Chapter Four
Graham
A loud crash beyond our bedroom door shattered the bliss of our post fuck. Leland made to get out of the bed and I stopped him with my hand. “Do you really want to see what Patricia is out there doing? Don’t go. Whatever is going wrong or just broke will drive you crazy and you won’t come back.”
“I’m not as much of a control freak as you make me sound.” Leland laughed and slouched back against his pillow, but continued to frown at the wall between us and the party preparation. “Maybe Mom needs help.”
I refilled my mug from the coffee carafe. “She doesn’t need help with anything. Patricia can handle it. My mom could have been a general in the military if she wanted to.”
The rumbles from his chest came louder, and he looped his arm around mine and kissed my shoulder before he said, “You’re so like her. You manage me like a general.”
My dick twitched because my ears received everything out of his mouth today as a let’s fuck line, but I quirked a brow at him since that managing-him nonsense was just that: nonsense. If anything, the man managed—or tried to—me.
“I’ve often wondered what your dad was like.”
I didn’t like to think about my father. “Serious. Judgmental. And disapproving of everything. Especially me.”
Leland made a sympathetic pout. “Well, we can’t choose our parents. I never got to even meet my mom. Out of the picture before I was done being a baby. But you were fifty percent lucky. Patricia is delightful. She has enough love to make any family a happy one. That’s better than I had. And I, for one, approve of everything about you.”
Another ominous crashing sound.
I paused in taking a bite of my breakfast. “No. Ignore it. You’re not micromanaging this today.”
“Don’t you want to see what’s going on out there?”
“Hell no. I’m trying to pretend it doesn’t exist.” I set my fork on my plate—even cold, the eggs benedict was exceptional—and put the tray on the floor beside the bed. “And exactly when did our anniversary party turn into a Leland B. Demille extravaganza?”
He tried to look contrite. “It just sort of happened. Mom was so excited to do this for us, started sending me ideas via email, and the more she sent the more excited I got, and we both got carried away, I think.”
“Ya think? Remind me never to let you organize anything with my mom again. Three hundred guests. It’s ridiculous.”
“I want to show off my man and have all our friends see how deliriously happy we are. I think everyone should be married. Happiness should be shared, Graham.”
“If you intended for me to be delirious tonight, you found the perfect way to have it happen. You know I don’t like showy things. That I prefer to keep things small and intimate.”
This time he quirked a brow at me and stared like he was waiting for something. It took a moment, but so noted.
“You, baby, are anything but small. But oh, the intimate. You do like the intimate.” Lee landed an open-mouthed kiss on my jaw then smiled. “It took work, but you’re mine. That’s reason enough for a big celebration. Don’t be a hardnose about this.”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t stop the party preparations, did I?”
He shook his head, grinning.
“Though it’s obvious you had this planned all along, so thank you very little for blaming this on Mom. This is all you. I’ve been with you long enough to know that.”
“And still you love me.”
“Somehow I do,” I answered blandly, but inside I was smiling. “But something tells me tomorrow you’re not going to love having had this party.”
Lee frowned. “Why?”
“Mom has to be back in Newport Beach tomorrow. Some kind of crisis with Margie. Guess who’s leaving at first light?”
His face fell. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. And you can blame your party for that. If not for the party, Patricia wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be leaving the third day you’re back.”
“You’re not staying down there, are you?”
“Only the night. No way am I battling Southern California traffic twice in one day.”
He tilted his head side to side as he did when mulling something over then the corners of his mouth turned downward. “One night. Not that bad. And it gives us another reason to have reunion sex.”
“But it takes away one day we could have been together. I’m shipping out again next week with my team.”
“Fuck.” His voice came out as a growl with his teeth cutting into his lower lip. “That goddamn president ruins everything. If, for one day, he’d stop behaving like the schoolyard bully, maybe we could manage to have entire months home without shit happening to ruin it.”
“Don’t—”
“I’m disappointed, all right?”
I turned on my side into him. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have deleted my resignation.”
“Now I regret it.” He reclined on his pillow facing me. He looked pensive and worried, and it surprised me. “Do you know where you’re off to this time?” That question surprised me as well.
“Nope. Need to know basis only, babe. You know that. Won’t learn the details until it’s time to go.”
“I really thought we had a shot at both of us being home for a while this time.”
“Me, too, Lee. I gotta grab fifteen minutes of shut-eye. No sneaking out of the bedroom to snoop on what’s going on while I’m asleep. You unlock that door and we both get drafted by Patricia to help.”
He rolled his eyes at me.
After one yawn, I went out like a light.
Later, I jerked awake to find myself alone in the bed, wondering what had startled me out of a very good sleep. The TV was off—thank fuck—our bedroom door locked from the inside, Lee’s desk and favorite recliner empty.
Ah, his bathroom door was closed.
From within, Lee’s voice, rapid and aggravated, penetrated the wood. He’d stepped away from the bed to take a call. From how intense he sounded it was Jensen Global Enterprises shit—the corporation he’d inherited from his father—and not the agency.
Though he’d put the day-to-day management into the hands of a very competent trustee shortly after we’d married, nothing would ever keep him from staying fully informed on every minute detail of the company and trying to call the shots even as an absentee owner.
His voice rose to a level where I could nearly make out the words. Yes, it was the trustee. Lee only ever lost his cool when he was battling with Wilcox over something. Probably because the man had worked for his father as well and there was a truckload of unresolved shit inside my man for his dad.
Stretching out on my back, I reached over the side of the bed and grabbed my coffee mug from the tray. Shit, hardly a mouthful. Carafe empty, too.
I debated if I needed more, felt that I did, and figured I could slip out to get us a refill before Lee knew I was gone.
Where were my clothes? The shorts Lee had all but ripped off my body were lying close to the door. I pulled them on and skipped getting a shirt, since I fully intended to be naked in bed again after the java run.
I checked my phone. It was only two thirty. We had time for another good fuck and a shower before Ella got home from soccer and the party shit took over.
Fuck, I wasn’t looking forward to the hoopla.
No, it was better I didn’t think of that.
Besides, it was happening. No choice and no way to stop it—that was so like Leland, ambushing me this way—but I could slug my way through the night with a smile on my face for Lee. If over-the-top absurd displays made him happy, the least I could do is let him enjoy it. But inwardly I groaned, because I didn’t doubt this party would be over the top in every way.
First clue: he’d kept the details secret.
Second clue: he was excited about it.
Third clue: I knew the man.
Fourth clue…
“Damn it, no. Not possible. I’ve already explained why.” Lee’s angry tone made my face snap toward his door. “No. Here is not an option. Because it’s my anniversary and I have guests coming tonight. I’ll move you tomorrow. I’ll find someplace more to your liking. You stay put. No. No. No!”
My brows shot up. Leland’s triple no had been shouted. Fuck, this couldn’t be good. He was already wound too tightly and he didn’t need more things setting him off.
Christ, I was shipping out on an op in seven days.
All I wanted to do until then was chill and get off. Christ, I didn’t even know how long this hop would be. One week. One month. Hell, it could be longer.
After avoiding the goings-on in the main house, I returned to our bedroom, coffee in hand, to find Lee slouched in his chair. His expression startled me. It was pensive and grim, and he had the far off, deep in thought, staring off into space air, though what he was staring at was his phone.
The tic in his cheek twitched and that hardly ever happened. Lee was a master at concealing—or perhaps I should have said camouflaging—his true thoughts and emotions, and I often had to fight through his layers of containment vaults, thanks to Langley training, to get at the heart of anything.
I refilled our mugs, handed him one, then settled in the matching recliner beside him. “Everything all right, Lee? Nothing’s wrong, is there?”
His fingers sank into his hair as he let out a ragged breath. “Everything is just fucking great. Unpleasant intrusion. You know how the company is. It gets even to me at times.”
He made a charming smile—inside my head I called bullshit on that—and I debated whether to probe it further.
After we’d been sitting there a while doing nothing but staring at our own dicks and drinking coffee, he said, “Things are fucked up, Graham. More than you know. My last op, a year of work, it went wrong. Very wrong. The lines can get blurry. Confusing. In the heat of the moment you do things you didn’t expect yourself to. I never intended any of it. But I fucked up. There’s no undoing what I’ve done, and it’s not going to be good for us.”
That comment landed like a depth charge in my gut. Lee never talked about the missions he worked without me, this was a first, and Lee never fucked up at anything.
“Maybe it would help if we talked it through,” I suggested, alertly searching his face. “It might help you shake it off faster.”
“I’m confident that’s the worst thing I could do to us today.” His gaze shifted to mine and then he laughed softly in halfhearted amusement. “I don’t want to provoke an argument with you, and that’s what I’ll do if we start talking now. We don’t have time, baby. We have guests coming. This is not a finish-in-an-afternoon discussion.”
Jesus H. Christ. That from the eternal optimist. Now I was both curious and alarmed about what had happened and who he’d yelled at on the phone.
He put down his coffee and sprang to his feet. “Besides, I know a better way to shake this off.”