Page 49
“You look like mine.” He kisses my forehead. “Get in the car, wife. We’re going home.”
* * *
I’ve been in a lot of nice houses. My parents’ house is a very nice house. I’ve been to partners’ houses in the Heights with acres of land and pools.
I’ve never been anywhere like this.
We drive for an hour, out of the city, into the hills. Then we turn off a road with no sign onto a lane with stone walls on both sides, and the walls get taller, then there’s a gate. Iron. Twelve feet. There’s a gatehouse next to it with two men inside, one of them steps out when he sees the car and touches two fingers to his forehead, and Declan nods at him through the window like a damn king.
Past the gate, there’s a wall around the whole property. I can’t even fucking see the end of it. There are cameras on posts, men walking the tree line with earpieces. There’s a goddamn helicopter pad, an actual helicopter pad, and then the house comes up out of the trees, and I stop breathing.
It’s all stone. Gray stone with ivy on it and a slate roof, three stories, so many windows I can’t count them. It looks like something fucking Elon would live in. There’s even a fountain in the middle of the circle drive, with water flowing.
“Uh… Decl,” I mumble.
“Yeah, baby.” He has me all snuggled up into his side, kissing the side of my head, big, warm hand going up and down from my hip to my hair the whole ride. When he wasn’t kissing me stupid, scenting me, purring into the side of my neck… making me absolutely ready to jump his damn sexy bones.
“What the hell…”
He laughs, then puts his mouth to my ear. “You married a fucking mob boss, Zahra. What’d you think that meant?”
I don’t know what I thought. I thought a very nice condo. Maybe a damn Range Rover…
There are eight men on the front steps when we pull up. They’re in suits, all huge. And every one of them puts his hand over his heart when Declan gets out of the car. He walks past them with a tilt of his chin. Pure badass, my man. With his hand on the small of my back, and every one of them looks at the ground until we’re inside.
Of course, because at this point, what the fuck else, the entrance hall has a staircase that splits in two… There’s an enormous chandelier over our heads, and a painting of a man who looks like Declan with a beard down to his chest.
“Who’s that?” I ask almost shyly.
“My great-grandfather. He got off the boat with eleven dollars.” He looks at the portrait with a fond smile, shaking his head. “Come, let’s go upstairs.”
His rooms, plural, like we’re in freaking Downton Abbey, are at the back of the house, at the end of an endlessly long hall. He opens a door and stands back.
It’s a suite. More like an entire penthouse! With a bedroom, sitting room, a bathroom I can see through the far door with a tub you could swim in. Floor-to-ceiling windows looking over fields going gold in the evening. Dark wood and leather, a man’s space.
A big desk by the window, with great lighting and an ergonomic chair. And a bookcase next to it, half filled with my books! The one about the Supreme Court I’ve been meaning to read for two years is right there… there’s even a coffee maker on the side, the expensive kind, with a bag of the Ethiopian stuff I get from my favorite spot…
I notice the closet door’s open. Half of it’s his suits. The other half is nothing but empty wooden hangers, rows and freaking rows of them.
I walk into the middle of the room and turn in a circle.
“Declan, you had this done from freaking prison?”
One shrug of a massive shoulder, a soft smile playing on his full lips.“I had time.”
My husband. Standing in a house that looks like a castle, in a suit that costs more than my car, with armed men downstairs and a wall around fucking acres of gorgeous land, and he’s watching me like I’m the only thing in this whole place that matters.
“You live here now,” he says.
“Declan, I have an apartment. I have a lease…”
“We bought your building.”
I almost shriek. Almost. “You what?!”
His eyes are steady. “Last month.”
He takes his jacket off and throws it over a chair. Then he starts on his shirt buttons, one at a time, walking toward me. “Keep the apartment. Use it when you work late. I can come stays with you. But this is home, Zahra. This is where we sleep. In this bed, together. Every night. I’m not going one more night without you, mate. Had enough of those.”
