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“This is incredible,” she finally eeked out as I poured her a glass of wine. “Is this Mero’s?”
I nodded. “It is,” I said. “I thought it was fitting, since that was the place of our first good evening. I wanted to bring us back to that moment and kind of have a chance to redo some of what happened after.”
“All right,” she said with perhaps a slight hesitation in her voice.
We ate, keeping our conversation somewhat light, as we got through the appetizer and into the main course. Mostly, she spoke of dealing with insurance for her car and the rental, of the building insurance and how she had run into a wall with it and might need my assistance, and how she had been interviewed by several major newspapers in Texas over the damage that the storm had caused.
I already knew those things, but I let her talk. I wanted to get her comfortable before I told her what I had in store. As we were finishing the main course, I put down my fork and knife and took a sip of the wine. It was time.
“So, you said you had a surprise for me,” she said.
“I did,” I replied.
A small smile appeared on her lips for the first time in a while, and my heart clenched.
“And?” she asked.
“I spoke to my loan officer the other day,” I said, trying to act as casual as possible. “Any day now I will have a loan deposited in my bank account that should cover the remaining demolition costs as well as a complete rebuild of the building.”
There was silence as she blinked a few times.
“What?”
“I got a loan,” I said. “To rebuild the store. To rebuildourstore. I didn’t want to wait on the insurance to come through first and it wouldn’t have covered the upgrades we wanted to make anyway, so I thought this was the way to go. Brewer Grocery will be up and running by the end of the year.”
Nothing Mero’s could ever cook could be as delicious as the way her expression ran the gamut of shock, happiness, emotional tears of joy, and then laughter. I laughed along with her and crossed over to be beside her as she stood up. I was going to just put my arm on her shoulder while she tried to settle on one emotion, but she threw her arms around me and squeezed.
I felt laughter bubble up inside me and held her tight as we rocked back and forth for a moment. Then she pulled back and pressed a kiss to my lips.
It was short and joyful, and when she pulled back from it, the smile on her face was still one of a woman who was so wrappedup in the moment that she lost control of herself. But then her eyes darkened. It was not the darkness of anger or resentment, or even the darkness of regret. It was the darkness of passion. Like the storm that had blown through our building and torn it to pieces, a cloud of passion had formed in her eyes and threatened to destroy everything in its wake in pursuit of release.
Our lips crushed together again, and I lifted her off her feet. The taste of the wine was still sweet on her tongue as I brought her back to my bedroom. We ripped one another’s clothes off unceremoniously and fell to the bed.
I entered her without hesitation, her legs wrapped around my waist, and found her wet and waiting. Gasping, clenching, tasting each other, we rolled on the bed in a fit of extraordinary, intense, carnal passion. As night fell on Murdock and the room darkened, we filled my bedroom with the sounds of sex and laughter and yearning.
And release.
When I came, she came with me, her toes curling into the sheets that had torn from the corners of the bed and were balling up in the center. Our bodies were slick with sweat, but we curled together anyway, happy as we held each other in the early night. We drifted off to sleep, and it was the soundest sleep I could ever remember having, holding her in the crook of my arm, our naked bodies pressed together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, finally joined.
22
MELANIE
Ididn't open my eyes immediately when I woke up. I felt like maybe this was all some wonderful dream, and if I opened my eyes, it would all go away. Eventually, I was going to have to face reality, but if I just lay there and enjoyed the cozy comfort of the bed for a little bit longer, I could hang on to the feeling.
I rolled onto my back and stretched my legs down toward the end of the bed, wiggling my toes in the sheets. Reaching over to my side, I felt for Victor's warmth. He really had gone to great lengths to help me and do something that he knew would make me happy. He'd created a dreamy, romantic evening for me and put so much into making me feel special.
As I reached for him though, my hand fell onto cool, empty sheets. My eyes snapped open, and I looked over to the side of the bed, hoping he had just rolled all the way to the very edge. He wasn't there.
That took the warm, happy feeling away from me quickly. I sat up sharply, looking around the room. He wouldn't just leave, would he?
Before I spiraled too far into the panicky thoughts, a crashing sound in the kitchen told me Victor hadn't left. He'd just ventured out of bed to scavenge for food. I chastised myself for having as intense of a reaction as I did. Almost as if he could hear my thoughts, Victor called in to me.
"Melanie? Are you awake?"
I laughed. "If I wasn't, that wouldn't have been the gentlest way to wake me."
His head popped around the doorframe into the room, and he grinned.
