Chapter 44
Megan
“You’re kidding me.” Nicole literally shoves popcorn in her mouth as she listens raptly to my retelling of how Jameson came to Crooks Creek and served up my ex-boyfriend’s ass to him on a platter. “He did that?”
“He did that. Then he screwed me in my old bedroom and all the way home on his private plane.”
“I’m in lust. You know, vicariously.”
I sigh. “I’m in love.”
“God.”
We both stuff our mouths with popcorn and chew for a long minute. That’s the first time, since I realized it was true, that I said those words out loud.
And I realized it quite a while ago, really.
We’re lying out by Jameson’s pool. Daisy is stretched out in the shade beneath my lounge chair, dozing. When we left my mom’s house in Crooks Creek, Jameson picked her up and carried her out to the car with us without even mentioning it to me. She flew home with us on the jet, and that was that.
Jameson himself should be home any minute. When his sister asked him to come down to the Vance Bayshore resort, where she’s working, to have dinner with her tonight, I basically ordered him to go.
Both Jameson and Daisy have been glued to me for the last few days, ever since we got back from Crooks Creek, as if they’re both afraid of losing me.
But I’m not going anywhere.
Because: love.
I’ve never had it like this before.
I’m not about to let it go without a fight.
Nicole drops her head back on her lounger. “Well, I’m happy for you. If you’re sure it’s the real deal…”
“It is. How could I not love a man who comes racing to my hometown, for me, and tries to save me like a damn superhero? He also makes love to me like his very existence depends on getting me off. And he reads my books. And enjoys them. If that’s not love…”
Daisy suddenly gets up, barks happily, stretches, and trots off into the house. I know that means Jameson is home.
“Shit. Are there any more of him?” Nicole moans. “I really need one of those.”
“Well, technically, he’s got three unmarried brothers, so…”
“So you’ll hook me up?” Her eyes go big and pleading.
“Well…” I snicker. “I don’t know. Even if I could. I mean, Harlan just seems… dangerous. And Damian is… intensely intimidating. And possibly perverted. And Graysen is… well, he just seems above the world. He’s engaged, but I don’t know how any mere woman could actually win that man’s attention for life…”
I drift off. Because unfortunately, Nicole’s eyes have glazed over more hotly with each successive description. Which means that my words, meant to deter her, are doing the opposite.
Oops.
“There’s my beautiful wife.” Jameson’s husky voice sends a warm shiver through me.
I glance over my shoulder to find him strolling toward me, Daisy following. His sleeves are rolled up, and he loosens his tie as he approaches.
“He’s calling you that?” Nicole stage-whispers. “Already?”
“Yes. It’s a whole obsession,” I stage-whisper back. To Jameson, I say “Hi, stud. Enjoy dinner?”
He makes a yummy growling sound as his eyes ravage my body in my pink bikini, telling me that I’m more delicious to him than whatever he just ate.
He leans in for a kiss. I make it quick since Nicole is here and all. “It’s still warm out here,” I murmur breathlessly. “Why don’t you take off that suit and put on your swim trunks?”
He kisses me again, then bites my lip. “I was thinking I’d just take everything off. And we can skinny-dip.”
I stare into his blue eyes, hypnotized by that vision. We haven’t done that in his pool yet.
Stupid, really.
“Uh, guys? I’m right here.”
I clear my throat, and Jameson straightens.
“Sorry,” I tell Nicole.
“That’s okay.” She sets her empty glass aside and gets to her feet. “You guys have all your naked fun. I should go anyway. I’m working tonight.”
“I’ll walk you out.” I get up and pull on a robe over my bikini.
After I see her off at the front door, I’m making my way back to the pool when I find Jameson in the living room. He’s still wearing his shirt and tie and his dress slacks, with bare feet. And he’s looking at the floor as he claws his hands though his hair.
My dog sits at his feet, gazing up at him with such adoration, it makes my heart skip a beat.
But I can feel the tension in his body from here. His expression when our eyes meet makes me stop in my tracks.
“Jameson. What’s wrong?”
“Megan.” He breathes out heavily. “I have a confession to make.”
My heart cracks at the pain in his eyes. Whatever this is, it isn’t good.
I drift closer.
“I should’ve just manned up and told you sooner. You know, that thing I told you that I can’t tell you…”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say quickly. Because I can see how it’s weighing on him. “If it will hurt you…”
He closes the space between us, slips a hand around my waist and tugs me to him, and buries his other hand in my hair, cupping my head. “The only thing that hurts me is lying to you. Keeping the truth from you.”
A terrible ache presses against my ribs, from the inside out. I can feel his pain.
What else can I tell him but the truth?
“I love you, Jameson.”
He closes his eyes and hangs his head.
“You’re kinda scaring me, though.”
When he lifts his head, his expression is fierce with devotion. He pushes his other hand into my hair, holding my head with both hands.
“Don’t be scared. I only want to protect you,” he says devoutly. “Protect us. Between us, my only regret is the only lie I ever told you. The reason why I couldn’t be with you like you deserved. Couldn’t make love to you. The truth is, I’m not allowed to talk about it. At all. Even now.”
I take that in, fear tingling up my spine. “Why?”
He sighs wearily. “It could’ve made me lose everything. Including you. I think I get now why my brother chose it for me,” he adds, almost to himself.
“I don’t understand.”
He takes a breath. “The thing is, if I told you, I stood to lose everything I have. And I still will. But I’ve thought about it a fuck of a lot.” He pauses, and if you can see a person’s heart through their eyes, I’m looking into Jameson’s right now. He’s laying it wide open for me.
He looks deep into my eyes, searching for a long moment. And the heat and the urgency, the frustration and desire, the pure love I feel from him takes my breath away. Then he says, “Fuck it,” like he’s uttering an oath, and kisses me, hard.
He kisses me so deeply and so long, I’m bent backwards over the arm he slides around my waist.
When we come up for air, I feel dazed, but he’s still locked onto me like his life depends on it. “I will tell you,” he swears to me, “if you want me to. If that’s what it takes to earn your trust and your love.”
“I do love you.”
He takes my hand and presses it to his chest, shaking his head. “I swore to myself when I got the dagger tattoo over my heart that I would never lie to anyone I love, betray them, the way my parents did to each other. And I love you, Megan.”
“I know you do.” I take a breath, shoring up my courage, even as my insides quiver with dread. I do know. I can feel his love. “But I don’t want you to lose everything. So… No. Whatever it is… you can’t tell me. I won’t let you.”
He shakes his head. “You’re so brave, it’s ridiculous.”
“Or so stupid,” I say quietly. “Because if you don’t tell me, that means there will always be this secret between us.”
He takes a deep breath. “Not if you’d allow someone else to tell you.”
“What do you mean?”
“This secret… Only my siblings are allowed to know. But there’s one other person who knows about it. I ran into her at the resort tonight, and it hit me. That I could ask her to tell you. She was… how do I put this? The love of my grandfather’s life, I suppose.”
“But your grandmother is deceased,” I say, confused.
“She is. And it pains me to tell you this because I don’t want you to think I take after my grandfather this way. But I mentioned to you that he cheated on my grandmother. It was even worse than that. In truth, he had a lifetime affair with his secretary. Her name is Valerie, and she’s here, right now. My siblings are bound to not tell this secret, ever. So Valerie is the only one who can.”
“So… you want me… to let some woman I’ve never met, your grandfather’s mistress, tell me the secret you’ve been keeping from me?”
“Uh… yeah. When you lay it out like that, it sounds terrible. And I should probably just have Locke drive her home now.”
“Are you kidding me? Send her in.”
“Really?” Jameson seems stunned. “You want to hear her out?”
“Seriously? I want all her stories. Go get her. I’m putting on tea.”
Finally, his shock dissolves. A faint smirk quirks his lips. “Actually, knowing Valerie, she’d prefer a brandy.”
“Brandy, coming right up.” I hurry behind the bar to get the woman a drink, sifting through bottles. “Where is she?”
“She’s in my office.”
“Well, let’s not leave the woman waiting.”
* * *
I sit in my little office, off Jameson’s office, where I said yes to his proposal. My head’s kind of throbbing with all the information Valerie just gave me.
She’s just left. Clara came to walk her out.
Valerie was polite with me, very formal, and not at all what I might’ve pictured.
She wasn’t beautiful in that way that told you she’d been a stunning-looking woman in her youth. She was rather plain and straightforward. Neatly dressed in a modest skirt and blouse with a cardigan.
The great love of billionaire Stoddard Vance’s life… was fascinating.
I’d seen pictures of his wife. She was beautiful. She was the mother of his two sons, the grandmother of his five grandchildren. What was it about his secretary that had captured his heart? Was it just that they were in such close proximity, that he relied on her day to day, and they’d formed a bond?
No. It had to be more than that. Jameson told me just before he introduced us that his granddad had left Valerie a billion-dollar portion of his estate.
I hear the office door open and get to my feet, walking to meet Jameson when I see him step in and close the door. We meet in the middle of his office, in front of the elegant sofa I flung mud all over.
“She told you?” he asks. I can see his tension.
I take his hands. “She told me everything. About the game, and your challenge.” I squeeze his hands. “And you can relax. All it did was make me like you more.”
“God.” He exhales with relief.
I raise an eyebrow. “Though I now know why you warned me about your family.”
Jameson puts his hand on the side of my neck, his thumb running over my jaw. “Yeah.”
“I can’t believe one of your siblings did that to you.”
“It was Graysen.”
“Really? Why?”
His thumb caresses my jaw. “I really didn’t understand why, until I fell for you. But I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m too much like our mom.”
That surprises me. “In what way?”
He sort of rolls his eyes. “Emotional. Moody. Capable of falling in love way too hard, and never coming back from it.”
I soften, and I don’t know what to say. Because truly, that sounds exactly like the Jameson I know.
“He thought the way my love life was headed,” he adds, “I’d end up with a broken heart. And maybe end up sullying the family name in the process. But in short, he was worried about me. He called me several times while we were in Crooks Creek to check on me. And you. He likes you, Megan. And he likes you for me. I think my whole family’s glad we’re engaged. They’re just cautious about outsiders. And like me, they’re slow to trust. But I trust you. And I’ll never hold anything back from you ever again, I promise you that.”
“I believe you.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Because I know you, Jameson.” I gaze at him adoringly. “There’s this thing in romance writing called a cinnamon roll hero. That’s you. I just want to keep peeling back your layers and licking the sugar I find inside.”
Now his eyebrow creeps up.
“You’re a romantic,” I go on, “and an honest person, even though you know how to create an illusion and make people believe what you want them to. You believe in happily ever after, and you want one, with someone like me. Someone you can trust.” I try to do that thing he did in Crooks Creek, where he listed off all those things he knew about me that I didn’t even know he’d noticed. “You clearly love dogs, but maybe you felt guilty when your dog died because you weren’t home enough and you thought you weren’t ready to be a dog dad, so you didn’t let yourself get a new one even though you have a ton of love to give. You live in this giant house alone with that big guest wing, because you hate being alone and lonely, and you want all your friends to be welcome, all the time. This challenge was extra hard on you because you thought it put a rift between you and other people, but in the end, it just brought you so much closer to me, and maybe to Graysen, too, than you ever imagined it could.”
“You’re scaring me right now. I didn’t know you were a mind reader.”
“I’m not. I’ve just learned how to read you. And I have more.”
“Shit…”
“You like to pretend you’re in control of your time, but in reality, you’re so devoted to your family and your business, you work more than you’ll ever admit. You actually love working with your hands, and helping your handyman whenever you can around the house. You like simple things, like local food and watching the sunset over the water from your patio and daydreaming about the future, and shooting hoops and drinking whiskey. And you love hockey. That’s part of why you admire Cole. Because you wanted to be a hockey player when you grew up, and you were angry that your mom moved you to France and you didn’t get to play anymore. And you’ve struggled to forgive her for abandoning you for her new life. You’ve been single and alone for so long, because you’re scared to fall in love and end up like your parents. But more than anything, you want a family of your own, to try to make up for your lonely childhood.”
“Jesus,” is all he says.
“And maybe you resent Graysen for knowing you better than you know yourself, because you never thought he understood you like that. You think you’re different, but you’re not that different. You may be years apart, but you grew up in the same home. You just processed your pain differently. You cope differently. But maybe he knew the exact challenge you needed to face. Even if it seemed nonsensical at first.”
“Yeah.” This time, he sounds defeated. “Fuck, I kind of love him for that.”
I laugh a little. “Maybe a challenge isn’t so bad. Maybe the people around you, those who know you best and love you through it all, should challenge you. If you’re not being challenged, you’re not really growing, right?”
His lips quirk. “Sure. There are probably better ways to go about it.”
“Not if you’re a game master.”
He smiles. I can tell he appreciates that I can see the cunning in what his grandfather set out to do.
“Do you feel like you grew from this challenge?”
“Hell, yes. I feel like everything I’ve been through, every moment of my life was orchestrated to get me here. To you.”
He goes down on one knee, so suddenly, I don’t see it coming.
“Um. What’s happening?”
He swallows, looking up into my eyes. “Sit down, Megan.”
I almost crumple. He guides me to sit down right in front of him, on the edge of the sofa.
He takes my hands in his. “I tried to prove my love to you publicly, to please my brother. The flashy ring. The press. And I didn’t fully understand why you didn’t believe it. But then I realized, you thought I was lying to you, because you thought I was also lying to the world about how I feel about you. When all that time, I should’ve been proving to you that it was real—right here, between the two of us.”
“Jameson…” I sigh softly, happily.
“The truth is, I didn’t lie to anyone. Everything I said from the start, everything I told my family about why I love you, is true. I meant every word of it.”
Hot, happy tears threaten to spill, and I try to blink them back. “Then kiss me already.”
He kisses me, pushing me back on the sofa, giving me his weight until I’m swimming in the heat between us. Falling, like I always do in his arms.
Falling into him.
Falling with him.
He kisses his way down my chest and smooths a hand up my thigh beneath my robe. He presses a warm, possessive hand to my pussy, then tugs my bikini aside, and I arch my back, wanting his touch.
Wanting him inside.
“I don’t have sex on this couch,” he murmurs between my breasts, even as his fingers slide into me.
I move my hips into his touch, gasping. “You do now.”
“I love you, Megan.” His rough-velvet voice is devout. His fingers are determined as they work inside me, his thumb circling around my clit, coaxing me to the edge.
“Jameson…” I gasp, relaxing into the rising pleasure that he’s orchestrating, so perfectly.
He lowers himself between my legs, and his tongue joins his thumb in urging me toward climax. I revel in it, in how much he wants to please me, in the warm and hungry affections of his mouth as he licks and sucks while moaning in pleasure.
And when I finally shatter, my core contracting in ecstasy, he says, “Marry me.”
Our eyes lock. My heart thuds as my body arches, the shivers of orgasm still pulsing through my body, his fingers moving slowly inside me.
When I stop moving and lie panting, he says, “I want you to be my wife, Megan. And I don’t need a fucking year to decide.”
A tear slides down my temple. And as soon as I catch my breath, I give him the only answer I can.
“Yes.”