S.O.S. Wiley

by LJ Vickery

  Solina felt a familiar itch in her fingers as she touched the pile of shards.

  “Anything special?” Wiley asked in a concerned voice.

  “I don’t think so.” Her voice came out only slightly strained. Solina looked closer. In reality, none of the items are special, she told herself. Everything could be replaced…if she had to. Shaking off her mild uneasiness, she wondered if she had to replace them? It was something to think about. Perhaps all this turmoil would help her move on to the next step in her recovery…where things didn’t have to be rotated on and off her shelves.

  Solina suddenly brightened. Thinking of the future made her think of Wiley’s present, which waited in the shop. “Do you want your Christmas present now?” she asked, her cheeks suddenly feeling flushed.

  Wiley chuckled. “But it’s not Christmas until tomorrow.” His face suddenly fell. “And I don’t have anything for you.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Solina replied impishly, trailing her eyes down to the front of his jeans. “I know it’s not brand new, but being in the antique business, I’ve never minded re-gifting.”

  “Solina Dalat, are you calling me an antique?” Wiley growled with mock outrage, wiggling his hips and getting into the spirit of things. “I’ll have you know that things were made better back when I came along. I doubt if my parts will ever wear out.”

  “Don’t you think we should test that theory?” Solina replied, blinking innocently. “I’d hate to get something defective that doesn’t have a warranty.”

  “Oh, there’s a warranty,” Wiley assured her, grabbing her around the waist and tumbling them down onto her bed. “Wanna read the fine print?”

  ****

  An hour later, completely sated and cuddled up under Wiley’s right arm, Solina poked him in the ribs. “You distracted us from getting your present.”

  “It can wait, Beauty. I want to lie here with you for a while longer.” He turned to his side to regard her. “I can’t get enough of you. Of this. I know you said you love me, but I need to hear it again.”

  Solina took his face between both of her hands. “I love you, Wiley. I really do.”

  He heaved a sigh that had his chest bumping into her nipples, which perked up again.

  Seriously? Have I gone from innocent to insatiable in a single day?

  Wiley brought his thumbs down to tease her interested peaks. “Does that mean you’ll consider a future with me, Beauty? I don’t want to rush things, but―”

  She laid a finger on his lips. As much as she wanted to keep playing, she slipped out of bed. “Come on. Let’s get dressed and go open your present.”

  He pouted, clearly disappointed that she’d stopped him from speaking of their future, but he complied by getting up and stepping into his jeans. “Okay,” he agreed. “But this discussion isn’t over.” He grabbed his shirt. Solina did the same.

  “Nobody said it was,” she returned smartly. “Now, get your coat.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Wiley wasn’t completely happy, but he couldn’t complain. Solina had survived her inspection of the house, they’d had an amazing sixty minutes of enjoying each other’s bodies and she’d told him again that she loved him. Three out of four wasn’t bad, and he vowed he’d have her talking about their future soon enough.

  “So you really want me to open my present today?” he asked.

  “Yup.” She practically skipped down the driveway.

  “What if I don’t like it?” he teased.

  She turned to him and rolled her eyes. “Not a chance.”

  Suddenly, his tingles were back. Christmas tingles weren’t as good as sex, but close enough that he wouldn’t argue anymore. “Okay. I’m in.”

  “Of course you are,” she laughed, and the jubilant chortle had his heart soaring. Had Solina ever sounded this joyous, this…carefree? Not in the time they’d known each other, and probably not since she’d been very young.

  “So what is it?” he asked. “A toaster oven? A toolbox?”

  She laughed again. “Wrong.”

  Wiley knew the size of the package, but he hadn’t paid much attention, his focus being on the tag. “If I’d picked it up to shake it, I’d already know what it is,” he told her confidently.

  “We’ll give that a try, if you want. But my bet is you won’t be able to figure it out.”

  When they reached the small shop, Solina fit the key into a door that had obviously been repaired. “Wait.” She paused, her gut clenching. “I forgot to ask. Did those men do anything to my store?”

  “No,” Wiley reassured her as he opened the door and had her precede him inside. “They wrecked your door a little and took the puzzle. That’s all.” He grasped her arm, stopping her. “By the way, you’re getting a complete security upgrade the day after Christmas,” he growled. “New locks, cameras, the works. And you will be changing your computer password.”

  Solina narrowed her eyes. “You’re kidding me. You figured out my password?”

  “In one try, Beauty, but we’ll talk about it later.” He dropped his protective mode and grinned like a kid. “Can I shake my present now?”

  She laughed and swept a hand in the direction of the desk. “Have at it.”

  Wiley walked over and carefully ran his hands across his present. Nothing to feel from the square box beneath the wrappings. “You put it in a cardboard box,” he ascertained, picking it up and carrying it toward the windows. Couldn’t see anything through the paper.

  “I did,” she said, leaning her pert little ass on the desk and crossing her arms under her breasts, plumping them in his direction.

  “Hey. No fair trying to distract me.” He pointed his chin at her chest.

  With a smirk, she scrunched them higher and gave a jiggle.

  He moaned. “Cut it out, or you’re going to find out what office sex, bent over a desk, feels like.”

  Her eyes grew wide and…expectant?

  “Okay. Yes,” he said, attempting to get his tongue back into his mouth. “We’ll do that later. After I open my present.” And wasn’t that magnanimous of him. His hardened dick couldn’t believe he picked the box over naughty office sex.

  Man up, Wiles.

  “Right. Now…” He shook the package gently from side to side. Something large and box-like lay inside the outer box. He gave the contents a tip—right, left, up, down. Several smaller wrapped items inside the larger one slid around. And…he didn’t have a clue.

  “Give up?” Solina asked.

  “No. But it might take me a few hours to come up with it.”

  “Hah.” She called him on it. “Just admit you’re stumped.”

  “Okay, fine. I give. But don’t tell the guys. I have a reputation to uphold, you know.”

  She jumped up. “Go ahead then. Open it.”

  Wiley circled around her and put the gift back onto the desk, ripping the paper off with one big swipe. “See. I got the cardboard box right.”

  “Ostrich could have figured out the box,” Solina smirked. “Now, keep going.”

  Wiley didn’t need any encouragement. He easily split the tape on the top flaps and opened them up. “What…” He reached in with both hands and withdrew something he definitely never would have guessed, even if she had given him a year.

  It was a very large, red toy barn.

  “What’s this for?” he asked, stymied.

  “Open it.” She pointed to the barn doors, lovingly painted with crisscrossed white planking.

  He did as he was told, extracting seven small, tissue-wrapped items. He began to think he knew where this was going. He fumbled with the wrappings on the first bundle.

  His voice nearly caught in his throat. “It’s an Appaloosa,” he managed, setting the small wooden horse on its delicate feet. He reached for the next package, untwisting the paper. “And this is a Friesian.” He placed the second exquisitely painted horse beside the first.

  Solina beamed. “I didn’t know what they were, but I had a fe
eling you would.”

  He swallowed hard, opening two more. “A Percheron. A Mustang.” And then the fifth came to light. “And here’s my Quarter Horse.”

  “The kind you want to raise,” Solina interjected, her skin flushed.

  “Yeah.” He searched her face, hoping he wasn’t mistaken. He quickly uncovered a Morgan and a Clydesdale, then fixed his gaze on hers. “They’re beautiful, Solina. But what do they mean?”

  He needed to hear it from her own mouth.

  “It means, if you want to… Well, you said you’ve been looking for a place… I might be putting the cart before the horse…” She giggled nervously at her unintended pun, “but would you―”

  “Yes, Beauty.” He didn’t let her get any further as he crossed the few feet between them to pick her up by the waist and swing her around. “Yes, my love. I’ll move in with you. And we’ll build a barn, and raise horses, and cats, and have a dozen kids…” He looked into her eyes.

  “So it’s a dozen now, huh?” Her tongue poked out at him.

  “Or more. Wait. You do want kids, don’t you?”

  She nodded, smiling, indicating with a fluttering hand that the tears in her eyes made her unable to speak.

  Wiley had no such problem. “This is why you wouldn’t let me talk about our future.” He laughed. “You had this all planned.” He suddenly went still. “Wait a minute…” He let her body slide down his until her feet hit the floor. “You knew you loved me before you were kidnapped?”

  This time, tears flowed freely as she gave him a nod.

  “Well, hot damn.”

  He gently kissed all her tears away, being careful not to hurt her face in the process. “You know what I am, Beauty? I’m the luckiest man in the world.” A few of the tears he encountered might have been his, but nobody would fault him.

  Minutes went by as they simply stood there, arms wrapped around each other.

  Solina finally whispered into the stillness. “Merry Christmas, Wiley.”

  “Merry Christmas, my love,” Wiley answered with all his heart.

  Solina cleared her throat. “Now, about the desk…”

  ****

  Between lovemaking and eating, they managed to notify his parents―assuring them that Solina was safe and they’d be meeting her soon―and to call all the ladies, thanking them for the wonderful work on the house.

  They’d agreed to spend Christmas at Del’s and New Year’s Eve at Prez’s.

  Now, once again, they lay in bed, enjoying the quiet and the twinkling Christmas lights Wiley had insisted on tacking up around the perimeter of the room.

  Solina turned to her side and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Do you trust me, Wiley?” she asked.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then hand me your phone.”

  Puzzled, he reached to the bedside table and did as she asked. She sat up, leaning against the headboard.

  “I’ll have to get a new one after Christmas,” she said while dialing. She had told him Pietro’s man had smashed hers.

  He waited to see who she called.

  “Hi, Mother.”

  His eyes widened. Well, he hadn’t expected that.

  “Yes. I’m fine. But I’ve had a bit of an adventure over the last few days.”

  He noticed her accent kicked in while she talked, her inflections sounding more British.

  “No. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you,” she said. “But I wondered if you could get away for a few days and come for a visit.”

  There was a significant pause while her mother talked, although Wiley couldn’t hear what the woman said.

  “Of course I mean it, Mother. And Father, too… Tuesday? That will be lovely. We’ll pick you up at the airport. Just let me know what time you’ll be coming in.”

  He heard an unintelligible exclamation from the other end.

  “Yes, Mother. I said ‘we’. And no, it’s not Sai. It’s someone you don’t know.” Wiley watched as she worried the uninjured end of her lip. “Yes, sort of. Listen, I’ll explain everything when I see you, okay?... Okay. Give my love to Father and email me your arrival time. My phone is out of commission.”

  Solina hung up with a huge, relieved sigh, but also sported a slightly impish look on her face.

  “What?” Wiley asked, eyes narrowed.

  She put a hand to her mouth, stifling a nervous giggle. “Oh, my god. I just told my mother that you’re sort of Indian.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Wiley and Solina spent a very low-key Christmas with Del and Bri. The two women got along famously, bonding over private school upbringings and, of course, baby Liam.

  They ate a delightful dinner before leaving, then finished up the day with something Wiley hadn’t done since he was a kid…and something Solina had never experienced.

  For several hours, they wound their way through neighborhoods between Del’s and Solina’s places, gawking at Christmas lights. Each extravaganza they found was cause for a battle between them over which was better. The competition was fierce, but in the end, they conceded a draw, their stomach muscles on fire from laughing so hard.

  ****

  Wiley gave a huge yawn. He didn’t know why they were meeting Solina’s parents at the airport this morning when all he wanted to do was keep Beauty in bed. But he had agreed to trust her on this, even though he didn’t have a clue as to what was in her head.

  “Which airline are we meeting?” Wiley entered the maze of roads that was Logan Airport.

  “Uh, no airline,” she told him. “Thanks to the embassy, they taxi to a private hanger in a private jet.”

  Wiley shouldn’t have been surprised.

  He took directions from Solina, who had been told where to meet them, and drove the car through a guarded gate and into a private lot. Solina had to show identification and inform security who she was meeting before they were waved in.

  Wiley parked. They had five minutes before the scheduled landing.

  “Are you ready for this?” Solina asked. She wiped her palms on the front of her jeans.

  “I am. Are you?”

  “Yeah. I’m just a little nervous they might say something inappropriate, since I kind of set you up.”

  They’d discussed how much to tell her parents―about the kidnapping, her intentions toward Wiley―deciding to omit revealing her hoarding, at least until another visit. There would be too much for her parents to take in already, without the added knowledge of what Solina’s childhood had wrought.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Wiley said. “I have a thick skin. Besides, I’ll just charm the pants off them.”

  Solina gave a nervous giggle. “Maybe leave the pants on?”

  “Got it.” He winked. Wiley looked at his watch. “Okay, Beauty. Showtime.”

  They stepped out of the car. There was no terminal. Just an expanse of tarmac where the jet would pull up and put down stairs. He saw more evidence of nerves in Solina as she waited—foot tapping, chewing her lip.

  “You’ve got to stop worrying those stitches, Beauty.”

  “I know,” she complained. “But they itch.”

  Wiley understood the problem, intimately. His last stitches had been on his ass, and healing wasn’t a pleasant experience.

  The roar of engines put a halt to their conversation as a man with orange batons marshaled the jet into its designated spot. Wiley draped an arm over Solina’s shoulders and waited, more curious than worried.

  The door eventually opened and steps were lowered.

  The first person out was Solina’s mother. Now he knew where she’d received her stunning looks. The woman was shorter than Solina by a few inches, but you’d never know it. Her posture brought to mind the word “elegant”, and her hair…dark, but shot through with gray…was coiffed perfectly, swept up in a graceful twist upon her head. Her frame was trim, her clothes chic, and her gaze neutral…until she spotted her daughter.

  “Solina,” she cried, her pace picking up. “My darling.�
�� Her accent was British.

  As she neared, Wiley was able to see the lines on the woman’s face that accounted for aging extremely gracefully, and they all deepened as Mrs. Dalat got her first look at Solina’s visage.

  “My baby!” She flew across the tarmac, not an easy feat for a sixty-seven-year-old woman in stylish heals. “What happened to you? Your face…”

  Solina slipped out from under Wiley’s arm and met her mother a few feet away. “That is part of the story I have to tell you, Mother, but I will wait for Father before I begin.”

  Solina’s mother hugged her fiercely, turning a suddenly stormy face toward Wiley to address him coldly. “You had better not have anything to do with this, young man.”

  Wiley felt like he was seven years old again, about to be taken to task by his second-grade teacher. “Uh―”

  “No, Mother,” Solina answered. “Of course he didn’t. Wiley is the one who saved me.”

  The woman calmed, but kept him under a suspicious eye. Wiley knew he had a fucking uphill battle to break through her icy demeanor.

  He turned his gaze toward the man now standing in the doorway of the plane. Solina’s father shook hands with someone inside before exiting the jet.

  This was where she got her height. The gentleman stood an inch or two over six feet and appeared slender as a reed, which was unusual for a man nearing seventy. His dark suit was impeccably cut for his slimness, and one couldn’t mistake the power he exuded.

  Wiley squared his shoulders for another round of harsh words regarding Solina’s bruises, but she sought to help him dodge that bullet by approaching her father, her mother in tow.

  “Father. How good to see you again,” she said, raising up to give him a brief kiss on the cheek. When his eyes narrowed and he started to speak, she put a finger to his lips. “No, the gentleman with me did not cause these injuries, and when you hear my story, you will be thanking him.”

  Her father looked skeptical, but the diplomat in him clearly won out in a mental tug-of-war that lasted only seconds. He placed Solina solidly under one arm and approached.