Chapter 32 Theo
THEO
LESS THAN FORTY-EIGHT hours after our elopement and we were back at Shep’s place, where it looked like a bomb had gone off.
My shit was everywhere, boxes half unpacked, garment bags lying over the couches, but Shep’s stuff was almost worse.
He’d been taking everything out of drawers and closets to make room for me, so now his deluxe penthouse was in a state of disarray I knew had to be making him crazy.
He was order and control, and this was the visual representation of our lives colliding at high speed.
I stood in the center of the living room surveying the damage. This wasn’t a small place by any means, certainly not by Manhattan standards, but suddenly it felt too small to bear our big lives.
“Shep?” I called out, not sure where he’d disappeared to until he responded. I found him in the main bedroom sitting cross-legged on the floor and looking like he was negotiating with God on how to fit both of our shoe collections in the closet.
“Maybe we just turn the guest room into a closet,” he murmured half to himself as he placed another of my shoeboxes on top of the pile.
“Eh, we don’t want anyone staying with us anyway.”
Shep smirked and pushed the boxes up against the wall, and I noticed a small carton off to the side with photos spilling out of them.
I was allowed to be nosy; that was what he got when he married me. No more secrets or surprises. Besides, I wanted to see all the hot younger photos of Shep, especially if they showcased any deviant behavior from college.
I grabbed a handful and flipped through them. They didn’t seem to be in chronological order, with some of him from his father’s presidency, and then others of his first days developing his magazine, Lincoln.
Aaand then came the more personal photos: Shep on the beach with a group of friends tossing a football; Shep in a nice suit, maybe early twenties, and posing with an actor I recognized. One of him with his arms wrapped around another guy in a teasing, but obviously close pose, and…
Him and King on the balcony of King’s place in the Caribbean, both shirtless and smiling at the camera in the selfie.
“Uh, Shep?” I said, and waited until he looked up to wave the photo. “You’ve still got a box of pictures of your exes.”
He barely gave them a passing glance as he pulled out more boxes from the closet. “Yeah, well, I didn’t run off with any of them to get married.”
Well, he had me there. “Touché,” I said, dropping the pictures back on top of the crate and flopping back on the bed, only to hear the crunch of something beneath my ass.
I rolled to the side and pulled out a now-mangled basket and hoped that it wasn’t a family heirloom of some kind.
“Those shoes are not going to fit,” I said.
“My clothes? Definitely not going to fit.”
As if to make my point, his foot knocked into the pile of stacked shoes and they went tumbling, falling open and landing on Shep.
“Fuck me,” he said with a sigh, picking up a boot and throwing it across the room. He leaned back against the wall, his brow creased with annoyance.
He was still the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, even frustrated. Especially when frustrated. It made me want to do things to his body that would have him moaning in seconds.
Impossible at the moment when there wasn’t an inch of free space to get him flat on his back.
“Babe,” I said, kicking a pile at my feet out of the way, “don’t take this the wrong way, but we can’t live here.”
“The mess is temporary. Maybe we can hire someone to organize—”
“It’s not just that.”
“I thought you didn’t want to stay at your place?”
“I don’t.” The royal residence we had here in the city was nice, but too stuffy and not right at all for the two of us.
And even though I’d always enjoyed being at Shep’s place.
.. “Maybe we could make a place that’s both of ours.
Somewhere you don’t have to move your shit to make room for all of mine and we can just… start all over.”
Shep studied me, a pensive look on his face, and then one side of his mouth quirked up. “Did you just call me ‘babe’?”
“I don’t think I’ve called anyone that in my life.”
“You did. I heard you.”
“I called you babe?”
“Mhmm.” Shep moved onto his knees, resting his arms on my thighs as he sat between them. “Feel free to call me that anytime.”
“Oh, you like a nickname,” I said, running my fingers through his hair. “I think I can come up with something better than that. Maybe something in—”
“Not French.”
“—French.”
He groaned, and it only made me smile.
“I’ll give you something good, babe, trust me,” I said.
“I do.” He ran his large hands up my thighs possessively and squeezed. “Are you serious about not wanting to stay here? We didn’t really talk about it, I just assumed…”
“I love your place. But it’s your place. It might be nice to have our place.”
“And somewhere a bit bigger.”
“Somewhere with enough soundproofing that the neighbors don’t call the cops when they hear you scream my name.”
That had Shep slowly smiling. “Somewhere private. A place that’s just ours.” He nodded at me. “I like it.”
“Yeah?” I didn’t know why it surprised me how easily Shep was going along with this. He wasn’t exactly the unreasonable hardass I’d always figured he was. He was my man. My husband. And I had a feeling he’d do anything not just for me, but for us. “Holy shit. Are we going house shopping?”
“Like real adults and everything,” he teased, drawing my face down so he could kiss me. I threaded my fingers tighter in his hair, all the chaos of our current living situation not quite so exasperating when his lips were on mine.
A new place of our own? Sounded like heaven to me, especially when Shep pulled back and I opened my eyes to the mayhem in the bedroom.
He must’ve read the look on my face, because he chuckled and took his phone out.
“How about I give my real estate agent Ryan a call and see what he can find for us?” he said.
“Make sure it’s big. And expensive. And has at least twenty closets.”
He shook his head, but hit a number on his phone and brought it to his ear. “Yes, Your Serene Highness.”
“That’s Your Serene Husband to you.”
“NOT THAT ONE,” I said as I slid into the back seat of our car and waited for Shep to join me. We’d just finished looking at a gorgeous place, but the second Ryan had told us the address, my mind had already been made up.
“Bet I can guess why.” Shep grinned as he pulled the door shut and signaled our driver to follow after Ryan. “But I think it was smart to at least look at it.”
“Sure. It has some of the best security on offer in New York, I get it. But I’d rather risk another kidnapping than live in the same building as James Easton.”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
“Who’s joking?”
“It’s not like you’d have to take the same elevator and risk running into him. That’s what the private car elevators are for.”
“I know. But there’s something about living in the same building as our boss and your ex that seems a little too…communal for my liking. Even if we wouldn’t be on the same floor.”
Shep chuckled and reached for my hand, lacing our fingers together. “I agree. But I think it’s good we checked it out.”
“Me too. It just confirmed I’d really rather be anywhere but on the same block as them.”
“Noted. So, let’s see where we’re headed next.” Shep pulled out his phone and looked at the listings Ryan had sent over. “Hudson Yards. Ah, the duplex with four bedrooms, six and a half baths, panoramic views.”
“Oh yes, I liked the main bathroom in that one.”
“Don’t you mean the shower?” Shep grinned as he scrolled through the images and then held up the one of the enormous shower with marble benches at either end and six showerheads running along the wall. “Planning to invite friends over?”
“Non. I don’t like to share.”
“That is the only correct answer.”
“But that shower gives us plenty of room to play.”
“That it would.” Shep licked his lips as his eyes trailed down over me, clearly imagining all the ways he’d like to “play” with me.
“If you don’t stop looking at me like that, we might have to tell Ryan to let us check out the place on our own.”
“I’m okay with that.”
I chuckled and reached for his hand, my pulse picking up pace when my fingers brushed over the ring there. It hadn’t even been a week since I’d slipped that on his finger, and now here we were out looking at homes together.
We’d managed to narrow it down to a few different styles and neighborhoods, and after visiting a loft in SoHo, a high rise in Chelsea, and a brownstone on the Upper East Side, among others, we were now heading to the final one on the list, the duplex penthouse in Hudson Yards.
“You know, it’s hard to remember that you used to be such a—”
“Be nice…”
I grinned and brought his hand up to my lips, kissing his knuckles. “I was just going to say, ‘such a control freak.’”
“I wasn’t a control freak.”
I shrugged. “You kind of were.”
“Well, good thing you came along and loosened me up.”
“Damn right, because now you’re the kind of man about to tell our realtor to leave us alone to inspect the shower privately.”
Shep shook his head as we pulled up out the front of the building.
“As tempted as I am to do that,” he said, then leaned in and brushed his lips over mine, “I’d much rather buy the place so we can move in and I can inspect you in the shower whenever the hell I want.”
“Oh, well, why didn’t you say so, Mr. Rinaldi?”
“Fuck, I love the sound of my new name on your tongue.”
“So do I.”
Shep swallowed as he looked me over, and there was no way he could miss the hard-on straining against the zipper of my pants.
But Jesus, what did he expect? All this talk about playing with me in the shower, looking for a home together, seeing how hot he got whenever I called him by my given name, that was now going to be his…
It was a miracle I hadn’t come in my pants.
“Get out of the car, Shep.”
“I don’t want to.”
A soft laugh left me. “Non?”
“No.”
“And what do you want?”
His lips curved in a sinfully decadent smile before he glanced out the window to where Ryan was waiting for us. Then he hit the button for the window, and when it slid down a crack said, “We’ll take this one, Ryan.”
“Uh—” Ryan started.
“Send us over the paperwork, and we’ll get it signed.”
“You don’t want to see it?”
Shep looked back at where I’d unbuttoned my pants and was palming my cock. Clearly there was something about this place that was getting us both hot and bothered without even setting foot in it.
That seemed like a winner to me. I nodded.
“No need,” Shep said, reaching over to cover my hand and squeeze. “We know what we want, and we don’t want to wait.”
Oh hell yes.
“Okay,” Ryan said, a huge smile hitting his lips. “I’ll, um, get it over to you this afternoon. Have a good day.”
“Oh, we plan to,” Shep said as he closed the window, instructed our driver to take the long way back, then proceeded to show me exactly what he wanted.