Beautiful Mistake Book 3

KYLA

My heart hammered in my chest.

A dozen pairs of eyes watched me as I hovered, undecided, near the locker room door of the yoga studio.

Even Charlie sensed the tension; her cheerful babbling had fallen silent.

I felt like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. I couldn’t move an inch.

The woman who’d made the comment about me gave a pointed sniff—in case I hadn’t gotten the message.

“Shouldn’t you be at the club?” she said under her breath.

“Excuse me?” I said, my blood rising.

The woman gave a look to her friend, an icy blonde who was holding an even blonder baby boy.

The blonde’s green eyes raked me up and down, then rolled away dismissively.

As if I weren’t even worth her time.

Any self-doubt I’d felt earlier evaporated in an instant, replaced by hot anger.

How dare they judge me? They don’t even know me!

There was no way I could leave now. I wouldn’t give these catty bitches the satisfaction.

Defiantly, I marched to the very front of the class and spread my mat out.

Wendy the instructor gave me a tiny smirk and a wink before putting on slow, peaceful-sounding music and beginning the class.

Well, at least I had one supporter.

I tried to breathe deeply and listen to Wendy’s calm, soothing voice.

Charlie seemed to be enjoying herself, at least. Her giggles echoed through the small room.

Two supporters.

Still, I felt the eyes of the other moms hot on my back.

This was unbearable.

Maybe I needed to talk to someone who knew more than me.

A professional at dealing with the press.

***

“Hello, darling!” Emma Hawksley cooed, stretching her arms out for the baby. I handed her over and took a seat at the café.

Charlie, who had just eaten and was nodding off, rested her head on her grandmother’s shoulder.

“Just wait until Christmas. I’m going to spoil you rotten!” Emma said to Charlie, who blew a spit bubble at her.

I thought Emma might worry about getting drool on the collar of her Chanel suit, but she seemed perfectly at ease.

“How are you, Kyla dear?” she said to me.

My relationship with my mother-in-law had gotten off to a rocky start; Emma had been concerned about her son marrying someone he had only known for a short time.

After Charlie’s birth, however, things had quickly changed.

Emma adored her first grandchild and never wasted an opportunity to spend time with her when she was in the city.

Which is why, after the disastrous yoga class, I’d given her a call to see if she was available for coffee.

“I’m alright.”

“Oh? I would have thought you’d be terribly upset after seeing the article that was published yesterday.”

I flushed. I should have known Emma Hawksley would be up-to-date on all the latest gossip blogs. She was adept at staying one step ahead of the media.

“Well, that’s sort of the reason I called you,” I admitted. “I’ve had run-ins with the press before this, but it never felt quite so…personal before now.”

Emma nodded. “Once you become a mother, the world sees you differently. They tend to judge you more harshly, are quicker to jump to the worst conclusions.”

“Was it this bad when you were raising Julian and Jensen? To juggle being a working mother?”

Emma gave a hard laugh. “I quit my job when I became a mother! It was expected of a woman in my position. Did you know I received my MBA from Princeton?”

“I had no idea!”

She nodded. “But when I married James, there was a lot of pressure to stop working and start a family right away.

“And once the boys were old enough that I could think about my career again, no one was interested in hiring me.”

“That must have been really hard,” I said.

“It was. But your challenge is equally hard. When I was a young mother, all of this social media nonsense didn’t exist.

“We had paparazzi, sure,” she went on, “but we didn’t have to worry about going viral.”

“I just feel like everyone is staring at me and thinking that I’m an unfit mother or something,” I said, eyes down.

“Kyla, some people are going to think you’re an unfit mother no matter what you do!” Emma exclaimed.

I looked at her in confusion.

“If you don’t breastfeed, you’re a bad mom. But watch out, because if you breastfeed for too long, you’re also a bad mom,” she said.

“If you let your baby cry itself to sleep, you’re a bad mom. But if you go to her every time she cries? Well now you’re enabling, and guess what? You’re a bad mom.”

Emma’s usually cool gaze was fiery with conviction. “Kyla, look at your daughter.”

She gestured at the sleeping baby in her arms.

“Charlie is healthy and happy. When someone suggests that you are a bad mother, don’t look at them. Look at her, and you’ll know in an instant they’re wrong.”

As I stared at my daughter, I felt a tug of love so powerful it was nearly painful.

She is beautiful. And growing. And strong.

Tears rose in my eyes, and I looked back at Emma, still wondering what I was supposed to do. “But you have a great relationship with the press.”

Her smile was wry. “Only once I learned that they had no power over me.”

JENSEN

I heard the water running when I came home.

After heading into the master bathroom, I found a cloud of steam and my wife standing under the rain shower.

Kyla was naked, her full breasts lathered with soapy foam that was sliding down her waist all the way to her center.

Her eyes were closed, her head tilted back to reveal the smooth skin of her throat.

In an instant, I was rock-hard.

In another instant, I was shrugging off my clothes and sliding open the door of the shower.

Kyla heard the sound and turned to face me.

“Hey there,” she purred, folding her arms around my neck. The soap on her body was slick against my chest.

“Hey yourself,” I answered, feeling the tension of the day begin to slide away. “How was yoga?”

Her eyes dropped briefly, but then snapped back to mine and she nodded. “It was okay. Charlie seemed to love it.”

She was keeping something back, but I knew she would tell me when she was ready.

And right now, I had other things on my mind.

“So, what did you learn?” I asked, trailing my fingers down her curves to cup her ass. “Any new positions?”

Kyla smirked and gave me a teasing look. “Maybe. Have you ever tried downward-facing dog?”

“No, I think you’ll have to teach me.” Giving her bottom a smack, I spun her around until she was facing away from me.

With a moan of desire, Kyla bent at the waist and pressed her backside against my groin, using her hands to brace against the shower floor.

My swollen cock rested between her cheeks. But I didn’t enter her yet.

I wanted to make this last.

I ran my hands down the soft skin of her back and around to her front, tracing every dip and curve until I was at the apex of her thighs.

Kyla spread her legs further, the muscles quivering as I sank a finger into her wet folds.

She cried out, a sound which sent a surge of lust straight to my aching member.

I poised myself at her entrance, one hand braced on her hip.

Just as I was about to slip inside, a bawling wail came from the open bathroom door.

Kyla stood, and we listened for the sound to come again.

Which it did. We both groaned in unison.

Charlie was awake. And if I knew that particular cry, she needed to be changed.

“I’ll go get her,” I said with a pang of horny reluctance.

Kyla grinned and stepped around me to open the shower door.

“No, it’s okay,” she replied. “I’ll try to get her back to sleep. I have a few more yoga positions to teach you.”

“Consider me your willing pupil.”

KYLA

I might have to make yoga a regular thing, I thought to myself the next day at work.

I bit my bottom lip, remembering the rejuvenating hours Jensen and I had spent pleasuring one another last night.

A knock on my office door startled me out of my improper thoughts.

“Come in.”

A moment later, Richard Morales entered, looking sheepish.

“Mrs. Hawksley, do you have a copy of the latest SEO analysis? I’m trying to design the new social media campaign, and I can’t seem to find it in my files.”

“It came in two days ago. Is it not on the company server?”

“Not that I can see.”

Odd. Things like that were usually visible to anyone in the marketing department.

I ran a search on my computer. Nothing popped up.

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” I cried. “I received that file myself. I stored it in the SEO folder, along with all the others. Which are right there.”

This had happened once before.

Before the Ambassador’s Ball, a file containing crucial information to the event had mysteriously vanished from the hotel’s computer system.

I still suspected Bruce Parker, who used to work in Richard’s department, of that operation, but since I had zero proof except a bad feeling, I’d kept my thoughts to myself.

But now, if other things were going missing…

Richard shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry, but I can’t finish this project without that data. Is there another copy somewhere?”

I paused, considering. We tried to be as paperless as possible, but I knew that Julian would have a separate file stored on his private computer.

“I have an idea. Would you mind watching Charlie for a few minutes?” I asked.

My daughter was currently lying on a soft play mat, kicking her chubby legs at the ceiling.

“Of course. Thanks, Mrs. Hawksley,” Richard said, relief evident in his voice.

I headed down the corridor toward the largest office.

With remodeling going on at the still unopened corporate office, Julian was spending less and less time at the Grand Hotel.

But I hoped that his girlfriend, Zoey Curtis, might be in today.

She was working nonstop on the community-center space, which meant a lot of rushing back and forth between the old offices and the new.

And sure enough, as I popped my head around the corner, I did see someone standing just outside the door to Julian’s office.

But it wasn’t Zoey Curtis.

It was Bruce Parker.

What’s he doing here?

I didn’t trust Bruce. Even before the incident with the missing files months ago, I’d found him disrespectful and crude.

Could this have something to do with our current SEO files going rogue?

I took a step back, careful not to let my shoes click on the tile as I peered at him from around the corner.

Bruce Parker was up to something, and I was going to find out what.