Boss Daddy: A Secret Baby Romance by Black, L. (big screen ebook reader txt) 📗

done. For a lot of my life, I thought the military was going to be my whole future. I figured I would go in for my initial term of service, then go career and spend the rest of my life serving. But it didn’t work out that way. Not that I regret my time. It was definitely what I was supposed to do for that part of my life. It just didn’t turn out to be what I was supposed to do for the rest of it.”

“I definitely understand that. Expectations and thinking you know what’s ahead of you, then realizing it’s something different can be a lot,” I said.

“It wasn’t just the military that changed,” he admitted. “I thought I had my whole life mapped out in front of me down to the detail. I was planning on getting married.”

“Oh, wow.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I know that’s kind of a cliché with military guys. We want to have something good at home, something to look forward to when we got back, and something to keep pushing for when times got hard. I think that was her for me. Not that I realized that at the time. I thought she was perfect. We’d been together a long time, and I was sure we were going to get married, have some kids. The whole thing. Maybe I should have caught on when she never wanted to talk about being a military wife and talked about a future that didn’t include the reality of moving around to different bases with me.”

“What happened?” I asked, tenting my hand over my eyes to block the sun so I could look at him.

“I got a short leave that let me come home for a little bit. Nobody knew I was coming. It was supposed to be a surprise. And it definitely was that. When I got home, I found her cheating on me with one of my friends,” Jordan said.

I cringed. “That’s terrible. I’m sorry you went through that.”

He nodded. “So am I. But at least it seems like I dodged a bullet in a way. Maybe if I hadn’t found out, she would have kept up with it all and I would have ended up marrying her, and it would have been much worse down the line.”

“That’s a good way of looking at it,” I said.

“How about you? Any skeletons in your closet?”

“You could say that. My parents decided they knew what was best for me and that they should have absolute control over my life. That included picking out who they wanted me to be with. They paired me up with this guy I’ve known basically forever. Ethan. According to them, he was an appropriate match for me and what they thought I should have in a husband. It didn’t quite matter to them that I didn’t feel the same way,” I said.

“So, an arranged marriage situation?”

I laughed. “Not quite, but something like that. I didn’t love him. Never. I’ll admit I tried. Having couples kind of put together by parents wasn’t so unusual in our circles, so I tried to see in him what they did and let the relationship develop. But it never did. Then I started to suspect he was about to propose, and I couldn’t handle that. So, I left him.”

I left out the big details about my relationship with Ethan. It felt far too soon to get into everything about the mental abuse and the controlling way he treated me. I didn’t want to pour too much of that out to Jordan and scare him away. Besides, it wasn’t something I talked about with anyone. Even Samantha only knew some of the truth. This just wasn’t the time for me to put it all out there.

Instead, I focused on how nice it was to walk down the sand with Jordan and get to know each other better. I hoped the beach would just keep stretching on and we wouldn’t have to stop.

9 Jordan

Work seemed to fly by with Hannah there to talk to. Or more appropriately, to flirt with. I found myself smiling and laughing a lot more than usual when she was nearby and not busy with customers. I also found more and more reasons to get behind the bar and go shoulder to shoulder or hip to hip with her. Occasionally, she would knock one hip into me to move me out of the way for something, and I would do it back. The banter between us was silly and funny, and the customers seemed to like it, which made me happy, but I was enjoying it all too much.

Suddenly, I realized Mason was staring at me from across the bar, a smirk on his face while I was in the middle of another mock argument with Hannah. I could feel my skin get warm as I flushed, and I looked back into her gorgeous eyes. She was making a face at me, her nose and lips all scrunched up because of something I had said that made her fake angry at me. An overwhelming urge to grab her by her face and kiss her soft, supple lips was only held back by the heat from where I could sense Mason watching me.

Instead, I turned on my heel and walked away, shaking my finger above me. She laughed, and so did a few of the patrons, and I went into the back to get some air. I needed to get control of myself before I lost it.

Grabbing an ice water, I passed Tyler in the hallway, who nodded at me.

“Taking your break?” he asked.

“Not a full one,” I said. “Just needed a drink of water and some air. It’s pretty calm in there now.”

“Warm tonight, isn’t it?” Tyler asked, pulling at the front of his shirt.

“Yeah,” I said, pretending that was the problem. “Maybe check the thermostat.”

Tyler saluted with two fingers and walked away. I turned and headed through the door to the outside, taking