Chapter 27
Taylor
“Are you sure you’re okay?” She flinched from my touch, pouring all of her interest into the margarita mix she was preparing.
“If you keep asking me, the answer will probably end up changing.”
I gave a frustrated sigh, leaning against the kitchen counter. It wasn’t my intention to be overbearing, or to keep fussing, but the more she told me she was fine the more unsettled I felt about it.
Alex’s loud laughter filtered through from the patio, met with the others’ voices.
I’d tried canceling the dinner after what had happened at the office but they’d been like limpets since I got back, wanting to see me every spare moment they had.
Alex was the worst, and I was surprised she hadn’t given in to watching me while I slept.
“I’m just worried about you, that’s all.” I was done tiptoeing on eggshells, and said it the way it sounded in my head—defeated.
“I know you are, but I’m a big girl, Taylor. I can handle a mild panic attack,” she replied, crushing a bundle of mint leaves. “It was my choice to come out here with you, and I did that knowing that it won’t be easy. That it might turn out to be something that wasn’t for me.”
Wyatt snapped the lid on the blender, but instead of pushing the button to drown out the vulnerabilities floating around us she stopped to look at me.
Her eyes brimmed with every single thing she was feeling, every single thought rebounding in her mind.
Seeing it laid bare like that was like a punch to the gut.
“Wyatt… what are you saying?”
My heart hammered so hard it felt as though it would beat clean out of my chest. There was no taking it back. Nothing stopping her from saying the thing I was most afraid of hearing—that she’d made a mistake, didn’t want to be with me.
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure we were still alone in the kitchen, then stepped closer to me. Her hands weren’t shaking when she intertwined her fingers with mine.
“I’m saying, Taylor, that I’m not going to give up on something just because it’s hard,” she said, not really smiling, but not…
not smiling either. Her eyes were warm, glistening pools of green, pulling me in for a soak.
“I’m saying… that even though I knew all the things that could go wrong, or would end up being a challenge, I wanted to be here. I want to be anywhere you are.”
She kissed me then, sweetly, but with purpose, warding off my earlier worries. My hands crept up her back to find their way to her hair, sinking into the silky tresses. She felt like what I wanted all my hard days at work to end, and every other day in between.
“You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that.” I pecked her lips, then her chin, and her nose.
Wyatt chuckled softly, her face so close to mine I could still feel her warm breath. “But-”
And there it was. My smile faltered, and I stopped breathing altogether.
“There’s a lot out here,” she said, fidgeting with the collar of my shirt. “A lot of traffic and so much public living that it makes me wonder whether I’m cut out for it. Whether I can fit into this world at all. But don’t freak out, because all that’s normal. And I’m here. I’m here, okay?”
“I knew it.” Cameron popped into the kitchen, her head appearing before the rest of her body followed. “The others are convinced you two are getting drinks, just like you said, but I bet them I’d walk in here and find you making out.”
She looked so smug, standing there with her arms crossed over her chest. Wyatt was the first to move and I let her, going back to my station at the kitchen counter.
“If you were so sure about it, why are you in here interrupting us?” I raised an eyebrow and bit back my laughter as Cameron realized what she’d done.
“Shit, sorry.” She covered her mouth with her hand, muffling her sniggering. “Let me finish the margaritas and you guys can go get a room, or whatever.”
My cellphone rang just as Wyatt entered into a back and forth over who got to make the cocktails, and I walked into the dining room to take it. On my right, I could hear the gang’s animated conversation, and back in the kitchen Cameron was trying to compromise drinks responsibilities with Wyatt.
I answered the call. It was Matt, my operations guy, and he started talking immediately, skipping over the formalities and diving straight into the issue at hand.
“What do you mean he’s going for the mountain spot?” My grip tightened on my phone and I heard the plastic cover creak under the pressure.
Matt was telling me about one of our biggest rival developers from the city, and how he got word that the scumbag had set up meetings with zoning board members in the coming week. This hot off the press call that announced my bid for that same area.
“Everything okay?” Cameron hummed as she danced by me with a serving tray filled with drinks. Wyatt was close behind with the rest of the margarita mix in the blender.
“Fine. I’ll be out in a second.”
Cameron moved on, but Wyatt’s gaze lingered. I gave her a reassuring nod, waving her off with my hand. She smiled and went out onto the patio with the others.
“Tell the team I want everyone in the office first thing.” I turned my attention back to Matt. “We’re getting to the bottom of this, and fast. I’m not losing out to Delaney Dev. Not with this location.”
“Give me everything you have.” I was on Matt the moment he walked into my office. “I can’t believe the asshole’s trying to sabotage our deal this late in the game.”
Matt smiled tiredly, his perfectly slicked back hair and expensive suit unable to distract from the pillow creases on the side of his face.
“Good morning to you too, boss,” he murmured, handing me the folder he’d come in with. “It’s all there, and Penny’s bringing the call logs she bagged from her ear on the ground out there.”
I hungrily scanned through the pages in front of me and my heart dropped to my stomach.
It wasn’t just buttering up the zoning board to secure permits, Damien Delaney had been snooping around to try to get his hands on our bid.
If he had the number we were coming in at, he could easily go one higher and land the deal.
“That’s pretty much the face I made when I got the tip.” Matt sank into a chair opposite my desk. “He’s pulling out all the stops and I don’t know why. His company doesn’t have the kind of vision we do to turn that place into a resort haven, and he knows it.”
I was only half listening to him while I read the report, thinking that the only explanation could be that this was personal. I’d trumped him to a few deals in the past, and Damian was never one to let go of a grudge.
“Are the others here yet?” I looked up at him, my jaw aching with the tension held there. Of all the things to be happening at this point in time, sabotage was the worst of it.
Matt nodded and rose from his seat. “I told them to meet in the boardroom and took the liberty of having breakfast delivered. Hope you don’t mind.”
I stood, too, scooping the papers into a wad and stuffing them back into the folder. “I don’t know how any of you could have an appetite at a time like this, but knock yourselves out, I guess.”
“That’s a pity, because I could eat.”
My head snapped toward the door to my office where Wyatt was standing, picnic basket in hand, a checkered blanket tucked beneath her left arm.
“What are you doing here?” I moved around my desk to go and meet her, giving her a light kiss on the cheek.
Matt grinned sheepishly and shimmied past the two of us on his way out. “I’ll tell the others they don’t have to save you a bagel.”
“To answer your question…” Wyatt moved into my office and proceeded to spread out the picnic blanket she’d brought. “You left in such a hurry this morning that I didn’t have a chance to feed you. So I figured I’d surprise you with breakfast.”
I closed the door, watching her in astonishment as she went about unpacking the delectable treats she’d whipped up at home.
“I’ll tell you what.” She didn’t pause in her actions, or look up while she spoke. “Food tastes so much better with fresh ingredients. I’m really spoiled over here.”
“I’m the one who’s spoiled.” I kicked off my heels and crept onto the blanket with Wyatt. “You didn’t have to do all this.”
She kissed me. On the mouth. Tasting of strawberries mixed with the fresh mint of our toothpaste. I licked the remains of her from my lips, savoring it for all it was worth.
“I know I didn’t have to, but I wanted to,” Wyatt replied with a soft smile. “Besides, I missed you. It wasn’t fun waking up in an empty bed.”
“Oh, really?” I tucked her hair behind her ear, allowing my fingers to linger at the sensitive spot where her jawline started. Then I leaned in and pressed my lips just there. “So you didn’t come here for breakfast. You came here for… fun…”
Wyatt’s eyebrow quirked up, and a small smile teased the corners of her lips. “Why can’t it be a bit of both?”
My motion was quick, surprising a delighted squeal out of her as I pushed her down on her back, positioning myself on top of her.
“How about a little of one, and a lot of the other?”
A throaty laugh bubbled out of her as I dipped my head, trailing wet kisses along her neck. My thigh slipped between her legs and I rocked my hips, working up the most tantalizing friction in just the right spot. Wyatt moaned into my open mouth, her tongue darting out to find mine.
“Don’t you have a meeting to get to?” she asked in a husky voice, one laden with growing arousal.
“The meeting of minds can wait.” I nipped her bottom lip and gave it a small tug.
“It’s the meeting of other things that I’m interested in right now.
And weren’t you the one who came in here complaining about me leaving you all…
frustrated this morning?” I broke up my words with searing kisses peppered over her neck, chest, face…
“I refuse to have my reputation tarnished, my name dragged through the mud. I’m nothing if not the most attentive, generous, indefatigable lover. ”
I slid my hand down between us, ghosting lower and lower, until I could cup her warmth. Wyatt writhed beneath me, bucking her hips so she could get more of my touch.
A loud rap at my office door made us both freeze.
“I’m only knocking because I know what I walked out of a few minutes ago.” Matt’s voice filtered through the door. “And I didn’t call because I figured you’d, uh, have your hands full. But we’re ready when you are, boss.”
I collapsed onto Wyatt with a disappointed groan, remembering the shitshow that demanded my full attention.
“It’s okay.” She smoothed back my hair. “Go, do your thing. We can pick this up later.”
I scrambled to my feet, straightening my clothes and stepping back into my heels. “Later we have Hayden’s launch, remember? So it’ll have to be after that.”
“Then it’ll be after that,” Wyatt said brightly, placing a chaste kiss on my forehead. “I’ll be careful not to eat too much at the new restaurant so I can be at my best when you get hold of me after.”
The wink she gave me stole my breath away, breath I was still trying to normalize when Matt knocked again.