by B. Cranford
It was just the first part of his present. He was working on the rest. And he only felt mildly nauseous about whether it was the right thing or not.
“It’s formal,” he added, finally answering the question she’d asked, “but you could go in a sack and look better than anyone else there, so . . .”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“Bullshit. It will most definitely get me in your pants.”
“I’m not wearing pants.”
He groaned. A skirt. His woman in a skirt was . . . Fuck me. “In your skirt then.”
“Not wearing a skirt, either.” She shot back, her words making his spine straighten. “Fun fact, I’ve been naked this entire time. But hey, I should go, I have shopping to do.”
“I–wai—no, stop. Naked? Aren’t you at work?” It was a dumb question—Jade would never nude up at work. Not even the time they made use of the privacy afforded by the supply closet had she been all the way bare.
“Yes, Declan. I’m currently sitting at my desk, tits out for the world to see. You don’t mind, do you?” Her tone was sickly-sweet, the fact she was mocking him clear. He could just picture her batting her eyelashes innocently.
But that was beside the point.
“Why are you naked and why do you have to go? I could lock my door and we could”—he broke off to gulp in air, the semi he’d been sporting since the beginning of their phone call becoming a full-fledged, needs-to-be-handled erection—“you know, talk.”
Even to his own ears, his voice sounded strained. But he didn’t care. Jade was naked and that was always guaranteed to get his attention.
“Well, Jackass, that sounds lovely and all, except now I need to get a dress for a party that I just found out about, so I’m afraid I just don’t have time for phone sex.” She laughed, a happy sound that was maybe, just maybe, tinged with a little bit of evil. “I’m so sorry. But you’ll be okay; you’re a big boy. I know you can handle it.”
He was shaking his head, trying to conjure up an argument from thin air as to why phone sex needed to happen—and damn if that wasn’t harder than his dick was at that exact moment. “Jay . . .” he trailed off when he realized she’d ended the call, groaning as he laid a hand on the arousal tenting his pants.
He was going to have to handle it all on his own.
Fuck.
Jade’s mood was somewhere between gleeful and frustrated when she ended her call with Declan. She’d tricked him into thinking she was naked—perhaps a cruel joke, except for the fact that he’d just dumped a work party in her lap with little notice—and now she had to find something to wear.
Funny thing, she could spent hours hunting for the perfect shoes, but send her looking for a dress and she’d be spent, exhausted and totally over it within twenty minutes. So, for this task, she needed reinforcements.
More specifically, she needed Brighton.
Palming her phone, she looked down her body at the black sheath dress that covered her and chuckled under her breath. Naked. She rolled her eyes at how easy Declan was, even as her needy inner Jade was preening that just the mention of her bare body brought her man to his knees.
“Jade, gimme one second, okay?” Brighton answered the phone quickly but the sounds of a crying baby in the background, coupled with the clipped way she answered, told Jade something was going on.
So, she waited. She could hear her best friend speaking softly to Stella, soothing sounds that, though she couldn’t make out the words, told Jade that Brighton was offering comfort the way only a mother could.
Brighton was a natural. Whenever Jade thought about being a mother, having a baby with Declan, she pictured herself asking Brighton endless questions. Basically, she assumed her friend was some kind of Earth Mother-slash-bottomless-well-of-knowledge.
“Hi, sorry. Stella’s got a temperature, she’s been reaching for her little ears all day and I swear to God, she’s not slept in two days.” The words were shaky, like perhaps Brighton was on the verge of tears.
A sob.
Make that in tears.
“Oh, Bright, I’m sorry. What do you need?” Jade forgot all about the dress and the party, wondering if Sebastian knew his girls were in a state. “Do you need me to get Sebastian?”
“No, no, we’re fine. It’s just the first time she’s really been sick is all. Delaney is on her way over here.”
Delaney was Sebastian’s mother and a pediatrician. If anyone was going to make Stella better, it was her. “Okay, good. But what about you?”
“What about me? I’m not sick. I’m tired and I’m worried, and I’m worried that I’m too worried because I know babies get sick but I can’t stop picturing all these worst case scenarios and I went on Google to find some, like, natural home remedies or whatever and now I’m convinced Stella has baby cancer because I swear, WebMD says that everything is cancer, and I know that, I know that but she’s . . . she’s . . .”
Brighton’s long, breathless spiral ended with pained cry and the sound of something breaking.
“Brighton,” Jade began, wanting to offer something to calm her friend, but not knowing what—if anything—could possibly help.
Sebastian stepped out of his office, his head snapping up from the open folder in his hands at the sound of his wife’s name—and the worried tone of voice in which it was said. “What’s going on? Give me the phone.”
Jade didn’t hesitate to hand it over to Sebastian. Nothing good could come of trying to shield him or hold him off. She moved a step back from her desk to allow him room and listened as he murmured comforts and asked questions of his wife.
With her lower lip pinched between her teeth, Jade chewed out her worries, waiting until Sebastian hung up before asking if everything was okay.
“I’m going to head home. I’ll take some work with me, since I won’t be able to concentrate here, you know?” He smiled a worried smile, one that was distracted but still trying to offer reassurances. He knew she cared and he probably didn’t want her to worry.
Sebastian was a good man. Brighton was the best woman.
They were perfect together.
“Definitely. What do you need me to do here?” She’d caught up on all outstanding files and invoices, updated calendars and sent reminders to people with upcoming appointments, and had been doing busy work for much of the day.
She was efficient, what could she say?
“I’m going to email you a list of client files. Can you pull them for me?”
Though they had online files for each and every client of Figures Accounting, they also kept hard copies on hand for their larger clients. It was a failsafe system that Peter, Sebastian’s father, demanded, and both men had expressed that working from hard copies was, at times, easier for them. “Of course.”
“Great. Once I have them, I’ll head out. Do we have anything else on the schedule today?” The question was asked as an afterthought, since they didn’t typically see clients later in the afternoon.
“Nope, you’re all clear.”
“Good. Thanks, Jade.” He wore lines on his face that told of his worry and Jade impulsively gave her boss a hug. She wasn’t typically a touchy-feely person with Sebastian—with anyone, really, until recently—but she didn’t think she’d seen a man more in need of a hug before.
She was getting better at this friend thing. After being closed off for so long, keeping people at arms-length to protect herself, she couldn’t help but want to be there for the people who hadn’t given up on her.
“They’ll be fine, I promise,” she said as she pulled out of the hug.
Her reward was a genuine smile and a nod. “I know, thanks.”
And, as he turned and walked back into his office, Jade marveled at how far she’d come, until she remembered that she still needed a dress and her favorite shopping partner was down for the count.
She was going to have to handle it all on her own.
“Fuck.”
“Bright? I’m home.” Seb
astian called into the unsettlingly silent house. Stella had been sick for a couple of days, and her go-to for letting them know was crying. It was as heart-breaking as it was loud, and both he and Brighton had been at their wit’s end.
“Brighton?” he called again, starting to move through the house in search of his wife and daughter.
Suddenly, she was there, her eyes wide open, her hands flying in a cut it out gesture. Despite what he might call loud gestures, her voice was whisper quiet when she spoke. “She finally fell asleep. Your mom is in there with her.”
He mouthed a “sorry” and stepped in close to wrap his arms around her, taking a moment to breathe deeply of her scent. Except . . .
“Ah, baby? When was the last time you showered?” As soon as the words left his mouth, Sebastian knew they were the wrong ones. Brighton’s body stiffened in his arms and he felt her start to pull back. “Wait, sorry, no, I didn’t mean . . . Shit.”
“She’s been asleep for all of ten minutes. Before that, she coughed so much she vomited. On herself and on me. But I only had a chance to change her and get her cleaned up, so, yeah, I smell. But you know what? Fuck you.”
He blinked. Hard. Brighton could be creative with her cursing when she wanted to be—in fact, the first day they reconnected, he’d listened to a stream of increasingly creative swears fall from her lips when she’d had a run in with the bathroom at Panera—but she didn’t actually swear all that often.
He’d definitely said the exact wrong words.
Reaching for her, trying to bring her back in for a hug, he apologized. Twice.
Then a third time.
Fourth time.
By the time the fifth apology was falling from his lips, Brighton had turned and verily marched herself into their bedroom, gently closing the door behind her. He got the impression that, if she could have, she would have slammed it, but she didn’t want to wake the baby. With the door in front of him, Sebastian let his forehead drop against it. The dull thud and small bite of pain didn’t do anything to change the fact that he’d walked in and insulted his very beautiful, very tired and, yeah, very stinky wife.
After pausing long enough to take a few deep breaths and figure out exactly how much shit he was in, Sebastian turned the knob and said a silent thank you for the fact she hadn’t locked it. He opened the door just enough to be able to slide in and then closed it quietly behind him. The sound of running water greeted him, telling him that she was in the shower already. He briefly wondered if she’d just walked in fully clothed and let the water douse her.
Wouldn’t blame her.
He crossed the room to face another closed door, but this one had a little message on the front—a hastily scrawled note on a piece of scrap paper.
Fuck off.
He knew that laughter wasn’t the response she’d been aiming for, but he couldn’t help it. She was mad, but she was cute. And he loved her. Brighton Figures might be the sweetest woman on Earth. But if you were married to her and you pissed her off? You’d better watch out.
Plucking the note from the door and shoving it in his pocket, he tried the door knob, assuming that, this time, she would have locked it. But no, it opened and a waft of steam escaped.
She wasn’t using the fan.
He hated it when she didn’t use the fan.
She’s really mad.
Sebastian had, after successfully completing rehab for his gambling addiction, picked up more than a few quirks. Quirks that he’d had prior to his addiction, but that were intensified by the order that he and his mind needed to maintain control.
To fight the urges.
And one of those quirks was a nearly maniacal need to use the bathroom fan. And to fold the towels a certain way. Okay, and yeah, when he pinned the clothes on the line outside—which was rare—he had a process for that too.
Don’t even get him started on the best way to stack the dishwasher.
Some of those things drove Brighton insane, he knew. Just as she knew he needed them, so she worked around them. But not today, not in this particular moment.
The fan was off. As were the gloves.
“Brighton. The fan.”
“Sebastian. Go away.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I said it twenty times already.” A slight exaggeration.
That she apparently wasn’t going to let him get away with. “Five times. Six, including that one. You said I smelled!”
“I asked when you’d had a chance to shower last. You’re overreacting.” Abort, abort, his mind warned. Once he broke out the “O” word—not orgasm, though surely that would help this situation—he was mere moments away from telling her to calm down.
And that never, ever ended well.
Her voice, which echoed through the tiled room and hit him square in the chest, was shrill. “I’m not overreacting, you . . . you . . . argh.” A thumping sound came from behind the fogged up glass of their shower and Sebastian jolted in place.
“Are you okay? What was that? What happened?”
“I’m fine. I knocked over the shampoo bottle because some asshole told me I was overreacting.” She pushed open the door of the shower, showing him her naked body, through the mist. “Don’t you look at me like that.”
“You’re naked. How else am I supposed to look at you?”
“Maybe the way you look at someone who smells?”
“I didn’t say you smelled, I said—”
“If you want to live to see our daughter’s first Christmas, don’t even think about finishing that sentence, Sebastian.” As if suddenly realizing that she was showing him her wet, gleaming, sinful body, she let go of the door. It closed, blocking his view, but not before he saw her covering her stomach with her hands.
“Bright?” He reached for the door, which bounced gently against the rubber lining before settling closed. “Hey, hey.” He could hear her starting to cry and he didn’t hesitate.
He opened the door, stepped into the running water in his suit and wrapped his arms around her again. And this time, he didn’t shove his foot squarely in his mouth. “I’ve got you, I’m sorry. I have you.”
“I’m scared. I know she’s okay. Your mom told me as much, b-bu-but, she wouldn’t stop crying. Or coughing. And one fed into the other, like this horrible cycle that I couldn’t break for her.” Her dark hair was plastered down, but it didn’t stop Sebastian from running a hand up her neck and under the soaking strands to cup her head.
He used that hand to tilt her head back, his taller frame blocking the water from getting in her eyes. “You’re beautiful. You look beautiful today. I’m sorry that wasn’t the first thing I said. I’m sorry I didn’t give you your kiss.” He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers, a ghost of a kiss, before continuing, “But more than that, you’re the best mom our little girl could have. I know and she knows you’re doing everything you can. Okay?”
She nodded, her tears mingling with the drops of water caressing her reddened cheeks. “How badly are you wanting to freak out right now?” She smiled apologetically. “I mean, you’re wearing clothes in the shower and the fan isn’t on. You must be on the edge, right?”
Nodding in acknowledgment, he looked down at the bubbling mess of spilled shampoo that was splattered across the floor and walls of the shower. “That’s not helping.”
“But, well, it can’t be all bad, right?” A devious look replaced the hurting one that had damn near broken his heart earlier, and now he wondered where her mind was headed.
He was still watching her face when he felt her hand wrap around him through the material of his pants. A spark hit her green eyes and he groaned. “Bright Star,” he warned, trying and failing to find the willpower to remove her hand from his body. “What are you doing?”
“Distracting you.” She moved her hand up and down, up and down. “It’s working, right?”
“Mmm hmm. Jesus.” Words were becoming harder and harder to find, while his dick was simply getting harder and harder. But then, somethin
g flashed in his mind, a question he wanted to ask. “Why did you cover yourself?”
“What?” Her eyebrows pressed down into a confused frown, but her hand never stilled.
“When you said I needed to be careful or I’d miss Christmas, you got this look on your face”—he contorted his face in what was probably a terrible impersonation of his wife—“like you didn’t want me to see you.”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing. I was mad.”
“And now you’re not.”
“And now I’m not.”
“Are you sure that’s all?” He didn’t want to stop whatever was happening between them, but he had to know. “You covered your body and I hate it when you do that.”
“Sebasti—”
He stopped her by raising his hand, palm out. The universal “stop” signal. “Please tell me.” His gut was telling him it was related to the other week in bed, when she’d been worried about how she looked.
“I was mad. You were mad. I didn’t—my body isn’t the same anymore. I didn’t think I could bear it if you looked at me and didn’t want me. If your mad overrode your horniness.”
“I will always want you. Do you know what I was thinking when you were yelling at me, naked?”
“No?”
“That I wanted you so bad. I couldn’t work out how to get out the hole I’d dug for myself and all I wanted to do was touch you. Kiss you. Make you yell for me instead of at me.” He reached behind his back to shut off the water, wanting to concentrate not on steam or fans or suits that were likely ruined. “I was thinking how lucky I am, how much I love you. Your body might be changed, but it’s still perfect. More perfect.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her from the shower.
“What are you . . .”
From the rack beside them, he swiped a towel and stroked it a few times across the mirror, clearing a space in the fog. The look on her face, reflected back at him through the glass, told him she thought he’d lost his mind—and maybe he had. But he had something to say and, dammit, she was going to hear it.