The Satin Sash (9 page)

Her father had been manager of a small air- conditioning business for fifteen years; her mother a caring, loveable woman dedicated to her home.They did not have servants or jets or houses in Marrakech and Mexico. And their daughter was no Miss Universe either. Though why they thought Grey wanted one, Toni had no clue. Stereotypes, maybe.

“If Grey walks out on our Toni, he’s a fool. I still wish you’d
ever
looked at me with those moon eyes she gives that man.”

Her mother’s scowl was murderous as she swiveled round. “Just maybe, Homer, you should think of what to do to deserve those moon eyes. I see no fancy sports car in our garage,” she argued. “Plus, Grey can never keep his hands off her, and I haven’t gotten even a morning kiss lately.”

Eyes twinkling, he squeezed her mother’s rump, and his hand got a slap for its daring.

“As I was saying,Toni,” her mother continued, a blush tinting in her cheeks, “if you want to keep him—”

Toni buried her face in her hands and groaned. “Can we please veer off the topic of marriage? Ask me something else. Anything else.”

“Grandchildren.There’s a topic for you.Your daddy and I want some.”

Anything except that.

“Mom, my career is just picking up. I can’t think of having a kid now. I wasn’t even able to take care of Daffy.” She pointed to the surly old furball eyeing her from his permanent place on the living room couch.

“But you and Grey talk about it?”

She snatched a glass from inside a cabinet and poured herself some water. “No.We do not, because neither of us wants one right now.” And because nobody could truly understand how difficult it was to talk to Grey. He listened, he wasn’t judgmental, but he was just so . . . so . . .
logical
.

It was practically impossible to get him to talk from the heart.

“Let’s talk about something else and stop torturing me. Dad, that deer over the fireplace looks miserable.Tell me about him.”

Her father’s chest expanded an inch or two. “Ahh, that’s a ten-point piebald whitetail deer. A really big buck, by anyone’s standards. Now I’m planning to go bear hunting to Alaska. I’m growing a beard and . . . well, speak of the devil and he appears! Good evening, Grey. How are you?”

What Toni felt hearing Grey’s distinct, low-pitched voice was indescribable. Like being swamped with whipped cream, covered in melted chocolate fudge.

“Homer.”

Even at this hour, his suit, the Hermès tie, everything about him was perfect. A smile curved her lips as she watched him pat her father’s back and move to her eagerly awaiting mother.

“I hope you don’t mind I let myself in, Beth, I stood out there for quite a while.”

“Grey, darling, that’s one crazy chime out there and half the time it doesn’t work. You’re always most welcome here.” Mom pulled him down to kiss his forehead, and Toni noted he no longer stiffened when she did.

When Grey popped a chocolate-chip cookie into his mouth, he didn’t get a slap. Her mother’s grin covered her entire face. “Take more, Grey—take all you want! I made those just for you.”

And then he was coming over to Toni, and her legs went rubbery. In his eyes she saw that glimmer he had for her, a mirror to the delicious emotion she felt every time she saw
him
.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to me?” he huskily murmured. The next second she was wrapped in all steel, all heat, all him. He brushed his lips across hers, their breaths mingling.

When he pulled away, he riveted her with eyes that smoldered with emotional intimacy.

Tilting her head farther back, she raised her hand to undo his tie like she always did. She draped it across the back of the couch, undid his two top buttons, Grey docilely letting her, and then she plunged her hands into his hair, playfully fussing it.“Wrapped up early?”

He gazed at her lips with a distinctly famished expression. “Seems like.”

“A good thing, too,” Mom chimed in.“I’m just about to serve.”

The next minute, they were sitting at the round oak table by the window. Once dinner was under way, their first bites were taken in companionable silence. Toni had always suspected that Grey secretly loved spending time with her parents. They said anything that came to their minds, but for the most part, it seemed to amuse him. No one ever listened with such quiet attention to her mom’s boring anecdotes of Toni’s childhood.

Toni could not stop eyeing her lover. The effortless way his hands moved. His
lips
. He was an Adonis, and he was
hers
. It was an intoxicating thought.

As he listened to her father’s hunting stories, she noticed how Grey, with his youth and sophistication, was so opposite of her dad. Her father was open and talkative, while Grey was reserved and contained. There was just something innately controlled and interesting about Grey she’d never seen in another man. With the possible exception of his father.

Grey’s father was the most handsome, compelling, sixty- five-year-old man Toni had ever seen. The man seemed immune to time, he was so attractive. Full head of luxuriant silvering hair, powerful square face, plus those same golden eyes she had fallen in love with.

He was also the biggest bastard she’d ever met.

All she’d needed to understand why Grey didn’t talk of his parents had been that one formal dinner, where they’d treated Toni like some lowly life- form out for Grey’s money—not that Grey’s money was theirs, because RS was Grey’s and Heath’s alone.

Grey had endured no more than two or three of their thinly veiled insults before calmly setting down his napkin and saying, “Mom. Dad. Enjoy your dinner.”

He’d pulled out Toni’s chair, so solid and composed when she’d been mortified at leaving the table so abruptly, and led her to his car. He said nothing on the way home. Nothing when they arrived. Nothing when they made love.The following week, while she was e- mailing a new proposal to one of her clients, he’d surprised her by whispering, “I wouldn’t change a hair on your head, do you know that?”

Stunned, she’d stopped typing and gaped.

“I know how much you wanted to impress my parents, and when you saw them for what they were and refused to play into them, you impressed
me
. All the money in the world couldn’t buy them your class.” He feathered his mouth across hers, and his lips twitched, forming a crooked smile. “Aren’t you glad fourteen nannies raised me rather than them?”

Toni had pictured a blond, gorgeous little boy trying valiantly not to care whether anyone showed up for his soccer practices.And when she tried to remember if he’d ever showed her a birthday picture where his parents were actually in it and found that there were none, she disliked Mr. and Mrs. Richards all the more. But oh, she loved their son.

“Toni was just telling us about your plans,” her mother was telling him.

“Was she.” The lack of a question in his voice told Toni he knew full well what was coming.

“Yes.” Her mother’s face furrowed as she wiped her mouth with a linen napkin. “Homer and I can’t say we agree. Antonia is thirty already, and she’s not getting any younger.”

Under the table, Grey’s hand went to her thigh, drawing her eyes to his. “Fill me in, sweetheart?”

Smiling, she patted his leg under the table, resisting the urge to do some other kind of touching, which was tempting with him near. “It’s not what you think. Sweetheart.”

Her mischievous grin brought a twinkle to his eye.

“Marriage makes people compromise,” her mother went on. “Toni would compromise for you as much as
you
would for
her
. Homer, I brought the meat loaf; could you bring more gravy?”

Her father grumbled a protest but promptly rose to fetch, and her mother beamed.

“See? Compromise.”

“Mom and Dad have been talking marriage and babies all afternoon, Grey,” Toni said, rolling her eyes and spearing a carrot slice from her plate.

Grey opted to fork something up from his plate, too.

“Well?” her mother prompted, pinning him on the spot with a direct look.

Grey faced Toni. “I’d say no more than two.”

She almost choked. She snatched up a glass, took a long sip of water, and plopped it back down. “Two what?”

“Kids.”

She sent him a puzzled look, her heart fluttering wildly, unexpectedly, and then she managed to steer the conversation to other, safer topics.

Grey listened to her father’s hunting tales, praised her mother’s new cookie recipe until she flushed, and Toni was left imagining what a little Grey would look like. She’d never thought of Grey in a fatherly way. He was too . . . proud and too . . . worldly. And yet he was so gentle and protective of Toni, it brought to mind how he would look lifting a little girl up high in his arms.

How could Toni not want that?

And why did she have a feeling Grey would give her a threesome a thousand times over a family?

The rest of the evening she fought bravely to push those thoughts aside.

Once they said their good-byes and crossed the walkway toward the street, she said, “Did you mean it, what you said in there?”

“What? About children?” He steered her toward the Porsche when she’d instinctively started for her own car. “Let’s take mine. I’ll have yours picked up tomorrow.” He waved her keys in the air, his eyes glinting. “Your tire’s fixed.”

“I didn’t know there was anything wrong with it until I saw you’d left your Porsche.” Stopping, she gazed into his beautiful eyes, filled with awestruck admiration. “But you don’t miss anything, do you?”

There was an almost imperceptible softening in his gaze. Tenderly, he ran his knuckles down her cheek. “It’s fixed,” was all he said.

“Thank you. My hero.And I’m happy to report your car is intact!”

He walked her over to the passenger’s side, but rather than helping her into the vehicle, he flattened her against the door so fast she gasped from the shock of his weight. “I need to have you; I need to be inside you.”

Heart thundering, she stroked her hand lightly across the prominent bulge on his crotch, watching his face tighten.“And I want . . . this.You. Inside me.”

He pressed his forehead against hers. “God, take me. All of me.”

Her throat hurt at his plea. Rising up on tiptoe, she slid her hand around the back of his neck, loving the thick, muscled feel of it as she drew him to her lips. Her nostrils tingled at the dark coffee scent of his breath, and then she tasted. The shock of the cool flavor blended with the heat of his tongue shot a rush of electricity through her.

Pebbles on the gravel crunched beneath the wheels of a car as it passed by. It didn’t stop her, didn’t stop him from pressing into her.

Their mouths moved languorously, sampling, enjoying, the simple connection of their bodies, their tongues, moving her to her soul. She was him. He was her. His arm curled around her waist, dragging her closer.

“You’re in my head.” One hand sifted through her hair and tugged her back, his lips sliding along the curve of her jaw, up to her temple. “In my head. All. Fucking. Day.”

“I was so anxious for you to get home to me.” Her voice was a husky whisper breathed against his chin.“I was this close to touching myself.”

His deep-throated groan rolled across her skin like a caress.“You know that drives me insane.Why didn’t you?”

“I had to work, even if I didn’t actually get anything accomplished. I’m . . . a little nervous about my sash, Grey.”

Receiving no reply, she grew nervous and tried to draw away. “We should get going,” she said, but he caught her hand and halted her.

Tension rolled off him in waves. “It’s your sash,Toni.You make the call.”

“And what call would that be?” she questioned, playing with the fingers of the hand that held hers.

He seemed reluctant to speak, and equally as reluctant to let her go, but then he drew back and opened the door. “Get in the car. I’m taking you home.”

Home.

He’d made her home his.

He was in every organized compartment of her little place. He’d maneuvered somehow to pay the rent despite her emphatic protests, and all her expenses prior to Grey had suddenly, magically, become nil. He took care of everything.

She’d always thought maybe she’d feel less like a kept woman or some sort of mistress if he’d say those three important little words to her. She’d prepared herself to wait, and though she’d been accused of being proud, she’d swallowed back her pride and opened her heart to him, told him what she felt, praying he’d follow. She’d been so disappointed when she failed. She’d gambled with her heart, saying
I love you
to a man like him. . . .

Over a year and a half later, she was still waiting to hear it back.

Stubbornly waiting for him to be ready.

And one lesson in humility had been enough. She’d chew off her tongue before she had to beg for the words. Do something desperately needy like ask him. God! What suicide that would be. Putting him on the spot in that way. Would he feel forced to say yes? Or would he say the answer she thought was most obvious:
I don’t know
.