaze with a sad, tired smile, and she nodded toward the door, indicating we should talk outside so Jamie could sleep. We ended up facing one another in the hallway, and that was where I finally got the nerve to ask her about Felipe.

"That seemed… tense with Felipe," I told her carefully, making sure not to lace any of my words with judgment. "Is everything okay? Did I do something wrong?"

"No, of course not," Lila assured me. "You're just fine. Felipe is upset with me… well, because of something I did."

"Somehow, I can't imagine your doing anything worth getting that angry about," I told her truthfully. Lila let out a humorless laugh.

"See, I couldn't have imagined it either, but everything's been changing lately. And now it looks like I've sort of gotten myself into a love triangle between two billionaires, which is absolutely bananas." She shook her head in disbelief, and my ears seemed to prickle with interest. Was this how normal people felt when they heard a piece of interesting gossip? Quickly, I deduced the situation.

"You, Felipe… and Aaron Pierce?" I asked, taking a guess. How many billionaires could this average girl realistically know?

"Yeah," she admitted, cringing a little, her cheeks reddening. And while my brain was struggling to imagine the two of them together—Lila in all of her innocent optimism, Aaron Pierce with the hard ass exterior and all-business mindset—she told me about the rest in an awkward rush. "I… we slept together, Felipe and me, but also Aaron and me—so now Felipe is upset. Like… I betrayed him, even though he and I aren't—I'm sorry. This is so unprofessional. I feel like I shouldn't be telling you all of this."

"No, it's–it's alright," I hurried to comfort her. I wasn't the best with affection, but I reached over to gently pat her upper arm in a way that I hoped was placating rather than threatening. My face was burning when I let my hand drop back to my side, and then it came up to rub at the back of my neck in a nervous habit I hadn't really exhibited since college. "I mean, you don't have to tell me anything you're not comfortable talking about. But you've helped me so much with Olivia, and… and then everything I told you about Janessa. I like to think I'm trustworthy, so if you feel comfortable sharing this…" I swallowed down the words we both knew belonged at the end of the sentence. You can tell me anything . I was still new to the whole "expressing your feelings" thing, after all, and Lila was the expert between us.

I was still a scientist, though. A supposed genius, if the experts were to be believed. In another second of deductive reasoning, my brain combing through the details of this afternoon with the same focus I gave to the scientific method, something clicked into place. "Oh. So when he said that thing about you and me being happy…"

"Yeah," Lila sighed. "He's convinced I'm sleeping with you, too. Which is ridiculous, obviously! And I told him it's not true. I mean, as if you'd ever even think of me that way." The laugh she let out was half-hysterical, her eyes unnaturally wide, her blush amped up to ten from the awkwardness of all of this. I frowned.

"Do you… want me to think of you that way?" I asked her slowly, my heartbeat picking up speed in my ears.

"Oh, uh," she sputtered, trying to avoid my gaze but finding it hard to latch onto anything else. "I mean, I just meant—well, of course, you're very handsome, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't attracted to you. But I know you're, uh, busy—and anyway, I can't very well have three billionaire boyfriends, right?"

I blinked at her, disbelief freezing me in place. She thought I was attractive? No, wait—she was attracted to me? That was a hard pill to swallow. And was I right to think she was embarrassed and blushing because of her own candor, not because she was horrified by the concept of something romantic happening with me?

The silence stretched on longer than either of us wanted, my brain obsessively combing over every word we'd spoken to one another in this very strange exchange. I felt like it was my turn to speak, but for some fucking reason, the best thing I could come up with was scientific in nature.

"You know, monogamy is quite unusual in the animal world," I told Lila. Her eyes, which had been dutifully scouring the carpet for distractions, snapped up to mine. "I'm not a biologist, but I had to take plenty of bio courses when I was getting my degrees, of course. And it became clear through all of my studies that humans are one of the few species that pairs up so neatly—one male, one female. It's not unnatural to… well, want more. On a biological level, at least."

Lila sat with that for a second, then nodded slowly. Finally, she turned the question back on me. "Are… are you attracted to me? "

Well, shit. I should have seen that question coming. I'd never been a very good liar, and just being this close to Lila made me want nothing more than to tell her how badly I'd wanted her from that very first day at lunch. I figured that might be coming on a little strong, though. Instead, I took a different approach that turned out even less tactful, if possible.

"Well, I think you're very beautiful in a way that's rather distracting," I told her, stepping closer to her because I couldn't help myself. "In fact, after you hugged me, I was so incapable of focusing at work the next day that I had to lock myself in my office and give myself an orgasm just so I could think straight. So… I'd say the answer is yes."

I didn't expect Lila to laugh, but that was exactly what she did. Though that might have been a major blow to my ego, cruelty didn't fit with what I knew about her, so I kept myself from jumping to any conclusions until she'd recomposed herself. When she did, she was still smiling, and the warmth of it seeped into my bones.

"Sorry for laughing," she said first. "It's just… this whole situation, my life lately, is so funny. I mean, I have three incredibly hot billionaires who are attracted to me. I'm not laughing at you, for the record. I Would never laugh at you like that. I just want to make that clear, since I've noticed you're not always… well, the best with the subtext, or other more subtle social cues."

It could have been insulting, but instead, I felt the warmth of being understood spread through my chest, comforting and unlike anything else. The social parts of being a human had always been a bit of a mystery for me, and knowing that Lila not only picked up on that from the short time we'd known each other, but she also was happy to accommodate me, to work with me to mitigate any confusion… yeah, that was a damn good feeling. No need to shove that into a compartment under lock and key.

"While we're being so honest," I spoke up again, "I hope you know that regardless of my physical attraction to you, I would never take advantage of our working relationship. I'm not the most, um, emotionally available, either, and after my wife, I'm really not sure what I?—"

Lila cut me off by coming up on her tiptoes, reaching for the back of my neck, and pulling me down to meet my lips with hers. She was kissing me, and she was the first person to do so since I'd lost my wife.

Even amid the wonderful sensation of her lips on mine, the passion that came naturally to us, I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming wave of guilt on its heels. Guilt that this was unfaithful to the woman I'd married who was long dead, guilt that I was further hurting my best friend who clearly wanted a claim over this girl. Together, it was a painful cocktail. But even that unpleasantness couldn't override the pure, perfect beauty of kissing Lila Dawson. Her arms came up to lock around my neck, and it was simple to pull her into me by her waist, the soft plushness of her body melding so beautifully with my bony, sharp edges that it almost made me softer. But at the same time, the heat of her mouth, the need I'd been trying to stave off with my hand for weeks now, inevitably rushed up to meet me, too. I deepened the kiss almost by accident, parting her lips so I could taste her tongue with mine, relishing the soft moan she released into my mouth.

"Daddy? I need water!" I heard my daughter call from her bedroom just a few feet away. Lila and I broke apart immediately, and my voice was raspy when I called back, "One sec, honey!"

That small voice was all it took to destroy any possibility of this going further tonight. My head absolutely reeling from this new development, from the heady effect of Lila's kiss, I turned away from my daughter's nanny and headed toward the kitchen to fulfill the little girl's request. For now, that was all I really could do.