by S. Ann Cole
“Open your eyes,” he demands. “Let me see.”
Tentatively, I do, and find an intense dark glare singed at edges with fire and desire. He’s so beautiful. So masculine. So all-consuming. So…mine.
Holding nothing back, I let him pass the veil, the shutters, the defenses. He needs to believe me. He needs to know that I’m so gone for him it’s scared all sense and logic right out of me.
“You’re mine,” I whisper.
“Always have been,” he replies, right before he seals his mouth to mine, kissing me with a fierce possessiveness that grips my very soul.
Over and over he fills me, with rhythm and fluidity, until I’m trembling all over him again, my cries of ecstasy dying on his tongue.
In mere seconds, he follows me over the edge, his face buried in my hair, his groans rolling through me, his shaft steel-hard and pulsing inside me.
I lock my legs around him and hug him tightly to me. With baring teeth and unyielding claws, I intend to hold on to this man for the rest of my life.
Chapter THIRTY-FOUR
“Don’t you trust me?”
Lexi
Trent watches me with a lazy gaze as I return from the bathroom across the hall. He’s well outgrown the full-sized bed; his long, muscular legs hanging off the end.
He’s leaned back against the headboard, the Lakers duvet draped across his nakedness. Most notably is his facial hair, which is thicker than usual, dark and ungroomed.
“Are you jumping in on the beard trend now or something?” I ask as I pad to the bed.
He rubs a hand across his jaw. “Rebelling. Said I wasn’t gonna shave ‘til you came back to me.”
I slide in under the covers, sidling up as close to him as I can get. “I’m a coward and an idiot. Forgive me?”
He fingers the necklace around my neck. “Love that you never take this off.”
I reach up and wrap my fingers around his on the locket. “And now that I so vividly remember the most important part of the night you gave it to me, I never will.”
“You will.”
“Never.”
Something glints in his eyes, as if he knows something I don’t. “Soon.”
Scowling, I knock his hand off and fist the locket protectively.
He laughs at me. Then asks, “How much longer do you need to be here?”
I shake my head. “I’ll go back with you.”
“I’m leaving at dawn.”
“Then so will I.” Doesn’t he understand that he is my home now?
“Pasadena or Santa Monica?” he asks.
I hike up a brow. “You bought a new home in Pasadena?”
He chuckles. “Point taken.”
“But, I need to find a job,” I say. “I can’t just sit around doing nothing. I’ll go mad.”
I’d damn near crawled out of my skin for the first couple of days I was here with nothing to do. So I started helping out at Mama’s restaurant. Kept me occupied, but it didn’t light a fire under me like working on the guesthouse had. That project was exhausting as hell, but thrilling and oh so fulfilling. It’s the withdrawal from that project, a pronounced listlessness, which sparked the idea to get some construction done on Mama’s house.
Now I know for sure that working as a receptionist in Washington wouldn’t have worked out for me. I get bored too easily. I’ve learned a lot about myself over the past couple of months, and one of those things is that I thrive under pressure.
“You already have a job,” Trent says matter-of-factly.
“I do?”
“Gimme a sec.” He taps my shoulder for me to ease up from where I’m glued to his side like a leech so he can move.
When I reluctantly peel myself away from him, he leans off the side of the bed, rustles around on the floor for something, then returns with a manila envelope.
“You asked me why I didn’t ask you to stay,” he says, handing me the envelope. “The answer is because I was never gonna let you leave in the first place.”
Shrouded in bewilderment, I slide the papers from the envelope and scan them. “What is this?”
It’s a dumb question; I can clearly see what it is.
A transference of shares.
“My share in the Pasadena property,” Trent replies easily. “Now yours.”
“Wha—” I throw another cursory glance at the property value. 4.6 million dollars. Half of which is now…mine? He has got to be joking.
I hold the contract out to him, shaking it for him to take it back. “This is madness.”
He laughs but doesn’t take the contract back. “Love is madness.”
Does that mean you love me?
Of course he does.
He must.
He’s just handed me his share of a four-million-dollar property. Who else would do something like that but a madman in love?
“I can’t take this, Trent.”
“True’s only interested in a silent partnership, and I’m out of it completely—obviously,” he goes on as if he hadn’t heard me. “So all executive decisions will be made by you.”
“Trent—”
“It’s yours, Lexi,” he repeats in a tone that brooks no argument. “It’s right there in black and white.”
“B-But it’s too much.” I drop the papers as if they’re on fire and rub at my temples. Am I dreaming right now? “What have I ever done for you? What have I ever given you? How do I deserve this? Make it make sense, Trent!”
“Take off your necklace.”
The command in his voice makes me pause. “What?” Like he’s a thief out to take what’s mine, I reach up and clutch it possessively. “No. Never.”
“Just for a minute.”
Suspicion creeps in and my eyes narrow on him. “Why?”
“Don’t you trust me?”
I do. With my whole heart.
Hesitantly, I reach up and unlatch the necklace, removing it for the first time since he put it on me in my bedroom across the street.
“Open it.”
I do, sliding the angel wings apart, revealing the miniature picture of Mama and me, slightly brown with watermarks from years of baths and showers.
“Pry the frame open.”
Huh? I frown down at the necklace. The frame and backing looks perfectly sealed. Not at all like something that should be opened. “But won’t that ruin it?”
“No. Use your fingernail.”
Gingerly, I poke my thumbnail into the tight seal and apply pressure to urge it open, surprised when it splits with ease. Like a book, I open the frame from the backing.
Then, I freeze.
Disbelief sears through me on wings of fire.
A wild rush of emotions explodes in my chest, and my eyes begin to burn.
Framed in the heart-shaped backing is a worn, water-stained picture. This miniature picture is not of people, though. Not of Mama and me. Not of him and me.
But of two tiny, scribbled words. In the same handwriting that is on the back of the picture of me tucked in the corner of his dresser mirror.
Marry Me
The words dissolve into nothing but a blur as tears pool in my eyes.
“Nothing’s changed, Lexi,” he says, pulling my watery gaze to him. Placing a hand over his heart, he adds, “In here.”
He leans in and cups my face. “I was in love with you then and I’m in love with you now, with the same crippling, forceful, undying, all-consuming fierceness. And all you’ve done to deserve it, is exist. I’m yours. All of me. No charge.”
I blink at him, and a tear escapes from the act. My heart feels like it’s about to burst in my chest. “But…I was dating Tor when you gave me this. How could you have known…?”
“I’ve never been sure about anything in my life,” he tells me. “My birth mother, my college major, my career choice, my style… I’ve winged everything in my life; some things stuck, and some didn’t. But there’s one thing I’ve always been unequivocally, unquestionably, unreservedly, one-hundred-p
ercent certain about, and it’s what you are to me. Never wavered, never fucking waned. I knew, since you first walked through our doors with your pig tails and talk-back attitude and asked me what the hell I was staring at, that you’d be mine.”
Oh, my heart.
This…this is real. I’m really here, in this moment, experiencing this. Hearing these words. Feeling all of these indescribable, earth-shifting emotions.
All these years I’ve been walking around with his freaking proposal on my chest. I never would’ve thought to try to pry it open. Though maybe that was the idea. For me to never find it…until he was ready for me to.
He takes the necklace and brushes his thumb over the words. “Dad helped me with this. I asked him if he believed in soulmates, ‘cause I believed with my whole heart that you were mine, even though you were with someone else. Then he told me the truth about him and Mom. That he’d always known she was the one, but she chose his brother…”
“Stefano told me about that.”
Trent nods. “He said that if you were mine, then you would be. No matter what.”
He closes all the compartments of the locket, so it’s back to how it was. “I don’t want an answer from you now.” As he leans in with the necklace, I hold my hair up out of the way so he can latch it around my neck again. “Just wanted you to know where I stand with you.”
I don’t even know what to say. To think I’ve spent my whole life not knowing that there’s someone in this world who loves me this much, this wide, this deep…
This man’s love is cosmic. Earth-shattering. With a depth that I will never, ever be able to match. Ever.
I do not deserve you.
“So, you see,”— he presses a kiss to one corner of my mouth—”it’s nothing for me to give you what I did. Because I live for you, Hellcat.” Another kiss. “Everything I’ve ever worked for was with a plan of you and me in mind. Everything I have is yours. All I am is you. I love you. Till death, Lexi. Till death.”
I’m a balloon of emotions, threatening to burst at the tiniest prick. “I don’t deserve you.”
“No, you don’t.” He kisses my nose, my cheeks, my eyelids…cherishing me. “You deserve the world. And then some.”
I grab his face between my palms, but before I can kiss him, he beats me to it. His kiss is color and life. Large and wondrous. I come alive with every lick of his tongue.
In a matter of months, this man has become the beat of my heart. The blood in my veins. Thrumming to life a part of me that I never knew existed.
I will never deserve him.
But I will die trying to.
Chapter THIRTY-FIVE
“I’ll always come back to you.”
Lexi
Seven months later...
“Okay, I’m going for good this time,” I say as I skip down the front steps of the B&B. “Be back in about an hour or so.”
It is quiet and peaceful, yet alive.
The weather is perfect. Life is perfect.
While it took roughly three months of strategic marketing for Barefoot Runaway to get a pulse, we are now alive and kicking. And dare I say booming? Well, as “booming” as a B&B can be.
I stop abruptly, rethinking my leave. “Are you sure you can handle the Tony Manson check-in?”
Monica rolls her eyes at me. “Things won’t fall apart if you aren’t here, Lexi. You have cultivated a very efficient and capable staff. Trust us. Besides, I think everyone in there is too afraid of you to mess up.”
Of course she’s capable and of course I trust her—she wouldn’t be assistant general manager if I didn’t. However, I’ve never, ever left the premises when there’s supposed to be a celebrity check-in.
With the path I’m trying to direct the business on right now, it is crucial that we’re nothing short of exceptional. And when I am around the staff doesn’t mess around.
Since I began operating Barefoot Runaway, I have learned a lot about myself, and one of those things is that I’m a tough boss. Not mean, but exacting.
It stemmed from the severe case of impostor syndrome I suffered when I first started. I’d felt like I didn’t deserve to be here, didn’t deserve this place. I felt like a fraud, a cheat with no experience.
Consequently, I came down hard on myself, pushed myself, determined to turn this place into something, determined to make myself deserve it. Determined to make him proud of me and not regret his decision.
Out of that tight fist of determination bloomed a fair but fastidious boss.
I won’t apologize for it, though; for not being nice and delicate and too friendly with my staff. I am who I am now, and we are where we are because of it. Growing successful in less than a year, with a woman with no college degree or business education or prior experience at the helm.
The first thing I’d done was hire a top-notch marketing team and told them what I wanted to achieve. With their advice and Maggie’s help, I closed off the entire upper floor, built a separate entrance, and added some extra touches of luxury and amenities to those rooms. A floor designed for the famous.
From the back of the property, behind the gardens, I created a “secret” entrance and check-in for privacy protection. So no one would know they’re guests here unless they choose to be seen.
Then, I let the marketing team do their job.
There was quite a bit of comping in the beginning, with socialites and social climbers. No profits, which had made me anxious, but the team assured me it was the best route to getting the word out fast.
They were right.
Within a few months, word permeated the elite circles, and the bookings started to roll in.
Suffice it to say, things have been going pretty darn well. And now Tony Manson, mega Oscar-winning movie star, our biggest A-lister so far, is checking in for five nights!
Of course, I should be here to micromanage this. I really should. But...well, there’s somewhere more important I need to be.
“Okay, okay,” I say with my hands up in surrender. “Just make sure Soraya is the one that greets him. Men always seem to respond, um, appreciatively, toward her.”
Monica laughs out loud. “I think you mean she makes men turn stupid.”
Yup. That’s exactly it. “And also make sure to—”
“Lexi,” Monica says slowly, patiently, and with a smidge of frustration, “I’ve got it. This is why you hired me, remember?”
Exhaling a deep sigh, I turn and face my second mother, remembering how her eyes had lit up with excitement and hope when I asked her to come run this place with me.
I love her. Had been worried about her and didn’t like that she was spending her nights crying on her living room floor, bathing in memories long gone.
Hiring her was one of the best decisions I’ve made. Not just because it completely revived her. But her nurturing, gentle, and rational methods evened out my stringent and often chaotic ones. The staff fear me, but they love her.
I’ve also convinced her to move into the attached condo with Tillie, as it not only makes sense for work, but also brings her closer to her boys.
“You’re right,” I mumble. “I need to chill.”
Monica laughs again and offers me her bottled water. “Here. Drink some of this.”
As I take the bottle and guzzle water down, she gives me a knowing smile. “Are you sure Tony Manson is all you’re worked up about?”
I bite my lip and thrust the near-empty bottle back to her. “Yes, Madame Know-It-All.”
Her laugh follows me as I spin around and head for my car.
~
I arrive by the skin of my teeth. They’ve just finished loading up the jeep with their badass paraphernalia, about to go off and do badass things.
Sunlight reflecting off their mirrored aviators, the hot, all-black wearing twins stop and glance in my direction as I careen into Red Cage’s parking lot like a bat out of hell and exit my car.
One twin nudges the other with his elbow, flashing a white grin, b
efore jumping into the jeep.
The other swaggers toward me.
Heart cartwheeling in my chest, I lean back against the passenger door of my car and wait.
We’d had a hearty breakfast together this morning after a round of toe-curling shower sex. We’d listened to current events on the radio as we crawled through lazy morning traffic. Then we’d kissed goodbye outside Barefoot Runaway as he dropped me off with dinner plans for later.
But just over an hour ago, he called to tell me I wouldn’t be seeing him tonight—and who knows for however many other nights—because of a job urgency.
This isn’t unusual, but rather something that I’ve had to get used to. It’s his job. We could be having a normal, mundane routine, and then without warning or preparation, he would have to up and leave. Gone, for anywhere between two days and two weeks.
I’ve no idea where he’s going this time, seeing as he’s prohibited from sharing that info outside of Red Cage—because I’m just a girlfriend, not a wife. All I know is that it’s “R&R”, which I’ve been told means ransom and rescue.
The last time he’d left so abruptly, I didn’t even get a chance to hug him goodbye. That job had kept him away for over two weeks and it damn near killed me. So when he called me earlier, I was determined not to let him leave this time without seeing him, kissing him, smelling him, touching him... Which is why I left the B&B even with a major A-lister about to check in, and drove here like a mad woman.
He stops in front of me, a ghost of a smile on his lips, and the butterflies go mad in my belly. Even after all this time, they still flap about wildly for him. He’s the socket to my plug. I come alive when he’s near, my whole body zapping with electricity.
“Hellcat,” is all he says.
“I couldn’t not kiss you goodbye this time.”
One corner of his mouth curves up. “I love how needy you are for me.”
No shame to my game. “Always.”