Page 38 of Punked By the Playmaker
Shit, I’d been so consumed with the need to fight for custody that I hadn’t stopped to consider that my daughter had quite literally shown up with only the clothes on her back.
Thank God Arizona would be riding shotgun on this crazy ride for the next year while I got my bearings and figured out how to be a dad.
A dad. Still didn’t feel real.
Arizona jerked her chin in the direction of the staircase. “Shall we?”
“Yeah, give me one minute.” I walked over to where the kids were chilling on the couch and handed Austin some cash, instructing, “Tell the pizza guy to keep the change.”
Without so much as a glance over his shoulder, he pocketed the money. “Got it.”
Hustling back to my fake-fiancée-soon-to-be-real-wife—which was also beyond unreal—I gestured for her to precede me up the steps. “After you.”
She glared at me. “You just want to stare at my ass.”
I couldn’t contain my smirk. “So what if I do?”
Her eyes lifted to the ceiling. “Just so long as you remember touching is firmly off-limits, go ahead and eat your heart out.”
With that, she took the stairs slowly, with an exaggerated sway of her hips, the tight fabric of her pencil skirt clinging to therounded curve of her tight little backside, and I was half tempted to drop to my knees to crawl after her like a damn puppy dog.
When she reached the top, she peeked back to find I hadn’t moved a single inch, and her eyes dipped to where my erection tented the front of my shorts. Hunger flashed in those brilliant blue gems, and straight white teeth descended into the plush pillow of her lower lip.
She was fuckingkillingme.
“Coming?” Her voice came out as a sexy purr, the sexual innuendo clear.
Goddamn, she was a vixen, and I vowed to make it my personal mission to get her to break the no-sex rule she’d imposed. Keeping my hands to myself for a full year simply wasn’t going to work.
Roughly clearing my throat wasn’t enough to keep my voice from coming out gruff. “Yeah.” I reached down, wincing as I adjusted my painfully hard cock, before I climbed to the second level of the house.
Since she’d been the one to sell it to me, Arizona knew the floor plan and moved toward the guest wing—yes, this house was massive enough that it had wings. Methodically, she opened the door to each extra bedroom before turning around to face me.
Humming, she remarked, “Didn’t expect you to have all of these furnished.”
“You can thank my interior designer. She insisted that none of the rooms remain empty.”
Arizona laughed. “Single guy with a six-bedroom house and deep pockets? Yeah, she saw you coming.”
I shrugged. “Guess it’s good for us that she did.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She clicked her tongue in thought. “Probably makes the most sense if we give Maisie and Austin the ones with attached bathrooms. That way, they can have their privacy.”
My head cocked to the side. “Uh, you don’t want your own bathroom?” I’d assumed she would take one of the rooms featuring an ensuite for herself.
Her eyes slid shut, and she shook her head. “God, you really don’t know how this has to work, do you?”
“What are you talking about?”
Lashes lifting, she asked, “You remember Hilda?”
A chill ran down my spine, and I shuddered. “How could I ever forget?”
“Well, because we pulled the short straw when the hospital called CYS, she’s going to make fun little unannounced visits for the next month, which technically is her job, but you can bet your ass she’s gonna be searching for anything that might suggest we haven’t been one-hundred percent truthful about our relationship. If she takes a tour of the house and finds all your stuff in one bedroom and mine in another, it’s game over. We will have handed her the win—and Maisie and Austin—on a silver platter. Is that what you want?”
My swallow was audible. “No.”
It was crystal clear that I was in way over my head when it came to navigating the nuances of social services.
