CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Lori
Cole walks me backward, presses me against the wall, and does a hot, quick inspection of my naked body. “You forgot to replace the panties I tore off you.”
“I didn’t forget,” I say. “I wasn’t letting you ruin yet another pair.”
“I’ll buy you new ones,” he declares.
“I’ll buy my own. I’m a Merrick Scholarship recipient, remember?”
His hand comes down on the wall and he leans in close. “I remember everything about you, Lori Havens,” he says, his voice low, rough, “to the point of complete obsession. Which is why I blame you for our tardiness.” He straightens. “We need to leave.” He picks up my clothes and hands them to me. “Which is why you can help me pack. Get dressed and come to my bedroom.” He issues that command and then walks away, disappearing into the apartment. I pat my hot cheeks, fairly certain that I’m blushing from that exchange, when I was just crushing my naked body against his without a blush in sight. I push off the wall, and I’m also smiling as I start dressing. A man that makes a girl smile gets extra white knight bonus points.
I tug everything back in the proper places, and head down the hallway, the dark wood beneath my feet carried into the main living room, where a gray couch and chairs frame a fireplace that seems to float in the glass of floor-to-ceiling windows. I pause, taking in the rich masculine style that screams power and money, my gaze drawn to an archway to the right that seems to lead to a den or library with rows of books on shelves. I wonder about the titles of those books and what they say about Cole Brooks.
“You coming?” I glance up to find Cole leaning over the steel railing of a second level.
My eyes meet his, a probe in the depth of his stare, a question in the air he has yet to ask. What am I thinking about his life, his world, his home? How does that affect us? “It’s perfectly you,” I say. “And that’s a compliment.”
His eyes warm with my reply, but his reaction, his very need for answers, tells me that I have not said everything I need to say to him. I rush toward the elegant winding steel staircase in the far corner of the room, and quickly make the climb. The minute I reach the top level, I cut right, and bring one hell of a hot man, now dressed in black jeans, boots, and a black T-shirt, into view.
He leans on the railing, just in front of an open door I assume to be his bedroom. Watching me, tracking my every step, and I swear, I know how he wins over a courtroom and a jury. When this man watches you, when he focuses on you, there is just him; nothing else exists. I stop in front of him, and when he motions toward the bedroom, I catch his hand. “Cole.”
The minute I say his name, he turns back to me. I greet him by pushing to my toes and kissing him, before I confess, “I got something wrong downstairs.”
His hands come down on my waist, and he walks me closer. “You got everything exactly right downstairs, sweetheart.”
“No,” I say. “I didn’t. I presented my reasons for pushing you away, as if your success was a bad thing when that is not the case. Please do not think that any of my feelings about my life reflect anything but admiration for your success. Professional and personally.”
“I was born into money, sweetheart. In the end, I made my own, but I never had to question how I would pay for school. I never had to worry about taking care of a sick parent.”
He hits about ten nerves with that statement. “You’re setting me apart from you,” I say, “And that’s what I did downstairs. That’s not what I want.”
“I can assure you, Lori Havens,” he says, lowering his voice, “the last thing I want is to set you apart from me.”
“Then don’t.”
“I won’t,” he says.
That’s as far as I get. His cell phone rings in his pocket and he kisses me. “How much do you want to bet that’s the driver wondering where we are?” He glances at the number and nods. “That would be a yes.” He motions for me to follow him into the bedroom, which ironically is a signal that we have to focus on work.
“Five minutes,” he says into the phone, disappearing into the bedroom.
I quickly follow, entering a room that, much like downstairs, is all clean lines and masculinity, with a low king bed with a gray leather headboard and a seating area off to the left. Cole enters another doorway to my right, and almost immediately returns with a suitcase in his hands. “For you,” he announces, setting it by the bed. “Those bags you brought with you won’t transport easily.”
In other words, he knows I don’t have a suitcase. “Thank you,” I say.
He arches a brow. “No other comment?”
“Just that you miss nothing,” I reply.
“If that were true,” he says. “I wouldn’t have been cocky enough to believe that I’d won you over in that hotel room. And I damn sure wouldn’t have gotten in the shower without taking you with me.”
“You had me at hello, Cole. You know that.”
“And yet I didn’t.”
“You do now.”
“No,” he says. “But I intend to change that.”
His cell phone rings yet again and I’m left feeling that I might still be a challenge to Cole, and wishing we had time to really talk. Cole’s call is quick, but he’s only just disconnected when it buzzes again. “I’m never going to get packed at this rate,” he grumbles, answering the line with, “Cole Brooks,” which tells me he doesn’t know the number on his ID.
He listens a moment and then says, “Now what?” ignoring his suitcase as he focuses wholly on the call, which I soon decipher as the private airline flying us tonight, dealing with some sort of challenge. I walk to the items sitting on the bed by his suitcase and get to work.
He steps to my side, takes my hand, and kisses it, a smile in his gorgeous eyes that reads like a welcome into his personal space. Just that easily, my fears that I am still a challenge, and nothing more to Cole, fade. He turns away from me and goes back and forth on his call before he disconnects the line and scrubs his jaw. “There was a problem with the pilot who was taking us up,” he says, zipping up his bag before I can.
I frown, not a happy flyer, even without that statement. “What problem?”
“They have sleep regulations he would have hit mid-flight, but the on-call pilot called in while they had me on the phone. We’re good and if we leave now, we can be in the air in an hour.”
***
Three minutes later, we’re rolling his bags through the lobby. Once we’re at the trunk of the hired car, Cole helps me pack my bags into the suitcase, and then this time when we join the driver both of us settling into the backseat, our energy is different. We’re still sitting a professional distance apart, but there isn’t a world between us. Just the conversation we haven’t finished having, that we can’t have until we are alone, that he may or may not know, is important.
The car starts to move, and for now, I focus on the other important conversation we can have. “How far is the airport?”
“It’s a private strip,” Cole says. “About fifteen minutes.”
“This new pilot has slept his hours, right?”
He laughs. “I’m sensing you’re not a good flyer.”
“If you mean do I like sitting inside a big metal machine while some person I don’t know or trust, controls the wheel? No, I do not. And I already know that you’re a control freak. You don’t even like your files outside your office. How does it not bother you?”
“I’ll save us if we start to go down.”
I scoff and rotate to face him. “Do not joke about going down.”
His eyes meet mine, “I really will save you. I have my pilot’s license. My father was a pilot and I started flying when I was fifteen.”
“Did you really?”
“Scout’s honor, and yes, I was a scout. My father thought it would look good on a college resume, even though I was just a kid at the time. My mother thought it would teach me self-preservation and good manners.”
Now I laugh. “I saw those manners tonight,” I comment, lowering my voice, and repeating his words to Lance. “Who are you and why do I care?”
“An asshole gets asshole treatment.”
“You didn’t know that he was an asshole at that point, despite the fact that he is. You didn’t even know who he was.”
He reaches down and grabs my thigh, pulling me next him, and behind the driver’s seat, heat flaming between us instantly. His fingers flex on my leg and he leans in close, lowering his head near mine, his voice low, intimate, for my ears only. “I saw how he was looking at you. I knew he’d had you. I knew he still wanted you. I made sure he knew that wasn’t going to happen.” He cups my face, cheek pressed to mine. “I made sure he knows he has to go through me to get to you again.” He eases back, and even in the darkness and shadows, the flicker of passing lights illuminate the hard lines of determination on his handsome face and the heat of possession burning in his eyes. Perhaps I should push back. Perhaps I should worry that I will lose myself if I’m consumed by such a man, as I had that day on the street. But I’m not the same person, in the same situation.
I lean in and press my lips to his. He cups my head in that hot, possessive way he does, and kisses me to the point I really want to fuck him right here, in this car. And when he pulls back and gives me a smile, before sliding his arm around my shoulders to hold me close for the rest of the ride, I come to a conclusion: I’ve seen death and illness. Life is too short to feel what I feel with this man and walk away, especially when I trust this man, which is big for me after feeling betrayed by my father, and even Lance for that matter.
That’s the bottom line to me; trust is paramount. As long as I can trust Cole, I can do this with Cole.