Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wade
Well, fuck.
Dara sighs. A sweet little breath of air blows across my chest.
Her arm dangles over my stomach, and her ankle crosses mine beneath the blankets. I’m acutely aware of her breasts as they press against my side because they move each time she breathes.
I try to reconcile having her here. In my home. In my bed.
I’m not an idiot, just a fool.
The events that led to this moment are fuzzy.
I asked her to come home with me. I remember that.
I also recall this … need … to bridge the ravine between us—never mind that I’m the one who dug it.
And I’d be lying if I said that her body in that dress wasn’t eating at my resolve to do the right thing and stay away from her.
I glance down at her still, peaceful face. My chest constricts.
What are you doing, Wade?
I rough the hand that’s not curled around her over my chin. Then I run it over my forehead. And then rub it against my temple.
This is wrong, so very fucking wrong.
That’s what logic says, and logic is king.
I groan as the reality of the situation hits me like a ton of bricks. This isn’t some broken rule or a way to protect myself. My avoidance of her in any meaningful way is for her own good.
So why am I allowing this to happen?
Dara stirs, pulling the edge of the sheet toward her chin. Her eyes are sleepy as she looks up at me.
I know the moment she realizes that she’s here. Her body stiffens, and her eyes go wide, but then she smiles and relaxes against me again.
Sweet fuck.
I close my eyes and pray for guidance.
“You aren’t asleep?” she asks in a yawn. Her arm takes its spot across me again. “I thought you were out before me.”
“Insomnia and I are old friends.”
She grins against my side. “What keeps you up at night?”
“Oh, the usual.” I glance down at her. “Just every wrong decision that I’ve made in the last thirty-some-odd years.”
She laughs. The sound whispers across my skin, easing some of my tension.
I stroke the middle of her back while I tell myself I’m not going to. So much for self-restraint.
“Wanna see something?” I ask her.
“Wade.” She rolls onto her back and nearly glares at me. “While I have thoroughly enjoyed myself tonight, I cannot possibly go another round with you and still have legs to walk out of here tomorrow.” She glances at the clock. “Or in a few hours since it’s already tomorrow.”
I chuckle. “I like your line of thinking, but I was actually wanting to show you something in my office.”
This gets her interest. She scoots up in the bed. The linen drops from her clutches and pools at her waist.
In the soft moonlight streaming in the windows, she’s the epitome of beauty. Her skin is soft and glowing. Her breasts are full and heavy, hanging in a perfect teardrop. And the way she looks at me? Fuck.
I stop myself from reaching over and touching her because I know she doesn’t want that. She told me. And there’s no way in hell that I’m about to make her think that she’s here just to touch.
She’s so much more than that.
Get up, Wade.
I climb out of bed and head to the closet. I slip on a pair of sleep pants, and despite being perfectly content with her walking around my house nude, I find a long Alexander Industries T-shirt that I got from my old friend Cane a while back. I never wear it.
I definitely won’t now.
“Here,” I say, tossing the shirt onto the bed. “If you’d like to refuse it, I’m perfectly fine with that.”
She grins, slipping the material over her shoulders. “Not that you haven’t seen everything that I have to offer, but I’d appreciate it if we could pretend that I have some modesty left to protect.”
I offer her a hand. “You do.”
I help her off the mattress and onto the floor. My intentions are to lead her into the hallway. But once I see her doe eyes looking up at me—her flushed cheeks and lips swollen from me ravaging them—all intentions are out the door.
Pulling her against my chest, I grin. “There’s one spot that I haven’t explored yet.” I grab both of her ass cheeks in my hands and give them a rough squeeze.
She yelps, her eyes going wide. “No. No, no, no, no, no. No.”
I snicker.
“Not funny, Wade.” Her laugh is strained as she swats me away. “Just the thought of … that.” She gulps. “It makes me all …”
She fans her cherry-red face and exhales.
“You know, I was just kidding, but now that I see your reaction—I’m into it,” I say.
“Be into whatever you want, but you are not going to be into this ass.”
She strolls out of my bedroom like she knows exactly where she’s going. I follow her, appreciating that ass.
If only things could be different.
“Down the stairs,” I say as we pad into the hall.
Light pours into the house thanks to all of the glass I had installed when I rehabbed the place ten years ago. Dara takes the steps carefully, her unfamiliarity with them obvious, and then steps onto the hardwood below.
She looks at me. “Now where?”
“To the left.”
She pivots and starts through the formal sitting room that I never use and should really revamp. Then she comes to another hallway.
“The only door on the left,” I tell her.
We make our way past pictures of structures that I’ve designed, a sketch my father helped me with in college, and a photograph of Gramps’s old homeplace where he was born.
She flips on the light in my office.
I walk around her to my desk. She stands beside me while I pull out a sketch pad. I hope she doesn’t notice the slight tremble of my hand as I lift the cover.
And there it sits. The reason I haven’t been getting much sleep.
Or one of them.
“What’s this?” she asks quietly.
She peers over my shoulder at the drawings I etched out over the past two nights.
“It’s … insomnia.” I shrug.
“Funny. It looks strangely like a house.”
I look up to see her grinning.
“Scoot,” she says.
I roll my chair away from my desk so she can get a better look. Her hair drapes down her back in messy waves.
She looks at me over her shoulder. “This is … my house,” she says softly, her eyes shining. “Isn’t it?”
I nod.
She looks back at the sketch and drags her fingers over the edge. “I mean, it’s not done, I don’t think. But this is … This is exactly what I was thinking.”
My chest burns with relief and a bit of pride.
Those words are the ones that I always yearn to hear. To know that I’ve read the client well and can anticipate their needs before they know them for themselves.
And the fact that I nailed it with her? Fuck.
I roll closer. I shift her to the side so that I can see the paper.
My face is next to her hip, and as much as I love architecture, I can barely concentrate.
All I can feel is the soft curve of her body. I breathe in coconut and her natural musk. I hear her little breaths in the quiet of my house, and I struggle to detach myself from Dara and focus on … anything else.
Anxiety fills the hole in my heart as an overwhelming dread begins to build inside me.
Stop this, Wade. Stop this now while you can.
“This is where you would have your coffee in the morning. At eight o’clock,” I say, teasing her.
She points at a part of my sketch. “Is that an atrium?”
“It is,” I say, my voice low. “You have to think about the way the sun moves through the sky. So having a sunny room for your coffee in the mornings would make sense here.”
I don’t have to look at her to know she smiles. I can feel it somehow. Can she feel the way her smiles make me want to smile too? I don’t know.
I’m better off not knowing.
“Your office could work over here,” I say, pointing at the paper. “Or we could move things around and put it here, next to the master bedroom.”
“My office?”
“Yeah.”
She leans away, a grin growing on her face. “Like an actual office-office?”
“Are you not the CEO of your business?”
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I guess I am.”
I shrug. “Then let’s give you CEO space to work and grow your business.”
She looks at me with a glimmer of disbelief. “I … I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No. It’s just … it’s been a long time since someone believed in me like that.”
Her voice starts to crack, and her eyes start to blur. I have no idea what to do with that, although I’m fairly certain that it’s not my fault this time.
Thank God.
She looks so beautiful, yet so … alone.
How can she seem so lonely when I’m sitting right here?
“Come here,” I say without a hint of the reservation that my brain screams at me to heed.
She moves toward me and I turn her around. Gently, I arrange her on my lap.
My heart pounds so hard that I’m sure she can feel it. I war internally with a mixture of instincts—both to move away and to pull her closer.
One wins.
I sit back in the chair, scooting her with me, and wrap my arms around her.
My mouth is hot, my swallows nearly painful. It’s so fucking strange to feel so at peace yet so conflicted.
I shouldn’t be doing this. I also can’t do anything else.
“Can I tell you something?” she asks.
“Sure.”
She pulls her knees up into the chair too. “I’m not sure about this house.”
I flinch. “Okay.” I gather myself. “What are you thinking? I can do anything, Dara. I told you. I’m the best.”
“No. Not like that. Not what you designed. I love that.” She grins sadly. “There are moments when … I’m not sure I should accept it.”
“From your grandfather?”
She nods.
“May I ask why?” I ask.
She lays her head on my shoulder. I splay my hand against her hair and hold her tight to me. I choose to ignore the red flags popping off like a bull fight and just … be.
I can gather the red flags later and burn them.
“Like you of all people want to hear about it,” she says, snorting.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I know what it means. She’s right too. Still, I’m a bit offended.
“Let me put it like this—anything that has to do with my grandfather includes a lot of emotions, and I know how you are with intimacy in relationships.”
That motherfucker again.
“I hear your judgment,” I say, my voice wary.
“And I feel yours.” She looks up at me. “You exude this aura of inaccessibility that I know is intentional.”
“Like that’s ever stopped you.”
“True. But this isn’t some random question. This matters.” Her lips dip. “So when you blow me off … I’d rather not do that on this one.”
She nestles against me again, effectively giving up the fight.
We sit quietly for a long time. I wonder what she’s thinking—mostly because it’s easier than dissecting my own thoughts. Which is what I accused her of before. The entire situation will be more easily handled if I stay out of my own damn head.
But the longer we sit, the more I feel the tension in her body. And the longer I have to ponder what’s rolling around in her head, the sorrowful tone of her words settle deeper into my heart.
“I’m not sure about this house … I’m not sure I should accept it.”
I have no right to ask her to open up to me because I won’t do the same. I realize that. But Dara is here, in my arms, and I’m logical enough to know that it won’t kill me to listen to her. She also needs to be heard. And, deep inside the pits of my internal hell, I want her to talk to me.
Why? I don’t know.
“Hey,” I say, jostling her gently on my lap. “Talk to me.”
Her shoulders fall forward. “You don’t want me to do that.”
“Yes. I do.”
She looks at me with a hopeful hesitation that I can’t deny.
“Just, you know, don’t turn this into a Q and A,” I say with a wink.
She laughs. “Really?”
“I’m not asking you again.”
Finally, she shifts in my lap and blows out a breath. It’s the sound of resignation.
I brace myself.
“I’ve tried to be really optimistic about this whole house thing,” she says, each word guarded. “I was a bit overwhelmed by it at first. Heck, I still am. Building someone their dream house—especially after knowing them for only a few months? That’s kind of … Well, it’s a lot of things.”
“He has the money.”
“Exactly.”
I furrow my brow. “I’m not following along.”
“It’s just what you said, Wade. He has the money.
” She pauses. “I want to believe that he’s doing this for me in some ‘Hey, my son kind of fucked you and your mom over, so let me do something for you since you’ve lived your whole life on the razor’s edge.
’ Or, even better, maybe he realizes he’s the only blood relative I have left, and he wants to make me feel like a part of the family in some kooky, rich-person way. ”
That tracks.
“But …”
The word floats through the air and hits me right in the heart. I drag her even closer to me. I let her know I’m here. Because I don’t know how to say that.
“But I know that’s not true,” she says, her voice breaking. “If he wanted to make anything up to me, if he wanted me to be in his family, he would invite me to dinner. Not build me a house.”
The splinters of her voice dig at my soul.
“Maybe they aren’t the family dinner type?” I offer, hoping it can give her something to grasp on to.
“Sure, except they do everything with their other granddaughter.” She sits up and looks at me with a pained, sorrowful look that sours my stomach.
“I’m Curt Bowery’s only granddaughter by blood.
I guess his wife, Tyra, has a daughter Curt has raised, and she has a daughter, Kimberly, who’s the apple of Curt’s eye. ”
That motherfucker.
“I know I’m grasping at straws,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I know I just … I want a connection with him so badly that I overlook so many things. I ignore so much so I don’t … so I don’t see it, I guess. And that’s not me. I don’t do that. But … I am.”
I brush my thumb across her cheek and wish I could tell her what I’m thinking. That I, too, am doing things I don’t do.
But like Dara, I don’t know how to handle it. It’ll just have to be a fight for another day.
“Come on,” I say, urging her up. “Let’s go back to bed.”
As she gets to her feet, her spirits rise.
Mine don’t. I didn’t love Curt Bowery before. I hate him now.
“Are you going to cuddle with me?” she teases.
“No.”
“Oh, come on,” she says, taking my hand. “Just a little cuddle.”
I look at her and try not to let her pouty lips soften my resolve.
“I already answered you,” I say, heading up the steps with her at my heels.
“That doesn’t mean I won’t ask you again.”
“Don’t I know that,” I mumble.
She laughs.
I follow her into my bedroom and ignore the ache in my chest. Nothing can be done about it tonight.
We slip between the sheets, and just as I knew—and hoped—she would, she curls up against me.
“Good night, Wade. Sweet dreams.”
“Night, Dara.”
We lie still, and it’s not long until her breathing evens out. Then I kiss the top of her head and go to sleep too.