Can't Hurry Love (39 page)

Celeste blinked, her mouth opened to protest.

“I don’t need you to protect me,” Victoria said. “Not anymore. But I will always love you for trying.”

Celeste glanced meaningfully at John, who was decidedly red around his too-tight collar. “I just want to help,” she said.

“I know.”

“Then let me.” Victoria should have known Celeste wouldn’t relinquish control so easily.

“Gavin?” Victoria said, and as if he’d been waiting for the chance to cart Celeste off someplace, Gavin read her mind.

“I’m on it,” he said, and looking more like a Viking than he ever had, he grabbed Celeste’s hand and pulled her away, kicking open the door to the treatment rooms. John stared after them like his new lollipop had been stolen.

“What’s happening here?” he asked.

“I believe we’re being managed, Uncle John,” Eli said, crossing his arms over his chest and smiling as if he was enjoying the show.

Amy stepped out of the hallway into the foyer, and Uncle John stiffened as if he’d seen a ghost. “Hello, John,” she said.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, his face going red. He looked at Eli. “What is she doing here?”

“She’s the architect,” Victoria said.

“Victoria hired your mother?” John asked Eli. “And you invested in this circus? Christ, son, I would never have stayed in Galveston if I’d known you were going to lose your mind.”

“Don’t insult him,” Victoria said, stepping closer to John, who pushed back his hat and laughed. “I’m serious. He’s not a joke. He’s a man, and a good one.”

John looked at Eli. “You said Victoria was a mouse. A … a scarecrow. A pushover.”

Eli shrugged. “Looks like I was wrong.”

“Why didn’t you tell Eli that Amy was paying for his father’s care?” Victoria asked John.

“Is that what she told you?” John asked, pointing a finger at Amy. “This woman left you—”

“I know what she did,” Eli said. “Better than anyone. But you lied to me, Uncle John. Why?”

“Because she oughta pay for something!” John cried.

“I think she’s paid enough,” Victoria said.

“What the hell do you know about anything?” John asked. She tried to resist the urge to duck behind Eli, because John was big and getting angrier by the second.

“All of it,” Eli answered John’s question, standing beside Victoria without touching her. “Victoria knows everything, and she’s right.” Eli turned and nodded at Amy, who stood pale and stalwart against the backdrop of the party behind her. “My mom’s paid enough.”

Amy’s eyes filled with tears but she didn’t say anything—just stood there, pulsing with emotion—and Victoria wasn’t sure she could love Eli any more than she did at this moment.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” John said, all kinds of judgment in his voice, and Victoria wanted to take Eli’s hand to show him he wasn’t alone, but he stepped forward, out of her reach.

“I never thought you’d lie to me, Uncle John. All these years you let me believe you were paying for Dad’s care and I felt so indebted to you. And all these years you knew where my mother was and you never bothered to tell me.”

“I didn’t think you’d care.”

“Well, I do.”

The silence pounded in the foyer and Victoria stepped toward the door, her heels clicking loud against the stone tiles.

“I think you should leave,” she said and opened the front door.

John ignored her, staring daggers into Eli, and she wrapped her hand around his arm.

John grabbed her fingers, so hard and quick that she gasped, more in surprise than pain. “And I think you should mind—”

Eli, his jaw tight, his eyes murderous, shoved John out
the door, following him over the transom as the older man tripped slightly.

“You don’t put your hands on her,” Eli said, following his uncle across the porch as the older man stumbled backwards down the steps. “Ever.”

“Eli, I only wanted this land for you. For your birthright,” John said from the bottom of the stairs, his face bleached with moonlight and regret.

Eli nodded toward the full parking area. “Get in your truck and go on home. I’ll find you when I can stomach looking at you.”

John seemed to know when he was beat, and he pulled his hat down low before turning and winding his way through the trucks to his own.

“Thank you, Eli,” Amy said quietly from the door behind them.

Eli turned—his shirt, teeth, and eyes bone white in the moonlight. So handsome that Victoria ached looking at him. He reached for Amy’s hand, gathering her fingers into his own like a bouquet. Amy gasped slightly, staring at their joined hands as if she’d stop believing it if she stopped seeing it.

Finally, Amy laughed a little, gusty and girlish. Awkward, she patted Eli’s hand before dropping it and stepping back inside the house.

“I’ll leave you two alone.” Amy quietly shut the door behind her, and then it was just Eli and Victoria standing in the moonlight.

“He hurt you?” he asked, his hands in his pockets, his eyes watching the taillights on his uncle’s departing truck.

She shook her head. This porch, this ranch had grown so familiar to her over the last few months. She knew the view from where she was standing better than she remembered what had been outside her penthouse window. But standing here with Eli, who wasn’t looking at her, made it all seem terrifyingly unfamiliar.

What if I am too late?
she wondered.
What if he’s realized what a mistake it would be to love me?

“Startled me mostly.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

He sighed, hard and deep through his nose, and then he turned to watch her. His face was utterly unreadable.

“You put on quite a show in there,” he said. “I’ve never had a woman fight for me like that. Never had
anyone
fight for me like that.”

There were a thousand things she should have said, starting with
I’m sorry no one has ever fought for you, because you deserve to be protected and cared for and battled over
.

Instead she smiled like a fool and said, “Glad you liked it.”

“Well now, I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, turning to face her fully, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted slightly as if he was trying to see her a little more clearly. Her heart took a cold bath in his words and hope faltered. “Why’d you do it, Tori?”

Gavin led Celeste into the first massage room he came to and shut the door behind them.

“What the hell are you doing?” she howled, pointing toward the door and the scene beyond it. “I need to help her.”

“I thought she was doing fine on her own.”

She tried to step around him but he got in her way. Exasperated, and trembling with fear and excitement and the dense, wonderful awareness of how alone they were right now, she plunked her hands on her hips. “That’s my party out there.”

“Why did you call me today?” he asked.

The change of subject threw her off and she backed up against the massage table.

“I needed help. I told you. The lights.”

“Right. You needed an electrician and a carpenter to hang Christmas lights.”

She took a deep breath. “Fine,” she said. “I … wanted you here.”

“Why?”

“Because you worked so hard—”

He shook his head, his grin so sly and knowing that her body got damp just from being in the same room.

“Can I tell you what I think?” he asked, stepping toward her slightly. “I think you called me because you missed me. Because you wanted to see me.”

“You’re right,” she admitted, leaning against the massage table, because her legs were shaking. She crossed her arms over her chest, balling her hands up under her arms, making sure they understood that there would be no more touching, even though that place on her arm where he’d touched her still burned. “You’re a good friend.”

To her utter shock, he started taking off his coat, pulling at his tie. He leaned against the door and toed off his shoes, and when that was done, he locked the door.

“What are you doing?”

“What I should have done the day I met you.”

“Making a fool of yourself?” Oh, she turned her nose up good with that one. It would take a better man—

He laughed. He unbuttoned his shirt, revealing the muscled perfection of his ivory chest. Her mouth went dry, her core went wet, and all of this was a mess.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I want to leave.” She laid it on thick, hiding behind the imperial bitchiness that had gotten her through some of the worst moments of her life, this one right up on the list.

“Really?” he asked, stepping toward her, his eyebrows
raised, his lips curled into a predatory smile. “You don’t know what I’m doing?”

“No, I—” He turned her around, just flipped her right over until she was braced against the massage table and his hands were lowering the zipper on her dress.

“I’m staking my claim, Celeste,” he said and kissed the skin revealed by the splitting zipper. “I don’t give a shit how old you are.” He leaned against her, and she felt his erection against her hips and hung her head, lost in the sudden upswell of desire. “But it clearly bothered you and I … I wanted to give you the distance you seemed to need, but I was wrong. I was wrong to let you push me away.”

The dress slipped off her shoulders, catching on her hips momentarily before falling to the floor, leaving her in a black bra and panties.

“Oh God, Celeste, you’re so beautiful,” he groaned, kissing her spine, her neck, the side of her face, and she found deep inside of herself the strength to push him away, to turn and face him with her imperfections. The crepey skin and spider veins, the fat around her middle, the sagging breasts that looked fine in a bra—but when she took this puppy off, watch out.

“Are you looking at me?” she asked, running a hand down her body. “Or are you seeing that cover?”

“What …?” It took him a moment, distracted as he seemed to be by her breasts in the black lace. “That magazine I kept for so long?” he asked. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

She didn’t say anything, refused to fish for compliments, for assurances that he wasn’t going to fuck her and think of the old her.

“That woman wasn’t real, Celeste,” he said, his blue eyes warm, his smile sweet. “Not like you. Look, I’m … stubborn. And moody. Loyal to a fault. I make a bunch of money and never spend it. I have a son who thrives
on causing trouble and I need someone real by my side. Someone tough and strong and passionate and smart. That woman in the poster—she was beautiful, no doubt about it. But you are what I need. You are what I want. And I don’t care how old I am, or you are. I want you.”

“But thirteen years, Gavin. I’ll be an old woman and you’ll still—”

“Want you.” He held her hand. “We have no idea what the future will bring, Celeste. But we could kill what we have right now worrying about it, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to waste another minute I could be spending with you.”

That gerbil in her brain fought a good fight for a second, pitching a fit, sending adrenaline and panic out through her veins until the need to run was almost overwhelming. But then she looked at Gavin, really looked at him, and she made a choice. Easy as that.

She wasn’t going to push this man away.

And just like that the gerbil packed its bags and left, and the silence was … sweet. The panic was gone, and—for the first time in a long time—she found herself alone with her reality. She didn’t have anything to prove anymore. Not to herself. Not to her dead ex-husband. Not to her parents. To no one.

She only had to please herself, and that was easy enough. The man in front of her looked more than equal to the task, on every level.

She and Victoria had planned for this room to be soothing and they’d set it up for the party. Plum walls, myrrh incense burning in a cup, the piped-in sounds of chanting monks.

But somehow, those monks … they sounded like sex.

And the plum walls were the color of sex.

And myrrh was definitely the smell of sex.

And Gavin in front of her, his white-blond hair and handsome face, his body, those smooth muscles, the dip
and swell of his arms and shoulders … he looked like the future.

“I want you, too,” she said.

Gavin’s arms came around her, strong and gentle, and his lips touched hers. Unbelievably, she found herself laughing. Giggling at first, against his lips, but then she was really laughing, fighting for air, leaning against him for support.

“I’m trying not to get offended here, Celeste.”

“I’m sorry, truly.” She tried to hold in the laughter, but ended up snorting. Her. Celeste Baker, snorting. “I’m just so happy.”

Gavin smiled, chuckled a little, laughed. His hands slipped into her hair, holding her head, ruining her classic upsweep, and it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but him and the happiness he gave her.

“Me too, Celeste.” He pressed sweet kisses against her jaw, along her cheek, and that laughter changed in her chest, became something breathless and full of wonder.

Her hands learned the textures of him, the contours, while her tongue learned the taste of her very own Viking.

chapter

29

In a heartbeat
Victoria realized what Eli was doing. He was giving her nothing. Which was roughly the equivalent of what she’d given him for the last few months. And into that great void he’d tossed all his love and affection and respect. He’d opened himself up, body and soul, for a woman who’d told him she would only hurt him.

“You’re the bravest man I know,” she said, amazed anew at his strength.

“On with it, Tori.”

She grinned, so in love she felt like she might split at the seams, her volume increased by the never-ending flood of her feelings for this man.

“I love you.”

Of all the reactions she had expected, narrowing his eyes at her as if she might be lying hadn’t even been on the list.

“I do. I’m serious.”

“I don’t want your guilt, or your sacrifice—”

“Well, too bad!” she cried. “You’ve got it. Look, clearly, I have some sort of … complex. What do you want—my mother was a mess, my dad was an asshole, I married a crook. I have issues, Eli. That doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Because I do. And I’m a coward. Life is scary to me most of the time and I work really hard at being brave, but sometimes I’m going to fail. That doesn’t change my feelings for you.”