Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Holt
Moonlight drifts through the drapes that didn’t get closed.
I’ve told myself for the past hour that I’m going to get up. I need to clear my head and get myself together. That won’t happen as long as I lay next to Blaire and continue to run my fingers through her long, silky locks.
But I don’t. I can’t quite force myself to leave her in my bed.
Her hair is tangled from sweat and sex. Every time my fingers find a new little knot, I gently work it out … and wonder what the fuck is happening.
What am I doing?
I sigh, letting my head sink farther into the pillows.
Blaire rustles next to me. Her cheek moves against my chest, her arm rubbing against my abs as she rearranges her position. I hold my breath and hope she doesn’t pull away. Because while I know this isn’t where I need to be, it’s where I am.
It’s where I want to be. And I don’t know how I feel about that.
What is it really hurting? I’ll have plenty of time in the morning with Oliver to make up for lost time.
My head is murky. My thoughts are a complicated web of logic and emotion—the latter clouding the first. This is precisely why I don’t do this. It leads to disaster.
So why am I doing this with Blaire? Why am I pointedly not following my own rules?
Not only that, but why am I instigating it?
It’s usually a woman’s behavior that confuses me. This time, it’s my own.
My motivations are typically social or sexual. This time, it’s not.
I want it to be. Damn, do I want it to be. And maybe I even thought it was when I invited her to stay with me. But it’s beyond that now.
Now, wanting her to stay here isn’t just about sex. I want to talk to her just as much as I want to fuck her. I want to see her various smiles, hear her laugh, and smell her perfume in the mornings. It’s fucked up. But I don’t know what to do about it.
My fingers slip through her hair. The weight of her body against mine feels like an anchor. But instead of presenting like a ball-and-chain, it feels more like a reprieve. It gives me a moment to breathe.
There were definitely ideas that we’d work, then fuck, then go to bed. It was supposed to be an easy few days with a woman who lived a thousand miles from here—a woman who had class and her own sense of detachment.
It was perfect.
Blaire wouldn’t show up at my house once our time together was done. She wouldn’t call me to come over when I was working. There would be no assumptions that we were attending any event together.
It was a week cut-and-dry. It sounded like heaven.
Now I find myself counting the days until she goes home. And not because I’m looking forward to it.
“Fuck,” I whisper angrily into the night.
I slip out of bed. The air is cold and almost assaulting. Blaire stirs but settles again with her head on my pillow.
The sight leaves me with a knot in my stomach as I tuck the blankets around her naked body. She smiles in her sleep—a lazy, unguarded gesture that twists the knot inside me harder.
I turn away and pluck my robe off a hook on the bathroom door.
The house is quiet as I make my way through the hallways. I wander aimlessly through the rooms until I wind up in the den.
I flip on the fireplace and take a seat on the sofa. The flames flicker, giving both heat and the illusion of company.
“What are you doing?” I ask myself.
I rest my head on the back of the sofa and fill my lungs with oxygen. It’s an attempt to clear my mind.
What’s surprising is that I’m not thinking about her body, or how hard I got off, or that she’s still in my bed and I could, theoretically, go back up there for another round. Those thoughts are there—I’m a hot-blooded man, after all—but they’re a definite back seat to other matters.
I blow out the breath. The hiss of air leaving my body is the only noise in the room.
This is going to end badly if you don’t stop it.
I groan, knowing it’s true. I also know that if I don’t get my head out of my ass and finalize the Landry deal, more things than my situation with Blaire are going to end in destruction.
Our current projects are wrapping up, and we have nothing else on the table. We have to get this property. I have to get it. Everyone put their faith in me, and I can’t let them down.
I can’t fuck this up.
Yet here I am. Sitting in the den and not at my desk. Not getting ready to go to the office early like I should be.
Shit.
My brain feels like a room with a bunch of open boxes. The contents of which are spewed around my mind. The harder I try to sort them back neatly, the more they fall apart.
What is Blaire going to think in the morning?
This is not like Picante. This isn’t a spur-of-the-moment fling that neither of us thinks much about.
She’s in my home.
We’ve shared intimate things about ourselves.
She’s in my damn bed.
She has every right to wonder if I’m pursuing her for a reason.
Am I?
I grimace. “No, why would I be? She’s leaving in a few days. She doesn’t want something serious any more than I do.”
But as my words settle in the air, hanging around like they’re taunting me, I realize how bitter they taste.
I look at the chair she sat in this evening. She was still annoyed with me for pushing her on the carriage—something I shouldn’t have done. Yet her opening up to me and sharing things about her life is something I’ll never forget.
It was real. Raw. Profound, in a way.
I’ve never experienced that kind of intimacy before.
So why her? Why now? Why at the worst possible time in my life?
Still, I watch the fire crackle softly and have half of a notion to wake Blaire. I think she’d like the peace of this moment.
“Maybe that’s precisely why it’s her and now,” I whisper into the night. “I’m only feeling these things for her because it’s what we both need right now. It works. There’s a freedom for both of us because she’s going to leave. And neither of us will be worse for the wear.”
I hope.
Blaire
The coffee maker hisses as the final drips of java flow into my cup. I take it from the tray and inhale the decadent aroma.
Holt’s robe is soft and warm. I found it draped across the bottom of the bed when I woke up and couldn’t help myself from putting it on. It smells like him.
I tug the tie together at my middle before leaning against the kitchen island and gazing across the backyard. The peaceful view helps to settle the wildness that’s still present from last night.
“What am I doing?” I ask the empty house.
It’s almost lunchtime, and I’m just having coffee. There are three missed calls from Yancy on my phone that I intentionally left in the guest bathroom. I haven’t bothered to check my work emails yet.
It’s irresponsible despite the fact that I know everything at the office is taken care of.
Yancy is handling everything because that’s what she does even though I’m usually too anal to let her.
But I should be checking in. I need to ensure that all my court dates are extended due to the asbestos and that nothing has fallen through the cracks.
Instead, I’m standing in Holt’s kitchen drinking coffee.
Maybe this is what it looks like when someone just throws in the towel.
Is this how lives begin to spiral out of control?
I take a tentative sip of my drink and give that a thought.
Today looks so different than my life did this day a week ago.
Then I was sitting at my desk in my business suit, probably lecturing someone about the ins and outs of the law.
I’m certain I was irritated and probably ready to have a heart attack—that and wondering why I picked a career that keeps me surrounded by overbearing men.
Then I took a vacation.
Now I stand in a business mogul’s luxury kitchen after a night of delicious sex in his multi-million-dollar house near the beach.
I pace around the kitchen, taking in the insane attention to detail in every element of the house. The handcrafted molding around the doorways. The rounded edges of the marble countertops. The way the windows bring in so much light, yet the sun never shines directly in.
It’s not surprising, though. That’s Holt, and it’s one of the things I love so much about him.
My feet stop moving as the last sentence flows through my brain.
I hold my mug with both hands and smile.
I do enjoy so many things about him.
He’s so kind and thoughtful. No detail gets by him. We can talk about anything, and his ideas are so thought-provoking. And he cares.
I lean against the counter and think back to last night. How he pushed me on the carriage to open up about myself. Even then, it was as if he was prodding me gently for my own good. As though he knew I needed to get that stuff off my chest.
What’s funny is that I didn’t even know I needed to share all of that. But waking up this morning felt … different. Lighter. Less weighed down by the world.
It’s probably all the sex.
I laugh at myself.
I grab a seat next to the windows that look across the pool and let my mind float back to Holt’s office. My intention wasn’t to spill my life’s story. All I wanted to do was to admit that he was right—that I do hold things in—and acknowledge that I might need to work on it.
Yet when I experienced the tenderness in his eyes, the attentiveness, my guard slipped.
For once, talking about Jack and the night I started to lose control didn’t feel like a shameful blemish on my soul.
I take another sip of coffee and remember how safe I felt in his arms. It was such a relief to tell someone my secrets and not be judged. His arms help put the pieces of me back together.
I sort back through various men I’ve had semi-relationships with over the years. Never once did I come close to telling any of them.
Why?
Why Holt?
The coffee burns my stomach as the acid sloshes around. I tug the robe even tighter.
My throat cinches, and I take a deep, calming breath.
“It’s because you’re leaving,” I tell myself. “It doesn’t matter what he knows about me. He’s safe.”
He’s safe.
My heart sinks as I realize the truth in that.
Holt is safe. He makes me feel protected.
And it’s a shame I’ll only have this one time in my life.
I put my cup in the dishwasher and head upstairs to check my emails.