“What? These are my casual clothes.” I’d intentionally dressed down for the meeting in Redwood Bay. I knew I already had Corporate Asshole branded across my forehead to these people. I figured the least I could do was put on a pair of jeans and a shirt.
“This is like a Ralph Lauren dress shirt,” she scoffed. “It’s got French cuffs. And what it is even made of?” She pinched a swatch of fabric at my arm between her fingers, examining it critically.
“It’s a cotton-linen blend with a hint of magical Elf-made stretch so it clings to my chiseled torso.”
“If you’re trying to say it was made by elves, the proper adjective is Elven,” she corrected me. So sassy. Just what I needed.
“I’m not afraid of baking.” I rolled up my fancy French-cuffed sleeves. I could take it.
“Good. I’d hate to get you all messed up.” She took the bag of flour. I thought she was putting it away. Until she sprinkled some on her hands like a gymnast preparing for a vault. And then she clapped me heartily on the back, a big plume of flour rising up over our heads.
Oh, she wanted to play that way, did she? I stood by her side, pretending to listen to her tell me about something to do with something. I took a pinch of flour. And I brought it up over her head, letting it rain down ever so gently over her hair.
Some dusted down onto her nose. She looked up at me, challenge in her eyes, then blew the flour off like an errant strand of hair had gotten in her way.
“Not everyone has the focus. The intense concentration. The maturity required for baking.” As she spoke she scooped her hand into the bag of flour. Then she threw it square across my chest, hitting me like a bucket of paint splashed against my dark blue shirt.
“No, I imagine not,” I agreed, coming to join her at the bag of flour, reaching in as well. “I imagine it’s only a small handful.” And I took out a rather large handful, pulled at her apron and dumped the flour right down.
She gasped, her eyes wide. “Oh no, you didn’t!” And she brought it, swiping a fistful of flour across my face, but I was right there at it, too, with another palm on top of her head as she squealed and laughed and tried to run away.
“You’re not getting away!” Laughing, I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to me.
“Let me go!” She pushed against my chest, trying to wiggle away.
“No.” I kept her there in my arms, then caught her eye as I looked down. “I won’t let you go. I love you.”
Her mouth dropped open, her eyes wide, and she managed to knock over the large baker’s bag of flour she’d been reaching for onto the floor. The contents poofed out and up all over our feet and legs. She bent to pick it up. I did, too, and we knocked heads.
“Ouch!” She cried, her hand to her forehead, tears springing to her eyes. It had been quite a crack.
“Are you OK?” I rushed to attend to her, a hand under her elbow, looking for blood. For a lifetime of suave and sophisticated, I’d really picked a great moment to get clumsy at everything.
“No!” she gasped, wiping an actual tear from her cheek. I must have really clocked her.
“Let me get you an ice pack.”
“I don’t need an ice pack.” She reached out to my arm, pulling me away from my path toward the freezer. “What did you say? Before you head-butted me?”
“I love you.”
More tears and a sob-gasp, but this time I didn’t think it was from physical pain. I pulled her into my arms. And told her again, just because it felt so great to say it.
“I love you, too.” Hearing that from her felt even better. She wrapped her hands around my neck, buried her face in my floured chest and we stood together, repeating ourselves quite a bit. Because we could.
“I do love you. So much.” She reached up, kissing me, brushing flour off my face, standing on tiptoe until I reached around, picked her up and rested her on top of the counter. “But I have to ask you something. And be honest.”
“I’ll try my best.” I dusted some flour off her cheek, really just managing to spread it into a larger patch.
“Are you an asshole?”
“What?” I hadn’t been prepared for that. Hadn’t she just said she loved me? Wasn’t that, like, game over? I’d won?
“Are you an asshole?” she repeated. “Because a lot of people think you are. And I might just be all caught up because you’re so good at sweeping me off my feet.”
“Oh, what swept you off your feet, exactly?” I teased her. “Was it the way I head-butted you? Or how my construction team bulldozed your bakery to the ground? Or the way I failed to check on the pilot during our flight to Fiji, missing the fact he was having a heart attack until we had to make an emergency landing?”
“You have screwed up a few times,” she agreed. “And my mother thinks you’re evil.”
“I’m not sure your mother is ever going to join my fan club,” I ruefully agreed. If there’d been a stake nearby when I’d met Caroline’s mom, I think she would have tried to tie me to it and set flames burning at my feet. I did not see where we could find common ground. “Don’t your father and she live in a nudist colony?”
“They do,” she sighed with resignation.
“That’s…” I tried to open my mind, see it at least as a potentially interesting topic of conversation with them. I, myself, was a big fan of nudity.
“It’s never the people you want to see naked.” She stopped the train of my thoughts.
“Right.” I sure wouldn’t want to see her parents naked. Awkward. “Anyway, I can’t tell you everything in my past is perfect. But I can promise you I’ll do my level best to not be an asshole in the future.”
“That’s very romantic.” She kissed me again. But then she pulled away and voiced one last doubt. “When I visited you in New York, it wasn’t exactly as if the lives we’ve been leading clicked.”
“If we don’t fit into each other’s lives, that means we have to change our lives to fit each other.”
She smiled in agreement. And there was more kissing. Because that was what people did when they loved each other.
Next, we headed into the shower. Because that was what people who loved each other did after they got in a big fight throwing flour all over the place. Plus, it meant getting Caroline naked, my favorite pastime.
CHAPTER 22
Caroline
“Was it here?” Colt brushed his mouth along to my hip, kissing me as we lay naked on my bed. He’d fucked me soundly against the wall of the shower, something I felt sure every single person in the entire house-divided-into-apartments now knew considering I’d screamed
my bloody lungs out. It had felt so good to have him driving into me again.
“Or was this it?” Colt worked his way up my stomach, to the base of my breast, licking my mound. He cupped me in his hand, using his tongue to draw a lazy circle around my nipple. How quickly he worked me up again, even after having just taken me to a crazy peak. Speaking of peaks, he sucked my stiff, aching tip into his hot mouth and gave me a light bite.
“Ooh,” I moaned, arching my back off the bed, feeling wet heat pulse between my legs.
“No, I know what it was.” He traveled down my stomach now, drifting lower, lower still.
“Are you looking for something?” I asked, parting my legs slightly. I’d be happy to show him the way, if necessary.
“I’m just trying to remember what it was about you that I missed the most over this past week.”
“Was it just a week?” It had to have been longer than that. But I did the math. I’d arrived back from New York on Monday to discover the rubble. And now it was Monday again, so that meant—“Oh!” His lips discovered that favorite part he’d missed, all by himself.
“Yes, this is it.” He settled himself down between my legs, spreading me, holding my inner thighs with his large palms. And he showed me how much he’d missed me, drawing a long, slow tongue down my slick slit. He took his time, letting me writhe and moan as he licked and teased me.
“Colt,” I whimpered. I’d missed him, too! I didn’t have patience for this kind of slowness. “Please!”
That just made him chuckle with satisfaction as he drew a finger down to my wet, slick entrance.
“I missed that, too, Caroline.” His eyes had a dark, intense heat as he gazed down at me, sliding a thick finger into my pussy. “I missed making you beg.”
“Colt!” I cried out, pushing against him, twisting the sheets in my hands.
“I think I know what I want,” he murmured, slow and sexy, not going even the slightest bit faster after my pleas. “Cup your tits, baby. Let me see how big and full they are.”
I brought my palms to my breasts, squeezing them for him as he stroked me.