If he was a normal man, the weight and suddenness of
these feelings would scare the fuck out of him, but all he could muster was a
whole lot of contentment as her inner muscles rippled with aftershock against
his still-buried dick. There were too
many times in his life when seizing an unexpected moment had changed the course
of his life.
Delaney was one of those moments, and even if she
couldn’t get it through her thick head, it was still real. This kind of intimacy couldn’t be bought or
sold. Like budding leaves in the spring
or the change of their color in the fall, what they had was…
Hell, he didn’t know what it was. There was a metaphor or lyric to be made
there. Something that had to do with the
appreciating the beauty of everyday miracles, but he wasn’t quite alert enough
to pull it together.
“S’agapo,” she
whispered into the side of his neck before chasing it with a soft kiss. “I missed you.”
Jon didn’t stop his slow stroke of her hair when smiling
gently into it. That wasn’t one of the
translations she’d gotten in the habit of providing. Delaney had just said two very different
things, and he happened to know that because….
Well, he’d suspected there would eventually be a need to know that bit
of Greek, so he’d done a little preparatory research. What could he say? He was a planner.
He acknowledged the sweet declaration with a press of
soft lips against to her forehead but didn’t confess his understanding. Actions still meant more to him than words,
and Delaney opening up to him would mean more than anything.
“Talk to me, Mou.”
“About what?”
“Yesterday.”
“Do I have to?” She gently shifted off him to pull up the
blanket. After arranging it over them,
her compact frame tucked into his side and a cheek settled contentedly against
his shoulder. “I’d rather just cuddle
and pretend yesterday didn’t happen.”
It wasn’t quite the same as being buried inside her, but
this new position allowed him to breathe more freely, so he wouldn’t complain.
“Yes, you fucking have to, because this isn’t happening
again. You don’t get to go pick up some
guy in a bar because you’re mad at me.
Especially when I don’t even know what the hell I did.”
The words were a bit harsh, but she didn’t seem upset by
them. A hand stroked pacifyingly over his belly in
what he chose to perceive as an apology.
“I didn’t pick him up, and it didn’t happen just because
I was mad.” The words were almost too
quiet to be heard. “There were
extenuating circumstances.”
“Such as?”
She scooted a little further down into the covers and
admitted, “Yesterday was Violet and Poppy’s birthday. They’re not a picnic for me, and this was the
hardest I’ve had without them.”
Sending up a little prayer of gratitude that it seemed
like the walls were finally going to come down, he opted not to complain that
she’d purposely withheld their birthday.
“Pearl mentioned you went to see Violet.”
“Yeah. I usually take
some flowers and make sure the groundskeepers are doing a good job. I never stay more than a couple of minutes.”
The fingers playing in his belly fur paused along with
her explanation. Evidently, he was going
have to pull this out of her a sentence at a time, but he had no place else to
be today. If this was what it took, so
be it.
“Was yesterday different?”
“Yes.” Delaney
withdrew her hand and would’ve moved completely away had he not locked the arm
that encircled her.
“You can talk fine from right there.”
Tickling strands of hair slithered down his locked arm
when she tilted her face. The eyes that
found his were a middling gray that held neither thunder nor lightning. They were simply clouded.
“I hold you responsible for it.”
“If I’m gonna get left holding the bag, you have to give
me a reason why.”
“Because everything I’ve worked so hard to keep buried
wants to surface since you came along with your guilt, sympathy and ‘get to
know my daughter’ shtick. Things got…
messy.”
Jon palmed her cheek with an unapologetic, “I’d say I’m
sorry, but I’m not. Those buried things
should’ve never been buried in the first place, and if my presence forced you
to dig ‘em up, I’ll gladly shoulder the blame.”
“You say that because you weren’t the one lying on a
grave and begging your dead daughter to tell you why her sister hates you. God, I can’t believe that happened.”
The mental image of his feisty Mou broken and sobbing
seized his gut, and he knew it would’ve killed him to see it in person. Jon’s tough guy ass would’ve been lying right
there with her, crying the same tears as she drowned in grief, but still…. He would’ve been there.
It helped knowing that Pearl was by her side, but his only real
consolation was that Delaney finally let herself mourn. Now the real healing could begin.
Drawing her into a tight embrace that was mostly for his
own benefit, Jon's lips touched the softness of her forehead to both deliver and
receive comfort. “Didn’t you feel better
afterward?”
“No,” she scoffed away his comfort. “I felt freeping empty and alone. Everyone has their little families to go home
to at night – and then there’s me. Coming
home to the solitude last night would’ve been unbearable, so that’s why I
talked Pearl into going out.”
The reminder of the photo in his text messages prompted a
green-eyed monster to awaken and snort his displeasure. “And invited some joker to paw your ass.”
“I didn’t invite him.
I just didn’t complain when he did.”
“Same fucking difference.”
Yes, he was being a big goddamn baby by letting the
embrace go lax and fixing his gaze on the ceiling light, but dammit. This was new for him.
Delaney was singularly unimpressed by the pout and used a
harsh hand to angle his jaw. Flinty eyes
informed him, “I’m not going to apologize.
I did what I had to do to get through the day, and you’re going to have
to get over it.”
“You could’ve fucking called and asked me to come home,”
he growled, disliking the ultimatum.
“Because that’s a good habit to develop.” Her snort ridiculed him. “Expecting you to drop everything and come
running from wherever in the world you are.
I don’t think so.”
“I fucking know you’re self-sufficient, Delaney, but to
use your words, these were extenuating circumstances. I could’ve and would’ve come. Hell, I did come.”
There was a little spark of angry lightning that accused,
“Because you were mad.”
“Fucking right I was mad, but that’s not why I hauled ass
back to New York.”
Anger fizzled with the reminder of how Jon felt on that
flight last night. He’d imagined a
million different scenes, a few of which involved her naked under another guy,
but mostly it was just visions of her smiling through the pain that nobody else
could see. Nobody but him.
“Then why did you?”
Lifting a hand, he trailed light fingertips down the side
of Delaney’s face and willingly exposed his softer side.
“I needed to know you were okay, Mou,” he confessed. “To look past the bullshit you feed everybody
else and see for myself that your soul was still intact. I couldn’t rest without knowing my
beautiful fighter was still fighting.”
Freepin’ fishsticks
on a fancy platter.
The love had come easy. Like Petra said, it was just another
four-letter word to Delaney. It came and
went with the change of seasons.
What she had been struggling with since last weekend was
the idea that this man – this rock star that she’d crushed on for decades – was
her soul mate. The one person Delaney
had waited her whole life for. She’d
been fighting it because… Well, just
because. It was too soon, too much, too
unrealistic and half a dozen other things for a woman who was afraid to believe.
But she’d faced demons yesterday and survived. She wasn’t afraid of anything now. Especially not the man watching her with such
tenderness.
That look in his eyes wasn’t the one he used to flirt
with fans. It wasn’t one he used to
charm the press. It was the radiant blue
aura of his soul – and it was the most beautiful thing she ever saw.
This was happening, and it was real.
“Promise me you’ll never call anyone else that.”
His features softened just a fraction from their intense
set. “Promise. You gonna tell me who Katya is?”
It amazed her that he didn’t know, but it was obvious he
didn’t. “You had your picture taken with
her at a party in Chicago. She was my assistant manager until I fired her
yesterday.”
“The Nordic looking blonde?” he snorted with a roll of those
baby blues. “Jesus Christ, Mou, are you
kidding me? The only thing I called her
was ‘sweetheart’, because I couldn’t remember her name. I don’t even like her. The woman’s a rapist in the making, and
you’re the only reason she got five minutes of my time.”
“She knew your divorce wasn’t as sudden as it seemed.”
“So did a lot of people.
We’ve had the papers drawn up forever.
Maybe she knows a legal secretary or something who decided it was okay
to blab now that they’re filed. I don’t
know, but she didn’t hear it from me.”
There was nothing but sincerity swimming in the irises of
moire blue, and that’s all the reassurance Delaney needed. Katya was still fired, but Jon was off the
hook.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” A lopsided
smirk hitched his mouth as a heavy hand landed on her butt. “If it’s that easy to put an end to this
shit, maybe you could fucking call me next time and save
us both a huge pain in the ass?”
Crawling on top of him to straddle his waist, Delaney
smiled down into his face. It was more
than that. His presence here meant
everything. He’d given her actions
instead of words, and Jon was right. The
actions carried a lot more weight than the words did.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to say them, though.
“S’agapo.”
The lopsided smirk evened out under twinkling eyes. “You gonna tell me you missed me again, too? Or are you gonna stick with just the ‘I love
you’ this time?”
“You knew.” It
shouldn’t have surprised her, and maybe it didn’t. Not really.
Sometimes she wondered if there was anything he didn’t know.
“Yep. And when you
finish telling my why you kept the twins’ birthday a secret, what sent you
flying out of the kitchen last weekend, and every single thing that happened at
the cemetery yesterday.... Maybe I’ll believe you.”
Cradling his whiskered face between her palms, Delaney
bent forward until their lips were mere inches apart. “You will believe. Eísai i
psychí mou.”
“That one I don’t know.
Translate.”
Tracing a thumb over his arched eyebrow, she whispered,
“You are my soul, Jon. However crazy it
seems to anybody else, my healing heart knows you’re the one. Stay tuned for all the supporting action you
could ever want.”
Brilliant white teeth gleamed in the morning sun, and
there was a gentleness about him that made her insides go squishy. She believed him. She believed him before he ever uttered the
quiet words, “I love you, Mou. Eísai i psychí mou.”
He mangled it a little, but Greek had never sounded sweeter
to Delaney’s ears.
Finally l caught up with this. I love them.
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