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“Really,” I arched an eyebrow at his sexy expression.
“Well, fuck me, I was trying to act like the dick most people hate,” he said, his smile growing to take up his entire face. “And yet, you love me anyway. You responded well to that method, though I don’t prefer to act that way with you.” He smiled again.
“I don’t think you were at full capacity dick,” I teased.
“I wasn’t,” he grinned. “Though you love that side, right?”
I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face, and I reached up to run my thumbs over his cheekbones and along the edge of his chin, taking in the beautiful lines I hadn’t allowed myself to indulge in the last few days. “God only knows what that says about me,” I replied, not bothering to suppress the smile that lit up my face.
He tipped back his head and laughed. “Thank God, you’re finally admitting it again,” he said. “I was starting to go insane without you admitting how you actually felt.”
“Just me?” I asked, tilting my head back to raise my eyebrow at him. “I’m not the only one who’s been quiet over the last couple of days, am I?”
“I’ve only been taking my cues from you,” he said, grinning down at me, “which is why it hasn’t felt right to do this…”
He leaned forward, pressing a kiss to my throat, drinking in my perfume as he did so. He let his lips linger over the soft skin on my neck, allowing his tongue to taste me as he dragged his mouth down the center of my throat. I sighed, letting my eyes roll back at the feeling.
He wasn’t the only one who’d missed this.
“And now?” I gasped as his teeth scraped over my collarbone.
“Now it just feels right,” he murmured, “but we need to head home for me to formally reintroduce myself to what I missed aside from your dazzling smile.”
“Well, not yet,” I said, smiling down at him as he teased my neck before bringing his eyes to meet mine.
The look and that sparkle that made his dark brown eyes glisten in a shade of bronze told me it’d really been too long. I lifted my hands to frame his face and kissed his forehead tenderly.
“I do love you, Spencer,” I said with more sincerity than I’d ever mustered. “I truly do.”
I stared deeply into his eyes, and I saw his truth. It was always there; I just never paid attention to it. Well, in my defense, I was programmed not to when he and I first met. If there was ever a man I needed to keep my defenses around, it was him. But that all faded today.
I thought about how he stuck around through my bizarre array of emotions, not wavering even as I disconnected from myself and detached from him. There was no reason Spencer should’ve kept me around when I tried so hard to push him away, yet he did. And not only did he stick around, he searched me out this morning, working to break down the defensive wall I’d put up to shield myself from the world. No man had ever done that for me—cared enough to work around my bullshit.
We’d gone from him answering his cell phone while having sex to now; a bomb could’ve gone off next to us, and he wouldn’t be distracted by it.
He wouldn’t take his eyes off me. I was important. For the first time in my life, I felt important to someone, essential to their life, and that was enough.
“Let’s go home,” he said, standing and offering me his hand. “I know you didn’t have to go to work this early and that you have no meetings or breakfasts to attend. So, there’s no rush.”
On the way home, Spencer explained that he had to be at work to deal with a CEO he’d caught embezzling funds from Mitchell and Associates, which would give me plenty of time to talk to my brother—who was very used to me shutting down, but not this extremely. And then, Shane and I could take some time and just breathe a little without the stress of talking about our father. But the main issue Shane and I needed to address was his drug use and that I wouldn’t tolerate it any longer.
I wondered if I could maintain my relationship with Shane if he didn’t get clean and sober. I could only tolerate so much before shutting him out of my life for his own good. I loved him, and that’s what scared me the most. Being hurt by the ones you love the most was the most painful feeling in the world.
Perhaps I shut down so hard this week because, after seeing Shane in such a horrible state, my subconscious knew it would come down to this, and the thought of losing him or casting him aside was too much to bear. Who knows? Maybe I was subconsciously putting Spencer to the test, giving him every reason to break it off, but he passed that test with flying colors.
What I did know was that I felt confident again. I was a woman of action and was about to prove it.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
SPENCER
It was a relief to have the whole plane to ourselves, even though we couldn’t take full advantage of it the way we did on our way to Italy. Of course, I couldn’t deny Shane’s presence had put a bit of a damper on the way I’d envisioned our flight back home, but that was only me being selfish.
Since our reconciliation, things had been easier for the three of us, but I couldn’t help noticing a definite rift between Nat and her brother, and it wasn’t for any conscious reason that I could tell. Ever since I overheard him admitting to using ketamine, and from what I’d been able to read between the lines since then, I had my suspicions that he was holding something back. But I knew Nat wanted to help him more than anything else, and I had no doubt she would.
Still, all bothersome drama set aside, it was a lovely last two days in London. Nat acted as a tour guide, taking her brother to all the sites he wanted to see, and I returned to work, buttoning up the last of the bullshit from the embezzling dick of a CEO.
As I sat and worked at the airplane table on our flight home, my mind drifted back and forth. I was focused on going between my phone and my laptop as I contemplated some of the new contracts Jim had forwarded me. He needed me to review the latest deals that Mitchell and Associates had underway and peruse some prospective ones for the next few months. But, unfortunately, I was fucked in the focusing department. If my mind wasn’t wandering, then my eyes were continuously drawn to where Nat and her brother sat side by side, quietly discussing what was to come.
