“You should’ve gone to bed,” I chide, embracing her, and she laughs, her gray eyes gleaming with barely suppressed excitement as she pulls away, leaving behind a cloud of her favorite jasmine perfume.
“To bed? When my favorite granddaughter is coming home? I’m not so old that I can’t stay up for a couple of hours past my bedtime. Besides, I couldn’t go to sleep with such a big surprise waiting for you,” she says, beaming, and I realize that in addition to wearing perfume and going-out clothes, she still has her daytime makeup on.
“What surprise?” Gramps, who’s coming up behind me with the suitcase, sounds as puzzled as I feel. “And whose car is that?” He glances over his shoulder at the Mercedes.
Grandma grins. “Come inside and see.” She hurries ahead, and Gramps and I exchange confused looks before following her in.
I enter first, with Gramps wheeling the suitcase behind me, but I only make it two steps before my feet grow roots and I freeze in place, gaping at the sight in front of me.
In the middle of my grandparents’ living room, standing next to their gently worn couch, is a tall, powerfully built man with hard, strikingly masculine features. Thick dark eyebrows, a sharply cut jaw, high cheekbones above lean cheeks darkened by a hint of stubble—everything about the bold lines of his face heats my blood and sends my pulse into overdrive. Instead of his usual perfectly tailored suit, he’s dressed in a pair of designer jeans and a casual white button-up shirt—the same outfit I saw him in at the JFK airport in New York less than five hours ago.
When he kissed me.
And asked me to move in.
And looked at me like I stabbed him in the heart when I refused and got on the plane.
Marcus Carelli, the Wall Street billionaire I fell in love with despite my better judgment, is here, in my grandparents’ house, his cool blue gaze trained on me with the intensity of a hawk tracking his favorite prey.
3
Marcus
Emma’s gray eyes are so huge I could drown in them, her freckles standing out in stark relief as all color leaves her already-pale face. Her curls are wilder than usual, floating around her head like a halo of fire, and her small, curvy body is stiff with shock as she stares at me from across the room, her equally stunned grandfather behind her.
“Hi, kitten,” I say calmly, even as dark anticipation boils in my blood, mixing with lingering fury and hurt. “Guess what? I wrapped up my work early and decided to surprise you.”
“He flew into the Daytona Beach airport and got here a half hour ago, can you believe it?” Mary Walsh exclaims, all but bursting from excitement. “I wanted to call you, but Marcus thought it might be more fun to greet you when you got here. We’ve been having tea and cookies and—”
“Excuse me,” Emma says tightly. Recovering from her paralysis, she marches toward me, grabs my arm, and faces her grandparents. “Marcus and I need to talk.”
Mary’s face drops as she realizes her excitement isn’t shared. “Of course, I’m sure you two need to…” I don’t hear the rest of what she says because Emma drags me out of the house. Not literally, of course—she’s tiny compared to me—but by tugging on my arm with enough force that I wouldn’t be able to resist without her grandparents catching on that my presence isn’t exactly welcome.
They must already suspect that as is.
Delicate fingers digging violently into my forearm, Emma tows me down the street until we’re two houses over and hidden from her grandparents’ eyes by the neighbors’ lush landscaping. Then and only then, she releases my arm and steps back, glaring up at me with so much fury each curl on her head seems to be dancing a jig.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she hisses, little fists balled at her sides. “I told you it was over—”
“And I refused to accept it,” I inform her grimly—though what I really want is to grab her and kiss some sense into her. Or better yet, fuck it into her. But in deference to our public location, I say, “At the very least, you owe me an explanation.”
“You came all the way out here for an explanation? Have you not heard of an invention called the phone? You can call and text on it. Hell, you can even email.” Her tone is pure sarcasm, and it makes it that much harder to keep my hands off her delicious little body—which is clad in a pair of tight jeans and a tucked-in T-shirt, a basic outfit that nonetheless highlights her full, heart-shaped ass and nipped-in waist. The yellowish light cast by the street lamp, combined with the high humidity in the air, is giving her porcelain skin a soft, dewy glow, and I want to strip her naked and taste her all over, concentrating on the slick, tender folds between—
Fuck. Now’s not the time for that.
“Are you saying you would’ve actually responded?” I ask evenly, wrenching my mind away from the X-rated fantasy. I don’t need any more fuel for my craving; my cock is about to punch a hole in my jeans as is. “Because I called you when I was on the way to the airport. Repeatedly—only to get your voicemail.”
Her chin juts out. “Maybe I would’ve. Either way, you had no business showing up at my grandparents’ house. How did you get here, anyway? All the flights into Daytona have been sold out for ages.”
A humorless smile curves my lips. “I have a private jet, kitten.” And a pilot who was able to change our flight plan from Orlando to Daytona Beach as soon as
