Roman-1(Lane Brothers, Book 5)(154)
I rear back, shocked that he is taking such a small thing so seriously, so…personally. Gregory is usually an easy-going guy. You’d assume that since he’s so controlling and domineering he’s got a stick shoved up his ass or something, but that is far from the truth.
He’s easy to be around, when I’m not focusing so much on my guilt and the wrongness of something that feels too right. Some nights we eat and watch television, cuddled up on the sofa, before he even touches me suggestively.
One time he’d been so comfortable I’d been forced to make the first move.
“Greg, look…”
“I mean, why can’t you just let us be happy together?” he asks softly, in a voice so unlike him I feel guilty for starting this argument. “We’re good together, Han, and you know it. We enjoy the same things, we both work hard — and well together — and we’re both in love with your nana. Just give this enough of a chance that I’m not yelling at you half the time. Please.”
He says the words, and my immediate response is to fling his engagement in his face. But that is so old news already, and I can only use it so many times before even I know it’s old.
The truth is that I do want to give in and let go and just be happy for however long we have together. He’s getting married, when, I do not know, but when that happens I know what we have will be over.
I’ll likely never see him again or get to look into his eyes, touch him, kiss his lips as he strokes my hair. It’s wrong, I know it, but as I look at him and feel the pain of the coming loss, I make up my mind to let go and take whatever it is I can while he’s still mine.
“I want to,” I admit, closing my eyes on a sigh.
“Good. That’s good,” he says, and I hear his relief. “It’ll be great, Han, you’ll see. We can spend more time together—”
“Greg, I can’t leave her alone with the helper all the time. She’s old. She’ll want me around too.”
“Yeah, I know that. We’ll bring her and Josey out to the house with us on weekends.”
And now I see exactly what his angle is. He wants me to accept Josey without a fight because, I’d bet my toes, he intends to pay for her, and he knows I’m not going to like it.
I mean, it’s one thing to be a man’s mistress and still be independent. It’s another thing entirely when he’s paying for more than dinner and the odd lunch.
This is a milestone, a point of no return in the screwed up ‘relationship’ we have, and I know that crossing that line is a one-way street with no return option.
“You can pay for it if, and only if, you swear you’ll hand Amber back her bakery,” I say.
It’s a hard bargain, and I know it. I’ve spoken to Amber about her ‘investor,’ and I know that Greg invested quite a substantial amount of money in the failing bakery. To just give it up isn’t good business.
“Darlin’,” he sighs heavily. “I’ll make you a deal. Give me a year to get that place out of the fire and hire on a decent manager, and I’ll consider it. You have to understand, Amber is a terrible manager, and she’s not exactly accurate with her books.”
Not accurate.
“You mean she’s skimming off the top?”
God, I can so see her doing that, even to the detriment of her business, if she wants something. Amber is about as trustworthy and straight as a crooked tire.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Okay, one year, and you promise not to blackmail me anymore. I can’t go on wondering if you’d kick her to the curb if I leave. Even if she does deserve it,” I say.
From now on we have to be honest, and to do that I need to know I can walk away without the consequences falling on someone else’s shoulders.
“Deal. But Greg?”
“Yeah, darlin’?”
“Do not ever make me choose wedding stuff with your fiancée again. Ever.”
He smiles with such a supreme look of arrogant victory before pulling me into his arms for a kiss that I’m left wondering if I’ve just been manipulated.
Chapter Eighteen
By Thursday I am having serious withdrawals, and I consider calling Greg just to hear his voice and prove to myself that this is real and not a dream. Monday night, after our first real talk, ever, we’d made love — yes, that’s what I’m calling it now — before he’d taken me home. Tuesday morning I’d walked into the office to a message that he’d gone away on business and wouldn’t be back before Friday.
Three days without him have been shockingly difficult. I’d fought so hard, and yet I am in exactly the place I didn’t want to be. I’m smitten with him.