“Was the plane ride to Queen City difficult? If I had known, I would have flown in and back with you.”
She ran a fingertip over his forehead. “Don’t frown,” she chastised him. “Big planes don’t scare me; it’s the little ones I can’t fly in. It wouldn’t be good. I had to be sedated to be flown back to the States.”
“I guess we’ll be flying commercial when it’s your turn to visit me.”
“What makes you think I’m going to be visiting you again?” she teased.
“You can go house hunting with me.”
“Where? California?”
“No, somewhere between Dax and Grace. That way, I can visit them both when I want to and still give them the space they need.”
Dalton leaned back on the couch arm to start working the puzzle again.
“You ready to lose? I’m almost finished.”
T.A. leaned back to intimately sliding her fuzzy pink socks over his jean-covered cock.
“I’ve already finished. You did say you wanted sex twice a day, and we haven’t fucked once today so far.”
Dalton felt the color leaching from his skin at the sultry look she was giving him.
“The day is still early…”
“It’s almost seven.”
“It feels earlier. The different time zone must be making me feel as if it’s more noonish.”
“Mmm, but you’re in my time zone, so that’s what really counts.” She ran her hand under the hem of his jeans to stroke his skin. “Doesn’t a hot shower sound… amazing?”
Amazing wouldn’t be the word he would use, but Dalton was wise enough to know she wouldn’t stop until she got what she wanted.
Masking his sore body, he got off the couch and reached for her hand to pull her up, accepting his defeat.
Sometimes, a man just had to do what a man had to do.
29
“I’m going to wrap that broom around your neck if you don’t quit sweeping that hair onto my foot,” Crazy Bitch complained.
“Sorry, I’m just trying to get finished, so I can go home and cook dinner for Dalton.”
“Why’s he flying today and not tomorrow? The forecasters aren’t even giving it a twenty-percent chance that it’s going to hit anyway.”
“Dalton said it’s a massive storm and that if it hits, he doesn’t want to be flying through it. Besides, he misses me.”
She ignored Crazy Bitch pretending to gag.
“He’s crazier than I am, then.”
T.A. laughed. “I know. I tell myself that all the time. I still can’t believe he doesn’t make excuses not to come, but to be fair, I was the one flying to meet him all spring and summer.”
Each time she talked to Dalton on the phone, she dreaded answering, afraid it was the call telling her that he wouldn’t come, or he didn’t want her to.
He had even managed to fly in after he finally accepted the role DeMour had repeatedly asked him to take. It was only when Dax and Grace reached out and asked her to talk to Dalton about his constant refusal when she’d been given an insight into Dalton being a perfectionist on his movie roles. You can plan stunts and choreograph fight scenes, but character roles took a degree of talent that Dalton didn’t believe he was capable of.
He finally relented and had taken a screen test that DeMour hadn’t even wanted. T.A. still remembered when they watched the clip on the internet in the hotel they had stayed in and knew he’d already made his choice before it was finished. Dalton signed the contract the next morning, and they had spent the ensuing months flying back and forth house hunting for him. And when he was able to take breaks from the movies, he would fly to Jamestown to stay with her.
In two weeks, it would be Christmas, and Dalton and Grace had already invited her to join them. His movie was finished, and it was winter again, so she had even more time alone with him on the horizon.
Only one thing could make her happier, and it was a Christmas wish he hadn’t fulfilled yet. She was storing the broom in the back room when her cell phone rang.
“Are you here?” she asked excitedly as she answered Dalton’s call.
“Bad news. I can’t make it.”
“Why?” Closing the door to the store room, she told herself she was shutting it so that Crazy Bitch couldn’t hear her conservation instead of admitting to herself that she didn’t want her to hear her cry.
“The plane has a problem with the motor.” Hearing his frustrated sigh made her feel better, but not by much.
“Then catch a commercial plane.”
“I can’t. You know the house I wanted you to look at but we didn’t go see because it already had a contract on it?”
“I remember it,” she said dully.
“The contract fell through. I want you to fly here and come see it with me.”
“I can’t.” Numbly, she felt as if the world she loved just moments before was shattering around her.