Temptation: Part One - Forbidden Flash Romance

Introduction

I never thought I would look at another woman the way I looked at my Maria. Memories of her raven hair and honey skin still linger here, in this bungalow where we spent her last summer. 

Will was too young to remember much, but I know Finn remembers. I know he sees it when I lose control and put a hole in the wall every time I find a forgotten piece of her - an earring in my sock drawer, the smell of her perfume that I can't seem to throw out no matter how hard I try.

Olivia is the only thing that keeps me from giving up. She loves my kids like they were her own, and dammit if it isn’t the most enticing thing about her.

I shouldn’t look at her like that. I know I should let her be and let my kids have their nanny. God knows they need some stability after what they've been through. What we've all been through.

But fuck it all, I don’t know if I can help myself. 

Desire

Sweat beads down my spine in the ragged heat of South Beach. I never liked Tybee, but Maria insisted we come here every year to languish in the heat and enjoy the festivities of the pier. 

When she got sick, I begged her to stay home. To get better. But she had already accepted what I couldn’t. And so we spent our last summer together here, with me watching her chase after the boys and pretend she wasn’t out of breath.

Even now the heat feels suffocating, the last memory of a life I’ll never have again. A fucking widower at thirty-one. 

Finn begged me to bring them here for three years straight before I finally gave in. Damn kid has his mom’s eyes. How am I supposed to say no to those?

Olivia, my nanny, sits with the boys in the sand, a brilliant smile on her face while she teaches Finn how to build a sandcastle and together the two of them try to keep Will from demolishing it. 

A faint surge of emotion enters my chest at the sight of them. Olivia found us two years ago, when I was too broken to even look at the kids and Finn kept asking when mommy was coming home. 

She should be in college now, at nineteen. But she deferred admission to become my full-time nanny. Said she was too attached to the boys to leave them.

I told her to go—not that I meant it. She’s the only thing that’s kept me this side of sane the last two years. And I can’t stand the idea of the boys losing anyone else. They’re so damned attached.

A slow smile spreads over my face as I watch them play, Will’s never-ending giggles weaving through the sounds of the ocean. Of all the babysitters I’ve ever had, she was the only one to really connect with them. They adore her. And I don’t know what I’ll do when she finally has to leave us.

“Why don’t you tell daddy to come help us?” she asks Finn, a conspiratorial look on her face. He nods and bounds over the sand to me, tugging on my hand. 

“Help us, daddy.” He won’t keep calling me that for long. Soon enough he’ll grow up and take those eyes—her eyes—on adventures that don’t involve me. And most of the time I feel like I’m only half here. What a waste.

Smiling at him, I plant my beer in the sand and scoop him up, hanging him upside down to tickle his belly while he giggles and screams in protest. 

“You sure you want my help?” I let him go next to her and drop into the sand across from them, grateful that she can’t see my eyes behind my sunglasses. Her golden skin and heart-shaped face would be temptation enough, even without the pink bikini top and tiny jean shorts.

I’d be lying if I said I’d never thought about it. And every time I do, I feel like absolute shit. What would Maria think?

“We should build a moat,” Olivia says. “That way when the water comes in, the castle won’t wash away.

“What’s a moat?” Finn digs for seashells in the sand, adorning the walls of their castle with haphazard designs.

I start to dig absentmindedly on my side, scooping wet sand out with my hands and dumping it in a pile that Will immediately scoots toward, his chest already covered with the stuff. He has no patience for building, only demolition.

“It’s the water around the castle that protects them from bad guys,” I answer him, gesturing to my digging. He follows my lead, his small hands struggling to pick up enough sand as he tries to compete with me.

“We have to protect our people.” Olivia nods, reaching for the ineffectual plastic shovel that came with the set I picked up on the way here.

The boys couldn’t be more thrilled, though eventually they bore of the castle and drag us toward the ocean. The sight of Will so close to the water makes me nervous, but Olivia keeps him close while I throw Finn into the depths only for him to swim back and beg me to do it again. 

“Look at you go.” She smiles sweetly at Finn, always quick to praise him when he does anything remotely interesting. He beams back at her, splashing her with his feet when he kicks away.

“Those swimming lessons really paid off.” I give her a grateful glance. It’s the kind of thing I never would have thought of, especially when I hoped to never see the beach again as long as I lived.

She hands Will off to me and splashes back at Finn, sunlight gleaming off her caramel skin. “He’s a fast learner. Got his dad’s brains.” 

As long as he didn’t inherit his dad’s foolishness. 

I thought I could beat it, when the doctors told us Maria’s prognosis. So many nights wasted fighting over how best to take care of her when I should have shut the hell up and held her while I had the chance.

Taking a deep breath, I struggle to focus on the present. I can’t go back to that place, catatonic on the couch while Will cried in his crib and Finn begged me to play trains. They need me here.

Will puts his chubby little hands on either side of my face and squeezes my cheeks, laughing when I make a fish face at him. 

“I want to swim too,” he begs, straining out of my arms. I know he can, even if he’s not up to Finn’s level yet. But he was so helpless when she died, it’s hard not to see him as my clumsy eighteen-

month-old even now that he’s almost four.

“Okay,” I agree, walking out to where the water hits my thighs. “But no further than here.” I could never live with myself if anything happened to them.

Further out, Finn tries to dunk Olivia under the water, his skinny arms pressing on her shoulders so hard he lifts himself out of the water.

I let them play until the sun hangs low, grateful when Olivia forces them out of the water to apply more sunscreen. She’s the only person I can trust with them—apart from my mother, I suppose. How on earth am I supposed to replace her at the end of the year?

“What should we have for dinner?” I ask to distract them when I drag them out of the water near dusk.

“Look! It worked.” Finn points to the moat around the castle, which is still standing, a massive smile on his face.

Will clutches onto my hair when I swing him up to sit on my shoulders. “Chicken nuggets,” he answers, kicking his feet against my chest.

“Yeah,” Finn nods so fast I’m surprised his brain doesn’t hit the front of his skull, “chicken nuggets.” He sticks his tongue out like a dog, jumping out of the way when Olivia pokes his side. 

“Should have seen that one coming.” She bends over to grab her shorts from the sand. Eyes up, I remind myself when I catch my eyes straying to her ass.

“You two are going to eat all the chicken nuggets in the world and then they’ll be all gone,” I tease, adjusting my shorts with one hand. Damn that tiny pink suit. Even when she slips on her white t-shirt, I can see the outline of the bathing suit, her silhouette every bit as arousing half-covered.

“Get dressed and we’ll go.” Sending them into the bungalow, I grab my shirt from the porch and pull it on, dropping my sunglasses on the chair before I head in to change into jean shorts.

When I step out onto the porch, she leans on the railing, her face relaxed. “They adore you,” she says as I rub a hand through my hair. Maria always used to tease me about it, wondering aloud if the kids would get my blond hair before they were born. 

Will looks more like me, though his hair is lighter since he’s so young. But I’m glad Finn looks like her. Has her kindness, too. And her irrational stubbornness.

“That’s cause they don’t know me well enough yet.” Someday they’ll know better. She looks at me in a way I’ve come to expect, searching for something deeper in the depths of my eyes.

Don’t, I want to warn her. Sexy or not, I could never be with another woman. Not in any meaningful way, at least. She deserves better than to cut herself on whatever shards remain of me.

“You really ought to give yourself more credit, Rhett.” She presses her lips together and raises a hand to touch my shoulder. But before she can touch me, she thinks better of it. I don’t know if I feel disappointed or relieved. 

A bit of both, I realize as she grins at the little monsters when they run out dressed in street clothes. 

Clapping her hands together, she squats down to their level. “Alright. Who’s hungry?”