Chapter Eight
Just a Dream
Daisy
That evening, I sat next to Marcus in the back of his
big limousine, Ronald driving (again wearing sunglasses, seriously, and night
had fallen and everything!), Brady sitting next to him in the front, Marcus
sitting next to me with his fingers fiddling with mine against his thigh.
He was on his phone.
It had been a surprise when Brady, not Marcus, had collected
me at my door, taking my bag and also putting his hand to the small of my back
as he escorted me to the car.
When Brady opened the door to let me in, Marcus was on the
phone but his gaze was on me.
However, the instant I sat my ass next to him, he muttered
into his cell, “I need a moment.”
He didn’t wait for whoever he was talking to to give him
that moment.
He put his hand over the bottom half of his phone, leaned
into me, brushed my lips with his, then slanted his head and kissed my neck.
He pulled away and said, “I’m sorry, honey. This is
important. I’ll try not to let it take too long.”
I’d just had my man’s man collect me from my door, carry my
bag, guide me chivalrously to a limousine in the back of which was my man.
He could be on the phone for an hour, two. With all that and
the way he greeted me and apologized, I didn’t give a shit.
To communicate this, I smiled at him, nodded, settled my ass
into the leather and it was then he took my hand, pulled it to his thigh, and
started fiddling with my fingers.
We drove from my building that was on the east side of
Cherry Creek past Colorado Boulevard, into downtown.
It took Marcus all that time to wind down his phone call and
he only flipped his cell shut when Ronald hit the indicator and made a turn
into underground parking.
“Sorry, darling,” Marcus murmured and I turned my head to
him. “How was your day?”
“I watched Gone with the Wind, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,
and Fried Green Tomatoes, so I’m topped up in Southern diva goodness.”
He grinned. “Does that ever run low?”
I shook my head (and hair—I’d gone with my Farrah Fawcett
flips-waves-and-curls-run-amuck-except-bigger look), but said, “I’m not takin’
any chances.”
His grin became a smile. He tugged on my hand and pulled me
in so he could touch his lips to my forehead.
About that time, Ronald pulled into a spot and stopped, so I
tore my eyes from Marcus’s retreating lips and looked out the windshield.
There was a big sign on the concrete wall in front of the
spot that said, RESERVED. PENTHOUSE.
Uh.
Penthouse?
The door at my side opened and Marcus let my hand go to put
his to my hip and give it a light shove, encouraging in a murmur, “Let’s get
you fed, baby.”
I slid out.
That was when I saw in front of the three spots next to the
limousine, one that held Marcus’s Mercedes, one that held a black Escalade, and
since the Escalade was so big I didn’t see what the other one held, but I did
see the same sign on the wall that was in front of the limo and the other
spots.
Four parking spaces.
All his.
My Lord.
Marcus took my hand and led me to the elevator that was right
next to the parking spot the limo was in.
But of course the owner of the penthouse would have all the
best spots.
The elevator came. We got in. Brady got in with us. Ronald
and his sunglasses did too.
And it was Ronald that tapped in a code on the elevator pad
then hit the button that had the letters PH.
They stood in front of us.
We stood at the back.
I looked up at Marcus. “You said you had a condo.”
He looked down at me. “I do.”
“A condo penthouse?”
He grinned again and squeezed my hand.
“Lobster, limos, and penthouses. You’re somethin’,
sugar,” I muttered.
“I’ll take that as good,” he replied.
I looked to the backs of the boys in front of me, stating, “Seein’ as that’s how I meant it, you go right ahead.”
At that, he let my hand go but only so he could curve his
arm around my waist and curl me so my front was pressed to his side.
I looked up at him again. “This is a long ride, darlin’.
Your penthouse on the moon?”
With that, he burst out laughing.
And I loved every second of it, hearing it and watching it.
Unfortunately, in the middle of it, the elevator doors
opened.
We walked out into a plush little hallway that had an
armchair and a table with a lamp on it over which was a mirror, all this for
reasons I didn’t know since you needed a code to get to that floor so I
suspected no one would be hanging there waiting for Marcus to get home.
It also had a big, gleaming wooden door that had to be a
foot bigger than normal doors on every side. This had a shining brass
door handle that would fit a manor house, except it was snazzier.
Marcus walked us to it, but didn’t fit a key into the door.
He slid aside the door over a panel on the wall I hadn’t even noticed and
entered another code.
I heard the lock unlatch.
He opened the door and positioned me to move through it with
his hand at my back, saying to the boys, “Tomorrow.”
“Yes, boss,” I heard Brady say.
Ronald wasn’t a big talker, apparently, since he again said
nothing.
“Later, boys,” I called, looking over my shoulder at them as
Marcus pressed me in.
Brady grinned at me. Ronald just stared at me through his
apparently ever-present sunglasses.
Marcus shut the door.
My gaze went to Marcus and I saw Brady had handed off my bag
to him.
“Does Ronald not like me?”
He got close. “Ronald likes beer, brats, Broncos, and busty
women, not in that order. He hasn’t shared, but if I had to guess, my guess
would be he loves you.”
That was good but I wasn’t sure it was true.
“Brady seems friendly,” I noted. “Ronald, not so much.”
“Brady is friendly because that’s part of Brady being Brady.
Ronald is old school, and as far as he’s concerned, he isn’t paid to be
friendly. Especially not to any woman I’d bring dinner to or have sitting next
to me in my car.”
I tipped my head to the side. “How many of those are there?”
“In my car, enough. Bringing dinner to, one.”
I smiled.
He smiled back and got closer. “I’m going to change. Then
I’ll show you around. After that, I’ll start dinner.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Make yourself at home,” he invited, lifted his hand,
touched my nose, then turned and sauntered up some stairs, carrying my bag with
him.
That was when I noticed the stairs.
They swept at a curve off to the side of the entry and they
had an elegantly carved bannister the likes I’d never seen. All whorls and
swirls, it was amazing. And the treads of the stairs were covered with a thick,
opulent carpet in the color of the palest mushroom.
Beyond that, I took in floor-to-ceiling windows with an
uninterrupted view of the Front Range. Uninterrupted except for the elegant
drape of oyster-colored curtains pulled back at the sides.
And in the space just beyond the staircase, on gleaming
parquet floors, sat a table with a massive spray of delicate
butterscotch-colored flowers, the type I didn’t know, these rising up from a
huge crystal vase. Two curved, elegant chairs sat at angles to the table for no
reason whatsoever, except to look posh, seeing as no one would sit there unless
Marcus was throwing a big party.
I hadn’t even walked in and I knew his place wasn’t class.
It was class.
He had all this.
He could come from living a life that was close to squalor
and build a life where this was what he saw when he got home.
And he’d picked me.
Me.
He’d not only picked me, he’d said he’d waited thirty-five
years for me.
So I stood just inside his door and I did this not feeling
uncomfortable.
I felt for the only time in my life outside the time I hit
the Denver city limits like I was right where I was supposed to be.
What I wasn’t going to do was make myself at home.
No, I reckoned if the entry was that fabulous, the rest was
going to blow my mind.
And I wanted to experience it with Marcus.
So I didn’t leave the entry. I walked to the windows, stared
out at the Front Range, and waited for him to come back.
“Honey, I told you to make yourself at home.”
I turned to see Marcus coming down the final wind to the
stairs wearing another pair of nice jeans, these topped with a garnet-colored
sweater with a handsome, manly shawled collar.
“I didn’t want to experience your place without you with
me,” I told him.
A look passed his face right before he got in my space.
I didn’t have a chance to figure out what the look meant
seeing as a nanosecond after he got in my space, I was in his arms and he was
kissing me.
And that kiss was another doozy, slightly less of one than
what he gave me that morning, seeing as we were standing up and we both had on
more clothes (well, Marcus did, I had on a pair of faded jeans with
strategically-placed worn spots (a lot of them), high-heeled, gray leather
cowboy boots with turquoise ostrich feathers stitched in, and a silvery
off-the-shoulder sweater that held on to my boobs by a miracle, so not more
clothes, exactly, just more coverage, kind of).
The kiss was still a doozy.
When he lifted his head, I was having trouble breathing and
I was holding on to his shoulders because my legs had gone weak.
“Want a tour?” he whispered.
Hell yes, I wanted a tour.
Though I’d prefer another kiss.
Horizontal again this time.
I didn’t share that.
I nodded.
He grinned.
Then he let me go, took my hand, and gave me a tour.
And we’ll just say I was right.
The entry was pure class.
The rest of it was like a dream.
“I’m having Kelly clear my schedule so next week we
can go to my place in Aspen.”
I sat at his side at his impressive dining room table where
he sat at the head, a fork with linguine wrapped around its tines, Marcus’s
homemade buttery, garlicky clam sauce dripping off it halfway to my mouth, and
I looked to him.
There was a lot there. I didn’t know where to start.
So I started with the easiest part.
“Kelly?” I asked, then shoved the pasta into my mouth.
“My PA,” he answered, reaching to the bottle of sauvignon