“I love you, Claire-bear,” I said with a grin.
She pulled back, a cascade of dark curls tickling my face. “I love you too, Thomas.” Slowly, she eased off me and I could feel the loss keenly.
“That was….” I began.
“Incredible,” Claire finished for me.
“It was.”
Claire tried to stand but the way her legs were shaking I wasn’t sure that was such a good idea. Apparently, she agreed and sat down next to me again. She pulled out the blanket and threw it over us, then snuggled up next to me.
After a few moments, Claire spoke. “What was all that about…at the end.”
I gulped. “Did I hurt you?”
“Not in any way I didn’t like.” Her lips pressed against my left pec. “I love it when you’re forceful. When you let the beast out. But that seemed…different.”
“Do you remember when we were talking about kids a little bit ago?”
She looked up. No tensing, no apprehension. A faint smile traced those gorgeous features I had come to love so deeply. “I do, are you interested in another round?”
Her hand snaked under the blanket and up my thigh. My voice rose an octave. “I was thinking about it again.” It took a considerable amount of effort to even out my voice. Claire shook with silent laughter watching me grapple with it. “A house, kids, the whole package. Is that something you would like?”
She turned those bright green eyes on me and I melted. “It was never something I wanted,” she admitted. Her hand gripped my thigh tightly like she was afraid I’d bolt at the confession. “But with you, I want it all.” Claire gave me a coy look. “I could stop taking the birth control and we could just let nature take its course…”
My heart stuttered in my chest. That same primal part of me yearned for what she was offering. Her hand started to inch up my thigh again. “Are you sure?”
It felt like I was in a dream. Everything had that fuzzy, indistinct beauty to it. Nothing could go wrong. In the afterglow of sex we were happy and closer than ever. I wanted to hold onto that moment forever. Press pause on time and linger there.
Just the two of us.
“I’m all in,” she said, maintaining eye contact. “I will always want every piece of you, Thomas. Of course I want you to put a baby in me. What do you think this is all for?” Claire motioned, indicating what we’d just done.
I gave her a sheepish grin, the blush rising to my ears and making them burn like coals. In all the time I’ve been alive, Claire confessing she wanted my baby was the sexiest, most arousing thing I have ever experienced. “An expression of our love?” I lamely answered.
Claire leaned her head on my shoulder. “No, silly.” She yawned, her words trailing off as sleep started to overtake her. “It’s practice.”
9
Claire
The next few days were nerve-wracking.
The waiting felt endless but we were fast approaching the deadline. Today would be the day. One final meeting to discuss what the investors had decided for good or ill.
I tried not to let it get to me.
I filled the time in between with impromptu business classes for Thomas. He was smart, a lot smarter than he ever gave himself credit for.
Concepts that I saw a lot of junior analysts trip up on were child’s play for him. What he struggled with was memorization.
Give him a complicated idea and he could turn it over in his head just as easily as if it were something he could fiddle with his hands. In the blink of an eye, he would have an answer that would have had my college professors fawning over their new favorite student.
It made my heart ache to see such brilliance never put to use.
There was nothing wrong with choosing a craft or blue-collar job but Thomas was smart and if he had been given the same opportunities as I had, he would have been able to pursue any career he wished.
Don’t get me wrong, I am beyond happy things turned out the way they did. For whatever reason, our winding paths brought us back together and for that I am eternally grateful.
But there is no denying that Thomas was robbed of a brighter future much sooner. Whether by circumstance, birth, or economy, the result was the same.
By the end of the third day, I knew he was ready. He may not be perfect but I would trust him at my back in a meeting over many other consultants I had been forced to work with.
He looked like he hardly slept at all last night as I watched him sleepily shovel his hash browns around his plate. Poor guy. It was a good thing the investors only wanted to meet with him to get to know him.
I wasn’t sure if Thomas was awake enough to do much more than engage in the small talk they wanted from him.
“When’s the meeting?” he asked.
My attention snapped up to him. I had let my eyes wander down to the curve of his collarbones and the delicious area of his neck I loved to nibble on. He still had a mark from last night.
Thomas let out a low, throaty chuckle at my sudden shift. I cleared my throat to hide the spike of embarrassment.
“It’s at nine,” I answered trying not to look at his dark pulling gaze. I would be lost and totally useless if he sucked me in with those coffee dark eyes of his.
I still could not believe how openly I had talked about getting knocked up with him. It was a secret wish of mine that he would order me to stop taking my birth control, throw them out and we’d have mad passionate lovemaking every night.
Which you do.
True. But it feels different when I know that it is more than just excellent sex. That we might have a baby. We could make an entirely new life. The thought of it was dizzyingly appealing and startlingly erotic.
I clenched my thighs and forced myself back to the present.
“Is there anything else I should know?” he asked, a flicker of amusement at the corners of his mouth told me he’d picked up on something I must have shown on my face. My blush deepened.
“Nope!” My voice jumped several octaves and I had to swallow to force it back under control. God, how that man could fluster me. I hope he doesn’t do that during the meeting. “They only want to meet you, get to know who they are partnering with.”
“Sounds like they’re more than just investors.”
I nodded, ducking my head a little. “They’re better than investors. They will be our business partners. Think of it like a committee that will oversee several projects in Sunrise Valley. If we do this right, Thomas, the town will be so much better off.”
Thomas hooked a smile at me that sent a thrill of delight into my belly. He had a slight smudge of syrup on the corner of his mouth and I wanted nothing more than to crawl onto the table and lick it off.
What is wrong with me?
“I can almost see it happening with you at the helm,” he said.
“We can only hope.” I fidgeted with the table napkin. “It’s what this town needs.”
Both of us knew just how badly this town needed a win. What we had done with A Game of Scones was a Band-Aid on a mortal wound. If something drastic wasn’t done - and soon - the town would fold up and cease to exist.
The longer I stayed in Sunrise Valley, the more I realized I could not let that happen. It would be all too easy to pull up stakes and leave. Even if Thomas didn’t want to, he would eventually be forced.
I still had enough connections and could quite easily get another job as a consultant in nearly any city. Every day I had recruiters filling up my inbox with new roles and proposals.
Thomas would be able to get a much better deal of things if he moved to a different city. It was almost like we were kids again when he used to play video games on their hardest difficulty because he liked the challenge.
That was the essence of what he was doing in Sunrise Valley, trying to make a successful restaurant in a dying town. In almost any other market he would have had instant success and popularity.
With the goods he made and the natural charm he had - even if he didn’t
believe he had any - he would have done great. The only issue would have been raising enough capital to start and together we could have gotten him seed money easily enough.
We wiled away the time snuggled up on the couch and reading beneath my favorite plaid blanket. Thomas still woke up fairly early in the morning, even though it was late by his earlier standards. And I was used to an hour-plus commute to work in the city so I was up around the same time as him.
The only difference was that Thomas had always been a morning person and I most definitely was not. While he hopped out of bed like some caffeinated toddler, I had to drag my half-dead body towards the nearest source of coffee before I became remotely human.
With a peck on his stubbled cheek, I got up. “I’m going to get ready.”
He smiled at me and watched me go without a word. I could feel his eyes on me and knew that if I turned around he would be watching my ass.
I almost wished I had thought of having a quickie but we were cutting it close as it was. And lovemaking with Thomas was anything but quick.
Though I couldn’t deny it would help with my nerves. I felt like the first day of school and I had forgotten some crucial thing.
I pulled on my tasteful white blouse with understated frills down the front and an appropriately short black business skirt to match my jacket. Thomas came in while I was pulling on my pantyhose.
Not the most glamorous sight, and yet he stopped dead in his tracks and stared as I grunted and struggled to pull them up without causing a run.
Sometimes, I did not understand what that man saw in me. But I would forever relish the thrill of excitement those hungry looks gave me. Nobody else had ever looked at me so deeply or intently before.
I could never get enough.
“If you don’t stop looking at me like that,” I said, tugging on the last leg. “We’re going to be late for the meeting and I don’t think our new partners will appreciate that we both smell of sex.”
There was a throaty rumble from Thomas, a sound that he rarely ever made. It was liquid sex. How could a man turn my insides to jelly with something as simple as a sound?
“Which is a bad thing.” Thomas was either trying to convince himself or understand what I was saying. I did not know which was more entertaining.
I took the reprieve in sexy, hungry glances and associated noises to finish putting on my stockings. I padded over him to throw my arms around his neck and breath in the scent of him. “You should get dressed.” I popped up onto my tip-toes and kissed his chin. “I’ll go get the car warmed up.”
Before I could pull away he pressed his lips back against mine. The force of the kiss nearly soaked my panties with the unexpected heat of it.
I wobbled towards the closet, pulled on my favorite heels - just the right blend of sexy and no-nonsense business - and barely managed to get down to the car without turning around and jumping his bones.
When Thomas crammed himself into the car with me, I had everything mostly under control. But one look at him in that three-piece charcoal suit and I just about lost it. I don’t know what it was with me and hot guys in suits but it was a serious turn on.
I kept glancing at him all throughout the ride out of town. Thomas barely noticed. He was so nervous he had his eyes shut. His head leaned back against the headrest. Thomas had done something to his tie, the same thing he had done at the reading of Dad’s will and again at the funeral.
It looked needlessly complicated. I wondered where he learned to do it. The effect was eye-catching.
I reached a hand out towards him and did my best to cover his much larger hand with mine. “It’ll be okay, they will love you.”
“I felt less nervous meeting your mom,” he said, eyes still shut.
“Well, what I told you that first night we had a family dinner with her still holds true.” I gave his hand a squeeze. “I do not care what they think about you. Their opinion does not matter to me. If they treat you poorly or do not like you then they are dead to me.”
“Would you really be willing to throw this deal away just because of me?” I could feel his dark gaze on me, lingering and searching. I gave him a glance and my most winsome smile. “Yes. This is as much a meeting to see if they like us as it is to see if we like them.”
He didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride but he looked more at ease. At the very least, he did not have his eyes shut anymore.
Without the weight of the partnership hinging on his large shoulders, he was able to actually relax. And I had been serious. I would fucking walk if they so much as looked the wrong way at Thomas.
No matter how useful these men were, if they were cruel or unkind to Thomas I would drop them like a hot coal.
They already knew me and while Thomas would have my full support, he was as unlike them as you could get.
I would rather risk the loss and have to scramble to cobble together some other plan than to put Thomas through the unique Hell of being forced to work with people who hated him.
Good thing that wasn’t going to happen.
10
Thomas
The meeting went off without a hitch. Okay, there was one but I thought I handled it pretty well. About halfway through the discussion, most of which I was able to follow thanks to Claire’s crash course in business terminology, the balding man in a ridiculously expensive suit said something that froze me in my tracks.
“I don’t know how you and Claire have been cooking this up for well over a month without us ever meeting!” boomed Gary Cirose. He was a nice guy, boisterous and talkative. We got along instantly, there was something avuncular and jovial that was endearing.
Apparently, the feeling was mutual.
I was caught off-guard by the comment. I thought this was a last-minute thing, something Claire had only just thrown together.
Claire stared at me, eyes wide and she gave me the most subtle shake of her head. The message was pretty clear: Not here. Go along with it.
Discomfort and surprise locked down into a grin and a snort, a slap on Gary’s shoulder for extra measure. “Managing the hottest new bakery in New York is tiring. I only recently began hiring additional help and that has only covered the basics.”
“I’ll be honest,” said Gary, “I thought you might be fake! The way Claire went on about you, we figured you might be some viral marketing scheme that got out of hand.”
I nudged him in the ribs gently, plastered a goofy grin on my face I didn’t feel and said, “I still might be! Claire didn’t tell me a damn thing about any of this, she just picked me up off the street, handed me fifty bucks and told me to say things like ‘synergy’ and ‘we’ll circle back to that!’”
That cracked all three of them up. I shot Claire a look while they were distracted in a fit of laughter. This was not over but I was not about to ruin a meeting by being a sulky child about it either.
I’m just making a point. I do not like being kept in the dark.
Gary wiped a tear from his eye. This was something I was good at. I had been since I was fairly young. I don’t know what it was but if I got in front of a group of adults they ate up everything I said.
It appeared that this was no different. Gary, Ryan, and Frank were well into their later years and sweet as could be. They loved me like some favored nephew they had not seen in ages.
If I had to guess, I would say it was the old-world values I held. I did not like a lot of newer trends, though I was aware of them and how to use them, and I had a lot of anachronistic habits.
Which is to say, I did things the “old school” way. Turned out, that is the way to impress rich old white men pretty handily.
The conversation devolved quickly from business matters to idle chit-chat. What impressed me most about them was that they did not immediately exclude Claire.
Usually, when a bunch of old men got together, it was the girls that got pushed out of the conversation. I may have a lot of old-fashioned ideals but equality was timeless. It was
something that always should have been and always should be. Gary, Ryan, and Frank did not disappoint.
They had good enough manners to keep Claire in the conversation even when things dipped into the type of discussions accustomed to a booth in a bar than a boardroom. Or, I suppose since they were filthy rich, a smoking lounge.
Wherever rich people hung out.
Either way, the meeting went surprisingly well. It ended with warm handshakes all around, personal numbers exchanged, and a promise to let them tour A Game of Scones whenever they wanted.
The coup de grâce also happened to be my secret weapon. Something I did not end up needing. I had planned on using it if things started to go south, which they never did. So I used them as a goodbye present.
I had whipped up a sampling batch of all the best non-refrigerated goodies I made at the bakery, boxed them up into three charcoal-gray boxes and handed one to each of the men as we departed.
As we headed into the parking lot I did my best to avoid Claire’s gaze. She kept trying to catch my eye all throughout the elevator ride but she knew me well enough that she didn’t press me for anything more.
I was mad. This was another thing she had hidden from me. I thought we were done with that. I understood why, not like that made it any better.
In fact, it made it a little worse because that meant I was turning into the type of person that kept secrets if the ends justified the means and I hated that kind of person.
At the same time, I had no idea what I would say to her about it.
I scrunched up in the passenger seat in the parking garage and for a moment I thought Claire was going to force the issue. She gave me one long look and started the car instead.
Nothing she could do would make me love her any less. This was not about that. This was about trust. It was about understanding that I would be able to handle anything she shared with me.
I felt like if she hadn’t needed me here, that she might have gone on even longer without involving me. We were business partners, no matter how ridiculous the initial circumstances of it were. I only wanted her to treat me like an equal.
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