When Mac finally broke the kiss he rested his forehead on hers, his breathing ragged. “You are not going out with Todd.”
“What?” Gina asked, confused.
“You’re mine, Gina,” he said with a low growl as he licked and kissed his way down her slender throat. “Mine.”
She smiled and arched her neck to aid in the path he was trailing. She had no idea where this relationship with Mac was going and right now she didn’t care. She needed him; she wanted him and if the hardness she felt pressing into her was any indication, Mac wanted her, too. Gina tugged on his hair and pulled his mouth back to hers and kissed him as if her life depended on it. She came up for air. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead his hands were busy skimming her body and his mouth was doing wicked things to any exposed skin he could find. Gina purred with delight and sighed his name. Mac lifted his head and looked into her sexy, slumberous eyes. She packed a powerful punch and she didn’t even know it, he thought to himself. His expression was serious as he put her gently back on her feet. “I’m sorry for the way I behaved today. My family makes me a little crazy and I know I didn’t handle things the way that I should have. We never talked about…us and how we wanted to handle it. I wasn’t ready to just put it out there to everyone because…,” Mac was always confident and self-assured in everything that he did but for some reason, this woman turned his carefully organized world upside down.
Gina reached up and cupped his face in her hands. “What we have is private,” she said for him and he nodded. “I get that; I honestly do. I don’t expect you to announce to everyone that we’ve slept together but I wouldn’t have minded you speaking up when your father was trying to set me up with another man.”
“It won’t happen again,” he said seriously. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
With a shy smile she pulled his head down to hers. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Can I stay?”
Always, she wanted to say. “Yes.”
Scooping her up into his arms, he strode to the bedroom and took his time making things up to her.
****
Mac looked at the clock on the bedside table and saw that it was after three. Gina was sound asleep beside him with her back to him. Normally she fell asleep in his arms but tonight she had rolled away. Maybe it wasn’t intentional but he had a feeling that it was. Had he come off as being too possessive? Was his apology not enough after the way he had treated her earlier at Lucas and Emma’s? Hell if he knew.
What he did know was that he already missed the feel of her in his arms. While he knew that the cat was eventually going to come out of the bag where their relationship was with his family, he didn’t want it to be with him getting caught leaving the guest house when the sun came up. Hating what he had to do, he quietly rose from the bed and got dressed. Gina didn’t stir and he was glad for that. If she so much as looked at him with her kiss-swollen lips and sleepy gaze he’d be a goner.
What the hell was he going to do? He wanted Gina; heck if he was honest he would say that he needed her. Somehow he was missing something from his life and it turned out that she was it. Mac hadn’t considered himself lonely or incomplete but these last two weeks with her told a different story.
Going to the office in the morning used to make Mac feel energized, now he found himself watching the clock a bit and figuring out how and when he was going to see Gina again. Sleeping alone never bothered him before but now all he wanted was her close beside him while he slept.
He was a goner.
The biggest problem that he had with the whole thing was Gina herself. She spent so much of her life not being able to be who she wanted to be, that he didn’t want to be an obstacle for her. She was just now starting to come into her own and if he made any demands on her or her time, she might never get to discover just who Gina Micelli really was. Did he truly want to be responsible for that?
“Mac?”
Her soft whisper brought him to her side. Leaning over he kissed her softly on the cheek. “Go back to sleep, baby,” he said quietly. “It’s too early for you to be up.”
“Why are you leaving?”
“I need to get into the office early and I have to go home and change. Plus, I didn’t think you wanted my parents to see me leaving here in yesterday’s clothes.” The frown on her face told him that his explanation didn’t thrill her. “Can I see you later?”
Gina nodded and then relaxed back into her pillow and rolled over. Mac kissed her on the top of her head before tiptoeing from the room. She listened for the door to close and sighed. She wasn’t sure how much longer she was willing to stay as his dirty little secret.
****
“So there we were, in the middle of the mall parking lot and my water breaks,” Emma said with a laugh. “The look on Lucas’s face was priceless. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so panicked!”
“What did he do?” Gina asked, laughing along with her.
“First her dropped all of our bags and tried to pick me up! I yelled at him to put me down and that I could manage to walk the ten feet to the car and then it took him three tries to pick up the bags and I think he was doing more Lamaze breathing than I was!”
“When we first saw him at the hospital, I thought they were going to have to shoot him with a tranquilizer dart,” Maggie joked. “Jason wanted to slap him just to bring him back to reality.”
“I’m telling you, you can take all of the birthing classes and read all of the books but when you are actually going through it, all of that goes out the window.”
“I can’t wait,” Maggie said with a smile. “We’re trying and we’re looking for a house and the thought of having babies with Jace is just everything that I ever wanted.”
“Is your place too small?” Gina asked.
Maggie shook her head. “Oh, good gracious, no. It’s actually quite large but it’s just not… a home. We live in the townhouse that Jason was living in before we met and it’s beautiful but not very kid-friendly. We want a house with a yard and that isn’t so modern. We’re on a golf course and there aren’t a lot of families in the neighborhood and so the more we talked about it, the more we realized that we want to move and get settled before we have a baby.”
“That makes sense.” Gina changed the subject to Lily’s nursery. “I did some sketches this morning that I want you to look at. When you were showing me the nursery yesterday I had an idea of what were going for and if there’s something that you like in the pile, great, and if not, we can figure something out.”
Emma took the sketches from her and stared at them in awe. “You did all of this before you came here?”
“I was up early.”
“You must have been to get all of this done.” She handed them to Maggie who marveled over them as well. “Gina, these are amazing! How is it that you’re an accountant when you can draw like this?”
Gina shrugged. “My mother convinced me that art wasn’t a bankable future and that if I wanted to have some financial security and meet a man who was stable and would take care of me, that I needed to give up my art and go into business.”
Both women looked at her as if she was crazy. “Let me tell you something,” Emma said. “I went into business because I was afraid to be creative and do what I loved, which is baking. I’m glad that I did because otherwise I would have never met Lucas but I enjoyed my job at Montgomerys. It doesn’t seem like you enjoy your job at all from what you’ve told us.”
“I really don’t and I plan on resigning when I go back; if I go back.” She put that last part out there to see what kind of reaction she got.
“Are you thinking of staying?” Emma asked excitedly. “Is it because of Mac? Are you two getting serious?”
Gina rolled her eyes. “This has nothing to do with Mac.” The lie rolled easily off of her tongue. “I’ve never been happy in Cali. I never felt like I fit in. I have no idea what I’d do here but I think that if I gave
myself the opportunity, I could really be happy here.”
“Well, you won’t want to stay in the guest house forever but I’m sure that William and Monica would love it if you stayed here. You could always move into your father’s house,” Maggie suggested.
Gina vehemently shook her head. “No, I couldn’t. I know that he wants me to stay there and it’s a beautiful house but it’s not someplace that I want to be. To me, it represents a lot of sadness. He’s lived there alone and yet created a life for me there even though he knew that I was never going to use it. And once he’s gone, it will just be a place that he had to live alone.” She looked up at both women and smiled sadly. “It’s a truly lovely house but I think it deserves a family with kids and a dog and to be filled with laughter. It’s too big for one person. I don’t know how he stood it for so long.”
Not wanting to upset Gina further, Emma began to talk plans for which piece of art she wanted to use for the nursery. Gina was relieved for the change of subject but at the same time, there was another subject that she needed advice on.
“I don’t know what to do about Mac,” she blurted out.
“Oh, thank God,” Maggie sighed. “I was afraid you weren’t ever going to talk about it!” All three women burst out laughing. “So you still have a thing for him?”
Gina nodded. “If anything, he got better with age and when I saw him at the airport? My heart actually stopped. He’s just…” she couldn’t find the words to accurately describe what she felt.
“He’s a Montgomery,” Emma supplied. “And Montgomery men just have a way of grabbing your heart and not letting go.”
“I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal; you know, it was a childhood crush. But once I spent time with him, it just grew into something more.”
“You’re in love with him,” Maggie said simply. “We can completely understand because we both felt the same way. Still do.”
“And I envy you both but Mac…I don’t think he wants a relationship. I know that he wants me right now, but we have an expiration date. Once I go back to California, it’s over.”
“Are you sure?” Emma asked. “If he’s anything like Lucas, it can be like pulling teeth to get him to talk about how he really feels.”
“He came by last night and he was upset about the whole Todd thing and said straight up that he didn’t like the idea of me dating somebody else but at the same time, he didn’t ask me for anything beyond right now. Does that make sense?”
Emma reached out and took Gina’s hand. “They may be handsome and charming and sexy as hell but they are also slow as molasses when it comes to making that big step toward commitment. Don’t give up on him. He’s not going to let you go back to California; I can guarantee it.”
“I hope you’re right. Because I already know that I’m losing my father; I don’t think I could survive losing Mac at the same time, too.”
Unable to help herself, Emma came over and hugged her. “Give him time; I can guarantee you he’ll be worth the wait.”
****
Later that night Gina was busy playing in the kitchen. After her lunch with the girls she realized that her culinary skills were greatly lacking. She had spent the afternoon with her father but he was tired from a morning spent getting poked and prodded by his medical team. William and Monica had invited her to join them for dinner but she had declined and decided to go shopping and play around with some recipes.
When Gina had graduated from college she had dreamed of having a place of her own and learning to cook and decorate her own place. Her mother had other plans for her and in the end, Gina had caved and moved back home where there was a full staff who did all of the cooking and cleaning. She was almost giddy right now at the prospect of picking out her own foods to create her own meals.
A small giggle escaped as she used the remote to put on some music – The Beatles this evening – and got to work organizing all that she was going to need to make the soup, salad, quiche and quick bread that she had planned. The bread was a mix and she had it put together and in the oven in no time; the quiche was a little more challenging but she found that chopping and sautéing the vegetables was a lot of fun. It soon followed the bread into the oven.
A quick detour to air drum to “Help”, she went to work on the salad. She used her hip to shut the refrigerator door to let it chill and then started the soup. “Probably should have done this before the salad,” she mumbled and then shrugged. “Who cares?” she responded to herself. “I’m not on anyone’s schedule but my own!” The idea was empowering. “No one to answer to but myself!” She laughed and segued into a sing-a-long with John, Paul, George and Ringo to “She Loves You”.
That’s when Mac came in. He stood in the doorway and smiled. Gina was dancing around the kitchen in total abandon, singing into a wooden spoon. He couldn’t help but smile at the picture she made. The carefree woman before him was blossoming and he knew it was because she was finally free to experience life on her own terms. He was thrilled for her, a little less so for him. Deep down Mac knew that his greatest fault was that he was a bit of a control freak; he didn’t go-with-the-flow or do things spur of the moment. He was a planner who was meticulous in making sure that he made lists and crossed them off as he went along. Watching Gina dance and sing with abandon hit him like a punch in the gut.
His father was right; he wouldn’t be good for her.
How soon before he was the one trying to get her to conform to his schedule and his rigid way of thinking? How soon before the music became too distracting for him or his schedule made him miss her excitement at preparing a meal for them? The smile slowly faded to a frown. He wanted Gina with a fierceness that he couldn’t control and it scared him. She scared him. That was why their arrangement had to work; when Gina left to go back to California, he would let her go. He had to. The only way for her to have the life that she deserved was for him to step back and let her have it.
It just might kill him.
Just then she spun around and spotted him. She did a little jump of excitement and then fairly skipped over to him, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him with all of the passion that she used in everything that she did. Mac welcomed it, savored it, because soon, all he would have is the memory of it.
Chapter Nine
“Some might call this a date,” Gina teased a week later as they stood outside Lucas and Emma’s house. Mac looked down at her with an arched eyebrow. “It’s true; when a man takes a woman out and they go out to socialize with other couples, I’ve been told it can technically be called a date.”
“Is that right?” he asked, enjoying the playful banter.
She nodded. “It’s not traditional, don’t get me wrong, but I think this situation still applies.”
“Traditional, huh? Anyone can do traditional. It takes a special knack to take someone to their brother’s home for dinner.”
“Careful…you may spoil me,” she said with a big smile and Mac knew that it was exactly what he wanted to do and just hadn’t been able to. Between work and the fact that Arthur’s health had been deteriorating this week for seemingly no reason, it had been difficult for them to spend any quality time together.
She had introduced him to the wonders of John Landis and the fabulous teen movies of the eighties. They had snuggled up together on the sofa for a movie marathon on more than one occasion while eating popcorn or pizza; he was really feeding into her junk food craze. And while he watched everything from Sixteen Candles to The Breakfast Club, he couldn’t quite get the appeal. What he did get, however, is how much those movies meant to Gina and that for a couple of hours out of her day, she could relive a simpler, happier time in her life.
“Okay, I get the whole teenage angst thing and the shy, quiet girl getting the captain of the football team thing, but I don’t get what the big deal is about this movie,” Mac said the night before when Gina had finally let him watch Say Anything.
“It’s a classic,” she said simply.
“No, no, no…Star Wars is a classic; The Dirty Dozen is a classic. Anything with James Bond is a classic. But this? I just don’t see it.”
She rolled her eyes. “First of all, none of those movies you mentioned are romantic.”
“There is always romance with 007,” he countered.
“That’s sex, not love and yes there is a difference!”
“Okay, okay, so tell me why you think this is a classic?”
“It’s love conquering all. They fall in love against the odds and no one thinks that he’s good enough for her and yet in the end, he is exactly what she needs.” She sighed. “Every woman wants that and they all watch this movie and love it and think it’s a classic.” Mac still didn’t agree but it made her happy so he was happy to sit and watch it with her.
Lucas opened the door and welcomed them in and Gina kissed him on the cheek and went right to the kitchen with the tray of stuffed mushrooms she had made. After she had sashayed away, Lucas looked at his brother and grinned. “Man do you have it bad.”
Mac glared at him. “Don’t ruin this night for me. It’s been a hell of a week and Gina needs a carefree night to just relax and have fun.”
“Dad mentioned that Arthur’s not doing well.”
“He spoke to the doctors along with Gina finally this week. Although the cancer hasn’t spread, his body is just shutting down. We all knew it was coming but it’s coming faster than anyone expected.”
“I thought he was doing well; holding his own?”
Mac shrugged. “Those first two weeks that Gina was here he was doing great but the body can only take so much and he wasn’t in great health to begin with.”
“How’s she holding up?”
“She has good moments and bad. By the time I see her at night she’s had time to kick and scream and cry and she acts like she’s handling it but I can see that it’s starting to get to her.”
Stay With Me (The Montgomery Brothers) Page 10