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Second Chances
by Scarlett VaughnWhen twenty-five-year-old Talia returns to her hometown for a teaching job, she reconnects with the family she used to babysit for. But the kids are grown now, and their widowed father—forty-seven-year-old surgeon Dr. James Holloway—looks at her very differently than he did when she was eighteen and earning minimum wage. She used to call him Dr. Holloway. Now he wants her to call him something else entirely. Some girls grow up. Some men finally notice.
Length: 26 min
14 min
Chapter 1
PROLOGUE
I'm twenty-five years old, standing on the porch of a house I haven't visited in seven years, and my hand won't stop trembling over the doorbell.
The Holloway house looks exactly the same—white colonial with black shutters, perfectly manicured lawn, the same climbing roses that Mrs. Holloway planted the year before she died. I was eighteen then, a freshman in college, babysitting their kids to pay for textbooks. Emma was ten, Noah was eight, and Dr. James Holloway was forty, recently widowed, and the first man who ever made me understand what attraction really meant.
I felt guilty about it back then. He was grieving. I was supposed to be watching his children, not stealing glances at their father when he came home from the hospital, still in his scrubs, exhausted and beautiful in a way that made my stomach flip.
Nothing ever happened, of course. I was a teenager. He was mourning his wife. It would have been wrong in every possible way.
But now I'm twenty-five. I have a master's degree in elementary education. I've just been hired to teach fourth grade at Riverside Elementary—the same school Emma and Noah attended. And Dr. James Holloway is forty-seven, still a surgeon, still devastatingly handsome, and apparently still single.
When the principal mentioned that the Holloway kids were "all grown up now" and that their father had "never remarried," something shifted in my chest. Something dangerous.
That was three days ago. Yesterday, I ran into Emma at the coffee shop downtown. She's seventeen now, about to graduate high school, and she recognized me immediately.
"Miss Talia! Oh my God!" She hugged me like we'd been best friends, not babysitter and charge. "You look amazing! Are you back in town? Dad would love to see you!"
She gave me their address—the same one, of course—and told me to stop by anytime.
And now here I am. Trembling like a teenager with a crush, about to ring the doorbell of my former employer. The man I've thought about more times than I should admit over the past seven years.
Some girls grow up. Some men finally notice.
I press the bell.
...
About the Author
Scarlett Vaughn
Dr. Scarlett Vaughn has spent over two decades as a psychology professor specializing in human sexuality, teaching courses on desire, taboo, and the forbidden. Her academic research into what draws people to transgressive fantasies led her to write the stories her students whispered about but rarely saw represented with depth and nuance. Writing from her Boston brownstone near the university, Scarlett explores the psychological complexity of forbidden attraction—age gaps, authority dynamics, and step-family scenarios—always with an emphasis on consent, emotional truth, and the healing power of accepting your desires without shame.