Page 39 of Marcus

That was her kid in a nutshell.

Never stopped moving those lips.

“Do you work with my mom?” Tiffany asked.

Marcus cleared his throat. “Do you mean with the penthouse?”

“Yeah, making people’s houses pretty.”

Cella dared to crack her eyes open, then, if only because she wanted to see where Marcus was and watch him while he talked to her kid. She wasn’t sure why he picked up her ringing phone, but she could deal with that later.

A quick scan of the space and she found him sitting on the chaise near the window of her Four Seasons’ room. He’d not bothered to get dressed beyond pulling on a pair of boxer briefs. His hair hung down around his dark eyes, the strands damp from a shower he must have taken. How long had he been up? He stared out the window with the phone in his hand, silent.

And what a sight he was.

All those hard, defined lines of his lean form available for her to admire. The way his jawline looked carved from steel and softened only the slightest when he smiled in response to whatever her daughter just said to him. A muscular torso and firm abs that led down to a narrow waist where the waistband of his boxer-briefs rested upon the cut V of his hips.

The man truly was beautiful.

In a suit, and without one.

Damn.

It wasn’t as though she got very much time to enjoy him in his naked glory the night before. In the solarium, he hadn’t even bothered to take off his clothes when he fucked her except to shove his pants down just low enough to get the job done. Not that she minded, and in fact, she’d had very good dreams because of that.

And then, once they’d arrived back to her hotel … well, because of the solarium, all she could think about was getting that man in her bed. Nothing else mattered, and she didn’t waste time getting what she wanted. Not that Marcus complained because he certainly didn’t.

Now, though, she was enjoying what she missed.

Nothing wrong with that, right?

Yeah.

“I’m helping your mom,” he replied, “but that’s not what I do for work.”

“Well, what do you do, then?”

Cella smirked at the way Marcus cocked a brow and smiled a bit at that question. Her girl was smart as hell, and quick as a whip. She would keep asking those whys or whats until she got what she wanted from the conversation. But considering Marcus had yet to realize she was awake, she said nothing and simply took in the show.

“I do a lot of different things,” he said carefully, “but right now I work the most with a bunch of maple syrup farms my family owns.”

“Really?”

Little Tiffany’s screech might have broken glass. There was one detail about her daughter that Marcus couldn’t possibly know, but he soon would.

“I love maple syrup!”

And she truly did.

Not that fake shit that was only flavored like maple syrup, no. Real maple syrup, and she swore her daughter could tell the difference just by smelling it. Cella kept a jar on hand of her daughter’s favorite kind, but it was getting terribly low.

“It’s real, right?” Tiffany demanded on the call. “Because my Uncle Ren tried to tell my ma it was real, but it wasn’t.”

In the background of the call, someone, it sounded like Renzo, said loudly, “Listen, not everyone knows there’s a difference, Tiffany.”

“Everyone should know it!”

Cella couldn’t help it, she laughed, finally making Marcus aware that yes, she was awake and watching him. His grin turned on her, that intense gaze of his softened more than usual. Maybe it was because he was currently talking to her daughter, but whatever it was, she liked it.