16. Kyle
16
KYLE
“Sienna!”
I’m on my feet the instant the elevator door opens, but Victoria beats me to it.
She crosses the living room, her feet barely touching the floor, and throws her arms around her best friend. They stay that way, locked in an embrace forged on years of friendship, until eventually, Victoria releases Sienna and leads her into the living room, where Caleb and I are waiting for them.
A huge part of me is relieved that Sienna is here and not in the arms of the slimeball Nick Morris. But one look at her puffy eyes and pale skin fills me with guilt that I’m still putting my own feelings first.
Her expression crumples when she spots me, and everything I wanted to say evaporates like condensation on a window.
“I should go.” Sienna’s shoulders drop. “I don’t want to interfere.”
“Not without meeting your goddaughter first.” Victoria’s eyes meet mine briefly as she goes to the bassinet currently parked at the end of the couch, and lifts baby Holly into her arms. She coos at the infant, nuzzles her nose, and then hands her over to Sienna. “Holly, meet your Auntie Sienna.”
I watch Sienna cradle the baby in the crook of her arm and study the tiny pink face, tears welling in her eyes. Happy tears. Not the hopeless tears that she’d shed at the gallery earlier. And my chest swells at the sight of her with a baby in her arms.
Sienna deserves happiness.
She deserves to have everything that she’s ever wanted, everything that she’s worked so hard for.
She sure as fuck does not deserve to have it all crushed right in front of her eyes, by a man who wants to reclaim his ‘father’ title after twenty years’ absence.
He had to be involved in the break-in. He had to be .
“She’s so beautiful,” Sienna whispers.
Victoria’s proud smile lights up the entire room. “She is.”
Caleb rubs his hands together. “Time to open that bottle of Moet we’ve been saving, now that you’re both here.”
“Decaf coffee for me.” Victoria stands on tiptoes and kisses my brother lightly on the lips before sitting beside Sienna on the couch. “I don’t want to get our daughter drunk.”
I’ve never been jealous of my brother, of any of my brothers, but this scene of domestic bliss, of normality and love and warmth, tugs at something deep inside. I want this.
More importantly, I want this with Sienna.
Caleb busies himself in the kitchen, his eyes constantly seeking out his wife and daughter, and I hear the gentle pop of the cork from the champagne bottle. He returns shortly after with three slender flutes filled with bubbles and a cup of steaming coffee for Victoria.
“To family,” Caleb says, raising his glass.
“To family.”
Finally, it is Victoria who brings up the subject of the gallery. “Kyle told us what happened, Si.” Her voice is gentle. “You know that you don’t have to deal with this alone.”
Sienna lets out a tiny snort before she can stop herself. Then, realizing how it sounded, she shakes her head, heat flooding her cheeks. “Sorry, V. That wasn’t aimed at you.”
I replay in my head all that I can remember from our conversation at the gallery, and the warmth in my chest subsides when I realize that it was aimed at me.
“I was trying to help, Sienna. I’ve secured the gallery, and I’ve got a team of men working in there through the night to repair the damage. I only wish I could do more.”
I set my champagne glass down on the coffee table between the couches and rest my elbows on my thighs. Sienna and I both keep our eyes firmly fixed on the baby, and it occurs to me then that Holly is acting as a kind of diffuser to moods and tempers that might otherwise have been running riot around the penthouse apartment.
“I know.” Sienna’s gaze meets mine and something seems to connect between us; it’s fragile, as delicate as butterfly wings, but the fact that it’s there at all gives me hope. “It’s been a long and eventful day.”
The roller coaster reaches the apex and plummets towards the ground. My hands ball into fists, every fiber of my being suddenly on high alert. I ignore the warning glance from my brother.
“What did he?—”
“What else has happened, Si?” Victoria interjects, her voice low, reminding me that there’s a baby in the room.
“I…” Sienna sucks in a deep breath, eyes closed momentarily. “It’s nothing. Nothing I can’t handle anyway.”
“Sienna.” I wait for her to give me her full attention. “Do you want me to leave, so that you can speak to Victoria in private?”
It isn’t the first time that I’ve given her the opportunity to let me go, and I doubt that it will be the last. I’ll keep throwing the ball into her court until she understands that I mean what I say. Until she understands exactly how I feel about her.
Her eyes linger on mine. Then, “Nick proposed to me tonight.”
My pulse quickens. I suppress an image of Nick Morris going down on one knee and slipping a diamond ring onto Sienna’s finger. My gaze tracks to her left hand, which is still ring-less. For now.
Victoria almost chokes on a mouthful of coffee. Caleb reflexively leans closer and rubs her back while she grabs a tissue from a silk-covered box on the table.
“Where the fuck did that come from?” Victoria’s hand flies to her mouth. “Sorry,” she whispers to the room in general. “I know I shouldn’t swear in front of the baby, but what the actual fuck !”
Sienna smiles for the first time since she arrived. “You’re only saying out loud what I was thinking when I saw him go down on one knee.”
She deliberately avoids meeting my gaze, and I don’t know if it’s because she’s embarrassed after what happened between the two of us, or if she’s about to shatter my heart and toss it straight back to me.
“So, you had no idea that it was coming?” Victoria asks.
“No.” Baby Holly wriggles in Sienna’s arms, distracting her temporarily, before settling down again. “I mean, literally, no. We’ve been on a few dates. I know I’m out of practice, but if there were any signs along the way, I totally missed them.”
She’s saying everything that I want to hear, but my skin is still crawling at the thought of that man proposing to the woman I love. I don’t know him. I’ve spent very little time in his company, but what I have seen doesn’t resemble a man who is besotted with a beautiful woman.
“You didn’t miss them,” I say, and all eyes are on me. “Do you honestly believe that he’s in love with you? Has he told you that he loves you?”
“Okay.” Caleb is wearing a sweatshirt and jogging pants, and his stubble is longer than I think I’ve ever seen it. He’s comfy and contented. But his eyes are still alert. “Sienna, I think what my brother is trying to say is, trust your instincts. If you didn’t see it coming, it’s because you were not supposed to.”
Sienna’s gaze slides around the room, settling on each of us in turn.
“Caleb is right, Si,” Victoria says. “If it was what you wanted, you wouldn’t be here right now without a ring on your finger.”
“There’s too much going on.” Sienna’s voice is clogged with emotion. “I don’t even know what to think anymore.”
“Hey.” Victoria places her arm around her friend’s shoulders and wipes the tears from her cheek with her thumb. “It’s hardly surprising with your father rocking up out of the blue and then the gallery. If you want my opinion, the guy’s a fucking asshole for proposing to you tonight when you’re clearly struggling.”
“I’m starting a swear-box,” Caleb chimes in.
“Sorry.” Victoria wrinkles her nose. “But he is. I’ve never met the guy, and I already don’t like him.”
“You’ve never met him?” I blurt out.
Sienna and Victoria have been best friends most of their lives. They tell each other everything, they practically raised Abigail together, and yet Sienna has never introduced Nick to her. The more I learn about the man, the more I see him as a shadow lurking in the background of Sienna’s world just waiting to reveal his true colors.
Caleb’s eyes flicker my way. He’s thinking the same as I am.
“The opportunity never arose.” Sienna shrugs. “I never thought…”
“You never thought that he would propose to you one day,” I complete the sentence for her.
“What did you say to him, Si?” Victoria poses the question that I’ve been trying to swallow.
“I didn’t. He didn’t give me a chance. He told me to take as much time as I needed to think about it, and then he took a shower. That’s when I came here.”
Victoria furrows her brow. “He took a shower? The jerk proposed to you and then jumped in the shower? What the actual fu—” She sucks on her bottom lip and swallows the expletive. “What did you do with the ring?”
“I left it on the kitchen counter.” Sienna peers at the baby in her arms, a wistful smile appearing on her lips. “I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
Yes!
I stop myself from fist-pumping the air.
He proposed, and Sienna isn’t there; she’s here, with us, and I’m not letting her out of my sight again.
“That’s your answer then, Si,” Victoria says. “You know my motto: if it isn’t a definite yes, it’s a no.”
“What should I do?” Sienna puffs up her cheeks and releases a steady breath.
I’m hoping Victoria will tell her to say no. Let him down gently, or not so gently; either way, the answer should remain the same.
Instead, she says, “I think you should take some time out, Si. Caleb and I have been talking about it.”
She deliberately avoids making eye contact with me, because whatever it is they’ve been discussing, no one thought to include me.
“We’ll pay for you to go to Ireland.” Before Sienna can protest, Victoria continues, “You need some time and space to breathe. Without anything getting in the way.”
“There’s an annex connected to the Murray family home,” Caleb joins in. “You can have the entire place to yourself. No one will interfere.”
“You can paint all day and all night if you want.” Victoria smiles. “This is what you need, Si. You’ve needed it for a long while, only I couldn’t help you before. But I can now. Go to Ireland. Paint. Sleep. Drink Guinness every day if you want.”
“It’s full of iron,” Caleb adds.
“Just learn to exist again, and everything will fall into place.”
Sienna’s eyes fill with tears again. “I don’t know… I’m not sure I have the energy…”
“Which is exactly my point!” Victoria’s lips press together in the kind of stern expression I always associate with one of my middle-grade school teachers. She turns to me. “Kyle, help me sell it to her, will you?”
Where do I start?
“It’s the best place in the world to relax, Sienna. Fresh air. Green fields. More cows than people.” I can’t contain my smile when I see her mouth curving upwards.
“I’m grateful,” she says, “truly I am, but I can’t.”
“Why not?” Victoria is still wearing her school marm look.
“The gallery?—”
“Is taken care of,” I say. “Apart from the artwork, and you’re the only person who can solve that problem.” I pause, picking up on Victoria’s enthusiasm. “Try to imagine setting up your easel with a backdrop of snowy mountains, trees, and streams filled with salmon.”
“I won’t find many clients in an Irish field filled with cows.”
“They have Internet in Ireland too.”
“What about my apartment? I have to vacate it soon.” She’s running out of steam, and I wonder how many arguments with Victoria she has lost in the past.
“That’s sorted then.” Victoria finishes her coffee and eyes up the glasses of champagne on the glass-topped table. “Vacate it now, then there’s nothing holding you back.”
“It’s not that easy.” Sienna slumps back against the sofa, and the baby lets out a feeble cry.
“It’s absolutely that easy.” Victoria checks the time on her watch. “Three hours. My baby is hungry.” She scoops Holly out of Sienna’s arms and sits back down, placing a muslin cloth over the baby’s face while she prepares to feed her.
Sienna still hasn’t touched her champagne as if she’s afraid to let the bubbles go to her head. “I’ve never traveled that far on my own. I’ve never traveled anywhere on my own.”
“Si,” Victoria says, “you’re the strongest person I know. You’re not going to let a flight to Dublin beat you.”
“It isn’t just the flight though.”
She doesn’t need to say anything else. I can see it in her eyes that this isn’t about the flight. She’s overwhelmed by the curveballs that life keeps throwing at her whenever she believes that she’s finally on the right path.
“I’ll travel with you.” The words spill into the room before I can think this through. “I’ll introduce you to the Murrays, make sure you’re settled, and then I’ll fly back to New York. Victoria is right. A week in Ireland will make you wonder why you stayed in the city for so long.”
Caleb is quiet.
Victoria knows how I feel about Sienna, and she gives me a smile that says she’d hug me if she wasn’t currently feeding her baby.
“You’re needed here, Kyle,” Sienna says, shaking her head. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking. I’m offering. No strings attached.”
There’s nothing I’d enjoy more than staying in Ireland with her. But the first hint of me pulling a stunt on her like the one Nick Morris pulled tonight will have her packing a suitcase and leaving the city behind in a cloud of grimy polluted dust.
It could go either way. After what Sienna has been through, she could thank me with a dazzling smile and ask me to prepare the private jet, or she could dash into the elevator before any of us can stop her and run straight back to the surgeon with the ulterior motive. If it’s the latter, I expect I’ll be serving a prison sentence soon for hurling him from the top of the Wraith.
“How long could I stay?”
The question sends a surge of adrenaline through my veins.
We’re traveling to Ireland together.
Me and Sienna.
Sienna and me.
I’m finally going to get her out of Mr. Morris’s sleazy clutches and somewhere safe, somewhere that she might hopefully reevaluate our relationship without the pressures of the city weighing down on her.
“As long as you like.” Caleb picks up the conversation while my heart performs a tap dance inside my rib cage. “As long as it takes.”
Sienna stands and sways on the spot, sitting back down on the couch heavily. She raises a hand to her temple and closes her eyes.
“Sienna?” I crouch on the floor in front of her, acutely conscious that I’m the second man to go down on their knees for her tonight. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“I’m fine. I just came over a little dizzy. I should go.”
She grips my hand tightly and tries to stand again, still wobbly.
“It’s the champagne. I haven’t eaten.”
“You’re coming with me.” I link my arm with hers; she’s shaking, which is hardly surprising after the day she has had. “You can have my spare room for tonight. We’ll discuss the trip to Ireland tomorrow once you’ve had some sleep and some food.”
She doesn’t even argue.
Victoria’s eyes follow us across the room. “I’ll come and see you in the morning, Si.”
In the elevator, we stand side by side and stare at the door. My apartment is on the level below the penthouse, and barely sixty seconds pass by before we’re both standing in my living room, the New York skyline winking at us through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The lights activate as we enter the apartment.
It’s warm inside.
But Sienna still looks like a deer stunned by the headlights of a rapidly approaching truck with a carcass clinging to the front bumper.
“Here, let me take your coat.” My fingers brush her shoulders, sending sparks of electricity directly to my brain.
I can’t ignore them. I can’t ignore her perfume, or the curve of her cheek, or the way her hair sweeps across my chest as she turns around to face me. But I force my hands to remain by my sides, her coat tucked into the crook of my arm.
“Sienna, you know I had nothing to do with the break-in at the gallery. Don’t you?”
Her eyes dart around the apartment, but at least she has stopped trembling. “Yes.” It’s barely more than a whisper. “What happened to my father?”
“He won’t be returning to the Wraith.”
“Should I be worried about him?”
Is it my imagination or has she moved closer to me? So close. It would be so easy for me to lean in and kiss her neck, the dip between her collarbones, her earlobes.
My cock is already halfway there.
“Only if you feel that he’s worth your energy.”
“All my stuff is still at my apartment.”
Now the huskiness in her voice is unmistakable, and I allow myself a glimmer of hope that she ran away from Nick this evening because of me.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Why are you doing all this for me, Kyle?”
“Sienna.” My own voice matches hers, and my hand entwines itself around a lock of her fiery hair, almost of its own accord. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”
Tiny dimples appear either side of her mouth when she smiles, and I can’t believe I haven’t noticed them before. “I think I have.”
“ Mo leoin . You are the most beautiful woman I have ever met.”
I toss her coat aside. No distractions.
I cup her neck with one hand and pull her towards me. She doesn’t resist. I lower my mouth to hers, and she parts her lips to let me in.
Her kisses are hungry. Frantic. Feverish almost. Tiny whimpers escape as she slides her fingers through my hair.
“Kyle, what are we doing?” she whispers, her oxygen mingling with mine.
“We’re trusting our instincts. I want you, Sienna.” I pick her up and wrap her legs around my waist. “I’ve wanted you since the first moment I set eyes on you.”
She silences me with her tongue.
She grips my hair tightly, holding me against her like her life depends on never letting me go.
Her passion matches mine, pumping my blood around my veins and engorging my already throbbing cock.
I cross the room blindly, relying on my senses to get me to the couch where I set her down and start fumbling with the zipper of her pants. I feel Sienna’s fingers tugging at my waistband. Frantic. Desperate.
“Tell me you want me, leoin.”
“I want you.” Breathless.
“Show me.”
She releases my cock from my boxers and wraps her fingers around the girth, teasing the head, rubbing the leaking pre-cum around it. I pull away just enough to drag her pants down over her hips. A quick glance. White lace panties.
White has never looked so fucking good on anyone.
She guides my cock down to her pussy, and I push it through the soft fabric, feeling the lace tighten around me as I try to find my way deep inside.
“Do you like that?”
“Yes.” Her voice is breathy, her eyes glittering.
I kiss her long and hard, while my cock frees itself from her panties and dives deep. “I’ve got to have you now, leoin.” I slide out again, all the way, her juices clinging to me.
I want to take her so fast that she forgets to breathe. I want to take it slowly, savoring every single part of her, tasting her all over, watching her orgasm carrying her away from the rest of the world.
“I’m going to fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before.” I probe her mouth with my tongue and nibble her bottom lip while she watches me wide-eyed. “I’m going to fuck you till you beg me to stop.”
She smiles. “Never.”
I ram my cock into her sex, and she instinctively arches her spine. I want to chew her nipples. I want to brand her with my kisses, but that will have to wait.
Cradling her head with my arms, I pound her pussy, deeper and deeper, until it’s all that exists. Her hips meet mine. Her wetness seeps onto my balls. At some point we roll off the couch and Sienna is on top of me, but we don’t stop.
“Ride me, leoin.”
My butt bounces off the floor as I thrust my cock up and into her. Our pants are tangled around our legs. We’re a sweaty mess of colliding limbs and hips and mouths, and I grip her hips tightly, guiding her sex up and down my cock.
“Is this what you want?”
“Yes,” she gasps. “Yes!”
“Take me in your mouth, Sienna. Now.” I lift her off me and position her body so that the head of my cock is rubbing her lips.
Sienna slants her eyes. Her lips close around me, and she starts sucking.
“Don’t stop.” My breathing is growing ragged. I’m so close. “I’m coming, leoin. Suck me dry.”
My entire body judders as I ejaculate down her throat.