“He could have seen you!” she whispered.
“The man is sawing logs out there,” Leo said, nuzzling her ear. “I need to get going home, though, while the getting’s good.”
Except he didn’t go. Instead, he began to drop gentle kisses onto her cheekbone. One of his hands wandered under the covers, skimming up her knee, sliding onto her thigh . . . It was the stuff of fantasies. Waking up with Leo on a weekend morning.
With her father in the next room.
Sigh.
She gave him a little shove on the chest. “Behave,” she whispered.
He gave her a naughty smile. But then he got up and grabbed his jeans off the chair.
“Your shoes are under the couch,” Georgia whispered. “That end,” she said, pointing.
When he was finished dressing, Leo patted his pockets for his phone and keys. Then he kissed Georgia on the head. “I’ll call you later.”
She caught his scruffy face in two hands and held on just a moment longer. “Okay. Sorry about breakfast.”
“Next time.”
She stood up to watch him make his escape.
Leo slowly opened the bedroom door one more time. Her father’s snores were loud, with a nice big honk at the end of each one, just like in a cartoon. Leo tiptoed over to the end of the couch and bent down. He slowly drew out first one shoe and then the other. He hooked two fingers into the heels and slowly rose.
That’s when everything seemed to happen at once.
Her father’s snore gave an extra loud honk and then stopped—going absolutely silent. Leo froze midstep toward freedom. And Becca’s bedroom door snapped open. “Hi . . .” she said before breaking off, probably picking up on Leo’s awkward body language.
From the sofa, Georgia’s dad coughed and rustled the sheets. She couldn’t see him from where she stood, but it was the sound of a man waking up. She gestured frantically toward Leo and the door.
Leo had been a natural at sports all his life. He knew how to spot an opening, and how to take a shot before the opening slammed shut. So now he hustled toward the door.
“Morning, Becca!” Georgia said loudly and with false brightness. “Sleep okay? My dad is here.”
Leo was out the door by the time she got to the end of that sentence. But Georgia flinched at the sound of the apartment door opening and closing.
“Um, yeah,” Becca said, wide-eyed.
“Princess?” her father called. “You just come in?”
“Yup!” she said with too much enthusiasm. “Checked for the newspaper, but it wasn’t down there yet.”
He sat up. “What time is it?”
“Excellent question,” she said, her heart still pounding. “I’ll just find out.”
She escaped to her room with a pounding heart. And three minutes later she got a one line text from Leo. I’m home now, but I forgot something.
What??? she replied, hoping her father wasn’t just about to discover Leo’s watch in the sofa cushions.
I didn’t get to say good-bye to the tatas, damn it. I miss them.
She practically slumped with relief. They miss you, too.
There were, in fact, quite a few of her body parts she would have liked for him to have visited this morning. But you can’t have everything. Georgia got dressed slowly, then went to see how her father was doing.
“It’s quarter to ten, Dad. You can take me to brunch anytime you’re ready.”
“Okay,” he said, getting up off the couch. “I’ll take all my roommates out. Where do you like to eat, Becca?”
Her roommate snickered. “Oh, I didn’t realize you meant me.”
Georgia glared.
“Right. Of course you meant me,” Becca said. “Let me just get my handbag.”
* * *
The next week was both wonderful and exhausting.
Georgia was still buried by work, and Leo had every player’s relentless schedule of practice and home games. The team tied Boston and beat Washington, D.C., with Leo earning a goal and two assists.
In the PR office, things hummed along. The interview with Nate and her father went live on the front of the Times sports section. “A Young Billionaire and His Young Hockey Team.” Nate seemed pleased enough with it, so Georgia was counting it as a win.
Even though it wasn’t easy for Georgia and Leo to find time together, they solved this problem by staying up late into the night. The only fly in the ointment was Georgia’s exhaustion. She wasn’t used to staying up until the wee hours with Leo to catch up on six years of lost sex and then getting up early to catch up at the office on six days of lost work.
And even when Leo slept beside her, Georgia fought to stay awake. The sound of him breathing quietly in bed beside her was precious, too. The comfort of sharing a bed with the man she loved was an entirely new sensation. She looked forward to the warmth of his sleeping form, whether they were at her place or his.
On Thursday night Silas had gone out drinking, so she and Leo had the run of the loft. They watched about seven minutes of television on the big screen before attacking each other on the leather sofa.
Later, Georgia had set her phone alarm for an early Friday wake-up. When it went off, she was very disciplined. She only spent one or two minutes admiring the godlike body asleep in the big bed beside her before tiptoeing off to the glamorous glassed-in shower stall in Leo’s en suite bathroom. She washed and shampooed, but then the bathroom door opened and Leo appeared, naked. He stepped into the shower, then, without a word, dropped to his knees.
“Good morning,” he rumbled, before reaching up to palm her backside in two big hands.
“Good . . .” she got out before he leaned forward and placed an open-mouthed kiss right at the juncture of her thighs. “Unnnngh,” she said, splaying her hands out onto the tile wall for stability.
“Mmm,” Leo said, the sound vibrating right in the center of her suddenly needy body. He pressed forward, his tongue making a pass right where it counted, and she dropped a hand into his wet hair and moaned.
She hadn’t gotten to work today quite as early as she’d planned, after all. And she was still tired from their late night frolicking the night before. That’s why coffee was invented.
But even better than caffeine was the spark of possibility each day now held. Even if she rarely glimpsed Leo at work, just having him nearby filled her with excitement. Who needed skydiving when your secret boyfriend just might turn the corner in your office corridor and give a secretive wink that made you blush? And since it was Friday, and all the bullpen kids were chattering about their weekend plans, nobody expected her to be sharp as a tack anyway.