Falling for Hailey: An Older Man Younger Woman, Secret Baby Romance by Annie J. Rose

Author:Annie J. Rose [Rose, Annie J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

RICK

Of all the possible courses of action when Hailey peeked into my office, I chose the one that made everything worse. I could have said, ‘have a good evening’ and let her leave. I could have nodded and said I was busy and couldn’t talk. I could have asked about my sister who is her best friend or her coursework since I am her goddamn professor. Instead, I insisted on walking her to the elevator as an excuse to prolong the interaction. Then I decided to put my tongue in her mouth.

Decided might be too proactive a word when it felt more like surrender, like falling into a pool or opening my eyes in the morning. Natural and good and right, but nothing that needed the name of volition. Because wanting her was like breathing, needing her, touching her was just one desperate action after another, frantic for relief. That was what it had been. A complete relief to kiss her. Not the slaking of some illicit lust. Something true and good and almost wholesome.

She was meant for me, and the way she kissed me back, the way she touched my cheek and just went for it, kissing me as passionately as I kissed her. There was no way to undo this, to make it right. I had done something I shouldn’t have, no matter how right it felt. It was wrong, professionally and personally. She interned at my marketing firm, studied in my class. She was my younger sister’s friend. As such, she deserved respect and politeness, not a man who took advantage of those connections to press my attention on her. Never mind that she had responded in kind, that she had seemed eager, seemed so damn perfect. I had put her in an impossible situation.

My impulse was to contact her and ask if she was okay, if we could talk, but even that seemed like the panicked reaction of a guilty man. I had done the wrong thing, so the only course was to do the right one now. To leave her alone and give her space. Pursuing her, messaging her, trying to reassure myself of her well-being and her understanding that I wasn’t going to trap her or coerce her—that was putting my interests ahead of hers. Hailey deserved better than this, and I wanted to go look for answers in a tequila bottle. To forget it ever happened. Like there was any chance of that, any chance that I wouldn’t relive the perfect union of those moments with Hailey every night, every time I closed my eyes. She would haunt me, and that kiss would haunt me, not only with guilt but with longing so fierce it threatened my sanity. A kiss like that, a woman like that could drive a man out of his mind.

Facing her in class was a grim chore for me, to appear detached and impersonal, but to wonder if it was acceptable to apologize. I had people I could ask, friends of mine who had been down this road.

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