I’m stunned, my world spinning right and wrong. I want to say yes, but Kace is too close to my past to hide inside his world. And Gio is still missing, but is hiding the way to find him or me?
“I can’t just leave,” I say, because I have no choice. I need to think about how bold I dare become about my past and my brother.
“It’s a weekend, Aria. I don’t want to leave without you. Come with me.”
Come with him. He doesn’t want to leave without me. How do I say no when I don’t want to say no? Will I endanger him? That is my fear, but I quickly reject it. Gio could staff an entire building with the women he’s dated, all of whom are alive and well. Why am I denying myself? Why do I always hide? And the idea of being alone at home, rotting in my own fear, is not a good one. “I have to go by my apartment.”
He arches a brow. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll go with you.”
Something I might call relief I do not expect washes over his face and breaks into one of his perfect smiles. “Good,” he says, stroking my hair. “But there’s no time for you to go home. I called the stores downstairs and they’re bringing you up everything you need, from shampoo to clothes. We’ll have time to shop in Austin tomorrow.”
“No,” I say adamantly. “I need my things, Kace. I have to run by my apartment.”
“Your things will be waiting when you get back. We need to leave no later than two and it’s noon now.”
My eyes go wide. “It’s noon. I slept until noon? I never sleep until noon.”
“You did.” He catches my hand. “Come. I’ll take you to my bedroom. You can shower there.”
He starts down the stairs. I tug his arm. “Kace—”
“Need a lift?”
I blink. “What?”
“You do. I can tell.”
The next thing I know, I’m over his shoulder and he’s walking down the stairs. I laugh and just give in to the moment. “Okay!” I say. “I’ll walk. I’ll stay.”
But he doesn’t stop. He grabs my purse and phone as we walk past the piano and keeps going. I’m not set down on my feet until we’re up a winding set of stairs and inside his bedroom. He plants me on the floor and I lose the grip on my blanket. It falls and I’m naked again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
There’s no time for embarrassment or any other reaction to my nakedness.
Kace tosses my purse and phone behind me to who knows where, and the next thing I know, I’m not just naked, I’m naked and pulled against him, the hard lines of his body absorbing the softer lines of my body. “My God, woman, you’re making me crazy. If I didn’t have this meeting—” His cellphone buzzes with a text and then the doorbell rings. “And that,” he groans, “is what you call bad timing. That will be your delivery.” He snatches up the blanket and wraps it around me but not before his gaze does a sizzling sweep, my nipples puckering beneath his inspection. “I’ll be right back,” he adds and when he would kiss me, I press my fingers to his lips.
“Oh no,” I say, though it pains me to do so. I want his kiss. I want his mouth. “I haven’t brushed my teeth,” I add. “You cannot kiss me right now. Please.”
He tilts his head skyward as if struggling with control before he says, “There’s an extra toothbrush and toothpaste in the middle drawer in the bathroom.” He closes my hand around the blanket, and releases me, stepping back and giving his jaw a scrub, the rasp of a rapidly thickening stubble against his palm. It looks good on him. Is there anything about this man that I don’t find sexy?
Apparently not, because when his hands settle on his hips, my gaze sweeps his tattoos of varied bright colors and I wonder why I have yet to kiss a single one. “The delivery should have everything you need,” he says. “I told them to imagine you’d lost your suitcase in a foreign country and I answered a bunch of questions about you.”
“Questions?”
“Hmm. How do you look? How do you smell? How do you taste?”
My eyes go wide and he laughs. “Not the latter two, but,” he steps into me again and presses his lips to my ears, “the answer is, like candy. You look, smell, and taste like candy.” He kisses my neck. “Brush your teeth. I want to kiss you.” He releases me and disappears from the bedroom, his bedroom where he’s invited me and now left me to use as I wish.
I am reeling from Kace’s touch and his words, really from every moment with him, and now I am in his most intimate of places. I rotate and survey the room, his bedroom. It’s on a corner of the apartment, a half-circle of windows wrapping the space, and delivering the illusion that we are floating on the Hudson River. The bed is to my right, framed by gray wood and a gray cushioned headboard. To my left are a deep navy-blue loveseat and double doors opening to the balcony. And right in front of me, lying on the gray carpet is my purse and phone, which has me laughing. He was so consumed by me being naked that he threw them to the ground.
Smiling now, relaxing into the experience of being here with Kace for the first time all morning, I grab my phone and purse and hurry toward the door opposite the bed that I believe to be the bathroom. Sure enough, I find a room of white tiles swirled with light grays, a giant claw foot tub, and framed by an arched window, with a stunning river view. One I can’t admire at present for good reason. I shut the door and drop the blanket, rushing to the separate stall to pee. Once I’ve washed up, I spy a thin navy robe hanging on the back of the door, and waste no time sliding it around me, only to have my hands swallowed. I try to roll the sleeves up but it’s a struggle I barely manage.
Once I can at least mostly find my hands, I head to the double sinks and open the middle drawer. Inside, I find about a dozen unopened toothbrushes that I assume to be for his travels. I think of his talk of retiring from the concert circuit and I believe Kace really is done. I could feel that in him last night and I really can’t blame him.
I grab a tube of toothpaste from the drawer and quickly brush my teeth. Opening another drawer, I find face soap and scrub off the mess of my makeup. When I’m done, I stare at the section of the counter Kace obviously puts to the most use and the leather organizer filled with his products. There is one cologne called Juniper Sling by Penhaligon, which I apparently love because the man always smells delicious. Other than that, there’s a comb, a brush, and a razor. That is all. Everything in his home is neat and clean, simplistic even. I can’t really say that about my bathroom, so I’m pretty sure I’ve already discovered that we’d never make it as a couple because I’d drive him nuts. Not that we’re going to be a couple. He’s working me out of his system. And me him, as well. That’s all this is. I think. Isn’t it?
There’s a knock on the door. “Aria? You okay in there?”
I smile all over again and open the door to find him, as I have two times before now, standing right in front of me, his hand on the doorjamb above his head. “Why is it that when I shut a door, you always knock?”
He folds me to him. “Maybe I just like you better on my side of the door but,” he adds, “I can’t decide if I like you better with my robe on or off. Off wins, as long as you’re naked.” He kisses my hand and then steps to my side to show me a collection of a dozen bags sitting by the bed.
“My God, Kace,” I whisper. “What have you done?”
“I threw this trip on you, so I made sure you have anything and everything you could need.”
A memory of my father leading my mother into a room filled with gifts for her birthday flickers in my mind. He’d loved her. He’d spoiled her. But she hadn’t needed the gifts. She’d just needed him. He knew that, too.
I turn to Kace. “Let me just shower here and I swear to you, Kace, I can run to my apartment and be packed in five minutes. I can wear my dress from last night, and change on the plane.”
“It won’t be ready until Monday and your five minutes to pack will be an hour we don’t have in traffic. If my agent didn’t have a big studio meeting he was flying out to tonight, we wo
uldn’t have a time crush, but we do.”
“Soon is not Monday Kace.”
He catches my arms and steps into me. “In my defense, I promise you, that they told me later today, but they called and told me a machine went down.”
“Wonderful.”
“I can be. I want you to enjoy everything that’s in those bags. And we can exchange anything that you don’t like or doesn’t fit. I want you to love it all.”
I glance at the bags, one of which reads Gucci and the other, Chanel. “There’s a lot of money in those bags, Kace.”
He waves that off. “I’m not worried about the money.”
“I am.” Embarrassment begins to burn in my belly. He saw the Goodwill label. I know he did. “You saw the tag on my dress, didn’t you?”
“I want to do this for you.”
In other words, he did. “I know you saw the label on my dress. I don’t need or want your charity.”
His mood spikes in the air and he cups my face. “That’s what you think this is?”
My hand flattens on his chest. “I don’t spend a lot of money on myself. I don’t need you to do it either. I’m here for you, not your money. And why would you even want me here, if you thought it was the money? I need my dress back.”
“I want to do this for you,” he repeats, his voice steel that is somehow brushed with tenderness. “Not to make you feel obligation or guilt. To make you happy. And because I greedily want you with me.”
He wants me with him. There is a rasp to those words, a ring of truth. I believe him. And that matters. “I don’t need fancy things. I can’t stand the idea of you thinking I’m with you one moment because of your money. I’m not that girl.”
Something flickers in his eyes, and he cuts his stare, seconds ticking by before he meets my gaze again. “I know that, Aria.” His thumbs stroke my cheeks. “I know.”
But he doesn’t know. He can’t know. In that moment, I discover yet another thing I know about this man and he about me. When you hold a prize in your hand, a gift, a wonder of the world that holds value, the entire world wants it and you. There is no peace to be found. Everyone around you could have an agenda, could want what you have. And with that I find yet another reason that I am drawn to him. He doesn’t know what is real in his life any more than I know what is real in mine. And somehow there is a sanctuary in two like souls haunted by demons of the same evil.
“I’m only here for you, Kace,” I say.
“And I am only here for you, Aria.”
“Thank you for the gifts.”
He studies me for several untold moments, unreadable, he is always so unreadable, and then he kisses me, a slide of his tongue that I feel everywhere before he says, “Hurry and get ready. We only have an hour and a half to get there. That means you have an hour to go through the bags and get ready.” He sets me away from him and doesn’t give me time to argue. He heads to the door and disappears into the hallway.
He does not shut the door.
And neither do I.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The bags are filled with everything a girl could possibly ask for: makeup, a flat iron, hair and bath products, several pairs of heels and boots, lingerie, and plenty of clothes. I try not to look at the price tags, but it’s hard not to. Just one bra is two hundred dollars, which is insanity. Searching for the items I absolutely need becomes my new goal. The rest can be returned. I start digging through everything and despite the worthy goal, I’m drawn to a Chanel box for one simple reason: my mother loved Chanel, though we didn’t have the income for it once we fled Italy. Nevertheless, the brand stirs memories of her and I quickly remove the lid of the box to suck in air, shocked at what I find. It’s impossible. I cannot be seeing what I’m seeing, but I am. The purse that I’m staring at is not just a purse. It’s pink, a classic recently brought back, but it is also familiar. My mother owned this exact purse. My father bought it for her before we left Italy and even years later, that bag had been in pristine condition. She adored it. It was a connection to him she cherished. She had it with her the day she died and it was never recovered.
Once again, Kace has managed to become a piece of my past. I swallow hard and slide the lid back on the box. I cannot keep that purse for about ten reasons including the price. It’s five thousand dollars.
Shoving a hand through my hair, I try to calm my emotions. How did I end up with that purse? How did he buy me that purse? It’s a coincidence, of course. It really is an old classic recently brought back, a hot item, but God, it’s killing me. It’s like the universe is trying to tell me something and I don’t know what. My gaze sweeps over the bags. There’s just so much here, so much money, so much generosity. And something in Kace’s reaction to me declining the gifts lingers with me, something beneath his surface, something from his past.
In these bags rest more than fancy trinkets and clothing, for both of us.
I’m not sure what to do with that realization. I just know that I want to understand him. I want to get to know him. Very much, and I can’t even seem to muster up an argument or warning that convinces me to walk away from Kace anymore. I don’t want to walk away.
I head to the shower, and lather up with a luxurious lily-scented shampoo and body wash. When I turn off the water, the sound of Kace’s violin somewhere in the distance sings to me, and my lashes lower, memories flooding my mind. Not since I was a child have I stepped out of a shower to violin music. It was always playing at home. Always. My father loved the instrument. We all did. I still do, but I shove away the past, reminding myself this is the present, and I want to live in the present. For once in my life, I need to live in the moment, if only for a weekend. I grab my towel and dry off, eager to enjoy the luxury of readying myself while he does what we discussed: practices his craft.
Thirty minutes later, I’m in Kace’s robe, rather than the pink silk robe I’d found in the bags, and beneath it, I’m wearing a lacy bra and panty set that cost a small fortune. My makeup is done in soft pinks and my hair is flat ironed to a soft brown silk, compliments of amazing products. And Kace’s violin notes are still hauntingly, beautifully present. I shut the bedroom door to try on clothes because no girl wants the man in her life to see her wearing something that looks horrible. I settle for a pair of dressy black jeans, a light V-neck black sweater, and a beautiful pair of high heel ankle boots. I also yank the tag off the adorable round black Gucci purse which is thousands cheaper than the pink Chanel bag. I have no history with this bag that won’t be created this weekend with Kace. I fill the bag with the personal items I will need to have handy, and then pack the Gucci suitcase I’ve been given as well.
Kace’s violin goes silent and I quickly prepare to join him, checking my phone to find it only ten percent charged. I consider dialing Nancy to check on the shop before I lose the little charge I have left, but decide better. I gave her time off for her protection. I’m about to slide it into my purse when it rings with a call from Alexander.
It’s a call I’d like to avoid, but he represents money I desperately need. I take the call. “Alexander,” I greet.
“Have you considered my offer to work for me?”
“Yes, but being frank here,” I say, “I’m uncomfortable. I don’t like being in the middle of you and Ed’s war. And he was my client first.”
“And I’m concerned. You seem to have a pattern of putting yourself in the path of powerful, ruthless men. First Ed, and now, from what I understand, Kace August.”
My lips purse. “Please don’t go there with Kace again. I’m not a part of whatever squabble is between you two.”
He laughs. “Squabble. We have far more than a squabble between us. Let’s meet tonight. Let’s get this contract signed and if we must, we’ll talk about Ed.”
“Look, Alexander—” In that moment, I feel Kace, even before I look to the doorway to find him standing there tall and strong, his jaw hard, his eyes harder, a pulse of dark energy waving
off of him.
“Aria?” Alexander prods.
I wet my lips, cut my gaze from Kace’s, and force my reply. “I’ll call you Monday and we’ll talk about the contract.”
“He’s there, isn’t he?” he asks, the phone line now charged as tense as this room. “You’re with him. Of course. He moves fast.” When I would argue that far from true, he’s already moved on. “When can we meet? Commit to a time and place now.”
Kace must hear the question because his stare sharpens, his expression tightening.
“I’ll call you Monday, Alexander,” I say. “I need to go.” I hang up. “That was—”
“Alexander,” Kace supplies. “I heard.”
“Yes,” I say, not sure why I was even telling him who it was. He knew. I said Alexander’s name.
He saunters toward me, closing the space between me and him, stopping in front of me, his hand sliding possessively to my waist. He pulls me to him. “What are you doing with him?” His voice is low but tight, his mood dark.
“He offered me a retainer for some wine purchases. He’s trying to push out one of my other clients he apparently used to work for. I’m caught in the middle.”
“Because he’s a manipulative bastard. And he wants to fuck you. You know that, right?”
“You’ve said that. And he would say the same of you. He has. You both keep telling me the other one is the bad one.”
His energy jabs at the air. “And you say what, Aria?”
My hand settles on his chest, the thundering beneath my palm defying his cool exterior. He’s bothered by Alexander. He’s bothered by my connection to Alexander. “That I’m right here with you, Kace, where I want to be. And I know that he’s manipulative, but so are many people in business.”
“He doesn’t want it to be just business and I have a problem with that. On a personal level, you’re with me or you’re with him. I won’t share.”
“Because it’s Alexander or because it’s me?” I ask before I can stop myself.
A Reckless Note (Brilliance Trilogy Book 1) Page 15