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“We shouldn’t stay out here for too long,” I said, and the squeak my voice made as it cracked on the wordlongmade me wish I’d shut my mouth instead. “You, uh, you have a date at seven.”
His lips pressed into a thin line as he stared at me, his brows dropping. “Ava.” He pushed my thighs apart and pressed me into the corner of the pool, invading my space again as he slotted his hips between my legs. A hint of firmness pressed against my inner thigh, and heat swept over me even in the cold. “Do you honestly think I have any interest in that?”
“I—”
“I walked away because I wanted you,” he said, his chin dipping as he dragged his nose along my cheek. “Is that not what I said last night? I already canceled the two tonight and the one for tomorrow morning, Ava. This is the only date I want.”
I swallowed to dampen my dry throat, my breath catching the moment his hand dragged up my thigh.You can want this.
You can properly want this now.
————
“On a fucking Saturday? Are you kidding me?”
Weak-kneed and wrapped in a towel with the lightheaded aftermath of another two orgasms flooding my senses, I stood beside the grand piano as Adrian shut the sliding glass door a little too hard, a little too angrily, his phone pressed against his ear.
“Fine. I’ll be down in twenty.”
He hung up, and those lines of stress popped back out on his face. Gone was the absolute calm I’d gotten used to. “What’s wrong?”
“Crisis at the office,” he sighed. The clock on the wall showed four thirty— surely they should be finishing up. “I’m sorry, I need to sort this out. I’m not sure how long I’ll be down there but I can try…”
“It’s okay,” I insisted, a sinking feeling in my gut. Insecurity had always lingered a little too close to me, and I couldn’t help but worry about the worst possible scenario here. But he’d insisted that he wanted me, and I needed totryto believe that. “I need to pick up a few things from my dad’s anyway.”
He closed the distance, damp feet padding across the wooden floors, and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I’ll call you when I’m done. We can meet up later tonight if you want.”
Of course I fucking want that.I looked up at him, trying to get a read on whether that was a sincere offer, but he spoke before I could even question it.
“Lucas is with Grace until tomorrow afternoon. I don’t want to waste that time on anything else.”
Chapter 22
Adrian
Michael’s call had ripped me from the stressless bliss I’d been floating in for almost an entire day. Part of me wanted to be angry with him about it, but the other part, the part that had been significantly calm yet ignited in ways I hadn’t been in years, could find a single morsel of understanding.
Until I pushed through the door to the private wing of offices and came face to face with Andrew.
Michael stood about ten feet behind him, his fingers rubbing at his temples as he leaned against the far wall of the meeting room. But Andrew, his ginger beard freshly trimmed and the lines in his forehead about half an inch deeper than yesterday, looked seconds from blowing his lid.
“What on earth is so important that you two have pulled me from my home on a fucking Saturday?” I asked, pulling at the slightly too snug collar of my shirt.Goddammit, I must have grabbed the one that was too small for me.That’s what I got for rushing and spending five minutes with my tongue down Ava’s throat. “I had to leave my goddamn date for this.”
“Adrian,” Michael started, but Andrew beat him to it.
“You’re aware of the conference all day today and tomorrow upstate, correct?” Andrew asked. He stared me down with a level of irritation I’d never seen in him—and I’d seen himfurious. He was practically shaking, each part of his body vibrating in his deep maroon suit. “Or were you not paying attention?”
“The Tomorrow’s Vision one? Yes. Of course.” There was a part of me that wanted to throw the name of it in his face,showhim that despite his insistence, I was fully invested and present here. “What about it?”
“It’s a disaster,” Michael mumbled.
A rock dropped in my stomach.
“We did what we could without getting you involved. But it’s gotten to the point where we need to shut it down,now, and you have executive power,” he added.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I asked.
Andrew shifted one foot to his left, stepping between me and Michael and blocking my view. “It means that shit wasn’t checked out,” he said. “It means that somehow, we double booked every ticket, resulting in twice the amount of people and far exceeding safety numbers. It means that security wasn’t vetted, and only a quarter of the necessary detail that we needed arrived. It means that we had to shut down ticket scanning because almost every single one was coming back invalid, so it’s a free-for-all all, and it’s filling up with random passersby.”
