That didn’t sit well, and I wanted to shout at myself. Was I really so off that I didn’t want Zeke to talk to other women? Even my sister? What was I worried about? That he’d prefer someone else, even my sister?
“Okay, Layla, get your shit together. Stop being this woman. You hate this woman.”
I picked up the phone and called Hope. She answered on one ring. “Finally.”
“Sorry. Time change issues.”
She laughed. “Well, that and the fact that you’re tearing around on the motorcycle with Zeke Scott.”
I winced. There must be photos online. I might not like it, but this was my life. When I went out in public, there was a chance that someone would be there with a phone to capture the moment. “Right. That, too. How are you?”
She sighed. “Not great. I miss you. It was the second Thursday of the month. You know what happens on the second Thursday of the month.”
I smiled. “We have tapas.”
Well, Hope ate it and I picked at it. Maybe in the future, I would eat more of it, too. I’d certainly found my appetite. Yes, I should have been back from my honeymoon by now, and we would have had dinner while I told her about my days sitting in the sun. Well, under an umbrella shaded like I wasn’t in the sun.
I was a redhead.
“We’ll do it again.”
She laughed. “Will the good-looking Mr. Scott be joining us?”
“I’m not sure that I can answer that, yet. But I have to talk to you about something else.”
“Okay.” She sounded more serious. “What’s up?”
I looked around the room. My stuff was everywhere. I wasn’t neat and organized. A shirt lay over the chair in the corner. My art supplies were on the desk. The bed, that got made up every day by staff I never saw, was crumpled. I’d certainly made myself at home. And even thought of it that way now.
Hope deserved me to remember that wasn’t true. At least not yet. “Hope, you need to quit your job.”
She was silent for a long moment. “I’m not going to say that I haven’t thought that myself on occasion. I mean, I hate it, and I don’t think they really care about doing the charitable side of things. Like they’re patting me on the head. But…why particularly now?”
“Have you heard that Zeke and Dad are dissolving their partnership?”
“What?” she shouted into my ear, and I winced. “No. Does Bridget know? I mean…fuck. What will Dad do? Why is Zeke doing this?”
I swallowed. “Dad is involved with some bad shit, Hope. And I think you and Bridget should quit your jobs and be as far from the fallout that has to be coming as you possibly can.”
“Are you sure?” Her voice was lower. “I mean…Zeke is on one side, Dad is on another. Maybe he’s misinterpreting things.”
I supposed it was a good question, but it still made me wish we were close so I could throw a pillow at her. “Zeke doesn’t misinterpret things, and he has no reason to make this up. Frankly, I don’t know that it matters to him one way or another if you are in the path of this blast, except that it matters to me.”
She sighed. “How bad is it?”
“Bad, Hopey. It’s the worst kind of bad.” I threw my pillow just for good measure at the window. It plopped down on the ground. The experience missed what I needed from it—Hope rolling her eyes at me but listening.
She was quiet. “Just quit. Abandon Dad.”
I rolled my eyes. “Hope, you can still be there for him without running his charity. I’m talking about you not being a person who others are looking at for payback. I know you need to think about things and consider all your options all the time, because you always worry you’re making the wrong decisions. We’re all like that. We get that because Dad told us all that our decisions were wrong, all the time.” I had to get this out. “But I’ll tell you what I mean. I will always have your back, Hope. Always. You can’t go down with this ship.”
I didn’t expect the tears that came, but they fell anyway. Streamed, like an explosion. I was the Niagara Falls of crying. “Even if you left me here. Went with Dad because he threatened me.”
“You told me to go.” She spoke in a low voice. “You did.”
“That’s right, because I didn’t think I was worth asking you guys to stand against him. But what I know now is that you stand with the people you love when they need you, whether you ask them to or not. You’re always there, even if they push at you. That’s called loyalty. It’s what you do.” I sat up on the bed. “And I love you, Hope. I’ll always love you. I’m trying to save you. Do the right thing.”
“I’m sorry, Layla. I…I did the wrong thing. I knew it when we got on the plane. Bridget and I both did. I’m sorry. You seemed so okay, so happy in all the photos and the texts. I decided you were doing fine.”
I nodded. “I am, and that’s lucky. Just have my back next time I need you, please. You’re my sister. I need you.”
It was hard to admit that; one of the most troubling things for me to say in the world, actually. To be needy was to be wrong. I felt that with Zeke, I felt it my whole life. I was expected to have my shit together twenty-four seven. How could that be a reasonable thing to expect of a person?
“I need you, too. I will, Layla. You’ll never have to worry if you can count on me again. I promise.”
I believed her.
We said our goodbyes and hung up. That hadn’t gone at all the way I thought it was going to go.
I thought I might need a nap, but instead, I started drawing, finishing what I had for Zeke and moving on to the next one I hadn’t known I had inside of me to create.
After an hour, I rose to bring them to him, but nerves got the better of me. I didn’t want to hand them to him. I wanted to leave them for him to look at them when I wasn’t there to see it. Right or wrong, that was what I decided to do.
He was actually talking on his computer in his office when I entered his bedroom. I could hear him from the door. Dang it. He hadn’t been in there all week. What was he doing now?
“Layla? That you?” he called out. “Come here, princess.”
That nickname again. Good or bad, it was obviously now mine. I walked toward him, stopping in the doorway. “You okay?”
“Yep. Come meet my friend Kolby.”
He must be on the screen. I walked over and would have bent over to see him, but Zeke pulled me onto his lap. I sat instead, sort of delighted that he’d done that in front of his friend.
“Layla.” A happy looking brown-haired man with blue eyes smiled back at me. He had a toddler on his lap. Aha, so this was one of the ones with kids and not the one traveling the world. Or the one running the bar. This was the electrician. “So, you’re the one who is making this guy look happier than he has in years.”
Behind me, Zeke groaned. “Don’t embarrass me, man. Or I wouldn’t have called her in.”
I smiled at Kolby. “How are things where you are?”
The toddler grinned at me, and I grinned back. He clapped his hands, and I did the same. I’d always loved kids, even if that weren’t a fashionable thing to do. I did. I’d own it.
“Well, they’re going well. Mommy is napping. She’s pregnant. Yes, Zeke, again. Three is not that large a number, and she needs to rest. So, we are watching big brother build with Legos while we are distracted by talking to Uncle Zeke.”
Behind me, Zeke laughed. “Now I see why you contacted me. You’re distracting Simon. I get it. I see. Using me.”
“Totally.” Kolby laughed back. “So, Layla. How did you get him to take an afternoon off? This has to be your doing.”
I shook my head. “Not me at all. Zeke is his own man. He makes his own decisions. He wanted this afternoon off, he took it.”
“I see.” Kolby smiled again. “Well, it’s nice to see the two of you.”
I rose. I’d been introduced. Made faces at the toddler. I’d let them get back to talking to each other. I quickly left the sketches I’d done on the desk. “Look at these later. Okay?
Without me here?”
He shot me a questioning look, his eyebrows slanted down, but nodded just the same. I winked at him. “See you later.”
It was time for me to get ready to be beautiful for wherever we were going tonight. It had to be possible for me to put on fancier clothes and not hate them. I just had to figure out how.
In the end, I wore a black pencil skirt and paired it with a white blouse that showed skin slightly before the end of the shirt and the top of the skirt. The really dramatic thing I did was put on red shoes and red lipstick. I pulled my hair back in a low ponytail and overdid it with the eyeshadow so that my eyes were really smoky. In the end, I was happy with the effect.
I came out to find Zeke waiting for me, which was when I realized I was five minutes late. “Sorry.”
His eyes widened. “Some things are well worth waiting for.”
I spun. “Good?”
“Stunning. I mean, you take my breath away.”
My cheeks burned, and I knew I had to be blushing, but I didn’t care. I took his outstretched hand. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
It turned out if you were Zeke Scott, you could get private tours of the Louvre when they were supposed to be closed. It looked like they were having some kind of event at the other end for someone important. I didn’t know them and I didn’t care, because getting to wander the Louvre with no one else in it was maybe the coolest thing, ever.
Everyone loved the Mona Lisa, and I certainly looked at her, but it was a different painting that stole my attention, not giving it back. I almost couldn’t move on from looking at it. It was called The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds by a painter named Georges de la Tour. It was fascinating to me. Four people were featured around a card table. A well-dressed man studying his cards was on the left. I was sure he was important, but it was the central figure, the woman who I couldn’t stop staring at.
Her gaze darted left to the server, who was perhaps helping her cheat. I loved the colors, the detail. It was like I was desperate to shout out, someone tell me what happens next. I rocked back on my feet. Okay. I loved art. It hadn’t been taken from me. Staying in Paris with Zeke had at least shown me that. What would my life have been like if my father hadn’t forbidden this?
I darted around. Zeke stood behind me, watching me, not the painting. And I hadn’t felt the ants on my neck.
“Sorry.” I hadn’t talked to him in a long time. I didn’t even know how long. That was totally rude.
“Why?” He walked toward me. “I brought you here so you could enjoy yourself. I like to look for a few seconds and move on to the next one. It’s fun for me to visit, but I don’t really get anything out of it. Watching you, I think that you do. From that one. It really spoke to you. What did it say?” I turned around to look again, and he wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Tell me what you see.”
“In this case, of course technique. It’s extraordinary. I don’t have the education to tell you what exactly he did. I wish I did. Dad denied me art. Told me it wouldn’t lead to anything good.”
He made that noise again that was something like hmmm, and I never knew what it meant. “That’s…too bad.” Zeke sounded funny, but when I would have turned to look, he held me still. “What else do you like?”
“How it feels like a captured moment in time. Always with us. Never gone.”
“Wow.” He kissed my neck. “That’s beautiful.”
We moved on after that and eventually headed back into his car to go to dinner. The second we stepped outside, I felt the ants on my neck. The security must be somewhere. Like Zeke’s staff, we never saw him, but his presence was real.
The wine was perfect, and I was a little bit drunk. Zeke wasn’t, since he was driving, but he grinned at me like he was just as happy in that moment as I was.
“No, you didn’t.” I shook my head at him. His story had to be impossible.
“I did.” He laughed. “The man was chasing me down the boardwalk in Atlantic City, so I stashed the cash with a mime and ran on. The dude held it for me, silently, and I paid him twenty percent.”
I was practically giddy with how this night was going.
“Layla, the designs you made for me. They were for wine bottles, right?”
I nodded, some of my glee fading. Yep, I’d forgotten they did that. I’d put a Z around a flower. His initials linked in another one. And the third had a Z at the bottom of a rose.
“They were so spectacularly beautiful. Thank you. If I ever actually achieve that dream, I’m going to pay you for them.”
“No.” I sat forward. “They’re a gift.”
“They’re branding. People get paid for that, and you are really good. I love them. Thank you.”
I’d never been so happy in my life. All the joy from before plus more flooded through me. “I’m just so glad you like them.”
“Love them.”
There was that word. It swelled around me. He hadn’t told me he loved me, but he did love that design. It was foolish for me to want that. We were still so new, and I’d already been with him longer than most women were. But I did. I wanted him to love me because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was in love with him.
For the first time in my life, I was head over heels, swim the Atlantic, bathe in happiness, in love. It was fast, but who cared, it was real. And it couldn’t be me feeling this way all alone. He had to be falling, too. Maybe he did it differently, but we connected. On almost everything. We laughed. We seemed to understand each other. He cared about what happened to me. I took care of him, feeding him whenever I knew he hadn’t eaten, listening because what he said mattered.
This didn’t just happen all the time. He was older than me, but even I knew it—feeling like this was a rare, unique experience, and I wanted it to last forever. I was in love with him. Hands down. Maybe somehow, I’d known when I was thirteen that he was the one. Who cared? The only thing that mattered was now.
“Bridget called me earlier.”
My ecstatic happiness didn’t flee. “Oh?”
“She’d talked to Hope and didn’t think you could answer her questions because they were very intricate. She’s going to quit her job.”
I’d even managed not to fall down a jealous spiral that he’d talked to my sister. “That’s good. Hope was reluctant.”
He nodded. “Do you want dessert?”
Why did I need any when life was so sweet right now? “No, thank you.”
Chapter Nineteen
I’d never taken a bath with anyone before, and Zeke’s delicious tub was like medicine for my soul. I leaned against him, my back to his chest, with the added benefit of being able to feel his hard cock pressed against me anytime I moved just a little. Still, he made no moves to press this forward to sex just yet.
Maybe he liked just lying here, too. His bathroom was everything I imagine it would be and more. Luxurious. Marble clad, with a huge window that looked out over Paris, I’d never been in a tub as big. The shower was huge, too.
Steam dripped around us from the water we’d filled the bath with, and the bath was scented with what I thought was sandalwood that he’d added when we’d been filling it. He’d smell like me, I was going to smell like him. I smiled.
“What are you thinking about?” I spoke in a low voice.
“How I love your breasts.” He squeezed one, and I giggled.
“Really? That’s what you’re thinking?” I turned in his arms until I faced him chest to chest. “About my breasts.”
He smirked at me. That adorable thing that he did. I touched my finger to his lips, and he bit down on the top of my pointer finger, lightly. “No. Now I’m thinking about how pretty your face is. The shape of your lips. The way that you pout when you’re thinking about something bothering you and don’t even know it. Your expressive eyes. Cute little nose. Yep, I’m thinking about all of that.” He paused. “And your breasts.”
I laughed, taking him in my hand. “Any c
hance you have a condom in the bathroom?”
He shook his head. “No, princess. I don’t. But that’s okay. We can make each other come other ways.”
Zeke pushed his finger inside of me. I moaned. Sex with Zeke was sweeter each time we did it, oral or intercourse. It didn’t matter. I always got immediately turned on, and now that I knew what would come, the anticipation was even better. I kissed him.
And he gently kissed me back. So sweetly. “Touch me, Layla.”
He almost never asked for specific things. To hear the slight plea in his voice was almost my undoing. I nodded, taking him in my hand. He was thick, and in the hot water, felt even bigger.
I pulled my head back to hold his eye contact. Face to face, we watched each other as we stroked and played. I would gasp, and he would moan. It was so personal like this. Holding our gazes brought out every bit of intimacy that could be lost when we didn’t do this. Every thought, every jolt, every pleasure was on display. His face and my own. Then I noticed the mirrors. If I wanted to, I could even watch myself.
No, that wasn’t what I wanted. Just him. The way we connected like this. Minutes passed, and water splashed. The steam dissipated, but still, the pleasure came close but didn’t finish.
His cock pulsed in my hand. I squeezed tighter. He flared his nostrils and pressed my clit between two fingers. That was it. I came, suddenly, and he did, too. Together. Like we’d been joined inside, connected. It didn’t matter. There had never been a more precious moment than this one.
He was mine. I knew it. And I suspected he did, too.
My neck felt the bugs walking the whole run home, and I was starting to believe it couldn’t be the security guard. I’d have been used to him by now. I didn’t feel the previous security this acutely. No, there was something going on. Maybe I was losing my touch. We ran up to the house together. Zeke was slowing down to run with me, but we were doing four miles together. It was improvement. That much was clear.
Redhead On The Run (RedHeads Book 1) Page 21
