Chapter 4
Ridge
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked into the house after a long day at work.
One of my clients had been an absolute pain in the ass to deal with.
They generally were once they began to establish a name for themselves.
The sweet, innocent, dreamer artists almost always turned into attention-hungry divas.
Usually, it was only for a short time until something humbled them again.
With Whitney Parker, the move to diva attitude happened almost overnight.
She had one hit but in her mind, she was bigger than Taylor Swift.
Since it was my business, hands-on client handholding was normally left to the agents, but she had been such a nightmare client that her agent couldn’t stand to work with her for another minute.
“Hey, how did today go?” Vi asked as she peeked around the corner from the kitchen.
“Whitney Parker,” I announced and Vi winced.
“Caroline reached her limit then?” My wife knew all about my clients because she was my person – the one I talked to about the ups and downs of the business.
She was my safe space and there wasn’t a single second where I had to worry about her telling anyone else the things we discussed.
Violet was a vault. It was nice to see her making a home-cooked meal in our kitchen.
It had been a fifty-fifty tossup lately whether she’d be here or I would get a text to order delivery.
“What are you making?” I asked as I leaned in and kissed her neck while I checked what was under the lid on the pot.
“Chicken and dumplings.”
“You are a goddess among women.” Chicken and dumplings was my favorite comfort food, and it was perfect after the day I had.
“What did Miss Whitney do this time?”
“She, honest to God, wanted to know if I could set up one of our other clients to make a sex tape with her and then leak it.”
Vi audibly gasped and then glanced up at me with a look of complete disgust. “Why on Earth would any woman ask such a thing? She already has a great start to her career. That could tank everything for her, especially since most of her audience is younger girls.”
“That is exactly what I told her. You can’t go from being a wholesome singer with tween and teen fans to a porn queen overnight while we’re still handling her first album release. It’s like she wanted to travel warp speed past all the steppingstones we talked about in the beginning.”
“I told you she was a little too wild to go down the wholesome route.”
“You should come work for me, sweets. I ran your thoughts by Caroline in the beginning, but she thought she could make it work.”
“And now, she’s shoving her failures off on you.” Vi leaned in and went up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on my mouth. I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her tighter to me.
“Missed you, my sweet flower.”
“Missed you too, honey. It feels like we’re ships passing in the night here lately.”
“Yeah, why is that?” I asked and apparently didn’t manage to hide my tone from her. Vi stepped back and pulled free of my arms. Before she could mask it, I could see the hurt look on her face.
“I’ve been busy with that party I told you about.”
“Seems like a lot of work to go into one party. It’s a birthday, right? It’s not a major charity event with a bunch of moving parts.”
“That’s true, but it has a lot of intricacies that require a lot of time and far too much planning.” Vi shrugged her shoulders. “The payout for it will be huge, so I guess it will all work out in the end.”
“You don’t need money, Vi. It’s not like we’re living hand-to-mouth here. We’re supposed to be working toward a family and you’re either never home or too tired to do that this past month.”
“Sorry,” she whispered. I hated myself then because my wife looked like a kicked puppy and that wasn’t my intention.
“Can you just promise me that this is the last one for a while?” She nodded her head as I pulled her close. “I know you love doing all that party organization stuff, but this one is killing you and we never see each other anymore. If I didn’t know you so well, I’d swear you were having an affair.”
Her head snapped up and eyes narrowed on me. “That would never happen. You are the love of my life, Ridge. My soulmate. The man put on this earth just for me. Who could ever compete with that?”
I kissed the top of her head, then the tip of her nose, and finally her lips. “No one. Remember that when you’re prancing all over Atlanta and the outlying areas making all the men out there drool over your perfection.”
“Stop it.” She huffed and turned back to the stove to start plating our meals. “I made some fresh bread to go with this, too.”
“Honey butter?”
“Honey butter and apple butter are both on the table already. I’ll grab the sweet tea, if you can carry the rest in.
” That was the thing about my wife. She was always thoughtful.
If she knew I liked something, she went out of her way to make sure that I had it available to me when I needed it most. Whether that thing I needed was my wife, comfort foods, or a specific suit for a meeting, Violet had this weird sense and made it happen before I could even ask.
She took care of me, plain and simple. She did it while working her own job, too.
Granted, her job was supposed to be more of a hobby that she took especially seriously when she would organize charity events.
Still, she did it all with a smile on her face and almost never complained.
There were days when I wondered how I got so lucky.
In the grand scheme of things, Violet working extra hard on someone’s party shouldn’t bother me the way it did.
The problem was that I was ready to start a family with her, and it felt like the minute I got serious about it, she took on one of the most time-consuming projects possible.
It made me wonder if she still wanted the same thing, or if this was her subtle way of telling me she wasn’t ready for that next step yet.
“You were put on this earth especially for me, too. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know it; and you best not ever forget it.” She winked at me and turned away to go grab the sweet tea from the refrigerator as I took our food into the dining room.
We rarely used it, but once in a while, it was like my wife could sense when I had a long day.
She’d make one of my favorite home-cooked meals and serve it up as fancy as a restaurant would.
“Did you need to go shower the day off first?” Vi asked as she came into the dining room behind me. “I didn’t even think about it before I started dishing everything up.”
I shook my head. “It can wait. Maybe, when we’re done, you can come help me wash away the day.”
Violet’s responding grin was all the answer I needed. “That sounds like the perfect way to wind down. Sorry my schedule has been so crazy. My client is very hard to please, and since part of it is a surprise, it makes things even more difficult.”
“How about we put talk of work aside for the rest of the night and just enjoy our time together?”
“That sounds perfect.”
I should have broached the subject of our future family endeavors with her, but part of me wanted to eat our meal in peace because I wasn’t sure how that conversation might turn out.
I hated that I had begun to doubt my wife lately.
That wasn’t us. It felt like something had rocked our foundation and if I asked the wrong question, it might all come falling down in a pile of rubble that no longer resembled the castle we built together.
After we ate and got everything cleaned up, I took Vi’s hand and guided her upstairs to our master suite. Once we were inside, I pulled her close and raised her hands above her head.
“Leave them.” It was an order, but one she was all too willing to comply with.
I ran my fingers up from her hips to the underneath of her shirt and then continued to ghost across her skin as I slowly pulled her shirt up and over her head.
I felt her shiver beneath my fingertips as gooseflesh erupted in the wake of my touch.
“Always so beautiful, sweets.” I tossed her shirt to the floor and gently pulled her arms down to her sides.
“Keep them there,” I stated and locked eyes with hers.
My wife was a beautiful woman. She had mahogany-colored hair that was so thick you couldn’t even see her scalp when she tried to part it.
I always loved her thick luscious hair. I pulled it back off her shoulders and bound it into one of my fists as I traced my fingers over her shoulder and down her arm.
Violet shivered again as her unusual purple-blue eyes stayed locked on my face.
“I always love the way you look at me.”
“How do I look at you, sweets?”
“Like I’m your everything.”
“You are,” I reminded her as my free hand trailed back behind her shoulders to find the clasp of her bra.
“I’m always mesmerized by your body. This silky, golden skin.
Those stormy eyes of yours that look at me with so much love,” I whispered against her neck as I leaned in to pinch just so on the bra clasps to make them fall free.
Her hair slid to curtain around her back and arms as I let go and moved to pull each of her bra straps past her shoulders so that gravity would do the rest of the work for me.
As the garment fell to the floor, I trailed my fingers teasingly over her stiffened, rosy nipples and leaned in to give a playful nip to each.
Violet reached up to grab hold of my hair, but I popped her hand and then grabbed both and put them back down by her sides.
“Now, now, now, sweets, you know the rules. Those hands stay where I put them or we do this the not so fun way.”
“Okay.” Her answer came on a whimper as I sucked her nipple into my mouth and tugged gently with my teeth.
“God, Ridge!” she hissed as her chest thrust out further in an effort to encourage me to continue.
My beautiful wife couldn’t help herself.
If she couldn’t use her hands, she would use her whole body to try to get me to do her bidding.
Normally, I would relent and give her exactly what she wanted.
There was a part of me that wanted to punish her for not being as available to me over the past couple months as she usually was.
I made a noise in the back of my throat and pulled away as she frowned at me.
“Slide,” I ordered as I tapped her left thigh, and dropped to my knees.
Violet complied readily and slid her foot out further so that she stood with her feet planted a little more than shoulder width apart.
I unbuttoned her pants, pulled the zipper, and tugged until the material came down enough that I knew we would have to wiggle it a bit to get the waistline past my wife’s plump ass.
She was trim thanks to working out, but she had inherited one hell of an ass from her mother.
She had the tits to balance things out. Neither were over the top in size, as it was all proportionate to the rest of her body.
My wife rocked that curvy, hourglass figure pinup models used to have before too-skinny became the go-to for the fashion industry.
“Perfect.” I kissed just beneath her bellybutton.
“You won’t be saying that after I have a baby.” That admission gave me pause. Maybe that was why she hadn’t seemed as enthusiastic about trying for a baby with me the past couple months.
“Sweets,” I glanced up and locked eyes with her as I traced my fingers all over her mostly flat stomach.
“Any changes that take place here because you carried our child will be magnificent. If you get little lines,” I ran my fingers from her bellybutton down to the edge of her panties, “then they would be a reminder of how you offered me your body, grew our baby, and turned us from a couple into a family. They would be the roadmap of our love for one another and any child we are inevitably blessed with. Nothing in the world could be sexier than seeing the reminder of the greatest gift you give someone.”
“Ridge,” her voice was clogged with emotion. She trailed a finger down my cheek and then traced my lips. I didn’t bother to scold her for moving again. My wife needed to feel the truth of the words on my lips.
“You will always be the most beautiful woman in the world to me, Vi. Only you. Whether you’re this size, full of our baby in your belly, or pleasantly plump and going gray one day…
” I grinned up at her. “I can’t wait until your hair turns silver and makes you look like a mystical goddess in conjunction with those purple eyes.
No matter what, I will always be your biggest fan. ”
I reached up and swiped away a tear that had fallen from her eyes. Those amethyst orbs swam with more unshed moisture as I kissed her belly again and then slid her panties down to land at her feet with her pants.
“Lift,” I tapped her left ankle, and she immediately did as I asked. Once her shoe and sock were removed, I slid her foot free of the pant leg and panties and then gently placed her foot back down on the ground before I repeated my actions on the other side.
After Violet was stripped bare before me, I stood and pulled her into my body. I looked down into her eyes and smiled. “I will love you in every incarnation along our journey. Whatever happens to this body is part of our story together.”
“How did I get so lucky?” she whispered as I leaned down and kissed her senseless.