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I found the door closed, but unlocked. Quietly pushing my way in, I let my eyes adjust to the darkness for a moment and then slipped into bed with him.
He turned over, then half sat up. “Wha—”
“Hey,” I whispered.
Before he knew what happened I was spooning backward against him, while pulling one big arm around me. It was my favorite sleeping position. The way we’d slept in Iceland.
“Jordyn…” I heard him murmur. “We can’t just—”
“Shhh,” I hushed him, snuggling my ass even deeper against his crotch. Elliot was shirtless, and practically naked. Already his warmth was seeping into me.
“It’s just sleep,” I told him, squeezing his hand into my stomach. “Just… cuddling.”
Slowly, reluctantly, I felt the tension in his arms give way. His body relaxed as he surrendered back to sleep.
“It’s not like I’m gonna jump your bones or anything,” I chuckled.
Forty-Two
JORDYN
“Oh my God this is fucking amazing.”
I tore into my bagel again, savoring the taste of the ‘everything’ spices. The outside was crispy and crunchy, the inside warm, chewy and delicious. It was the type of bagel you could only get in one place in the whole world, and everyone knew that place was New York.
“It’s the water here, right?” I asked. “It’s the only reason people don’t make millions of dollars opening bagel shops all over the country?”
Aiden nodded as he turned the wheel again, guiding us down another side-street. “It’s definitely the water,” he mumbled around a mouthful of his own bagel. “I ran into a place in Texas called ‘NY Bagel’ that made a small killing on bagels like this. All they did was import the water. A tanker truck came several times a week, hauling hundreds of gallons of it.”
“Whoa.”
“It was expensive though,” he pointed out. “It ate into their profits. But when it comes to something like this,” he waved his bagel around, “you can’t cut corners.”
I took a sip of my coffee and gazed through the window, noting how beautifully sunny it was outside. We were north of Greenwood Lake, somewhere in another part of Orange County. Things were rural here, but still town-like and exceptionally beautiful.
“Sleep well last night?” he asked, without a hint of suggestion.
“Like a rock.”
“Good,” Aiden sighed. “I think we all needed it.”
I’d woken beside a still-slumbering Elliot this morning, his strong Italian nose mere inches from mine. For a good five minutes I just stared at his handsome face. It looked very different relaxed, with no tension, no thought or worry lines criss-crossing it. Before leaving the bed I was tempted to kiss him again, to plant my lips lightly against his. He was deep in sleep. He’d never know…
It seemed wrong though somehow, even despite the deeply intimate things we’d been doing. Besides, I didn’t really want to kiss him again. I wanted him to kissme.
“Alright,” Aiden said abruptly. “We’re here.”
He pointed to a street-sign as he made one last turn, and I read the words ‘Margaret Lane.’ The block was on the shorter side, with big front lawns and cookie-cutter houses that were quite beautiful but all the same model. I could see it ended in a wide, sweeping cul-de-sac. Before we got there however, Aiden pulled us off to one side and killed the engine.
“Okay…” I asked, looking around. “So where are we?”
“Margaret Lane,” he said, lifting his coffee from the cup-holder. With the flick of a wrist, he saluted the sky with it. “Named after my late, great mother.”
“You named thestreet?”
“When you build the street from scratch you can,” he smiled. “Welcome to the first full block ever developed by Triad Realty.”
I glanced around, realizing we were parked beneath the shade of a big elm tree. The place was pretty. The houses were well-kept, with wide sweeping driveways and nice cars. A basketball net was set up at the end of the cul-de-sac, a weather-beaten ball resting beside it, idly.
