Her voice was shaky, but her words were exactly what I wanted to hear.
“But you have to make me a promise.”
She turned around and hooked those beautiful eyes with mine, but there was a sadness there. A depression, almost.
What the hell had happened while Nick and I were on the porch?
“Anything,” I said.
“You have to promise that I’ll have an equal voice in what happens with this child. The doctors, the hospitals, the way I give birth—everything. Especially with regard to what we’ll do once the child is here.”
“I promise,” I said. “Full and equal voice. As far as once the baby gets here, we’ll take it day by day. Get you recuperated from labor and make sure the child is healthy, then I’ll figure it out from there.”
“We will figure it out from there,” she said.
“Correct.”
I watched her nod her head, but there was something in the way she stood. It was almost as if she stood in a posture of defeat. Like all of the fight I’d come to admire about her had been sucked from the marrow of her bones.
“So, when do we leave?”
Relief washed over my body. So much so that it made me weak in the knees. I had no fucking clue what was going to happen once this child was born, but I tried not to think about it. I wanted to put the past behind us, however. I wanted to try and start
fresh. We didn’t have to be friends, but we could be polite to one another. Treat one another with respect. That was what adults did, and we were both grown-ass adults.
“Whenever you’re comfortable leaving,” I said.
She turned her eyes back to me and I could’ve sworn I saw a grin trying to make its way across her cheeks.
“What?” I asked.
“That’s the most polite thing you’ve said to me in days,” she said.
“I can be polite. When I want to be.”
She threw her head back in laughter before she shook it in disbelief.
“I’ll believe that when it happens more than once a month,” she said.
“Then sit back and enjoy the ride,” I said. “Because super polite Gray is coming for you.”
And for a split second, I thought I saw that spark of fire in her eyes again.
It was going to be a very long pregnancy.
Chapter 18
Michelle
I stood on Gray’s private terrace, looking over the acres and acres of grapevines. I couldn’t get over the beauty of it. Over the incredible view he had to wake up to every single morning. The vineyard seemed to stretch on for days. Over the lush green hills of Napa Valley and tumbling off into the distance as far as my eye could see. The sun was beginning to rise on my fourth day at his home, and everywhere I looked, decadence shone. From the plush carpet under my toes to the jetted tub in my bathroom, everywhere I looked boasted of Gray’s wealth somehow.
But the landscape.
I’d never seen anything so beautiful before.
It was so idyllic that it robbed me of my breath. The private jet had been amazing, with buttery leather seats and five-star food served from the hands of a very cheerful steward. His house was grand, with corridors that spilled into bedrooms with vaulted ceilings and silken curtains that shimmered as the sun streamed through the windows. Gray had even walked me through the place where all his wine was made, and that had been amazing as well.
There was no other word to describe his life other than completely and utterly amazing.