by Bethany-Kris
“Go on your ride—you know I’m kidding with you.”
She did.
And hopefully, Cara would love what Cella was doing for the penthouse. They were going to have to just wait and see on that one, though.
Cella headed across the grass where Marcus waited next to the carriage, his grin making her own grow the closer she came. Cara had been right about something else, too.
She was leaving tomorrow.
Thing was ... she no longer wanted to go.
Life couldn’t be easy, though.
It never was.
12.
While the flat screen on the opposite wall to his desk in the office of his home played through the highlight reels of the weekend news for Central Toronto, Marcus sipped on two fingers of cognac on ice and half paid attention. The news was always a good indication about just how much of Guzzi business went under the radar when there were issues. Especially if those issues originated outside the organization. Like right now with the bikers.
Of course, with the chapter of the Riders in Quebec being small, the death of the president of said chapter hadn’t been a big news story when it happened, although it had made the highlight reel.
Now, it wasn’t mentioned at all.
And the Guzzis name had never been brought up.
Marcus took all that as a win for him.
Sighing because it had a been a long, busy day but still happy with how it turned out for Cella and Tiffany, Marcus finished that last bit of cognac in the glass. Setting it down to the desk, he picked up the remote for the television and turned the news off. With the screen blank and his home mostly quiet with Cella getting her daughter ready for bed, he tried to decompress a bit.
To put the mafia business aside.
Enjoy his last night with Cella before she went back.
You should just ask her to stay—that’s what you want, idiot.
His mind was a special brand of hell tonight.
Turning, Marcus stared out the windows. The first thing that greeted someone when they walked into his office was the large windows that dominated one entire wall of the space. An inky sky overhead twinkled with stars that he couldn’t see nearly as well in the city, which was yet another reason why he preferred staying in the suburbs more than he did elsewhere. He waited for Cella to finish up with her child’s nighttime routine before she would come to find him.
Then, regardless of what his crazy mind—or was that his heart?—wanted to do, he was going to enjoy his last night with her in Toronto without making any demands of her. He wouldn’t even speak his wants when frankly, even those could come off as him not thinking about what she might want from all of this.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t Cella who found him.
Well, no one really found him.
He heard the soft footsteps coming down the upstairs hallway first, and then the tired sniffles echoed the closer the noise came to his office. Turning on his heel, he found the source of the sadness just starting to walk past his open office door.
“Tiff?”
The little girl in her pajamas decorated in pink hearts held a pillow tight to her chest that practically swallowed her in size. It wasn’t that she was a tiny child—she was small, yes, but normal for her age and stature. The pillow was just big enough that it seemed she needed both arms to hug it in order to keep a good hold on it.
She sniffled again, tipped her head down to wipe her few tears on the top of her pillow. For a split second, he wondered if maybe she was having another one of those nights where she was afraid because it wasn’t her home and bed she had to sleep in.
“Where’s your ma?” he asked, taking a couple of steps toward her.
She still didn’t come into his office. Shrugging one shoulder, Tiffany said, “Aunt Lucia called, so she went downstairs to talk. I was supposed to be sleeping, but she forgot to get my pillow for me. I didn’t mean to rip it, Marcus.”
“Rip what, dolcezza?”
Tiffany turned the pillow around to show him whatever had her so upset. It looked like any decorative pillow with a cotton case and a design in the middle. Or rather, a logo.
There, in the middle of the pillow overtop a faded band logo that he recognized had been popular a good fifteen years ago or so, was a three-inch long rip.
“Oh,” he said, kneeling down. “Come here, let me see it. I’m sure it can be fixed.”
Tiffany held even tighter to the pillow, as though she was not going to give it up not even for the world, and didn’t move an inch. “I tried to pull it out of Ma’s suitcase, and it caught on the zipper. I’m sorry. I wasn’t careful like I promised to be.”
He didn’t understand what the big deal was.
It was just a pillow.
Right?
“Your Ma won’t be mad about that, it was just a mistake.”
Tiffany dragged in a shaky breath, hugging that pillow as hard as she could to her chest and making the tear open a little more. “Yeah?”
“Of course. Now, if you let me have the pillow, I can fix it for you.”
In fact ...
He stood up, remembering the small sewing kit he kept in the top drawer of his desk just in case. One never really knew when a thread was going to let go in something, and it had been a useful skill his mother passed onto him. He could easily fix something wrong with an item of clothing, at least to a point where it wouldn’t get ruined further before he took it into his tailor.
Soon enough, he found the kit he needed exactly where he’d left it. Coming around the side of the desk again, he waved it for Tiffany to see as he explained, “It’ll be good as new for you tomorrow, I promise.”
“But ...”
“Hmm?”
She squeezed the pillow, new tears starting to form. And God ... that more than anything else killed him a little bit. He didn’t want to see those tears. This sweet little girl who was always so happy, and loved to make everyone else smile, should never be sad.
“Don’t cry, bambina,” he murmured, coming to kneel in front of her in the office doorway. “It’s not a big deal, just a little rip. I’ll fix it, okay?”
“I sleep with it.”
Oh.
Well, some kids did that, he knew. They found something that they really got attached to, and that was that. For some, it could be a pillow or a bear. Maybe a dolly, or whatever.
“I can bring it into you after, if you want?” he offered.
Tiffany managed a small smile. “Yeah?”
“Absolutely. It’ll just take me a bit to get the pillow apart, so I can sew it from the inside where you won’t see the seam of the tear. That’s all, so you might have to fall asleep without it, but I give you my word you’ll wake up with it. How does that sound?”
It took the girl a minute, but eventually, she nodded. Then, with shaking hands, she handed the pillow over to him. The soft cotton of the covering felt warm to the touch, a true testament to how close and tight she’d been holding it.
Marcus looked over the pillow, and the band logo on the front. “Where did you get this from, anyway?”
“My Uncle John.” Tiffany brightened when he met her gaze, waiting for her to explain more. “He gave it to Ma when I was a baby—it’s my daddy’s shirt. Ma put pictures in my room, but I like his pillow shirt the best. I get to hug him and say goodnight. He comes with me everywhere I go.”
Well ...
That explained so much.
Jesus Christ.
He couldn’t imagine the man he might have become without the influence of his father. He couldn’t stand to think about the pain that would have caused his mother to lose her husband with a young child in her arms.
“I’m sorry you lost your daddy,” Marcus murmured.
“Me, too.” She glanced up from the pillow in his hands, meeting his gaze with wide eyes that spoke of knowing and truth when she said, “My daddy would like you, Marcus.”
“You think?”
Tiffany nodded. “You make Ma sm
ile. She said he loved to make her smile.”
“Huh.”
How did one respond to that?
“Take good care of my pillow, please.”
He’d not seen the pillow before now. It must have been something Cella kept just between her and her daughter, so he didn’t take offense. However, it’s significance wasn’t exactly lost on him, and all he wanted to do was make it better.
Marcus cleared his throat, refusing to acknowledge the thickness building there when he said, “I will be extra careful with it since it’s so important to you. Thank you for trusting me with it.”
Tiffany smiled again.
And it made everything better.
• • •
“What are you doing?”
Marcus didn’t bother to look up from his current task at Cella’s question. He’d known the very second she came to stand in the doorway. It wasn’t as though she tried to be quiet, but he suspected she hadn’t expected to see him sitting there fixing the item in his hands. And considering the significance of the pillow covering, well, he didn’t blame her for needing a moment before she spoke.
Sitting comfortably on the leather chair that faced his desk, he pulled the needle through the delicate cotton fabric. “Fixing Tiffany’s pillow—said it caught on the zipper of your luggage when she tried to pull it out. She was quite upset, and I offered to fix it for her.”
Cella cleared her throat. “Oh, uh ... do you know what that is?”
“A shirt of your husband’s that your brother had made into a pillow after he passed, yes. Tiffany explained to me. That’s why I am handling it with care, and making sure it gets fixed so that she can wake up with it like I suspect she’s always done since you gave it to her. When was that, by the way?”
He glanced up to look at her.
In the doorway, Cella kept eyeing that pillow covering he held, shifting from foot to foot while her throat flexed with every swallow. Clearly chewing on her words, he gave her the moment or two that she needed to gather her thoughts and speak.
“It was very recent after his passing when I got it,” Cella managed to say. “But she was older when I gave it to her.”
He hated that her voice was so faint.
The memory of pain, he bet, never quite went away.
“Is she sleeping?” Marcus asked. “I heard you go check on her before you came in to see me. I worried she might not fall asleep without the pillow.”
“She is sleeping, but she’ll appreciate waking up to it.”
“Good.”
Once more, Cella went quiet as Marcus continued to work. It hadn’t been as simple as just sewing the rip together when the shirt had been sewed closed around the pillow as a covering. He’d needed to rip the seam open at the top, pull the covering off before turning it inside out, and then sew the tear. After he finished closing the rip, he’d need to sew the seam he’d ripped open almost entirely closed, but for a couple of inches, stuff the pillow back in, and then finish the seam.
Eventually, Cella joined him, coming into the office to sit on the stool in front of the leather chair. She held the pillow while he worked to close the seam after finishing with the tear. All the while, she said nothing but didn’t look away from the item in his hands either as he worked.
He thought ... well, he just decided to ask, “It’s important to you, too, hmm? The pillow, I mean.”
“For different reasons, yes. William only wore suits—part of the job, you know? So on the weekends, he’d wear anything but suits. This shirt was one of his favorites. God, it was old. I almost threw it out a few times, but I couldn’t. My mom saved it when they cleaned out his things from the house because I couldn’t do it. It was in the dirty laundry, so she washed it and my brother took it to have it made into a pillow.”
“You said reasons, meaning more than one.”
Cella sighed. “My brother, I guess. We didn’t have a great relationship, and it just felt like when he gave me that, it started to fix something that had been broken for a long time with me and him. I never explicitly said it, and neither did he but it happened. Anyway, Tiff was about two when she started sneaking it off my bed and taking it to her own. I never stopped her. I thought she probably needed it more.”
“Cella?”
“Hmm?”
Her gaze lifted to meet his, and while he hated when this woman had tears in her eyes, the wetness he found staring back at him let him know every little last thing running through her mind. Both for the things she’d lost, and everything that she was finding now.
Was it hard to come second—to be a man who came into a woman’s life when she’d already had love taken from her by no choice of her own, leaving her afraid and hurting always?
Yes.
It made this situation between them much more delicate, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew these things, and so every step he took with Cella, he kept that in mind. He kept the man who had been here before him in mind because he knew that man was constantly on hers.
“I hope you know,” he said quietly, “that I have no intention of trying to replace your husband, or her father. That was never my purpose here, Cella, and it won’t be regardless of what happens after today. I don’t want to be a replacement for someone who isn’t me—what I do hope for, though, is that you’ll make space for me here with you. If you can make space for me with you and her, I would be forever grateful.”
The shaky exhale that left Cella’s trembling lips made her words all the more faint when she asked, “Where did you even come from—I wasn’t looking for someone like you.”
“Sometimes, that’s the point. You shouldn’t look for the good things, Cella. They should just find you when you need it the most.”
“Forever, you said?”
Marcus grinned. “Is that all you heard?”
“It’s quite a statement to make.”
“Could I have that?” He pointed to the pillow in her hand. “I just have to finish the seam once I put it back in the cover, and you can take it back to Tiffany.”
She handed it over, asking, “Who taught you to do something as menial as sewing?”
“My mother.”
“I’m not at all surprised.”
Marcus laughed. “Yeah, she’s quite the woman.”
It took him no time at all to finish the pillow. Packing the items from the sewing kit away into its box, he then picked the pillow up from his lap and flipped it over once to show Cella the front with the logo all fixed, and the new seam where he’d fixed the rip was barely visible at all. Someone would really need to be looking for it what with the trick he used to repair it.
“Almost perfect,” he said.
Cella took the item and shook her head. “No, I think you made it better, Marcus.”
“I don’t see how—”
“Because you just seem to do that. You’ve made a lot of things better for me. I don’t think I’ve ever told you that, and I’m sorry because you should know what you’ve done to and for me.”
Those words had barely left her mouth before she closed the bit of distance between where she sat on the stool, and him in the chair. Her lips melded to his with a sweet, and yet still hungry intent. Her kiss reminded him that it, better than anything else about her, reflected who Cella truly was. A woman with a heart of gold, sweet as sugar, and yet on the flip side of that same coin she became a woman with determination surrounded by an aura of passion that couldn’t quite be tamed but for the one lucky man she would purr for—him.
A woman made for him, really.
Who he was.
Who he needed to be.
Who he could be with just her alone.
Marcus was not sure how he found that woman.
One like her.
He never intended to let her go now that he found her, though.
Her one hand coming up to cup his jaw as her tongue slashed against his the second she allowed him to deepen the kiss had him biting her bottom lip the first chance he could. Just to
feel the tremble of her fingers against his skin when she gasped.
“I have to—”
He kissed her again before she could finish, although he knew what she was going to say.
“God, you make me crazy,” she whispered when he pressed his lips to hers yet again. “Let me take this, so she’ll have it if she wakes up, but—”
“You’ll be right back.”
His stare nailed to hers.
Her tongue peeked out to lick along the seam of her lips.
Cella swallowed audibly, a sexy smile coloring her features. “I promise.”
“Make sure it’s somewhere that it’ll be the first thing she sees when she wakes up.”
For a brief second, she shifted from the woman ready to climb into his lap into the sweet single mother doing her best to keep a father’s soul alive in her daughter’s heart. Right before his eyes. And then just as fast, Cella winked and blew him a kiss. It reminded him all at once that she was such a multifaceted woman.
“Be right back.”
He nodded.
She stood straight, leaning down to give him a quick kiss and one more whispered thank you for this before she left his office. Marcus took that chance to put his mini-sewing kit back inside his desk drawer and pour himself another two fingers of cognac—no ice this time—to sit back down in the chair and sip on until Cella came back.
He’d just taken his second sip of the drink when she slipped back into the office. She closed the door behind her, already reaching to pull the spaghetti straps of the silk nightdress she’d pulled on earlier down over her shoulders before she had even reached his spot. Marcus had enough time to set his glass to the small decorative table beside the chair and then Cella climbed into his lap.
Her thighs straddled his hips as she leaned in for a kiss. Marcus gave it to her, letting her taste the flavor of the cognac he’d only just swallowed still fresh on his tongue while her hands pulled at the buttons of his dress shirt. He was already yanking the fabric of her nightdress up around her stomach before he shoved a hand right down her panties to get his palm cupping her sex. His fingers drifted through her slit, already finding her slick and hot to the touch.