“Wherever you want, Caroline.” He turned his palms up, effectively signaling his hand-off. He was putting the ball in my court. From Mr. Alpha CEO, it was quite a moment.
“So I’m in charge?” The smallest hint of a smile started stealing across my lips.
“You are in the driver’s seat.” One started tugging at the corner of his lips as well.
“This is interesting.” I tapped my fingers together, contemplating my next move. Did I have Colton Kavanaugh, billionaire baron and CEO, sitting contritely before me at my beck and call? A dizzying array of possibilities stretched before me. Which one should I choose?
CHAPTER 21
Colt
I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a shy guy. I’d spent my entire life in the spotlight, the oldest son, groomed and coached and thrust into any number of prominent, high-risk, high-profile roles and responsibilities. I didn’t exactly stand in the corner and shuffle my feet.
Yet that was exactly what I was doing in the kitchen of Caroline’s little apartment. Tongue-tied wasn’t a state I could ever remember being in. But, then again, I’d never wanted so badly to madly, passionately declare, “I LOVE YOU!” How did one work up to that sort of thing, exactly? Especially after one’s company had accidently-on-purpose demolished the one thing she valued more than anything else in the world. “Whoops, sorry” wasn’t going to cut it.
“Can I give you a hand?” I stood, hands in pockets, watching her bustle around adding ingredients to a bowl with speed and assurance.
“I don’t know what to do about you, Colt!” She fumed, exasperated, as she tipped in a cup of sugar. At least I thought it was sugar. I’d never actually been this close to a real, live incidence of baking, so I couldn’t be 100-percent sure.
I could think of some sexy retorts to her exclamation. I could offer some witty, suggestive banter leading her down the path to her bedroom. Or here. We could also stay right here in the kitchen. But the wind that usually puffed up my sails to bursting had vanished. The peacock had his feathery plume down. Ready to get it up, though, at a moment’s notice.
“Add some vanilla to the wet ingredients.” Caroline handed me a teaspoon with the air of an annoyed parent. As if at least I could help with that.
She was assuming a lot with that request. Vanilla...I perused the ingredients she’d assembled on her countertop. Was it a bean I was looking for?
Thankfully, she was too preoccupied to notice my floundering. “New York was a disaster,” she burst out. “I came home to rubble. And now you’re here today with all these plans. And you’re looking at me all apologetic and hot.”
“New York was a disaster?” I turned to her. I knew she’d left a day early, but had she really hated her visit that much? And, wait, what did she say at the end? “So you think I look hot?”
“Pipe down!” She pointed her finger at me. I tucked the start of my cocky grin back into an apologetic and attentive facial expression. But she’d said it. I’d heard it. So all couldn’t be lost, right?
“Yes, New York was a disaster!” She practically threw the next two ingredients into that bowl. I was glad she started using the wooden spoon in her hands to mix instead of hit me over the head. I could tell she was thinking about doing it, though.
“You sent me to that bitchy woman, like I had to change everything about myself so I could fit in with your friends.”
“What? The personal shopper I hired for you?”
“I’ve never felt like such a whale!”
I moved to take my cell out of my pocket. “I know someone who’s losing her job.” A quick call and her employer would know of my displeasure. She’d act on it, too.
“Colt, just listen to me for a minute, OK?” Caroline stopped me.
“Why didn’t you walk out on her? Or tell me about it? Don’t let anyone treat you like that!”
“Colt.” She pointed that finger again. Like a librarian. A naughty one. She’d have on glasses, but then I’d get her in the back room and take them off, take it all off. “Eyes up here,” she reprimanded me.
Sheepishly, I looked away from her curves. So luscious, bursting out of that apron. I could really get into that look, just the apron, nothing underneath. Shit, it was hard to focus around this woman.
“That weekend in New York, I felt obligated. Like I owed it to you to try to do things the way you wanted. So I let that woman boss me around and I met all your bitchy friends—”
“Wait, who was bitchy to you?” How much had gone on that weekend that I knew nothing about?
“It doesn’t matter. Just some creep claiming she was Juliet to your Romeo.”
I knew exactly who she was talking about. Vivica gave new meaning to the phrase relentless, aggressive pursuit. “I’m sorry she was there at the party. A friend brought her as a date. I never would have invited her.”
“So you know who I’m talking about. How serious were the two of you?” Such hurt burned in her eyes I nearly tripped over myself finding the best, quickest way to dispel any of her misconceptions.
“Never! We were never serious. We went to school together. I think we might have hung out at a dance when we were 14, 15. It was nothing.”
“She staked a serious claim on you.”
“Caroline, no one has a claim on me but you.” I stood next to her now, my hands itching to hold her. “I don’t know what she said to you, but she was jealous. Because she sees how I feel about you. And knows it’s much more than I’ve ever felt for her. Or anyone else.”
Caroline looked at me, those gray-green eyes warming up, wanting to trust. But she still kept that damn mixing bowl between us like a nun’s ruler at a 1950s dance. Keeping us one foot apart at all times.
She shook her head and looked away. “I can’t tell you how awful it felt when I got back and saw my store torn to the ground.”
Groaning, I brought a hand up to my hair where I balled it into a frustrated fist. “I hate thinking about that.”
“I know you told me you didn’t know it was going to happen.”
“I didn’t,” I repeated, wishing there were some kind of automatic truth meter I could apply to the conversation. Like a lie detector app you could install on your phone. Actually, that was a brilliant idea. I should get some people together the next time I was down in Silicon Valley. But not now.
“I googled your company,” she added accusatorily.
I groaned again, imagining the shit she’d dredged up on the Internet. Lawsuits, accusations, dirt. Our legal team worked hard to keep our exterior squeaky clean, but that was hard when people were always slinging around mud.
“Don’t believe everything you see online,” I pleaded. “Especially when you’re looking for the bad stuff. It’s like getting a sore throat and doing a search on it. You’ll convince yourself you have a rare type of cancer.”
“Still, Colt,” she persisted, “I saw some articles about your company doing this kind of thing at building sites in the past. Staking your claim, asserting your dominance. Trying to intimidate and run roughshod over the little guy. Like that woman tried to do me at the party.”
Caroline finally put that big bowl down, but she crossed her arms over her chest, still warding me off. “I don’t like bullies.”
I wanted to keep denying all responsibility. I’d had that training hard-wired into me. Deny wrongdoing, never admit culpability. My father had gone to his grave with a string of affairs plus an out-of-wedlock son, renown for his history of ruthless backroom business deals and habit of stepping over each and every person between him and maximum profits. Yet he’d never apologized for a damn thing.
“I’m sorry,” I started, the words tasting foreign in my mouth. I was sure my father was turning over in his grave. But I’d had enough of doing things his way. It was time to do what I knew was right.
“I’ve done some bad things, some things I’m not proud of.” I forged ahead, ignoring the visions of my legal team having a collective heart attack. “You’re right, my company has bullied
its way through a lot of deals. And my former COO, Leonard—”
“Former?”
I was glad she’d picked up on that. “Former,” I confirmed. “I fired him when I found out what he’d done to your business.”
“That’s good.” A smile started at the corner of her mouth. I resisted the urge to kiss it. I needed to keep going, before I made the mistake of cutting short my full apology.
“It wasn’t always my finger on the trigger, but I empowered the people who did the dirty work. Leonard was the last and worst of them. A holdover from my father’s days at the helm. But I want to do things differently now. A lot of things.”
We stood, surveying each other in the kitchen. She knew I wasn’t just talking about Kavanaugh Investors. I wanted a wholescale shift, whatever it took to set things right between us. Because when I looked around my life, I seemed surrounded by a lot of shiny, bright trinkets and distracting baubles. But the real treasure was Caroline.
“So you want to do things differently?” she asked, a hint of teasing mischief in her question.
“I do.” I could already tell I would like where she was going with this.
“Want to start by finishing up these scones?”
“OK.” Not exactly where I thought she was going. But it was better than her showing me the door.
“You might get messy.” She eyed my clothes disapprovingly.
“What? These are my casual clothes.” I’d intentionally dressed down for the meeting in Redwood Bay. I knew I already had Corporate Asshole branded across my forehead to these people. I figured the least I could do was put on a pair of jeans and a shirt.
“This is like a Ralph Lauren dress shirt,” she scoffed. “It’s got French cuffs. And what it is even made of?” She pinched a swatch of fabric at my arm between her fingers, examining it critically.
“It’s a cotton-linen blend with a hint of magical Elf-made stretch so it clings to my chiseled torso.”
“If you’re trying to say it was made by elves, the proper adjective is Elven,” she corrected me. So sassy. Just what I needed.
“I’m not afraid of baking.” I rolled up my fancy French-cuffed sleeves. I could take it.
“Good. I’d hate to get you all messed up.” She took the bag of flour. I thought she was putting it away. Until she sprinkled some on her hands like a gymnast preparing for a vault. And then she clapped me heartily on the back, a big plume of flour rising up over our heads.
Oh, she wanted to play that way, did she? I stood by her side, pretending to listen to her tell me about something to do with something. I took a pinch of flour. And I brought it up over her head, letting it rain down ever so gently over her hair.
Some dusted down onto her nose. She looked up at me, challenge in her eyes, then blew the flour off like an errant strand of hair had gotten in her way.
“Not everyone has the focus. The intense concentration. The maturity required for baking.” As she spoke she scooped her hand into the bag of flour. Then she threw it square across my chest, hitting me like a bucket of paint splashed against my dark blue shirt.
“No, I imagine not,” I agreed, coming to join her at the bag of flour, reaching in as well. “I imagine it’s only a small handful.” And I took out a rather large handful, pulled at her apron and dumped the flour right down.
She gasped, her eyes wide. “Oh no, you didn’t!” And she brought it, swiping a fistful of flour across my face, but I was right there at it, too, with another palm on top of her head as she squealed and laughed and tried to run away.
“You’re not getting away!” Laughing, I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to me.
“Let me go!” She pushed against my chest, trying to wiggle away.
“No.” I kept her there in my arms, then caught her eye as I looked down. “I won’t let you go. I love you.”
Her mouth dropped open, her eyes wide, and she managed to knock over the large baker’s bag of flour she’d been reaching for onto the floor. The contents poofed out and up all over our feet and legs. She bent to pick it up. I did, too, and we knocked heads.
“Ouch!” She cried, her hand to her forehead, tears springing to her eyes. It had been quite a crack.
“Are you OK?” I rushed to attend to her, a hand under her elbow, looking for blood. For a lifetime of suave and sophisticated, I’d really picked a great moment to get clumsy at everything.
“No!” she gasped, wiping an actual tear from her cheek. I must have really clocked her.
“Let me get you an ice pack.”
“I don’t need an ice pack.” She reached out to my arm, pulling me away from my path toward the freezer. “What did you say? Before you head-butted me?”
“I love you.”
More tears and a sob-gasp, but this time I didn’t think it was from physical pain. I pulled her into my arms. And told her again, just because it felt so great to say it.
“I love you, too.” Hearing that from her felt even better. She wrapped her hands around my neck, buried her face in my floured chest and we stood together, repeating ourselves quite a bit. Because we could.
“I do love you. So much.” She reached up, kissing me, brushing flour off my face, standing on tiptoe until I reached around, picked her up and rested her on top of the counter. “But I have to ask you something. And be honest.”
“I’ll try my best.” I dusted some flour off her cheek, really just managing to spread it into a larger patch.
“Are you an asshole?”
“What?” I hadn’t been prepared for that. Hadn’t she just said she loved me? Wasn’t that, like, game over? I’d won?
“Are you an asshole?” she repeated. “Because a lot of people think you are. And I might just be all caught up because you’re so good at sweeping me off my feet.”
“Oh, what swept you off your feet, exactly?” I teased her. “Was it the way I head-butted you? Or how my construction team bulldozed your bakery to the ground? Or the way I failed to check on the pilot during our flight to Fiji, missing the fact he was having a heart attack until we had to make an emergency landing?”
“You have screwed up a few times,” she agreed. “And my mother thinks you’re evil.”
“I’m not sure your mother is ever going to join my fan club,” I ruefully agreed. If there’d been a stake nearby when I’d met Caroline’s mom, I think she would have tried to tie me to it and set flames burning at my feet. I did not see where we could find common ground. “Don’t your father and she live in a nudist colony?”
“They do,” she sighed with resignation.
“That’s…” I tried to open my mind, see it at least as a potentially interesting topic of conversation with them. I, myself, was a big fan of nudity.
“It’s never the people you want to see naked.” She stopped the train of my thoughts.
“Right.” I sure wouldn’t want to see her parents naked. Awkward. “Anyway, I can’t tell you everything in my past is perfect. But I can promise you I’ll do my level best to not be an asshole in the future.”
“That’s very romantic.” She kissed me again. But then she pulled away and voiced one last doubt. “When I visited you in New York, it wasn’t exactly as if the lives we’ve been leading clicked.”
“If we don’t fit into each other’s lives, that means we have to change our lives to fit each other.”
She smiled in agreement. And there was more kissing. Because that was what people did when they loved each other.
Next, we headed into the shower. Because that was what people who loved each other did after they got in a big fight throwing flour all over the place. Plus, it meant getting Caroline naked, my favorite pastime.
CHAPTER 22
Caroline
“Was it here?” Colt brushed his mouth along to my hip, kissing me as we lay naked on my bed. He’d fucked me soundly against the wall of the shower, something I felt sure every single person in the entire house-divided-into-apartments now knew considering I’d screamed
my bloody lungs out. It had felt so good to have him driving into me again.
“Or was this it?” Colt worked his way up my stomach, to the base of my breast, licking my mound. He cupped me in his hand, using his tongue to draw a lazy circle around my nipple. How quickly he worked me up again, even after having just taken me to a crazy peak. Speaking of peaks, he sucked my stiff, aching tip into his hot mouth and gave me a light bite.
“Ooh,” I moaned, arching my back off the bed, feeling wet heat pulse between my legs.
“No, I know what it was.” He traveled down my stomach now, drifting lower, lower still.
“Are you looking for something?” I asked, parting my legs slightly. I’d be happy to show him the way, if necessary.
“I’m just trying to remember what it was about you that I missed the most over this past week.”
“Was it just a week?” It had to have been longer than that. But I did the math. I’d arrived back from New York on Monday to discover the rubble. And now it was Monday again, so that meant—“Oh!” His lips discovered that favorite part he’d missed, all by himself.
“Yes, this is it.” He settled himself down between my legs, spreading me, holding my inner thighs with his large palms. And he showed me how much he’d missed me, drawing a long, slow tongue down my slick slit. He took his time, letting me writhe and moan as he licked and teased me.
“Colt,” I whimpered. I’d missed him, too! I didn’t have patience for this kind of slowness. “Please!”
That just made him chuckle with satisfaction as he drew a finger down to my wet, slick entrance.
“I missed that, too, Caroline.” His eyes had a dark, intense heat as he gazed down at me, sliding a thick finger into my pussy. “I missed making you beg.”
“Colt!” I cried out, pushing against him, twisting the sheets in my hands.
“I think I know what I want,” he murmured, slow and sexy, not going even the slightest bit faster after my pleas. “Cup your tits, baby. Let me see how big and full they are.”
I brought my palms to my breasts, squeezing them for him as he stroked me.
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