Chapter 30 WREN #2
“I’m not sure I’m getting through the night without pulling you into a bathroom stall.”
Mission accomplished.
He crosses the room and his hand finds the small of my back where the silk isn’t, pulling me into him, kissing the side of my neck just below my ear. His mouth lingers there and I feel everything I am supposed to be holding off until later.
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting.”
His hands drop to my hips and slide down over the silk to my ass, pulling me harder against him.
“Mmm.”
He pulls back, exhales rough.
“Get away from me, Wren. I have a tux to put on.”
I laugh.
* * *
I love the Botanical at night.
The conservatory is lit up gold from the inside.
The trees in the courtyard are strung with lights.
The fountain in the front is doing its show in blue and white.
Two hundred people in tuxedos and gowns moving between the rooms, and the centerpieces are on every table—my centerpieces, twenty-five of them, the peonies opening in the warm air the way I knew they would—blush garden roses, eucalyptus, dusty miller for texture.
I work the first hour.
I check arrangements. I shake hands with board members I’ve known for years.
I find the catering manager and confirm the dessert flowers haven’t wilted.
I do a lap with Helen Markham, who runs the gala committee, and answer her questions about the new garden roses and pretend I don’t notice Jace at the edge of the room watching me.
He stays out of my way.
That is the thing I notice first. He is not following me.
He is not standing behind me. He is at the bar across the conservatory holding a glass of something amber and talking to one of the older men on the board like they have known each other for years.
The tux is a problem. Sasha was right—public health crisis.
Women all over the room are noticing him.
Subtle, less subtle, openly. To be expected when a man looks like that.
He doesn’t notice—or he does and doesn’t care. Every once in a while he glances over and finds me in the room, letting his eyes stay on me a moment past polite before he turns back to the man he’s talking to.
Helen leans in.
“Who is that?”
“Friend.”
“He’s not looking at you like a friend, sweetheart.”
I laugh. “Helen.”
“I’m just saying.”
She squeezes my arm and moves on.
A man I used to do the flower markets with finds me by the orchid display and asks how the shop is doing. I move through the room and I do my job, and every time I look up I catch him already looking at me.
He fits.
I thought he wouldn’t. I thought a man with a Manhattan penthouse and a security firm and a billion-dollar net worth would be too much for a charity gala full of NYC art-world money and old garden-society families and women who flew in from the Hamptons for the night.
I thought I’d spend the night managing his reaction to my world.
He doesn’t.
He’s polite to everyone who comes up to him. He laughs at something Helen says and it sounds like a real laugh. He lets me lead.
Halfway through the second hour I’m at the bar getting a glass of champagne, wanting to find Jace, when the lights dim and Helen takes the small stage at the front of the conservatory.
Brief speech. Thanks to the donors. Thanks to the board.
Thanks, she says—and my stomach drops because I know what’s coming—to Wild Tide Florals, who has done our centerpieces for years and has refused to take a dollar more than the cost of the stems. There isn’t a florist in this city who can do what Wren Ashford does, and we are lucky to have her.
The room turns toward me, two hundred faces, and then they’re clapping. For me.
I am not built for this part. I lift my champagne in a small thank-you and I smile at a place above everyone’s heads and I will it to be over.
I look for Jace through the dim and find him already looking at me—not at Helen, not at the stage, at me—and I have never had a man look at me the way he is looking at me right now.
The lights come back up. The applause folds into music. Helen steps off the stage and the room goes back to its low hum of conversation, and I cross the floor to him through the crowd.
He’s standing where I left him an hour ago, drink in one hand, the other in his pocket, watching me come.
I get to him and put my hand on his lapel.
He looks down at me.
“How did I not know that about you?”
“Know what?”
“The free centerpieces. All of it.”
“It’s not a big—”
“I’m proud of you, Wren.”
I go still.
His hand finds the small of my back and rubs once, like he knows I don’t know what to do with what he just said.
I give him a small smile and a half shrug.
“Dance with me.”
“Ashford.”
“Carrington.”
“I do not dance.”
“You do tonight.”
He looks at me a second.
Then he sets the glass down, takes my hand, and walks me onto the floor.
His hand finds my lower back and pulls me into him—body against body, the silk of my dress against the wool of his tux—and I have to reach to slide my arms up around his neck.
We dance.
His hands are warm against the bare skin at the small of my back, and his thumb is moving against my tailbone.
He smells like the shower he took an hour ago and something underneath it that is just him.
I have been smelling it all night and I am going to be smelling it on his pillow at three in the morning when he is asleep beside me, and I have a feeling I will never be able to smell anything else and be content.
He’s looking down at me with the same look he had when he walked out of the bathroom and saw me in this dress, except now it has weight.
I can feel everything.
For the first time in five weeks I am not afraid of anything.
I look up at him and whisper.
“Take me home, Carrington.”
* * *
The penthouse is dark when we come in. I kick my heels off in the foyer and he sets his keys on the side table. We don’t turn the lights on. The city through the windows is enough—the lights outside reflecting off the wood floor.
He shrugs out of his tux jacket and drapes it over the back of the couch, pulling the bow tie open with one hand and letting it hang loose around his collar.
I cross to him and put my hands on his chest through the white shirt, looking up at him.
I don’t say anything. I don’t have to. He is looking at me the way he was looking at me at the edge of the dance floor, and I am looking at him the way I’ve been wanting to since he walked out of the bathroom in those tux pants.
He tips my chin up with his knuckle, holds my eyes a second longer, then kisses me.
So slow. His other hand comes up to my jaw, his thumb tracing the line of it, and his mouth is on mine, and it’s nothing like any kiss I’ve ever had with anyone.
This one is quiet.
I pull back.
I take his hand and walk him down the hall to the bedroom.
I find the zip at my side and slide it down, and the silk goes loose. He eases it off my shoulders, and it slips down my body and pools on the floor, and I step out of it.
I reach up and pull the pins, and my hair falls loose down my back.
Then I turn to his buttons. He lets me, his eyes on my face the whole time, and I work his shirt open and push it down his arms, my hands sliding over his biceps as I go.
He pulls me into him and kisses me. His hand slides up my back into my hair, and his mouth moves to my jaw, the side of my neck, the curve where my shoulder meets it. He works his way back up, finds my mouth again, and looks at me.
“I love you, Wren.”
I freeze. My breath stops.
He holds my eyes a second longer.
“I love you. I have loved you since the morning you came down to my lobby in that yellow dress and told me to stay away from your shop. I knew it when you walked out, and I have known it every day since.”
My eyes sting.
He leans in to kiss me. I stop him with a hand on his jaw.
“I love you too, Jace.”
His throat works. He closes his eyes for a second and exhales, like something just came loose in him.
Then he lifts me, carries me to the bed, and lays me down like I’m made of glass.
When he’s finally over me—his weight on his forearms, his hips between my thighs—he stops.
He just looks at me.
Then he kisses me—full, deep, his hand sliding into my hair, every word he just said pressed into my mouth.
He pushes into me in one stroke.
I close my eyes.
When I open them he’s right there, looking down at me, his hands framing my face. He doesn’t move for a moment. He just stays buried in me with his eyes on mine, and I’ve never felt closer to another human being in my life.
Then he moves.
Each stroke full of everything he’s been holding back. He stays close—his face above mine, his weight on his forearms, his hands in my hair on either side of my head. My arms are wrapped around his back, and I’ve never felt this small against him. We don’t look away from each other.
He presses his forehead to mine, like he’s trying to steady himself—or maybe me. His breath mixes with mine as he kisses me.
When he pulls back, he doesn’t go far. His lips hover at mine, barely there.
“I love you,” he murmurs, the words brushing against my mouth.
“I love you, Jace.”
He keeps moving, and I am not going to last long. Not like this. Not with him giving me everything he has been holding back since the morning I came down to his lobby in that yellow dress.
I come apart.
Not hard. Not loud. Quiet. A long slow wave that rolls through me with him still moving inside me, his eyes still on mine, my arms still wrapped around him. He follows me into it. He says my name once, low, and his forehead stays against mine, and he goes.
We lie there.
He doesn’t pull out for a long time. He just stays—his weight half on me, half on his elbow, his face in my neck, his hand in my hair.
When he finally pulls back, he brushes a strand of hair from my face and smiles.
I’ve never seen him smile like that.
Then he rolls onto his back and pulls me with him, tucking me against his side, his hand tracing down my spine while mine rests over his heart. After a while he tips my chin up and kisses me. “I love you,” he says again, quiet, against my temple. Then he settles me against his chest.
He falls asleep first, his arm heavy around me. I rest my cheek against his chest and listen to the steady rhythm of his heart.
I think about the dance. The yellow dress he remembered. The way he looked at me when he said, I love you.
I think about my brother. And the fact that he still doesn’t know about us.
I push it away.
Not tonight. Tonight is ours. Whatever is waiting on the other side of this can wait until morning.
I close my eyes.
I have never been this happy.
I have never been this afraid.