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He closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose, clearly trying to center himself. “I don’t know who hurt you in the past, but that’s not who I am. Not who I want to be. So if you can trust that I really like you and I want to take care of you, then I need you to trust that this is how it has to be for now.”
God, I wanted that so bad. My brain kept telling me not to believe him, but my heart already trusted him with my life. “Yeah, okay. That’s cool.”
“No.” He cupped my cheek and tilted my head back until I was looking right at him. “Right now, I don’t want a flippant brush off from you. I want you to acknowledge that I mean what I say, and I do want to see where this goes. But I believe you need to move slowly—we need that—if we’re gonna have any chance of something real. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I think so.” In my heart, I knew he was right. My hard cock, on the other hand, was not so agreeable. But I could take care of that myself. It was my nightly ritual anyway. “So…I’ll see you later?”
Tony pulled me against his chest again and held me tight. “I’ll text you when I get home to make sure you’re snug in bed, and maybe we can have coffee or lunch tomorrow?”
I nodded to him, not trusting my voice to stay strong. He was saying everything right and it sounded too good to be true. If I were smart, I would lock down my heart and keep my feelings at the surface until I knew for sure what his intentions were.
But no one ever accused me of being smart.
I just stood there as Tony walked to the elevator, and then he turned and waited for me to close and lock the door before he even pressed the call button.
I ran straight to my window and watched as he eventually exited the building and strode toward his car. Before slipping inside, he looked up at me and blew me a kiss. It was ridiculously sweet.
Instead of being embarrassed about getting caught, I waved like a madman, making sure he knew that I was paying attention to him. And I knew he was paying attention to me.
Damn, that felt good.
* * *
On Monday morning, Jesse and I met up at the park with our charges. We each had a full pack of dogs to set free in the confines of the gated yard.
Jesse was acting kinda funny, so after a few minutes of waiting for him to say what he needed to say, I finally turned to him with my hands on my hips. “Okay, what’s going on with you?”
He broke out into a big grin. “I have a surprise for us.”
“For us? Like, cookies?” I glanced down to his pockets to see if anything was hidden within them.
“I wish I had cookies. But no, even more exciting.” He held his clasped hands in front of his chest, as if waiting for me to guess.
“Um, a cake?” I really had no idea where he was going with this, but making me name off various desserts didn’t seem like his usual style. “Can you just tell me?”
“Fine, you’re no fun at all.” He rolled his eyes. “I made an appointment for us to check out the building.”
My arms went limp, and my jaw dropped. “The building? Our building? The garden center?”
He bounced on his toes, practically giddy with excitement. “Yep, our building. I talked to Harris, and he’s willing to co-sign the lease. We just need to check it out and make sure we can afford it with a reasonable amount of clients.”
It took me a second to process what he was saying. “So we’re really doing this? Do you think we’re ready?”
Jesse shrugged his shoulders, but the smile never left his face. “No idea, but we’ll never find out unless we try.”
“Holy shit, Jess. We’re really doing this.” I lunged toward him and wrapped him up in a bear hug.
Luna, his flunky service dog, threw herself against our legs, almost making us fall over. She always wanted to be a part of the action.
“What time do we have to be there?”
“Eleven. I figured it was between walks, and we could grab lunch after to talk about it.”
“You’re a genius, man. Let’s get these dogs tired out so we can get ready. I don’t want to show up all sweaty and gross or they might not take us seriously.”
I pulled three balls out of my hoodie pocket and tossed them in different directions, sending my brood to the far ends of the park to burn off their energy. After ten minutes of hard running, everybody was ready for a drink and a nap. Even me. But I was too amped up to slow down. I gave Jesse a quick side hug and leashed up the gang to get them all home.
It was only 9:30 in the morning, so I had enough time, but I was a ball of nerves and needed to burn off some energy of my own.
