Then he was cursing into the pillow beneath my head and his muscles clenched and I felt his orgasm rippling through his body into mine. It sent me spiraling over the heights, head over heels, spinning and falling and pulsing and holding him close as we shared this insanely powerful, extraordinary thing.

A few moments later, he lifted his chest off mine and pulled out. “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” I said, disappointed he wanted to get up so fast.

While he was in the bathroom, I lay there clutching the blankets beneath my chin. I couldn’t believe this! Just to be sure it wasn’t a dream, I pinched myself. Hard.

Nope. It’s real.

But now what? I couldn’t actually sleep in here, could I? No, I should go back out to the couch. We did not need his kids discovering me in his bedroom in the morning. I found my underwear at the bottom of the bed, yanked them on, and was hunting around on the floor for my T-shirt when Mack opened the bathroom door. Light spilled into the bedroom.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” Spying the shirt on the floor, I straightened up and slipped it over my head.

“Um, do you want to use the bathroom?”

“Oh … sure.” He stepped aside as I passed him, giving me way more space than I needed to get by, which seemed kind of weird since his sweaty, naked body had been tangled up with mine for the last thirty minutes. That was a move you made passing someone in the hallway at work, not in the bedroom after sex. Were we going backward now?

In the bathroom, I shut the door behind me and cleaned up a little, trying not to read too much into it. But something felt off. I dried my hands and paused for a moment before reaching for the doorknob. After a couple deep breaths, I turned off the light and opened the door, hoping I’d been wrong.

My eyes weren’t used to the dark, and I wasn’t sure where he was at first. It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t even in the room. I stood there for a minute, confused and blinking at the empty bed, when the bedroom door opened. Mack entered, holding the pillow I’d been using on the couch. He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt.

“Hey,” he whispered. “I was just switching pillows.”

“Switching pillows?”

“Yeah. Moving mine out there and bringing yours in here. I’ll sleep on the couch and you can have the bed.”

“That’s not necessary. I can sleep on the couch.”

“I’ll just tell the girls I offered you the bed when I realized how cold it was out there.”

It actually hadn’t been that cold out there, but suddenly it felt damn near Arctic in here. “Mack, I—”

“Do you want clean sheets on the bed?”

“What? No.”

“Okay. Keep this closed, and hopefully the kids aren’t too loud when they come down. You can sleep in a little.” He grabbed the door handle and began pulling it shut behind him. “Night.”

“Wait a minute. Mack.” I walked toward the doorway. “Come back in here a sec.”

He hesitated, but then did as I asked and entered his bedroom again, closing the door. “What?”

“Well …” I folded my arms over my chest. “What now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, are we just going to pretend this didn’t happen?”

“I think that’s best. Don’t you?”

Of course not. I wanted to ride off into the sunset with him. Cue the music. Roll the credits. “I … I don’t know. I guess so.”

“It is. Trust me on this, Frannie.” He’d adopted a sort of I’m Older And Wiser tone that made me feel five years old. “Tonight was a nice break from the norm but it can’t happen again.”

Nice break from the norm?

Nice?

I’d just experienced the most unbelievable, mind-blowing, earth-shattering sex imaginable. My life would never be the same. And he’d thought it was nice?

I wanted to die.

“Right,” I said, glad the lights were off so he couldn’t see how mortified I was. “Okay. It didn’t happen.”

“Good. We agree.” He sounded relieved. “And now that it’s out of our system, we can just go back to the way it was before. ’Night.”

He was out the door before I could even say it back.

Confused, hurt, and embarrassed, I crawled back into the bed, which smelled like him. Curling up on my side with a pillow in my arms, I fought off the lump swelling in my throat.

Then I was angry.

Grow up, Frannie. You wanted to be treated like an adult? Free to make your own mistakes? Here you are—a great big plate of THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE, served cold with a side of humiliation. And it won’t do you any good to cry over it.

What, did you think he was going to confess his undying love just because he gave you a couple orgasms in the middle of the night? Did you think you two would be a couple now? What a joke.

Sometimes sex is just sex, and you’re acting like a teenager, sniveling into a pillow in the dark. No wonder he thinks you’re too young for him. You knew your feelings for him were pointless from the start, so don’t pretend otherwise.

Only a child believes in fairy tales.

Mack

I hurried out to the couch and stretched out, tossing the blanket over my legs.

Jesus, that had felt good. Even better than I’d imagined—and I’d imagined it a lot. Everything about it had been really intense—the heat, the chemistry, the connection. I hadn’t felt that in years, if ever. Maybe it was the whole forbidden aspect, maybe it was the fact that I’d been fantasizing about her illicitly for months, or maybe my dick was really that starved for attention after a year of celibacy, but honest to God, I could have wept after that orgasm.

For a moment, I let myself imagine what it would be like if I were younger and didn’t have kids. If I were free to pursue her. Win her. Keep her. Christ, I’d fucking spoil her rotten all the time. She was that perfect combination of sexy and sweet—it drove me crazy in the best possible way. In another life, I’d have done everything possible to make her mine.

But as it stood, I’d meant what I said. As good as the sex had been, we couldn’t do it again. She was still too young, she was still the boss’s daughter, she was still the nanny, and I was in no position to pursue anyone.

Thank God she agreed with me that we should just pretend it never happened and go back to the way things were.

I really didn’t know what I’d do without her.

In the morning, the girls came down in their pajamas and asked where Frannie was.

“She’s in my room,” I told them, yawning and pulling the blanket over my shoulder. “It was too cold out here, so I told her to take the bedroom and I slept on the couch.”

None of them batted an eye. “Can we wake her up now?” Felicity asked. “We want to make the monkey bread.”

“No. Don’t.” Reluctantly, I sat up. Scratched my stomach.

Winifred giggled. “I saw Daddy’s hairy belly.”

“Ewww!” the older two chorused.

“Hey,” I said, grabbing Winnie and throwing her across my lap. “I do not have a hairy belly.”