“Josiah even confided in my daddy about Moses’s relationship with Carter,” she adds. “Wrote about it in his journals.”
My glass freezes halfway to my mouth. I look at her over the rim of it, convinced I heard her wrong. “Your daddy kept a journal?”
Her warm brown eyes light up. “Oh my, yes. Lots of ‘em. Josiah taught him how to read and write, as a matter of fact. He suggested Daddy keep one so he could practice. I’ve got trunks full of ‘em. Josiah even wrote a few of his own that he gave to Daddy.”
My lungs constrict in my chest. “Hattie, would you mind at all if I read some of them? Would that be all right with you?”
Her smile is as bright as a summer’s day. “Please, child. You can read all of ‘em. Though I don’t know why you’d want to. They’re not exactly mystery thrillers or any of that such. Just stories of Daddy’s life.”
Which is exactly why I’m compelled to read every single word.
“I’d love to read your daddy’s stories.”
She shrugs, as if she can’t understand me at all. “All right. You’ll probably be bored out of your pretty skull, but I ain’t got nothin’ against it. They’re all back at the house.”
I’m sitting at Hattie’s dining room table an hour later, pouring over her daddy’s journals, knowing deep within my soul that I just found something uniquely special.
Something that should be shared.
“I think it’s my turn to have your attention now,” a seductive, deep voice rolls over me.
The sound barely breaks through my hazy surroundings, so lost am I in the words scrawled across the aged pages of the journals.
“Five more minutes,” I say absently.
Carter attempts to distract me by running his wicked mouth down my neck, teasing me with the tip of his tongue.
And it works.
Leaving the journal open to the current page I’m on, he grabs both of my hands and pulls me back against his hard chest. “Okay. I just thought you might want to see the gardens, that’s all. They’re at their most gorgeous at twilight.”
My eyes snap to the windows. I didn’t even notice the sun begin to lower in the sky, let alone when it fell below the horizon.
“All right, you win.”
He releases a smug harrumph. “I thought I might.”
I give Hattie the tightest hug as we’re walking toward the door. “Thank you so much. His stories are amazing. I’ll be back to read more.”
She pats my back in a motherly gesture. Haven’t felt one of those in God knows how long. “I’d like that, child. I’d sure like that. You’re welcome to my journals and huckleberry pie anytime.”
Carter whistles behind us. “Now, that’s an achievement. She doesn’t let just anyone at her huckleberry pie.”
After releasing me, she holds out her welcoming arms to him. “You better recognize, boy. Maybe I need to be makin’ it more often so I can get some more visits outta ya. Seems I don’t get enough these days.”
His expression is sheepish when he pulls out of their hug. “I know, I know. Work has kept me pretty busy lately. I promise I’ll do better.”
“Be sure that you do. And bring that one back.” She nods her head at me, tossing me a mischievous grin. “I like a girl with some moxie in her.”
I blush at the compliment, then turn even redder when I hear her next hushed words to Carter. “Don’t be lettin’ her scamper away now. Those ones aren’t so easily caught. You hear?”
The sight of Carter’s embarrassment once again takes me by surprise. But I’m finding that I like it. A lot. It feels like it’s leveling the playing field. Gratifying even, to know that a man of his age and life experience can still get embarrassed by a mother’s admonishments, even if it’s not his biological mother.
Though his embarrassment doesn’t last long.
It’s pretty quickly banked when he swings his attention back to me and his eyes flare with heat.
I wonder what Hattie would think if she knew that I’m already a divorced woman. Probably change her mind about me being hard to catch, since Grant had a stupidly easy time of it. The woman’s opinion of me shouldn’t matter, but it does. Mostly because I think it would matter to Carter.
I feel on top of the world as we leave her house—the original plantation house, which she let me avidly tour the second I walked inside hours ago. That feeling only multiplies when Carter takes my hand and leads me toward the gardens, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Like we’re a couple.
A concept I’m finding disturbingly easy to accept.
“You loved that, didn’t you?” he asks as we step through a parting in the green foliage onto a gravel path.
“What?”
He tips his head back toward Hattie’s house. “Reading those journals.”
My smile comes instantaneously. “Are you kidding? Those are unpublished, first-hand accounts, written during some of the darkest times of this country’s history. It was raw and emotional and authentic.” Really, there aren’t enough adequate words to pay homage to what I just read. “It’s an incredible window into the past that no one else knows about.”
“Which is exactly why I wanted you to read them. Because I knew you’d understand their value.”
“You’ve read them?”
He holds a low-hanging palm frond up for me to walk under. “When I was younger. I was curious about my grandfather. Seymour’s opinion of him was…enlightening.”
“In a good way,” I supply.
Seymour, Hattie’s daddy, couldn’t have had more inspirational things to say about his employer-turned-friend.
Carter nods as he continues guiding us along the narrow path, twilight blanketing us in its mystical ambiance. “I suppose I was also searching for a way to connect to my own father, if I’m being honest.”
“And did you?”
His expression turns forlorn. “No. That proved impossible, so I eventually gave up.”
Sounds like me and my mother.
Though I’m sure he had a much rougher go of it than I did. Growing up in the lap of luxury isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, especially if you don’t have the right kind of love and support in your life.
Carter hasn’t had anyone but Hattie since he was in college. And for the ten or so years before that, his father was a miserable drunk. At least I had Daddy when things went to hell in a handbasket.
“I’m sorry—”
My words are cut off when we reach a clearing.
It’s like a Monet landscape come to life.
The gravel path has opened up into a circular one, lined with cobblestones, surrounding a large stone fountain. The glistening water trickles out of the top and pours over the three tiers, eventually pooling into the bottom level. There’s a small pond in the background, settled beneath a curved, white bridge that might as well have been plucked from a fairytale. Oak trees with Spanish moss hang over the bridge and form almost a wall around us, encircling the space in its own private oasis. Like a natural barrier, closing us off from the rest of the world.
Actually, it’s like stepping into a whole other world.
Add to that the sound of cicadas and rustling leaves, and you’ve got a southern paradise.
“I can see why you saved the best for last,” I murmur, completely enchanted.
“And here I thought I was the best.”
“Psshh. Next to this?” I wave my hand at the most romantic scene I’ve ever beheld. “Sorry, Counselor. As magnificent as your dick is, it can’t top this.”
He huffs in a half-laugh, half-scoff. “I’m not sure if I should say thanks or we’ll see about that.’”
“The latter probably has more potential.”
He laughs and leads me over to the only bench around the fountain.
Always fountains.
He sits down on the wrought iron bench and pulls me onto his lap. Both of us spread our legs to accommodate the other. He leans back as my hands fall on his
shoulders. Placing my feet on either side of his thighs, I straddle him. Then the notch between my legs nestles right over his stiff manhood, causing us both to hiss through our teeth.
“You’ve been keeping this from me all day,” he growls, his hands falling to my ass.
“First thing this morning in the shower didn’t count?”
“Fine. All afternoon.”
Gaze dropping to my cleavage, he buries his face in my chest. Every sensation is heightened by his hot breath, his ragged groans, so much I feel them deep within the marrow of my bones.
How does he even do that?
How does he affect me so acutely? So cellularly?
My head is angled so far backwards that I’m viewing the mossy oak trees almost upside-down. “I can’t believe this is all yours and you don’t even live here. I’d never want to leave.”
I mourn the loss of his mouth when it leaves my skin. “Believe me, I want to. I’ve always wanted to. I love it out here.”
I frown, meeting his hazel eyes. “Then why don’t you sell the mansion and move here?”
He shrugs. “It sounds ridiculous, but I guess it’s easier to forget that I don’t have a family when I’m at the house downtown. I basically just use the place to sleep and shower between work, so I don’t really notice the absence of life inside it.”
He looks around the garden, his eyes twinkling along with the fireflies that are dancing in the plants behind him. “But this place… It’s teeming with life. It deserves a family. I’ve always imagined moving my own out here one day. Playing with my kids in the yard, walking with them in these gardens. I pictured sitting on the porch with my wife after the kids go to bed, laughing about what new word the youngest one learned that day.”
A tightness enters my chest and wraps around my esophagus. I know it’s not a panic attack because I’ve never had one of those in my life, but the symptoms feel oddly similar.
“Being out here by myself,” he continues, “just doesn’t feel right, not to mention it’s depressing. I stay at the house in town because I work so many hours, it doesn’t make sense to drive out here and back every day. And out here, I’d be forced to actually take time for…leisure.” His voice isn’t disgusted when he says it, like he’s such a workaholic the idea of leisure is abhorrent to him.
He sounds…wistful.
Wistful for a slower, more relaxed life out here with a wife and kids and it makes me—
Yep, this might be a panic attack.
I force my breathing to calm so he doesn’t freak out at my freak out.
“Then I really wouldn’t be able to ignore how lonely living out here in an empty house would be,” he finishes.
I’m amazed I’m able to force words out of my mouth. “You still want kids?”
He rubs slow circles in my lower back but doesn’t meet my eyes. “If I’m answering honestly, yeah, I still want kids. But I know I’m not getting any younger…”
And neither am I.
But I am nowhere near the kids stage of my life.
I’m barely responsible enough to take care of myself, let alone a tiny little baby. I haven’t even gotten my master’s yet, haven’t really started my career. I’m in debt, I’m newly divorced, I only just got a handle on how to spell the word “rhythm” correctly without screwing it up every time, and I can’t even bake goddamn desserts.
I am not ready for children.
If that’s what he’s needing from me—a wife, who will sooner rather than later become the bearer of his children—I’m going to have to cut him loose. It’s not fair to keep him on the hook.
Sure, I want those same things, too. Eventually. I want a loving husband and cute toddlers running around my feet. After growing up with the broken family I’ve had, more than anything I want a whole one of my own.
But we just started this!
It hasn’t even been a full week. Surely, we can give it a little longer before we have to face the music, right? We don’t need to bust out of the gate, guns blazing. For now, this is just fun.
And I’m not ready to give up the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.
Nope, not yet.
Maybe not ever.
I guess that won’t really matter, though, if we’re on completely different trajectories. This is the first time the reality of our age gap has really hit me. Could the distance between where we’re each at in our lives be insurmountable? He might not want to wait until I’m ready to have kids, and I refuse to rush into such life-changing events…again.
Rushing into marriage is one thing.
Rushing into parenthood is unacceptable.
“Hey,” he coaxes, framing my face with his hands. “Where’d you go, darlin’? Come back to me.”
I put all of our potential issues on a detour and focus on the man in front of me. “How could I be anywhere else when I’ve got that”—I wriggle my hips, grinding against the ridge in his pants—“beneath me?”
He grunts. “Just checking. I was worried I was losing my edge there for a second.”
He shifts the angle of his hips, driving his jutting erection directly against my mons.
My eyes fall shut on a moan. “Pretty sure that’s impossible.”
“No, what’s impossible is your body. You’ve been shoving these tits at me in my dreams ever since you first walked into my office. You know that? They’ve been the first thing on my mind every morning for almost a week now.”
Hearing that does all kinds of fluttery things to my insides.
His hands guide my hips into a rocking motion. I earnestly follow his direction, creating a simmering friction between our connected bodies.
“Funny,” I whisper up at the night sky. “I’ve had similar dreams about you. Only you’re shoving something of yours in my face.”
He growls, his mouth drifting over the swell of my breasts. “Is that right? You want to tell me more about that?”
“You want me to show you instead?”
He stills. “Is that a serious question?”
I grin. “Predictable man.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
Before I can shimmy off his lap, his hand slides up to the back of my neck and pulls me down for a kiss that is so searing hot, it feels more like a brand.
And dear God, that’s exactly what he’s managing to do. With every second I spend in his company, with every flick of his tongue, with every drawl of the word darlin’, he’s embedding himself beneath my skin, tattooing his touch onto every inch of my body.
He might as well have already branded his initials right on my ass.
And his expression after he pulls out of the kiss tells me I may be doing the very same thing to him. Surprisingly, after the conversation about marriage and kids, seeing that symmetry between us is comforting.
I can’t take my eyes off of his as I open the button of his shorts, lower the zipper, and peel the material down his legs. His eyelids grow heavy with lust, his breaths shallowing.
“You were sitting much like this in my dreams,” I tell him as I take in the beautiful sight of his thick shaft tenting his briefs. “But your arms were stretched out along the bench.”
As if his body is being controlled by my words, he drapes his muscular arms over the back of the bench.
I nod. “Just like that. And your shirt was off.”
He obeys without hesitation, ripping the shirt over his head. “I was sitting naked on a public bench with you standing fully clothed in front of me? You dirty girl.”
I have never seen anything more arousing than the sight of him sitting almost completely naked, sprawled out for my viewing pleasure, in one of the most breathtaking places I could ever imagine, awaiting a blow job from my mouth.
“I never said we were in public.” I reach for the hem of my tank top and pull it over my head. “And I never said I was fully clothed.”
His heated gaze inspects my lacy lavender bra. “That’s better.”
“That’s all that’s coming
off for now.”
He frowns. “But I want more.”
I quirk an eyebrow. “I believe I was the naked one on your chaise last night, and you were the clothed one. You going to complain?”
His legs fall wider. “Not on your life. Show me how you dream about me, darlin’.”
I inch his briefs down his legs, my anticipation rising. I’m biting my lip as I fall to my knees, bracing myself with my hands on his thighs.
“My pleasure, Counselor.”
“Pretty sure that’s going to be mine.”
I dive right in without warning.
With the level of steel his rod is at, I figure our words have been enough foreplay.
“Jesus!” His thigh muscles tighten as he jolts in surprise. “That’s a good way to give a man a heart attack.”
I ease my mouth back a hair, my lips just shy of grazing his tip. “I’m sorry, did you say heart attack or hard attack?”
His head falls back. “I think I’m having both right now.”
“Then you better hold on because this next part might kill you.”
I swipe my tongue over his head, then glance up to see his hands clutching the bench in a death grip.
“Any last words?”
He blows out a long breath. “Fucking flatline me.”
Game on.
I work him over from tip to base, my hands rising to assist with the job, massaging, fisting, twisting. Taking him to the very back of my throat is difficult with his size, but I manage to get close enough.
The moment that used to always hit me whenever I did this to Grant never comes. The moment when my mouth goes a little lax because he’s taking too long and my enjoyment has long since waned. The frustration over the ache in my jaw while everything south of my border remains as dry as the deserts south of the US border.
But I can say unequivocally that I have never gotten so much pleasure from doing this as I am with Carter right now. Just like the urge to release is rising up the length of his cock, a similar pressure is building inside me. A pressure so insistent and demanding I have to lower my hand and rub myself through my shorts.
He must hear me because his head jerks up, his gaze snapping to my movements. “You’re actually that turned on by sucking on me? Enough that you need to pet yourself with your own fingers until you come inside your panties? All because you can’t wait for my cock to do the job?”
The Divorce Attorney Page 13