by Eden Ashe
But while they’d spent nearly every second of every day together, they’d avoided the one subject they most needed to discuss—what to do with St. James Manor.
It had been a touchy subject before they’d realized her Nana had turned into a ghost to get her way, but, more than anything, Jilly didn’t want Luke to think she‘d use him to get what she wanted.
The funny thing—while spending hours methodically listing her arguments and color-coding them according to strength of that particular argument, she understood, yeah, St. James Manor meant a lot to her. But Luke was her home now. Whether they settled in her family’s ancestral home or a shack in the backwoods of some forgotten forest, she’d make it work, as long as she had him.
In only a week, he’d become the one thing she couldn’t bear to lose.
The back door opened, followed by three pairs of footsteps, and she braced for the news.
“Jilly, baby? Are you…. Crap.” Luke crouched in front of her, mismatched eyes shadowed beneath his ratty ball cap. “What’s up, babe? Are you planning on invading Russia?”
Snorting out a laugh, she accepted his help getting to her feet. “That would probably be easier.” Drawing in a deep breath, she ignored the two lawyers crowding the doorway behind her. “We haven’t discussed the house since Nana unlocked us, and our time is up.”
Surprise flicked in his gorgeous eyes. His gaze dropped to her meticulously organized notes then back to her face. “That’s because my mind has been made up since then.” He lifted a brow and crossed his arms. “But feel free to argue your points. I don’t want you to have wasted all this time.”
She waved that off. “It’s never a waste, trust me. But, Luke….” She stepped over her rainbow of notes with care until she stood directly in front of him. After all her planning and plotting, none of it really mattered. “I don’t care where we live. I don’t want to be somewhere that makes you miserable, and you said yourself, updating this place would be a decade out of your life. I just want to be with you.” She lifted her chin in defiance of how cheesy the next sentence would sound. “You’re my home.”
A full ten seconds passed before he let out a sigh. “That’s it? That’s your argument?” With a disappointed expression, he shook his head. “I expected a full-on PowerPoint presentation, including charts and graphs, and hours and hours of arguments.”
Her heart knocked against her chest because for the first time all week, she couldn’t tell if he was teasing or serious. “I have all of that,” she said, heat blooming on her face, “but I don’t want you to do this because I wore you down.”
The quick shrug had her heart leaping into her throat. When had her Luke turned cold? “It doesn’t matter.” He gestured at the lawyers still standing behind her. “The paperwork has already been filled out. It just needs your signature.”
She blinked, but quick on the heels of the hurt came anger, and she shouted, “You…you…. You made a decision without me?”
Confusion flickered over his face before he waved the men forward. “I didn’t think you’d care, baby. All you have to do is sign, and this place is ours forever.”
“Of course I care—what?” She could only stare as the taller of the two old men started unloading files from his briefcase. “What’s going on?”
“I love you, Jilly.”
Nodding, she acknowledged his words, but her gaze never left the attorney, sure she’d missed something. “That’s nice, and you know I love you, too, but—”
“Baby. I need you to look at me.”
She did, and her heart finally caught up with what her brain tried to tell her. Kneeling on one knee, he held a small black box in his hands. He’d removed the ball cap while she gaped at him, and his heart, so full of love for her, was in his beautiful, mismatched eyes.
Twining the fingers of his free hand around hers, he said, “I love you. I couldn’t live in this place with you while knowing I could never have you. It would have killed me to see you dating other men, knowing they had the right to touch you, kiss you, be with you, when I knew it should have been me. I wouldn’t have survived it. But then your pain-in-the-ass Nana locked us in here, and you knocked down every wall I’d built to keep my heart intact. And I realized, no matter how much I’d loved you before, it was nothing compared to what I felt after being able to touch you the way I’d desperately needed to for all these years.”
He closed his eyes and cleared the emotion out of his throat before he looked at her again and traced his thumb over the trail of tears leaking down her face. “I’m asking you to marry me. It doesn’t have to be now, or even in a year. But this house is ours, and I want us to live here in it, together, as a couple. Not mine and yours, but ours. And I need you to know that this isn’t temporary for me. It’s forever. So say yes to me, Jilly. Say you’ll be with me until we both die of old age and can come back and haunt our grandchildren together.”
She opened her mouth to answer him, but nothing she could say felt like enough. Swiping at her tears and sniffling pathetically, she fell to her knees and let him see the love and desperate need inside her. Wrapping herself around him, she rested her head against his. The words she finally gave him were the only ones that mattered because her heart had long ago made the decision for her.
So, with all the joy and love she had, she nodded while her entire world narrowed to him. Always him.
“Forever, Luke. You’re all I need.”
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Sexy Designs by Desiree Holt
Chapter One
“Grace, you’ve done a fabulous job.”
Ben Randall stood in the living room of a Paradise Ranch model townhouse and took in the exquisite décor. Blues and greens blended with subtle earth tones for a feeling of warmth without being overbearing. The furniture was inviting, especially bathed as it was by the sun spilling in from the large picture window.
“I’m glad you like everything.”
“You promised me warm, sexy designs, and that’s exactly what you gave me.”
Grace Traynor slid folders and her iPad into her briefcase and snapped the lock. “Thanks, Ben. I’m happy we got just the look you wanted to achieve.”
What he really wanted to achieve was Grace across a dinner table from him. Lying on the grass in warm sunshine. Naked and in my bed. From the day he met her, he’d been strongly attracted to her, an attraction that only increased over time. At sixty-five, his sex drive might be a little lower, but he hadn’t lost any of the nuances of touch. And he’d learned long ago that a lot more than the physical made a relationship spark. He wasn’t slow where women were concerned, but, for months, he’d been searching for the right opportunity to move forward with Grace, and each time it seemed he hit a wall.
In the months they’d been working together, he had made a giant number of casual overtures. She’d politely rebuffed every one of them. At first, he’d figured maybe she just didn’t feel the same physical pull, the same interest in taking this out of the business arena. That would be disappointing, but he’d make himself deal with it. However, the more time they spent together, the more frequently he caught her looking at him with banked hunger in her eyes.
No, Grace was just as attracted to him as he was to her. Over time, he’d noticed whenever he came too close or invaded what he assumed was her personal space, she became as tense as a stretched rubber band. He’d love to know what that was all about. He just had to be smart enough to figure out what the problem was.
“Yes,” he said now. “I agree.”
“You know,” she told him, “when you first brought me out here to look at this place and tried to share your vision with me, I thought you might be crazy.”
He laughed. “Fourteen hundred empty acres with nothing but trees and deer? I might have felt the same way.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You had the vision. And the more you talked, the more I could see it.
”
He smiled and lifted her hand, brushing his lips across her knuckles then dropping it before she could tug it away. “But the credit for this goes to you.”
He looked at the view from the sliding patio doors.
Selling the Crooked R ranch had been hard for him. Generations of Randalls had raised cattle on it, very successfully. But, somehow, the cowboy gene hadn’t passed down to any of his three sons so he’d looked for a buyer, one who knew the business. And he’d kept fourteen hundred acres for himself.
It wasn’t just that he needed something to do, although that was part of it. At sixty, he was far from ready to retire. He had visited friends who’d moved to one of the many Sun City developments or The Villages in Florida and been struck with the idea of creating a community for people fifty-five and over. A place where they could begin a new phase of their lives, with every amenity and convenience he could contrive. The community would have a definite Texas theme and be called Paradise Ranch because, as he told his sons, “It’s for people entering a new phase of paradise.”
Working with McMann Brothers Development, seeing his ideas actually come to life, had revitalized him. Paradise Ranch showed him life had a lot of excitement still waiting for him. Meeting Grace Traynor had kicked it up another notch.
Alex McMann had recommended her as someone they often worked with, so he’d made an appointment. When he walked into her office, his heart did a little drum beat and his cock, which hadn’t been interested in a lot lately, stood up and demanded attention. A silk blouse the same blue as her eyes, and navy slacks outlined a lush, mature figure. Highlighted sable hair fell in soft waves to just above her collar, and the wide smile she greeted him with made him want to taste those plump lips.
The first thing he’d thought was, Holy shit! He hadn’t exactly been a hermit since his wife passed away, but he also hadn’t met a woman who turned him on like this in more years than he wanted to count. The more time he spent with her, the more he was attracted to her. Not just her body, either. He wasn’t a horny teenager anymore. Grace was smart, funny, easy to be with. Someone he wanted to spend time with outside the work environment.
A goal he knew would not be easy to achieve.
“Let’s do one more walkthrough,” she said to him. “Make sure we’ve got the feel you want for the townhouses before we start on the first detached villa.”
Ben was sure she’d nailed it, but it gave him a chance to spend more time in her company. “Sounds good. Lead the way.”
He had to concentrate on what she was saying as they moved from room to room, mesmerized as he was by the musical lilt to her voice and the tempting sway of her hips.
“Ben?”
He stopped, almost bumping into her as he realized she had paused and turned to him.
“Sorry. Did I miss something? I was just enjoying the feel you’ve created here.”
She laughed. “I don’t think you’ve heard a word I said. We’ve spent a lot of time on this today. I think you need a break.”
“What I think I need is a cup of coffee,” he told her. “Or, better yet, a glass of wine. Thistle Creek Winery wants to open a retail outlet in the first town center we’re building, and they sent over some bottles for us to try. Let’s see what they gave us.”
She took a step back, holding her briefcase tightly. “Oh, I don’t think so.” She made a show of looking at her watch. “It’s actually later than I thought. I should get going.”
“One glass of wine won’t hurt.” He winked. “To celebrate what we’ve done so far. Come on. I won’t take no for an answer.”
She stood there, frowning.
“Come on,” he urged again. “You’ve done a terrific job with the model townhouses. Kept right to the theme without being excessive in your designs. And I want to see what you have in store for the villas and the first clubhouse. The wine is locked up in the model we’re using as an office. We can sit outside and enjoy the late afternoon sunshine.”
He considered it a major accomplishment that when he took her elbow to guide her along, she didn’t protest. By the time they reached the offices and he’d taken down a bottle of cab, she actually appeared slightly less tense. He urged her outside where a small café table and chairs were set upon the patio. The air was heavy with the scent of new shrubbery and flowers and freshly mowed grass. There was no one else behind the row of townhouses, but in the distance he could hear the sounds of construction. The signs of the ongoing development always excited him.
Ben couldn’t take his eyes away from her graceful neck or the smooth movement of her throat muscles as she swallowed some of the wine. Jesus! He was besotted with the woman. That was the only explanation for it. Probably had been since the day he’d met her.
“To a long and successful relationship,” he said, touching his glass to hers.
“I’ll drink to that.”
“Based on our most recent conversations, I’ve been working on the sketches for the first clubhouse,” Grace told him, setting her glass on the table. “Done some refining. Added a few things. And I have four new interior design plans for the villas. Ideas for accessories and new color schemes. I think you’ll like them.”
“I like everything you’ve done so far, Grace. You managed to capture the exact feel I was looking for and blend it with the architecture. That’s not an easy task.”
“Actually, it’s turning out to be one. I love your concept, especially since I’m Texas born and bred.” She grinned. “And I’ve looked at a lot of Texas art lately for inspiration.”
“Oh?”
“Mmhmm. Visited some museums. Even talked my way into a few private collections.”
Ben studied her face as she spoke. She looked relaxed for the first time since he’d met her. The air was heavy with late spring warmth, and when Grace settled into her chair, she’d taken off her jacket. The late afternoon sun picked up the highlights in her hair and bathed her face in an amber glow. A gentle breeze kissed the soft fabric of her blouse so it outlined her breasts. And was that just the hint of her nipples barely discernible? Was she reacting to him, despite her Keep Away attitude?
God, he hoped so. She was like a luscious plum, ripe for the picking.
As they chatted, very casually he lifted the wine bottle and topped off their drinks. Intent on what she was saying, Grace picked up the glass and sipped from it. He loved seeing her like this, less on guard, not quite so controlled. Could he possibly take this opportunity to move things along a little?
“You know,” he said slowly, “in all the time we’ve sent together, you’ve never really told me much about yourself.”
She tilted her head slightly. “What is it you want to know? I’m sure Josh gave you all my credentials. I’ve worked with them on a lot of projects. And you have my brochure.”
“But I know nothing about Grace Traynor, the woman.” He stroked the tip of one finger over her arm, just a brief touch. He felt a slight tremor and wondered if it was anxiety at his touch or, hopefully, controlled desire. If it was anxiety, what could possibly be the cause of it? He’d done his best not to crowd her.
“She’s really very boring.” She picked up her glass again and, this time, took a healthy swallow.
“I’ll bet she’s not.” He took a chance and stroked her arm again. Maybe the wine was mellowing her, but she didn’t jerk away. Instead, he noticed her nipples had become even more prominent beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. “For example, you never talk about your family. I’m sure I’ve bored you to tears about mine.”
“Not at all. I love hearing about your ranch. It’s too bad none of your sons wanted to take it over.”
He shrugged. “It is what it is. I came to terms with it a long time ago. And Paradise Ranch is really filling my life in a way I never thought it would. But there we go, talking about me again. I want to know about you. Let’s start with something simple. I know you have a degree from Rhode Island School of Design, but what made you start your own business?”
“I wanted my independence.”
She said it very simply but in a way that told Ben there was a lot of meaning beneath that one sentence.
“And you certainly have it. You’ve done very well for yourself. I’m surprised, though, that you never wanted to marry. Have children.”
The muscles in her face tightened and her glance slid away. “I’m happy by myself.”
“So no special man in your life? No one to celebrate holidays and successes with?”
She turned and looked at him, and he was startled by the pain in her eyes. “What exactly is it you want from me, Ben? You must have better things to do than playing Twenty Questions with me.”
“What do I want from you?” Here was his opening. “I want to take you out to dinner. Maybe dancing. Spend a little time with you when we’re not discussing business.”
“Why?”
The question surprised him. “Why? Because you are an incredibly attractive, appealing woman, and I’d like to get to know you better.”
She lifted her hand, breaking his contact with her arm, and took another swallow of wine. “I’m not all that. I guarantee you’d be disappointed.”
What in hell? There was something going on here he didn’t quite understand.
“Since I have no expectations, that wouldn’t happen. But I think we’d enjoy each other’s company. When was the last time you went out for an evening that wasn’t related to business?”
She laughed. “If I went out with you, it would be.”
“No. I’d make sure it was nothing but pleasure.”
She paused, nibbled on her bottom lip in a way that made his cock swell and his balls ache. Unexpected desire flushed through him, stronger than he’d felt in years. All of the sudden, it became very important to convince her to do this.
