Chapter 48
LAUREL
Rain has swallowed most of the morning by the time I make it downstairs, streaming over Beckett’s kitchen windows until the backyard dissolves into dark trees, softened green and the occasional shiver of branches caught in the wind.
Inside, the house is warm and dim despite the hour, the kind of gray morning that leaves the lamps glowing and makes everything outside feel farther away than it is.
Coffee perfumes the kitchen beneath rosemary and garlic, and for a few quiet seconds I just stand there in one of his shirts, drinking from a mug that says world’s okayest uncle while Beckett makes breakfast.
Potatoes crackle in cast iron, sourdough turns gold at the edges, and Beckett folds soft eggs through butter with the easy flick of his wrist that would’ve made him unbearable during last night’s cooking show if we had actually finished it.
Everything that came after still hums under my skin, dulled only a little by too little sleep and absolutely no regret about what kept us awake.
I take another drink of coffee and hide my smile behind the mug, still a little stunned that I actually woke up here.
My cheek was on his chest, one of his arms heavy around my waist and my leg tangled through his, and I stayed warm and disoriented until the soreness between my thighs reminded me exactly how we’d spent the night.
The faint mark near my breast helped. So did Beckett opening one eye, realizing I was awake and giving me the slowest, most satisfied smile I have ever wanted to wipe off a man’s face and kiss at the same time.
The stairs taught me several things about consequences, mostly that several hours of sex followed by a staircase should qualify as poor urban planning.
I’m less subtle about this conclusion than I think, because when I finally surrender to one of the stools, Beckett notices the care I take lowering myself onto it and smiles down at the eggs.
“Are you mocking me, Beckett Vale?”
He glances over his shoulder, spatula in hand, innocence sitting badly on a face I now know far too intimately. “I haven’t said anything, my woman.”
“Mhm.”
“Why do you sound skeptical?”
“We established months ago that your face is a terrible liar.” The smile gets worse.
I sip my coffee and refuse to reward him, although dignity is difficult to maintain when I’m wearing his shirt with nothing underneath and watching the man responsible for the limp move around the kitchen in gray sweats, barefoot, hair still wrecked from sleep.
He looks exactly like Beckett; that may be the strangest part.
Nothing about him changed overnight, but everything ordinary about him means something different now.
The hand sprinkling chives over our eggs was spanking my ass a few hours ago; the mouth he keeps trying to hide a smile behind has been everywhere on me.
Neither fact makes breakfast awkward or this morning strange. It just makes all of it nicer.
Beckett plates the eggs with the potatoes and toast, then abandons breakfast on the counter and comes around the island. “You’re staring.”
I lower the mug. “You’re standing there making eggs after spending half the night with your mouth between my legs. How exactly am I supposed to behave?”
Beckett actually blinks. Color climbs across his cheekbones, and the sight delights me so much I nearly laugh. “Jesus, Laurel.”
“What? It was a compliment. You earned specificity.” His ears are turning red now too, ridiculously endearing on a man who spent several hours saying things filthy enough to permanently alter my relationship with eye contact. “Are you blushing?”
He rubs a hand over his mouth, but the smile gets through anyway. “You say things like that and expect me not to?”
“I expected more resilience.”
“I had more resilience before you started casually discussing my oral performance over breakfast.”
I grin into my coffee. “For the record, excellent work.”
He shakes his head, still smiling as he stops between my knees and plants his warm palms on my thighs, the hem of his shirt already high over bare skin.
My tongue passes over my lower lip as I take him in, already wanting him again.
Last night should’ve taken some of the mystery out of him; instead I have evidence now, and evidence is terrible for discipline.
I know exactly what those hands can do, exactly how that mouth feels when it stops smiling and gets busy, and having both within reach is doing nothing useful for my self-control.
I set my mug down and wrap my fingers around his wrists. “Breakfast.”
His mouth brushes mine. “I’m distracted.”
“By what?”
His attention drops to the shirt, and I follow it to find my hard nipples poking out the thin cotton, subtle as a fire alarm. Beckett’s thumbs move over my thighs. “As much as I love seeing you in my clothes, I’m having serious second thoughts about giving you that shirt.”
I glance back at him. “It seems perfectly happy.”
“It’s covering several things I’m extremely interested in.”
I laugh when he kisses me, and his palms slide under the hem with none of last night’s uncertainty, only the easy confidence of someone who already knows what makes me lean closer.
Beckett’s palms travel over the backs of my thighs and draw me to the edge of the stool, his body fitting between my open legs as the shirt bunches around my hips.
He’s getting hard through his sweats, a level of enthusiasm I find ambitious considering last night and shamelessly delightful anyway. “Beckett. Your eggs are getting cold.”
“I have priorities.”
“You’d reheat those eggs?”
He pulls back with genuine offense. “What kind of animal do you think I am?”
“Good answer. Relationship preserved.”
His mouth curves. “How long have I been your man?”
“Long enough to be on probation.”
“I thought you said my performance was excellent.”
Heat rolls through me, and the smug man notices every bit of it. “That was exhaustion speaking.”
“At midnight?”
“Dehydration.”
“And the hallway?”
I narrow my eyes. “Temporary neurological event.”
His huff warms my mouth as he leans closer. “Repeatedly?”
“You’re becoming very irritating.”
“I’m concerned about the pattern.”
“You should be. Symptoms seem to appear whenever you take your pants off.”
He laughs into the kiss I give him, one hand closing greedily around my breast, his thumb rolling my nipple under it as I hook my arms around his neck.
I’m sore, barefoot, wearing his clothes and stupidly happy in his arms, and for once I don’t examine the feeling until I’ve picked it apart.
I just let myself have it, and it occurs to me with startling simplicity that there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
My phone starts chiming on the marble, dragging both of us back to the rest of the world. We groan at the same time, roll our eyes at the same time, then catch each other doing it and dissolve into a stupid little laugh, noses scrunched. I glance at the screen.
Evelyn.
Yeah. We can’t ignore that.
Beckett takes in his shirt bunched high over my thighs, then the sliver of space left between our bodies, and grumbles, “Fine.”
I push at his chest, still smiling, and reach for the phone. He steals one last kiss before returning to the stove to rescue breakfast while I answer.
“Morning.”
Evelyn skips the greeting. “The special committee and Grant’s counsel have terms.”
The words clear every trace of sleep and sex from my head. I sit straighter, and Beckett turns off the burner, reading my face without asking me to put the call on speaker.
“Final terms?”
Evelyn corrects me, because nothing involving lawyers is allowed to become final without acquiring at least three additional adjectives.
The special committee has completed its internal findings and reached a settlement in principle with Grant, subject to Mercer board approval and executed documents.
The findings are worse than Grant’s lawyers hoped and better than the most catastrophic version gossip accounts have been inventing for months.
There’s no sudden criminal indictment, no secret team of federal agents waiting outside his house, no revelation that Grant has been operating a criminal empire between tour stops. What there is, unfortunately for him, is documented corporate misconduct.
The special committee has completed its findings and reached a settlement in principle with Grant, subject to Mercer board approval and executed documents. The conclusions are bad enough that neither Mercer nor Grant has much appetite for spending the next several years litigating them.
“How much?”
Evelyn gives me the number.
Grant pays six-point-eight million dollars to Mercer through a structured settlement, including the existing bonus clawback, defined lender-amendment costs, a negotiated contribution toward forensic and legal remediation, and reimbursement connected to Daniel’s unauthorized consulting payments.
He resigns from the Mercer board immediately and agrees not to seek an executive, board or committee position for five years.
He keeps his thirty-nine-point-eight percent ownership because shares are property, not morality points, but he enters a three-year governance standstill restricting any attempt to remove independent directors, reverse the rights-restoration program or interfere with Bellamy House’s corrected catalogue rights.
He can vote on ordinary shareholder matters; he cannot use a thirty-nine-point-eight-percent block to restart the war we just spent months ending.
“And he can afford six-point-eight?”
“Not comfortably.”
That’s where it actually hurts.
Grant’s liquidity after the lake sale, tour escrow, Russell financing and partial Mercer subscription cannot absorb another six-point-eight million without opening a new hole somewhere else.
Charles negotiates installments, but Mercer demands substantial security because everyone involved has finally learned not to build important agreements on Grant’s future optimism.