Love in Transit

by Jana Aston

  And two months was all the time I had left to get her to the altar, and my ring on her finger.

  ***

  I MET REESE Pinkarver when she was ten years old, at a party held in the rose garden at Mount Laurel. My family’s historic plantation just outside of Charleston was the perfect setting for our introduction, because the significance of the place helped drive home the importance of precisely what was expected of me. Mount Laurel is the birthplace of Grayson Thaddeus Lash I, former President of the United States of America, and my esteemed grandfather.

  I was an eighteen-year-old college freshman—so technically an adult while definitely still very much a kid in the head—when my father, Grayson Thaddeus Lash II, pointed her out to me in the rose garden, and told me the wide-eyed little girl with the blonde curls holding onto her mother’s hand in a death-grip, was the person I would marry.

  It wasn’t even a suggestion by any means, but a requirement. She had been chosen specifically for me, he said. It only made sense that the direct descendants of presidential bloodlines running as blue as ours, were strengthened by making more little Pinkarver-Lash’s to add to the ever-expanding family tree.

  At the time, I let my father’s—You’ll marry that girl someday, Gray—nonsense go through one of my eighteen-year-old ears and right on out the other. I did not care what he or anyone else required of me. I was young, dumb, and full-of-cum, just like every other male in their first year of college. I was all up my own ass perfecting my skills with women who were my own goddamn age for one thing. Being matched up with a child was downright disturbing. Having my life laid out for me without my input or consent was fucking infuriating. Marrying any person was a foreign concept I couldn’t even entertain. Having children?

  I was not hearing any part of what he had to say.

  Dad could go after one of my sisters in forging his political dynasty with some other sap-bastard, Son-of-America. My own parents had shown me just how painful marriage could be during the course of my whole life. There was no shining example of a loving relationship for me to draw an experience from, so his words meant very little to me.

  As the years passed, Reese and I met at more garden parties, charity balls, and even an event or two at the White House. We actually forged a friendship over time, as I made more of an effort to get to know her while she grew up before my eyes. I found her delightful, and she seemed to look up to me almost like the big brother she never had. The two of us were connected family acquaintances with an easy friendship, and nothing more than that. There were no awkward moments, nothing weird between us whenever we did happen to run into each other somewhere in Charleston or the DC area. The edict my father had given me so long ago in the rose garden at Mount Laurel was pretty much forgotten in the past where it stayed buried.

  Until two years ago when Reese and her family showed up to my father’s funeral.

  No longer a shy little girl clinging to her mother for security, but a confident beauty who’d grown into a lovely young woman. My whole opinion of her, and how she might fit into my life, changed dramatically with the event of my father’s death.

  I found a great deal had changed for Reese, and for me, in the thirteen years since the garden party down at Mount Laurel when my dad told me she would be my wife and the mother of my children someday.

  That’s about the time “it got weird” between us—and I can honestly say the blame was one-hundred percent on me. It wasn’t Reese’s fault I’d been raised with certain expectations from birth. A law degree from Harvard was one of those expectations. A career in the family business of politics was another. I’d accomplished the Harvard Law degree, and was working my way up the political food chain with my new term as Attorney General for South Carolina solidly in place. It was also assumed that my crowning political achievement would be the governor’s mansion someday, and it very well could be if all of the pieces fell into place as they were supposed to.

  The most important piece of that puzzle was in the back of an ambulance being administered a breathing-treatment for an asthma attack, brought on by me being the demanding asshole I was pretty much most of the time.

  I’d have to work on that with her, because Reese certainly didn’t deserve an asshole for a husband.

  And I would be her husband. That wedding shit I’d said no to before? It was happening.

  My lovely Pink deserved the best husband in the world. She deserved the best of everything life had to offer. Hell, she deserved to be First Lady of South Carolina, and maybe even more, someday.

  And she was getting me in the process, even if she wasn’t sure she wanted me yet.

  She might not be sure, but I was certain she felt the attraction between us. It was definitely there that night two months ago when I came to see her…and we ended up in my suite at The Jefferson for the night.

  Reese felt something for me, or she wouldn’t have reacted so strongly when I showed up tonight. She wouldn’t be gripping my hand so tightly right now, or let me hold her while waiting for the ambulance to show up at Oakley’s house.

  “How are we doing, baby?” I leaned down to ask against her ear so she could hear me.

  Her eyes flickered open, and she nodded up at me before mouthing three words I understood as clearly as if she’d been able to shout them. ‘Stay with me.’

  “I’ll be right here the whole time. I won’t leave you,” I assured her with a confident wink solely for her benefit, even though I didn’t feel so confident on the inside.

  My emotions were all over the place, and for good reason. I’d waited far too long to make my move with Reese. By the time I was ready to settle down, she’d already found her professor with the PhD in Pre-Colonial Amazonia or some ridiculous shit, and to my horror, agreed to marry him.

  I’d blown my chance with Reese, and then it was too late. Someone else had won her heart by being there with her. While I was down in South Carolina finding my footing as head of the family after my father’s death, someone else was stealing my woman away.

  I learned an important lesson about priorities. I also learned never to assume the outcome of a relationship with another person. My feelings for Reese became crystal clear the moment I realized someone else was taking her to bed every night. She didn’t belong in any other bed but mine. It sucked to realize I’d lost her, but I did accept that I was fully to blame.

  I’d pushed her away once before, and regretted it ever since. She had tried to offer comfort to me when my father died, and I didn’t handle myself well at the time. If I’d done things differently with her, we’d surely be married by now with a child or two, or at least working on it. But nope. I was just too fucked up in my own head to see that I was denying myself the one person who was exactly what I needed.

  So, Reese found someone else and she moved on. I tried to move on as well, but I found I sucked at that too.

  I buried myself in work and forged ahead with my campaign for Attorney General of South Carolina, which I easily won. The night the election results came in and we started celebrating, I’d learned what a hollow victory it was without Reese by my side sharing it with me.

  And then four months ago a miracle happened.

  Dr. Doolittle went to Brazil and decided to stay there without her. Money won out over love in his case. I had a strong suspicion that Reese’s grandfather paid the professor to break off their engagement. I never knew any details about a deal, and went the extra step of telling Theodore Pinkarver up front, that I didn’t ever want to know. I kept myself at a distance until that fool was out of the picture. My involvement never extended any further than praying for some powerful juju to make Dr. Doolittle decide to take the fucking money and leave.

  Tonight wasn’t the first time I’d asked Reese to marry me. I’d posed the question to her once before, but my timing was bad because she’d just had her heart broken. I’d also been an ass by presenting it as more of a business plan hatched by our families, than something I really wanted. And then we ended up
having a night of spectacular sex after a lot of wine and…yeah—

  This was where the confusion came into the picture for me. I knew I wanted Reese, but I wasn’t sure why I wanted Reese. Did I love her, or did I love the idea of merging our families into a magnificent political dynasty? I needed to get my shit together and figure that out so I could explain it to her. She deserved the truth most of all, and I wouldn’t lie to her by telling her I’d been in love with her for years. It hadn’t been like that for me. My feelings for Reese had surfaced with more of a slow burn than anything else. The one thing I was certain about was how much I wanted to make a life with her. There was no one else for me.

  She’d had some time to think about it, but not nearly enough. We were just getting started figuring everything out so maybe it was best to have a meeting with her grandfather to clarify exactly what was at stake here.

  It was only fair that she hear from him, what had been decided for the two of us a long time ago.

  Our families wanted us together, and I wanted her, so…

  The ambulance coming to an abrupt halt brought me out of my little trip down Memory Lane and back to the present—the emergency bay of GWU. The rear doors opened up to the outside, and I was relieved to see there was a gurney waiting to take her right in. The EMTs did the transfer efficiently, reporting her medical stats for triage to evaluate where she should go next as I followed closely behind.

  “Her name?” the intake nurse, Barb according to her ID badge, asked me as we rolled down the hallway toward what I hoped would be a private room.

  “Reese Pinkarver.”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-four. She’ll be twenty-five in two months.”

  “And you are?”

  “Grayson Lash,” I answered, bracing myself for the question that would come next.

  Right on cue, Barb shot inquisitive eyes up from her clipboard. “Like the president?”

  I nodded once, and left it alone.

  “Your relationship to the patient?”

  Ahhh, a question I was more than happy to answer for Nurse Barb. I’d given the same reply to the EMTs when I’d demanded to ride along with Reese inside the ambulance.

  “My fiancée.”

  Chapter 4

  Reese

  Fiancée? Gray and I needed to have a little talk about his false assumptions. Make that a really big talk, rather than a little one. Too bad it would have to wait until I could actually talk and breathe at the same time. God. I’d been so stupid in not recognizing the signs of an impending asthma attack. I’d been given plenty of clues, like the headache from a lack of caff—

  “You’ll need to change out of your—umm…wedding dress—and put this on before getting into the bed.” The nurse who’d been interviewing Gray handed him a hospital johnny and added on, “Your fiancé can help you. Just let me close you guys in behind the curtain for some privacy—”

  As I desperately tried to choke out a protest, she yanked the curtain shut and stepped out, but not before loudly announcing, “All the way down to your panties please.”

  “I’ll make sure she follows your directions to the letter, Barb,” Gray called back to her through the curtain, while I shot poison daggers at him with my mind.

  “I bet you will, Mr. Lash,” Barb replied on a giggle as the sound of her steps faded away.

  He swung his head around toward me, and of course that smug grin of his was right in place like always, but I could see there was also worry behind his gorgeous brown eyes. Gray was faking with the nurse just now about wanting to undress me. I hardly believed it, but I could see he was really worried about me.

  I removed the oxygen cannula and set it on the bedside table.

  “You need to keep that on, Reese,” he said tightly.

  “I’ll put it back as soon as I’m changed into the hospital gown. I am breathing fine now.”

  After about a minute of staring at each other, it was clear I was going to have to start the strip show because he wasn’t moving. Strangely empowered, I sat down in the chair reserved for visitors and began to undo the straps on my heels. I took my time lifting my skirt up higher than it needed to be for removing shoes, but this was my show. Gray could watch or go home. I wanted to find out if he was affected by me, the woman, at all. I peeked up at him as my fingers worked the tiny buckle open and was surprised again by his rigidly held stance, as if struggling to hold himself back from pouncing on me. He was fighting something, I just wasn’t one-hundred percent sure if that something was an attraction to me.

  “Are you going to help me or not?” I asked softly.

  He dropped down to his knees instantly, as if my giving permission had flipped some kind of go-switch inside him. He took over with the other shoe, removed it, and then set the pair of oyster satin Manolos neatly under the bed. There was no pause from him before he slid both hands up one leg to the top of my thigh where my stockings ended. I felt his fingers searching for any clasps that might be hiding before he tugged it down. How very considerate. “You can just pull them off, Gray.”

  He buried his fingers underneath the elastic edge and yanked the sheer stocking down in a furious rush. Then he moved over to the other leg, his touch a bit more confident. But this time, before he searched for the stocking, he pushed my skirt all the way up to the top of my thighs so he could see what he was taking off me. A little more wandering of the fingers along the top edge of the stocking than with the first one, but I could tell he was frustrated by the situation. He wouldn’t look me in the eye either.

  Gray got to his feet, and then pulled me up to standing with him. He put his hands on my shoulders and abruptly turned me so that my back was to him. All of this was done without a word. I could feel his hot stare burning my back as he studied how the dress worked so he could get it off me without damaging it. If he was as careful with the dress as he had been with the stockings, then he would do fine.

  “There’s a hidden zip in the left side,” I offered.

  He found the tag to the zipper and took it down slowly, the sound harsh against the soft swish of silk and lace. The bodice fell away from my breasts, and since there was no separate bra underneath, I was bare the second the dress started responding to gravity. I put an arm across myself to cover my nipples, which were tight and aching thanks to Gray’s busy fingers on my body. But my nipples were the extent of what I could conceal with only my arm. My breasts are just not that small.

  And I really didn’t know how much more of this little tête-à-tête I could endure. I was on fire just from the body heat of Gray so near to me. Probably because I was naked—with the exception of panties thanks to Nurse Barb’s orders—and Gray had been the one to get me naked, had something to do with the sexual tension between us right now. Thank goodness my panties were nothing too racy. Just a simple lace Agent Provocateur bikini in blushing pink. Awww, how appropriate for the ‘bride.’

  He held my dress open at the floor so I could step out of it. Once my feet were completely free from the skirt, he rose up and came around to my front with the hospital johnny in his hands. I was going to have to take my arm away in order to put the damn thing on, and Gray would see me floatin’ freestyle when I did.

  “Don’t look at my boobs, okay?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, of course I’m gonna look,” he snapped at me. “Tellin’ a man not to look at naked tits all up in his face is on par with tellin’ him not to drop the match that’s burnin’ his fingers, so don’t expect me not to look! It cannot be helped, okay?”

  Gray’s slight Southern drawl became much more pronounced in his speech when he was agitated or upset. Well, he was definitely agitated and upset, but also so funny, I had to bite down on my bottom lip to keep from laughing at his thoroughly adorable explanation of why a man averting his eyes to naked breasts was not only highly improbable, but also outrageously unrealistic.

  He wasn’t quite done explaining it to me apparently.

  “I’m standin’ here in front
of my really fuckin’ sexy fiancée—who I’ve just undressed by the way—and you’re tellin’ me I’m not supposed to look!” Biting sarcasm rolled off his tongue. It would appear that Gray’s self-control had come to a complete and abrupt end as he gave the hospital johnny an angry little snap in front of me. “I am not made of stone.”

  “And I am not your fiancée,” I reminded him, secretly happy about the ‘really fuckin’ sexy’ part.

  “Well, the hospital staff thinks you are, so hurry up!” He jerked the johnny in my direction once more and jiggled it at me.

  “Fine.” I dropped my arm from across my chest and freed the girls. I repeat, the girls have been freed and are on public display! Have a gander if you will!

  A soft groan came out of him in the seconds it took to put my arms through the sleeves, so I knew he’d looked just as he’d assured me he would. The weird thing was I didn’t care about Gray seeing me naked. It wasn’t even the first time. Honestly, I was relieved we were finally doing this sexual dance around each other out in the open, rather than while under the influence. Things had been brewing between us for a good while now. We’d already crossed the sex line anyway, even though I don’t remember much from our night nearly two months ago. I’m not even sure how much Gray remembers because we were both drunk when it happened. He was still sleeping it off when my walk-of-shame out of his suite at The Jefferson was happening.

  Not our shining moment, but if anything I did trust Gray to have my best interests in mind. We were connected through family and an elite inner-circle that basically required we protect one another. An encounter was bound to happen at some point, especially since we were both single now. The part where he kept talking about getting married was a bit more confusing. On both occasions Gray had asked me to marry him, our night had ended badly, accompanied with so much drama and trouble, I was now on alert. I needed some truthful answers for Gray’s motivation before I made any kind of decision on the matter. Money was involved from my grandparents on some level I was certain, but I wanted to hear it from him first.