What You Need(88)
Brady watched me with eyes filled with hope and that just did me in.
I was crazy about all the different sides of this man. He’d come here with an honest-to-god apology from the heart, no excuses. What more did I expect him to do? I closed the distance between us and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth. “I accept your apology.”
He rested his forehead to mine. “Thank you.”
We stayed like that for a few moments longer before we broke apart.
“I want to spend the night with you.”
I raised an eyebrow.
That earned me a glorious grin. “Not like that, although I’ve heard makeup sex is hot.” He picked up my hand and kissed my palm. “We can watch TV or something. Hell, I’d even watch paint dry as long as I get to do it with you.”
There was that sliver of sweetness that made me go all gooey inside. “Okay. But my roommate will be home and she’s probably still pissed enough at you to let fly. So fair warning.”
“Kiley forgave me when I promised my place to her and the kids tomorrow with no chance of me backing out.”
The little sneak. No wonder she’d hedged and claimed tomorrow’s location was a surprise.
“And I reimbursed her for last weekend. Plus I gifted her three more Saturdays at the Walker, so if she runs into this problem again, she’s covered.”
“You are so forgiven.”
He laughed.
“I missed that laugh too, Brady.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“I have to pay the check.”
“Already taken care of.”
I opted not to argue.
Outside in the chilly night, I started to wrap my scarf around my neck when Brady grabbed the end and tugged me against his body.
“My lovely Lennox.” His mouth came down on mine. Not tenderly, not with gratitude or reverence, but with the hunger that quickened my blood and my heartbeat.
I’d missed kissing him like this. A little desperate. A little sloppy. A little impatient to sate the passion that flared between us.
“Come on,” he whispered against my mouth after he broke the kiss. “Let’s go to your place.”
*
Later, as we were lying in my bed, after we’d watched a movie—The Blind Side, not my first choice, because, hello? sports movie—I finally asked him the question I’d been dying to.
“So everything turned out all right in Chicago? After you retrieved your missing materials?”
He spooned me, with his chin on the top of my head and his fingertips trailing up and down my arm. “Yes. The numbers were solid and we made them a decent offer. It’ll take a few months to transition to our product line, but we aren’t demanding they stop manufacturing for our competitor. Yet.”
“I’m glad you didn’t have any serious setbacks, Brady.”
“Me too.”
“After that you went to Charlotte.”
He stilled his hand. “Checking up on me, were you?”
“No. Patrice took great pains the first two days to inform me of your whereabouts in the employee break room. For the rest of the week I ate at my desk.”
“Smart move. I had meetings with a couple of financial institutions in Charlotte and then I led a seminar on family-business practices. Pretty boring, dry stuff, I imagine. Jens had a game last night, and luckily for the Lund family, Jax had a hockey game in Raleigh tonight, so they’re all cheering him on.”
“Why aren’t you there?”
“Because I’m here. Apologizing and working on fixing things with you. Making it right for Kiley and her kids was more important to me than watching a puck flying across the ice.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” I snuggled into him.
I thought he’d fallen asleep, but then he said, “I had to face the music with my family too, not just you.” A long pause followed. “Remember I told you about the intervention my cousins and my brother staged that night at Maxie’s?”
“Yes, I remember. That’s why you wanted to prove you have a wild side.”
“I wanted to get them off my back because it was annoying, humiliating and embarrassing to have them treating me like a child. So as they showed me they cared about me, I blew them off and followed my own agenda.”
“Was I part of that agenda, Brady?”
“God, no. They made me promise to quit working so much. And yes, they encouraged me to find something outside of work that let me enjoy my station in life. I found you.”
I smiled in the darkness.
“Then I had the crisis with the Chicago project.” He inhaled a deep breath. Exhaled against my hair. “I’d done a bang-up job convincing myself I couldn’t have both you and my job.”