I needed all the help I could get just to get close to her these days.

“Hello, Natalie,” I greeted, lowering my voice. I was rewarded with the sight of gooseflesh popping up along her arms. She loved my voice. Yeah, I was fighting dirty tonight. But all was fair in love and war and all that bullshit.

Her jaw clenched and I knew she was fighting the way I was making her feel. Good, baby. Fight it, because when you fight it I know that you still care. “Hello, Devlin. It was nice of you to come for Axton and Dallas.”

Dallas hadn’t felt up to traveling from Tennessee to New York for the weekend, so Axton had called me to fill in for him since he knew I was going to be in the city anyway. “I didn’t come for them. I wanted to see you,” I told her honestly. I hated New York, but I was here at least once a month these days. Just so I could see her, even if it was just a glimpse. It would ease some of the tightness around my heart until I could get back out the next month.

A lock of her beautiful hair fell over her shoulder and I was powerless to stop myself from reaching for it. The first graze of those silky strands against my fingertips made my already aching body throb with need for her. I wrapped it around my finger and caressed it with my thumb, torturing myself further, imagining those silky strands caressing my stomach and thighs as she sucked my dick like it was her favorite flavor of candy. “I’ve missed you, Natalie.”

For just a second, one very brief second, I saw it in her eyes. The pain, the need, the loneliness. It was there, glaring at me so blatantly that it made my heart stutter in my chest. In the next moment her lashes lowered to hide it from me and she jerked away. Reluctantly I released her hair because I didn’t want to hurt her any more than I’d already done.

A waiter passed and Natalie took another glass of champagne. When the boy offered me one, I shook my head. Champagne was too prissy for my tastes. I couldn’t stomach the shit. “We have a bar set up on the opposite side of the room if you would like something stronger, sir.”

“I’m good, but thanks.” I would have loved a glass of bourbon but I needed a clear head to keep up with Natalie.

When the waiter moved on, Natalie turned to face me again. “Is Harris with you?”

I grimaced at the mention of my son. For the first five years of his life, I barely knew the boy. I’d only been a kid myself and I’d resented his mother to the point that I’d started to resent him too. But then Tawny had died and I’d been stuck being a fulltime father. After that I grew up fast and became a better dad. Harris and I had become close, and I’d been thankful that we had been able to have the kind of relationship where my son felt like he could come to me with anything. I wasn’t one to judge; I’d done some fucked up shit when I was a kid, too.

The night that Zander had destroyed my chance with Natalie was the night that Harris’s opinion of me had changed. He’d picked sides after the breakup and it sure as hell hadn’t been my side. He liked Natalie, had even hinted a time or six during the two months that Natalie and I had been a couple that he wouldn’t mind if she became his stepmother. I had been stupidly terrified at the thought of marriage, of being tied down. And yeah, the idea still scared the hell out of me, but not nearly as much as the idea that Natalie would never be mine again.

These days Harris barely spoke to me unless it was with curt, monosyllable answers. Yet he talked to Natalie daily on FaceTime, email, and text messaging. So yeah, I was more than a little jealous of my son. Every message I sent to Natalie was either ignored or replied to with a picture of her middle finger. I’d much rather get the picture than be ignored any day.

“Harris is spending the weekend at Layla and Jesse’s house. He spends more time over there these days than at our house. If it weren’t for Lucy, Jesse might even enjoy having my kid around. But since the girl started… developing…” I shook my head at the thought of Lucy Thornton and how much older she looked now that she was starting to grow female parts. She was only eleven but she looked like she was years older because of her new feminine curves.

Harris and Lucy were best friends and I was glad he had someone to hang out with that was so smart and imaginative. Yet now that the girl wasn’t looking so much like a little girl but more like the beautiful woman she would one day be, my son was noticing her in ways that had nothing to do with friendship…and her father was noticing that he was noticing.

“He has his head on straight, Dev. He knows that she’s off limits. At least for a few more years.” Her lips lifted in a small, but genuine smile. “And the fear of death that Jesse puts in him will keep his hands to himself.”

The obvious affection she held for my son only made me love her more. Most women didn’t care that I came as a package deal, because they didn’t care about my son. All they wanted was a few nights in my bed, the expensive gifts that I could spoil them with, and whatever else I could offer them for a short time. And if they were interested in my son it was because they were hungry cougars on the prowl for fresh meat. Harris looked just like me, and having a younger guy was what some women went for. They needed the ego boost an untried boy could offer them.

With Natalie, I’d never had to worry about either scenario. In the beginning of our relationship she had always included Harris as much as was possible, and when it was over she’d stayed friends with him. As for the cougar road? Natalie was closer to my sixteen-year-old son’s age than my own, but she’d never even batted an eye at the kid, and I hadn’t seen or heard my kid make even a small innuendo in regards to Natalie.

“He has his head on straighter than I ever did at that age,” I said, agreeing with her.

For a long while, we just stood there—Natalie sipping her champagne while she pretended to ignore me, and me standing there feasting my eyes on the beautiful woman whom I’d been unable to hold onto. Around us people mingled, their fake laughter filling the air, but I heard none of it. It wasn’t until some creep in a monkey suit just as expensive as my own approached and smiled at Natalie that I snapped out of my stupor and started paying attention.

“Would you like to dance?” the man asked, and I took stock of him. Thin, on the shorter side of six feet tall. With Natalie’s heels she was basically on the dude’s eye level. He had short, gelled hair and wire-rimmed glasses.

If Zander had been there we both would have been snickering at the man, calling him a geek to his face and telling him to get lost. But the man who had once been my friend wasn’t in attendance and if he had been, we sure as hell wouldn’t have been within shouting distance let alone beside each other. And with this geek staring longingly at my girl, with his hand stretched out to her, offering her a dance, I wasn’t in the mood to smile let alone snicker at him.