“He said he’d come back to see if he could maybe fix a few mistakes he made when he was living here before. Told me how sorry he was to leave without giving any notice or whatever. Said he knew I’d expected more from him than that.”
“Big of him, coming back after all these years.”
Billy’s squint softened a little as he studied my face. “He was a good kid, Addison. And he’s become a good man. Offered to help me out with some of my medical bills. I guess he’d heard about all that from someone.”
“Did you take the money?”
“No,” Billy said, a soft, ironic smile touching his lips. “You know me. I don’t like taking something I didn’t work for.”
I knew that. He’d refused the money I’d offered him, too. So I called the insurance company we used for employee medical, asked them what I could do. But medical records are confidential. They wouldn’t take my money, either.
“Take the money, Billy,” I said, touching his hand lightly. “Don’t let your pride cause your family to go without.”
“I could say the same to you.”
“Me? I don’t need money.”
“No. But I saw the look on your face when I said his name. You still love him.”
I shook my head, but I knew he could see right through me. I’d known Billy since I was a small child, following my dad around like a puppy on a leash. He’d seen me with Grant, and then wrapped up in heartbreak. He knew.
“Give him a chance, kid. Let him explain what happened all that time ago.”
“And what if his excuse isn’t good enough?”
“What if it is?”
I leaned over and kissed Billy’s cheek.
“I’ll see you.”
***
I drove to our three other active projects. We normally had upwards of ten projects going on, each at a different stage of development. But now we only had four in active production and two on the drawing table in the architect’s office. In fact, my dad fired three of our staff architects last month because we simply didn’t have enough work for them.
We were once a strong company—the one everyone went to to build their dream office, their perfect apartment building. We even delved into the occasional home. But times change. Other companies offered more modern services. Environmentally friendly building materials. Internet and cable access built into the walls of offices and apartments. Computer-drawn architectural plans. Cheaper, more economical solutions. My dad refused to move with the times. He was one of those men who believed the old way is the only way. No matter how often we argued, he would never budge. And now, here we were.
His company, his decisions, I always told myself. And when I drove by some of the buildings he put up thirty and forty years ago, I couldn’t argue with him.
Some were a work of art.
I pulled my truck to the curb outside of the apartment building that was the first for me. It was nothing but an idea on paper when I went to work for my dad the spring before college. In a matter of weeks it became a foundation and then a bare-bones structure. By early June it was a ten-story structure with walls going up and plumbing going in.
This was the luxury apartment building Grant was working on when we met.
I often stood out here, leaning against the side of my truck and looking up at the building. Sometimes I thought of how it represented what we did right at Berryman Construction. Sometimes I thought it represented all the hard work and the long nights and the things my dad sacrificed in order to keep the business going all those years. And sometimes I thought it represented my relationship with my dad. How strong it was, but how there were a few vulnerabilities that should have been found and fixed long ago.
But, mostly, I looked at this building and thought about the relationship that was born here and should have blossomed like the surrounding neighborhood after this building went up.
It felt like everything in my life was crumbling at the foundation. I’d had all these dreams when I was young, but most of them centered on Berryman Construction. Even when I was with Grant and he talked about running away to California, I thought we would eventually come back and run the company together. The company was all I knew. It was all I wanted. It may seem odd, a girl wanting to inherit the family construction company, but not to me. It was my dad’s—the legacy he’d built up from nothing more than a tool belt and a little charm. It was the life I was supposed to live.
Now I felt like a ship that had suddenly come unmoored, drifting aimlessly out in the harbor. I needed my captain to come and save me from floating with the tide. I needed to have a purpose, needed to know where I was going. I needed this not to be happening.
“It turned out beautifully. Just as you’d always known it would.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin as Grant’s voice filled my mind. No warning.
“Have you seen the inside since it was completed?”
I closed my eyes and counted to five. But it didn’t help. The moment my eyes shifted and moved over his familiar face, my heart skipped a beat and my knees threated to turn to Jell-O.
“Are you following me around?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“First the bar…no, first one our construction sites. Billy says you went to see him.”
“He’s a friend.”
“Then the bar. And now here.”
“I live here.”
“You do?”
“Don’t sound so surprised, princess,” he said, using the nickname he only used when he was trying to piss me off. “I bought the penthouse apartment.”
I glanced back at the building, remembering one afternoon seven years ago when he took me up to the top of the building—before there was even a roof—and told me he was going to own it one day.
“Just how do you propose to do that? Daddy says this apartment is already sold to someone who paid so much they’d have to stay twenty years to make it worth it.”
“I guess I’ll just have to make an offer they won’t be able to pass up.”
“And what would that be?”
He shrugged. “I don’t plan to work construction all my life. I’m going to find something I’m really good at and I’m going to make millions doing it.”
“And then?”
“And then, I’m going to buy this place and set you up in here. Let you decorate it any way you want to. And then we’ll fill it with babies.”
“Babies?”
“Half a dozen, at least.”
I laughed. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who has to carry them.”
He lifted me from the waist and carried me to the makeshift table they’d been using to cut lumber on.
“I want a houseful of baby girls that look exactly like you,” he said, kissing the tip of my nose lightly even as he moved between my legs, pulling me tight against him. “And I want to give them the world, just like I’m going to do for you.”
“You must have made a hell of a good offer,” I said softly.
“More than you could possibly imagine.”
I glanced at him and realized he was watching me. Not only that, but I knew he knew I was thinking about that long-ago evening. I blushed, because my memory hadn’t stopped at the words we’d exchanged. There was so much more about that night that I’d tucked away in the back of my mind, refusing to replay it the way I did some of the others. Because that was the night I knew I loved him. It was the night I knew my life would never be the same. And that was the night he put me on a path that would end in the most devastating heartbreak I’d ever experienced.
“I should go.”
I pushed away from the side of the truck, intent on getting as far from him as I could. But he grabbed my arm and pulled me back, his eyes moving slowly over my face.
“Why are you here?”
“I think that’s my question,” I said. “I never left.”
He smoothed his hand over the side of my face. “If I’d had a choice�
�”
“You had plenty of choices, Grant.”
He nodded slowly, his eyes moving over me again. It was like he was trying to memorize me. Or maybe he was looking for the girl I was seven years ago. I was sure I’d changed. I didn’t see it, but I was sure someone who knew me as well as he did might. If he’d really known me as well as I’d thought he had…
“Come upstairs,” he said. “Let me show you what I’ve done with the place.”
“I have places I need to be.”
“It’ll only take a minute.” He stepped back and held out his hand. “Are you afraid you’ll be impressed?”
“You wish.”
I took his hand and let him pull me across the street. I knew the lobby of the building. It was still covered in the marble my dad and I had searched dozens of suppliers’ warehouses to find, still painted the same subtle creams and tan the owner had wanted. There was a little desk off to the side where a security man greeted visitors and accepted packages for the tenants. There was a security guard there now who lifted a hand in greeting to Grant.
“Good afternoon, Mr. McGraw.”
“John,” Grant said in a tone of voice I didn’t know. One filled with pretention and formality that the old Grant would never have used.
“You’ve certainly come up in the world,” I said the moment we were alone on the elevator.
“What makes you say that?”
“When I knew you, you wouldn’t have been able to afford the rent on a locker in this building, let alone the penthouse.”
He shrugged, concentrating on putting some sort of code into the elevator’s number pad that I assumed would take us to the top floor.
“Billy said you got lucky in California.”
“Is that what you really want to talk about, Addison? Where I got my money?”
I watched him turn toward me, saw the thundercloud cross his face.
“No. But I’d like to know what happened to you after you left here. And why you came back.”
“And I’d rather find out where you learned how to do that little hip twist you entertained me with last night.”
“What—”
He pushed me back against the wall and stole my lips, his mouth determined as he began exploring me. It was like the last twelve years hadn’t happened. We were simply picking up where we dropped off last night.
I twisted my head to break the kiss, but he simply buried his face in my neck, dropping tiny little kisses along that super sensitive spot behind my ear.
“Did you only ask me up here to get into my pants?”
“Can you think of a better reason?”
I tried to squirm out from under him, but then his tongue was doing something to my earlobe that made my spine tingle. Without any input from me, my hand slid up over the back of his neck, pulling him closer as the heat of his breath sent yet another tingle rushing up and down the length of me. I think even my toes curled in my heavy work boots.
His mouth came back to mine and neither of us noticed that the elevator door had opened for several seconds. But then some chime sounded and Grant groaned before backing away, running his fingers over my arms as he tugged me after him.
The elevator opened right into the penthouse. This aspect of the apartment had caused an argument between my dad and the architects at the time it was being constructed because he believed it was unsafe, but the architects insisted it was something the client has specifically asked for—so that visitors found themselves instantly stepping down into a sunken living room, facing a wall of windows that stood floor to ceiling. The view was breathtaking, looking down on a lovely neighborhood to the east of downtown Houston.
The room was fairly empty. There was a lovely bamboo floor that was clearly new—carpeting had been installed by our floor guys—and a single couch. There was a desk off to one side that was covered in paperwork and a laptop computer. But that was about it, leaving the rest of the large living room looking bare and almost sad.
I got a brief glimpse of the kitchen as Grant pulled me toward the stairs as the elevator swished silently closed behind us. There were impressive appliances on the counter, a beautiful stainless steel refrigerator and top-of-the-line oven sitting in their appropriate places, and a well-stocked wine cooler sitting in a small alcove that looked newly installed.
He pulled me up the stairs and into the huge master suite that took up the entire second floor of the apartment. It was just as empty as the living room below, only a television stuck to one wall, with a pretty impressive electronic array on a low table beneath it, and a king-sized bed shoved up against the far wall.
“I don’t remember you being a minimalist.”
“What more does a single man need than a good, sturdy bed?”
That should have been amusing—or even a little annoying—but hearing the word bed on Grant’s lips as he looked at me with the smoldering fire in his eyes made everything just sort of shimmer as my nervous system went haywire.
I didn’t fight him when he pulled me into his arms. As much as I hated to admit it, I was exactly where I wanted to be. He had this power over me that was impossible to ignore.
He lifted my T-shirt, tugged it from my body as his hands came around me and he pulled me against his chest. His lips were on mine again, his movement encouraging me to open to him again. I was already responding, looking forward to the taste of him. There was nothing better than the touch of a man like Grant, one who knew exactly where to touch me and how to touch me. I fully believed that no other man could ever make me feel the way he did. I’d accepted that a long time ago. Maybe that was why I was so weak now. I shouldn’t have been doing this. But he wanted me. How could I pass that up?
He lifted me and lay me on the bed, his fingers already working the snap on my jeans. I tugged his shirt over his head, struck dumb by the raw look on his face. There was need there, and a whole world of emotions I couldn’t begin to pull apart and understand in my current condition. All I could do was touch him. Run my hand over his jaw and down along his throat, and soak up the realness of him. He was really here. He was really back.
He slipped off of the bed for a minute to tug my heavy boots from my feet. When they were free, he kissed them. A man who would do that—kiss a pair of feet that had just spent hours in work boots—was a man who was truly desperate for something. And then my jeans, his strong hands simply grabbing the cuffs and yanking them away. I laughed as my body threatened to go with them, nearly causing me to fall in a heap on the floor. But he saved me, grabbing my hips and pushing me a little higher up on the bed. And then my panties followed the way of my jeans and his fingers began to tug at his own.
I could have helped him. A part of me desperately wanted to hear that little grunt that slipped from his lips whenever I touched his swollen cock. But I liked the way his eyes were moving over me, like I was a priceless painting hanging in the Louvre. I did, however, reach behind me and unfasten my bra so that the scene was perfect for those curious eyes.
And then he was the piece of art, a masterpiece standing before me. Not much had changed about him in the past seven years. I got the impression that he no longer did manual labor. It wasn’t that his muscles were no longer well defined. They were. But the deep tan he’d always had when I knew him before was faded, which suggested the muscles came from a nice, air-conditioned gym.
Nothing wrong with that.
He still had the broadest shoulders and the longest legs, hips that any woman would admire, and a chest that my fingers itched to touch. If a man could be beautiful, he was more than that.
And he was looking at me.
He lifted my hips a little and guided himself to me, watching my eyes as he slowly made our bodies more than two separate entities. I tried not to break that gaze, but the pleasure that rushed through me was more than I could take. My eyes rolled back as I arched my hips, my calves sliding over the backs of his thighs and then up over his hips. He leaned over me, balancing himself on his arms, and dipp
ed low to steal my lips.
Our tongues danced as he moved into a slow, gentle rhythm that I was able to match almost perfectly. This was what it was all about. This was why marriages were formed and torn apart, why perfectly intelligent people did things that couldn’t be explained in simple terms.
Our bodies fit together perfectly, touching each other in places no one else could reach. He touched me in places that made my nerve ending explode and my ability to think straight simply evaporate. And I knew that I touched him, too—knew by the way his breath came in such quick gasps that he had to break our kiss and bury his mouth against my shoulder, and by the way his simple, gentle rhythm became something rougher, fevered. I knew when he thrust his hips hard against mine and cried out as he filled me with life, as my own body betrayed my secrets by bursting into uncontrollable twitches and moans and toe-curling eruptions.
We were perfect. Still.
Chapter 7
I lay on my side staring at a blank wall across the room. I found myself wondering if we’d been far enough along on construction for him to have been the one to put the drywall up in here. I doubted it. I didn’t remember any drywall here that night. But wouldn’t it be ironic if he’d put up the wall I was lying there staring at seven years later?
“What are you thinking about?” he asked as he pressed his body against my back, his fingers dancing over the flesh covering my hip.
“The drywall.”
He kissed my shoulder lightly. “Billy asked me if I still did drywall. He seemed disappointed when I said no.”
“Billy always thought you were the best student he’d ever had.”
“Yeah?”
“You learned a lot quicker than anyone who came before or after. Especially after.”
“Having trouble with your drywallers, Ms. Chief Operating Officer?”
I groaned. “You have no idea.”
He kissed my shoulder again, brushing his lips against the same place he’d pressed his mouth when he’d orgasmed. I moved back into him, enjoying the heat of his body against mine. He made a soft sound against my shoulder as he slid his foot over both mine.
LUCI (The Naughty Ones Book 2) Page 86
