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“Yes.”
All he could think about now was her in those shoes on Saturday, and what might happen later that night. Images flashed wildly before his eyes. Her legs on his shoulders. Her legs in a V. Those heels digging into his back. His tongue all over her naked body, spread out before him. Her spine curving in an arch as he took her once again, and sent her over the edge.
Damn, he liked the reel his mind was playing. Far too much.
“I’ll even let you pick me up if you want,” she said, and he nodded vigorously, thrilled that she was giving him her address finally. She reached for her phone. “I’ll text it to you right now, and then I’ll be wearing these shoes when you come get me,” she said in a come-hither voice that made him want to come hither that instant.
He wasn’t going to be able to get up for a long time because he was so fucking hard. Good thing his phone rang, and Ta
“Let me grab this for one minute,” he said to Sha
The man wasted no time with hellos. “Here’s the deal. You need to meet the leader of the neighborhood association. Let him know Mr. Late Night Fu
He cursed silently. Saturday night was his big date with Sha
“Fine. I’ll send you details,” Ta
“Hey, I put in a few calls to the parks department in the city. I made a donation to have some of the parks there revitalized, like you suggested.”
“Good. Keep that shit up. You got a long row to hoe.”
After Brent hung up, he gestured to the phone. “The neighborhood association in New York is being difficult about my plans to open a club there,” he said, then caught her up to speed on the situation as he paid for lunch.
“Hmm,” Sha
“Hmm, what? You coming up with a perfect plan for me or something?” he joked.
“Actually, I was thinking. Even though your meeting is Sunday, I could record a rehearsal in San Francisco next week when I’m there with the dancers. You can show it to them after so they can see it’s more Cirque du Soleil than Scores.”
He stopped in his tracks, and raked his eyes up and down over the woman at his side. This time, though, he was admiring her business savvy. “That’s brilliant.”
As they left, he vowed to do whatever he had to in order to keep her in his life. Work had won his heart ten years ago. He had to show her that she was more important than work.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A pink and purple illustration of an animal stared at her.
“I don’t even want to ask why you’re buying that,” her grandmother said with a laugh, pointing to Sha
“It’s a surprise for someone,” Sha
“That’ll be fifty-seven twenty-one,” the cashier said, bagging up the balloons, streamers, cups and party favors that Victoria had picked up for the birthday party she was throwing for her great-granddaughter’s third birthday—the grand-daughter of Sha
Before her grandma could stop her, Sha
“You didn’t have to do that,” the older woman said.
Sha
It was definitely a date.
“Might that someone you’re surprising be your old beau?”
“Beau. Boy. You’re so old-fashioned, Nana,” Sha
“Well?” she asked pointedly. “Is he?”
Sha
Victoria patted her knee as they slowed to a stop at a red light a few blocks from her home. “Excellent. So what are we going to do about your brothers then?”
“What about them? The fact that all three are total pains in the ass?” Sha
“Not that. The fact that they’re all single. Maybe we need to set up a matchmaking service for those boys.”
“Good luck getting the three cavemen married off,” Sha
Her grandmother gestured grandly, as if she were putting their names in lights. “Matchmakers for the Paige Men.”
Sha
“I meant the Sloan men,” her grandmother quickly corrected.
Just like that, Sha
Her father’s final moments had been in a car, driving home from work late one night, pulling into the driveway of his home. The one place where he should always have been safe from harm.
She pressed her teeth into her bottom lip, holding her emotions in as she turned into her grandmother’s driveway.
It was only a driveway. A mundane, ordinary slick of concrete. Her grandmother didn’t even live anywhere near the home where her dad had been shot. But as she cut the engine and looked at her father’s mother, she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Victoria was thinking the same thing. That she, too, had been jolted out of a festive moment of party pla
“Sometimes it’s hard just turning in the driveway,” Sha
Her grandmother clasped her hand. “I know. Every day, I think about him.”
Sha
“I do too, sweetie.”
After she walked her grandmother inside and said goodbye, she returned to her car. She sca
The hair on her neck stood on end, and for a second, she wished she carried her gun with her. But that weapon was locked away at her home.
Sha
She took a deep breath, letting it spread through her body, coaxing it to ease away the stranglehold of the past. Good thing she was seeing Brent that afternoon. He was her antidote. He’d wash away the cruel memories.
But by the time lunch rolled around, she no longer wanted to rely on her old habits with Brent. He’d always been her magic bullet to extradite the pain. Maybe to truly change, she needed to give instead of to take.
Over salad and pasta at an Italian restaurant inside Caesars Shops, she asked him more about work, peppering him with questions about his clubs, the expansion, his vision for Edge, reminding herself the whole time not to be jealous. She listened intently, because she didn’t want to feel an ounce of resentment for his choices, including the one to ditch the very industry that had once been so important to him.