My Love - Bobby & Sophie: A Crossroads Novella (2 page)

In the bedroom, Bobby was in control. It might sound strange to some people that a woman as independent and strong-willed as Sophie would enjoy his dominant energy, but strangely, it was liberating. From that first kiss, Bobby had somehow instinctively known Sophie. He knew what she liked, what turned her on, what made her so hot that it felt like she was going to spontaneously combust.

A shiver raced down Sophie’s spine, but she ignored it. She tried to put all thoughts of the erotic payback she knew she was in store for because of her ‘teasing’ text, at the masterful hands of her too-sexy-for-his-own-good husband, out of her mind. All she needed to do was concentrate on the hundreds of emails that had stockpiled over the past couple of months. If she could just stay focused on the heaping mountain of correspondences in front of her, then she could enjoy an entire guilt-free week of uninterrupted time with Bobby.

*     *     *

Wait. What?

Bobby put his phone down after he heard his brother, Seth’s, announcement. He’d barely been paying attention to anything his brothers had been saying for the last half hour. All he’d been able to think about was his wife. He’d strategically made sure that he’d garnered the center seat in the back corner of the round booth he and his brothers Seth, Riley, Jason, and Alex were seated at so he could text—or as the kids called it these days, ‘sext’—with Sophie in total privacy while he sat through the monthly Sloan brothers’ breakfast at The Diner.

Sophie had just gotten back from a business trip, her third in the last two months, and Bobby
missed
her. Not just in a surface, shallow, ‘I miss my wife because she’s not home’ kind of way. No, his heart ached, his soul yearned, and every fiber and cell in his body craved Sophie. It was hard enough for him to get through a normal workday when he knew that she was just across town; but lately, she’d been traveling a lot for her new position. He saw how happy she was, how fulfilled she seemed, but it was killing him to spend so much time away from her.

“Billy Marshall?
Seriously
? Holy shit!” Alex stared at Seth in disbelief.

Bobby was just as shocked as Alex over their eldest bro’s announcement that, as of the first of the year, heavyweight boxing champ Billy Marshall would be moving to Harper’s Crossing and joining Seth’s Elite Protection Security team, but his shock was for an entirely different reason than Alex’s was.

“I didn’t know you were looking for people,” Bobby said, trying to sound as casual as possible as he motioned for their waitress to refill his coffee. He didn’t want to show his hand until he had facts about what was going on with Seth’s business.

“We weren’t, but in the last month, I’ve lost four guys,” Seth stated.

“Damn.” Alex shook his head. “I thought you only had eight guys on the team. That’s a pretty bad turnover. What happened?”

“Two of the guys decided to move to Miami and open a night club. One is getting married and moving to Australia. Another just got the opportunity to work for the Secret Service,” Seth explained.

The waitress poured Bobby’s refill, and as the piping-hot steam drifted through the air, Bobby inhaled the strong java aroma while his mind was firing on all cylinders. This might be his chance to make the move he’d been waiting for. Since Seth had moved back home and started Elite Protection, he’d only ever hired former military guys he’d served with; but, as far as Bobby knew, Billy Marshall had no military experience. He’d been a boxer since he was a teenager.

Bobby had never loved construction. Hell, he’d never even liked it. He stepped up and had been there for his older brother when Jason had to quit school to come back and run Sloan Construction after their dad, Bob Sr., had a heart attack. In just a few years, Bobby had rapidly moved up the ranks until he was serving as Vice President. But, a couple of years ago, he had stepped down from being V.P. because he’d known that, if he hadn’t, he would have ended up following in his dad’s and Jason’s footsteps—staying in construction his whole life. That’s not what Bobby wanted.

“How in the hell did Billy Marshall get into the mix? Did Zach have something to do with it?” Alex asked.

Zach Courtland currently held the light heavyweight world champion belt. He had also married Bobby’s cousin, Jessie Sloan, last New Year’s Eve and was best friends with Billy Marshall. Billy had announced his retirement back in August after winning his seventeenth consecutive bout. As far as the press knew, the retirement had been planned and Billy just wanted to go out on top. Since the Sloans had the inside track—not only because of the familial relations but also because Jessie was Billy’s publicist—Bobby knew that he’d been advised to by several physicians who had warned him that his dome couldn’t take too many more cracks without the very distinct possibility of permanent brain damage.

“Other than the fact that we started talking at Zach’s fight last month, no, Zach didn’t have anything to do with it,” Seth said, as the waitress set down everyone’s food.

Bobby was not surprised that his oldest brother didn’t elaborate. Seth pretty much kept things close to the vest. He’d always been the brother Bobby had most identified with. Seth was known as the ‘quiet, brooding type.’ Bobby had even heard some people describe him as mysterious. Riley was the ‘bad boy.’ He’d gotten into quite a bit of trouble in his teen years. Jason had earned the nickname ‘Romeo’ because practically the entire female population of Harper’s Crossing had been in love with Jason at one point or another. And Alex was the ‘player’ before settling down with his wife, Jamie. He’d run through more women in a month than most people did in their entire lives.

Then there was Bobby. People mostly compared him to Seth. Bobby understood why. He and Seth looked alike—they both had jet-black hair and blue eyes. They were both quiet and reserved.

“But I thought that I saw something on ESPN that said Billy was going to go into commentary. I thought he was going to start covering fights,” Alex recalled, as he reached across Jason’s plate to grab the syrup, which earned him a sock in the arm.

Seth shrugged. “He was, but he did a few test shoots and said that he really didn’t think it was for him. He said he was interested, so he came down and trained with Travis and Locke. It went well.”

Bobby felt nerves begin to kick up as he listened to his brother. Sure, he was no boxing champ, but he’d been training in MMA for almost six years now. He was in top physical condition and had done well in school. He’d graduated with a 4.2 GPA and scored 1800 on his SATs. He knew that he’d have to travel, but now that Sophie’s job entailed so much travel, it wasn’t like he’d be leaving her home by herself. She was happily pursuing her dream. They could work out the logistics. He knew that all Sophie ever wanted for him was to be happy, which was exactly what he wanted for her.

“How many more guys are you looking for?” Bobby asked, hoping that he wasn’t tipping his hand just yet.

Seth leaned back and his jaw tensed. Bobby wasn’t used to seeing his brother look stressed. Usually, Seth was unreadable. Had he pissed him off by asking him that? It wasn’t like he wanted state secrets or anything.

“At least six,” Seth finally answered.

“I thought you only lost four?” Riley, who, up until this point, hadn’t said much, leaned forward and engaged in the conversation.

“I did, but I just got three new contracts in that I accepted before I lost half my guys,” Seth said in a flat, unemotional tone.

“Are the contracts local?” Riley asked.

“Two are,” Seth replied.

“I can help out,” Riley offered, and Bobby almost spit his coffee all over the table.

“You?” all four brothers said in unison.

Riley didn’t seem offended in the least at his brothers’ reaction. “Yeah. I mean, Dax and Landon have everything under control down at Freedom. Mya’s in preschool now. I have time. I can help you out, bro. At least until you’re able to assemble a full crew.”

Shit.

Riley owned Freedom, a bar down in New Orleans, with two guys that he served with, but he spent next to no time there. Since he’d married Chelle and became a family man, he’d lived in Harper’s Crossing full time.

As the baby of the family, Bobby was more than used to getting overlooked, more than used to his brothers talking over him and ignoring him. But this was too important. No way was he going to get passed over or let his brother beat him to the punch—even if Riley had been in the Marines for ten years and had the experience Bobby was sure Seth was looking for.

“I can help you out, too,” Bobby spoke up. “Not temporarily either.”

“What?” Jason asked.

Bobby could feel the heat of all eight of his brothers’ eyes boring into him. This was it. Time to ante up. Put it all on the line.

“Don’t you have a job?” Alex asked, looking more than a little amused at this turn of events.

“The Randall Drive complex is wrapped. I don’t have another project lined up until March.” Bobby looked directly at Seth. “We can see how it goes.”

Bobby felt a little bad that his current employer, Jason, was watching this all go down. But Jason had known that Bobby had been thinking about leaving Sloan Construction for a while. Bobby was pretty sure that he might have thought it was all talk, but it wasn’t.

Seth, although normally unreadable, looked taken aback and…happy. His oldest brother nodded. “Sounds good.”

Looking around the table at his brothers, Bobby wasn’t surprised to see that Jason looked stunned, Seth’s poker face was back in full effect, Riley was on his phone, and Alex had a small smirk on his face.

Bobby had no idea what his face looked like. But he knew he felt alive. He felt like he’d just made a huge step in the right direction in his life. Maybe it would be the right one. Maybe not. All he knew was that the only other thing in his life that had felt so right and he’d been as certain of was marrying Sophie.

Sophie.

Just thinking of his wife’s name made him half hard. That tease of a Snapchat she’d sent earlier certainly wasn’t helping matters. He knew he should just leave it alone. She was working and he was heading back to work. Still, as his brothers all fought over who was going to pay the check, Bobby pulled out his phone and sent his wife another, more
specific,
text.

S
ophie was on a roll. After putting on Spotify and listening to some ’90s hits, she had been clearing out her inbox in record time. Her head bobbed along to both the click, click, clicking of the keyboard beneath her fingers and TLC’s “Waterfalls.” Just as she was beginning to make a considerable dent in her workload, her phone alerted her to a message. Thinking that her and Bobby’s sexting session was over, Sophie was not expecting to see what she did.

‘Spread your legs. Show me. Now.’

Perhaps the shock of the unexpected added to the intense arousal spiraling through every fiber of her being at Bobby’s request. Or maybe it was the fact that her husband was commanding an encore performance. Either way, her heart was pounding so hard beneath her button down shirt that she was scared she might pop a button.

After swallowing hard and glancing once more at the door, Sophie slid her fingers beneath the hem of her skirt for round two of ‘I see London, I see France, I see Sophie’s underpants.’ Then she lifted her hips up off her chair, pulling the tight fabric up to her hips. Once she sat back down, her heart raced even faster and her arousal grew before she spread her legs and positioned the camera between them. She bit her lip as the cold metal of the armrests pressed against the bare skin of her outer thigh. Finally, she turned on the flash so that the picture would come out clear, even though she was taking it beneath her desk and a burst of light flared as she captured the erotic image.

After snapping the picture, she made sure her skirt was back in place before she looked at the provocative pose displayed on the screen. When she did, she had to admit she felt more than a little thrill of erotic excitement. Her panties were so transparent that you could see the outline of her pouty lips and the small, dark patch of curly hairs that sat neatly above her sex, surrounded by the fair skin of her inner thighs. Knowing exactly what this picture would do to Bobby when he saw it, she decided to choose a ten-second viewing window before she pressed ‘send’.