Commitment (22 page)

She
nodded
.
“Okay.”

“Why don’t you get some stuff from your place and stay here with me?” he asked impulsively. 

“All week?” she asked.

“Or longer.”

“Are you asking me to move in to the Four Seasons
with you?” she
teased
.

“No, I’m asking you to marry me
,
” he said seriously. “B
ut
to stay with me here in the meantime
.
”

“I would love to stay here with you this week,”
Riley
said, pointedly avoiding the underlying
, much
bigger
question. “I could be back by
ten
if I go now.”

She made as though to stand but Shawn pulled her back.

“Hey
,
hey
.
Not
now
.
We c
an go together tomorrow.
Tonight you’re
not going anywhere
.”

“Yes, sir,” she laughed.

“And I’m not letting you run out on me at six in the morning either.”

He pushed her back and rolled over on top of her,
the
weight
of his upper body
resting on his elbows.

“But I have to go to work
tomorrow
,” she pointed out, amused.
“
And p
eople
would
talk
if I showed up in the same clothes I left in today.”

“So
I
’ll
get you a car to take you home early, and you pack your stuff, and send the car back here with your stuff aft
er it takes y
ou to work.
Sound
good?”

“Sounds perfec
t.”

g

Later, Shawn watched from bed as Riley walked across th
e room to go start the shower.
Her body, her skin, her hair, her fac
e.
That was the standard now.
Any deviation from that would be wrong, and
somehow
inadequate.

After a few moments, he heard the water and Riley stuck her head out of the bathroom
, beckoning for him to follow.
They stood in the shower that was big enough for six people, jets of almost too hot water massaging them from all s
ides.
Riley reached for the hotel shampoo and worked the lather into her hair, turning her back to Shawn so
he could rub it into her scalp.
As he washed her hair, it was difficult not to let his hands roam down her neck and back and then around.

“Don’t you start,” she said, her tone more encouraging than not.

He ran his hands over her sides and back up, over her arms and briefly across her breasts before finally f
ocusing on her hair once again.
He scrubbed for a few minutes then pulled her back into the direct stream of on
e of the shower jets to rinse.

Her eyes were shut
and her neck arched backward.
It was impossible to resist kissing her there, right at the
point where her throat curved.
This time, she responded by turning her head so that her lips were on his, and the
tip of her tongue met his own.
Shawn reached down and stroked her until she was pressing herself against the heel of his hand, her br
eath coming harder and faster.
Just as he could feel the tension building, he pushed her against the shower wall and slid his hand along her inner thigh, lifting her leg so that he could enter her
from behind
.

The friction was slow and
sweet and hot.
He leaned in, feeling
a pulse from deep inside her.
They moved together slowly and in perfect rhythm
, Shawn’s hands coming up to cup her breasts. F
inally Riley
reached back and gripped his shoulder, her jaw clenched. One of them cried out their release.
He c
ouldn’t be sure it wasn’t him.
Riley went
slack
in his arms and
winced
.

“I thi
nk my leg’s asleep,” she said.

“You want me to carry you out?” Shawn asked.

“No,” she
allowed her head to hang
forward
limp and pushed back against him so they remained connected. “The water feels good.
Let
’s stay a little while longer
.”

“Okay,” he said, kissing
the back of her neck
. “A little while longer.”

At
dawn,
he opened the
French
doors to the rooftop terrace
. The
air was clean and clear
, and t
he
city seemed
almost
peaceful in th
e
early
, soft gray light.
Ev
en the traffic below was muted.
Shawn looked
back
into the room where
Riley
was regarding him from
the bed
, her eyelids heavy.
They had
barely slept
all night
and spent hours
talking
until
occasionally
one of them reached for the other
,
and
a touch in the right place, or the right wa
y would get them
going
again.

“What’re you looking so intense about over there?” she asked.

“Just thinking about stuff.”

He leaned against the door and
stayed
where he was, just so he could look at her.
Shawn felt a tug in his core so fierce it was almost painful.

“What kind of stuff?”

“Like why we never did this before.”

“I seem to remember us doing this plenty of times before,”
Riley
said.

“
I mean w
hy you never stayed
before
.”

She half-shrugged and turned onto her back, looking away from him and at the ceiling.

“No. Really,” he said seriously.
“Why didn’t you ever stay?”

“Because,” she said s
lowly.
“It would have been too
risky, I guess.”

“Risky.
”

“Yes.
Because I
knew that
. . .
” she turned over ag
ain and looked directly at him,
“b
ecause
I knew
that
if I let myself,
I could love you.”

She gave him a wry smile and shrugged.
“And then i
t happened anyway.”

“Loving me
is
risky?”

“Loving
anyone
is risky, Shawn,” she said quietly. “Isn’t it?”

“So it wasn’t because you h
ad to go home to
. . .
”

“To Brian?”
Riley
said.
“No.
I would always avoid him for like
three
days afte
r you left.
I don’t know how
he never figured
it
out.
It was awful.
I
was awful
.”

“I
didn’t like
that,” he
admitted
.
“
When you left
.
”

“But I always came back to you
, didn’t I?
”

Shawn said nothing.
It didn’t feel that way; it felt like he was the one who always came back to her.

Riley
stretched and groaned happily.
“I wish I could
ditch
work today.”

“So do it.
”

“It’s Friday. I may as well go in.
I’m going to be
so late though.
I should call
now and leave voicemail
f
or
Greg
and see whether . . .”

“I love you
too
,” Shawn
interrupted her
.

No risk, no reward.

Riley smiled, her eyes becoming warm. She looked almost shy, like a little girl.

“More than anybody
,” he continued.
“
More
than anything.
Y
ou
know
that right
?
”

“Yeah
,” she said
after a moment
as though just realizing it for the first time
.
“I know.”

g

For the last four years,
almost
every
Sunday
morning, Tracy and
Riley
met for B
ikram yoga at a midtown studio.
After perspiring and contorting for forty-five minutes, they shower
ed
and head
ed
for their favorite coffee shop, Harambe,
for breakfast.

This morning it was considerably more difficult to
get
m
otivated
with Shawn’s arms wrapped about her waist
and his face bu
ried in the back of her neck but s
omehow,
Riley
managed
to get up and out of there.
She was about a half hour early, having forgotten that she wouldn’t need nearly as much lead time, since she wasn’t coming from Flushing. Standing outside the studio in her yoga attire, her mat rolled under her arm, she
tried to process everything that had happened over
the last couple days.

Shawn had
said he loved her.

Just thinking about it made her feel just as she had then –
giddy
and excited.
It was probably unfair to compare it to how she’d felt when Brian said the same words
and
quite frankly there
was
no comparison.
F
or the past few weeks she’d been desperately trying to come up with some
reason
for what she’d done to him, and the truth was, there was none.

When Tracy showed up, she was breathless and flushed, her hair pulled back into a swing
ponytail.
She kissed
Riley
on the cheek and looped an arm through hers
, pulling her toward the studio’s entrance.

“What’s all the love about?”
Riley
asked suspiciously.

“Does it have to be about something?” Tracy said, feigning disappointment.

“I’m pretty sure it does, yes.”

Tracy said nothing as they climbed the stairs to the second floor.  They passed some of the
folks from
the early class as they descended, some of them still
sweating profusely
.
Tracy carefully avoided physical contact, pressing herself against the wall of the narrow steps as they walked by her
.

“So what is it?”
Riley
said when as they shed their shoes f
or class.
“Spit it out.”

Once they got started, talking would be next to impossible given the challenges of Bikram yoga.

“
Okay there is something,
” Tracy admitted.

“I knew there was.
What is it?”

“Well I heard Barbra Streisand is coming to t
he Garden and I thought maybe . . .
”

“Barbra Streisand,”
Riley
said dryly.

“Yes.
Now, I don’t expect that she and Shawn move in the same circles or anything, but he is in the music industry, so I’m sure he knows someone.”

“Sure.
I’ll ask.”

“
You will?”