Page 32 of Shopping for an Heir
When she smiled, she lit the world.
“It’s all good,” Gerald said with a sigh. “I got McCormick to fund the arts center forever.”
“And paperwork shows McCormick had been trying to buy it from Hopewell for ages. Maybe he saw an opportunity.”
“We already had a meeting set up for that day! And Declan hates when other people meddle in his and Shannon’s lives. I’ve heard him grumble about it in the back of the limo for years. His wife and mother-in-law are Olympic champions in Meddling.”
“They medaled in meddling?” she joked.
He groaned at the terrible wordplay.
“Meddling got us here.” Her hand moved from his knee between his legs, the slow quality of her journey reassuring, sensual in its timing. She knew how to hold him, stroke him, make him feel a rising urgency that was tempered now.
Calibrated by the knowledge that this wasn’t going away.
And that she wasn’t a dream that would soon end in nightmares.
Since they’d reunited, the dreams had faded again, consigned to a back corner of his subconscious.
“It all worked out for the best. The Afghani officials are over the moon about the relic. You donated it, and now your hands are washed of it. No charges against you, and Kulli’s being investigated for antiquities fraud.”
“Plus there’s the clause in the will,” Gerald reminded her.
“I couldn’t tell you.” In the event that Gerald did donate the relic, Harold Hopewell had set aside a $100,000 inheritance for him. Suzanne wasn’t allowed to mention the clause—per Hopewell’s instructions—until or unless Gerald decided to donate.
“I know. A happy surprise.”
“You’re keeping it, right?”
“Some of it, sure. Enough to get out of debt and donate a little to the center.” It wasn’t enough for Gerald to retire on, but it would accelerate the timeline for him to be able to just be an artist all day.
“Nice,” she said.
“But the McCormicks already funded the center and some camps, so...”
“What’s it like to work for the McCormicks?” she asked, making Gerald vibrate with amusement. Completely nude, their limbs twisted against each other, her smooth thigh found his, the delight of hair against bare skin a sensory buffet. He couldn’t stop touching her, hands caressing, eyes absorbing. He was readying for an art project.
Later, he thought.
Later she would pose.
“You know what it’s like. You work for them, too.”
Her own eyes took him in, hungry for more. What did he look like to her? He’d bulked up these ten years, his shoulders bulging with strength, legs built like cabled powerhouses, thick and sturdy. Veins bulged over well-defined, taut skin. He was smiling, his cheeks red, his morning stubble coming in a cinnamon red that had always surprised her.
She sat up on one elbow, head propped in one palm, her face a delight. “I sit across from Declan, Andrew and Terry McCormick once a year. It’s hardly the same as what you do. You probably run period errands for their wives and girlfriends.”
The bed convulsed as he shifted, staring at her in shock.
“How did you know?”
She just laughed. “I assumed. Plus, you have no shame. Remember that time at the BX when you bought lube and a dozen donuts and asked the poor clerk about proper technique?”
“That was on a dare.”
“A dare you won.”
He shrugged.
“You do know what they’re like, though,” he insisted.
“Once a year I sit across an enormous boardroom table and drool at those hot, gorgeous, smart, intense men who—hey!”
He pinched her ass.
“I don’t need to hear that,” he growled.
“You asked,” she said in a low, chiding voice. “If you don’t want to hear the truth, don’t ask.”
A slow grin spread across his face. “I’d forgotten that about you.”
“What? My pinchable ass?” She rubbed the spot where he’d zinged her.
“No. That I could never forget.” His feelings deepened. “You tell the truth. Always. But you also face it.”
“Can’t live any other way, Gerald.”
His entire body tensed, like a stadium of sports fans doing the wave, one muscle at a time, in sequence. It was a slow motion shiver.
“I know. It’s what captivates me.”
“It scares the hell out of most men.”
“I’m not most men.”
“No,” she said, in a voice that was half sigh, half regret. “You’re not.”
“Don’t sound so happy about it.”
“You ruined me for other men.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. The gesture seemed intended to be casual, but it broke something inside him.
His hands slid up from her shoulder to cup her jaw.
“I wish I’d understood back then how your unflinching willingness to face the truth in any situation could have saved us.”
“It would have saved us.”
“And I’ll regret not connecting that to reality for the rest of my life.”
“I don’t want your regrets about the past, Gerald. I want you here. Now. In the present. And I want to talk about how we’re going to be in the future. Together.”
“C’mon, Suz. Don’t be shy. Tell me how you’re really feeling.” He kissed her then, an awkward, sudden move that she broke, eyes blazing.
“You always used to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Cover up talking about feelings with sex.”
“Sex is a feeling.”
Her eyebrows shot up, then curled down, like a silky beige caterpillar being tickled. “What?”
“Sex is a feeling,” he insisted. “It’s how I express feelings.”
“I want you to express your feelings with your mouth.”
He began to crawl under the covers, prowling toward her body. “Yes, ma’am....”
“Gerald!” He could hear the laugh in her voice as she struggled to stay serious. Soon, though, she stopped.
This was serious.
He needed to have as much of him touching her, and not just through sex. The affinity they shared transcended the pain he’d caused her, the confusion he’d lived through, the emotional muck and mire of so many years lost. As he kissed her, so many thoughts raced through his mind, most of them fragmented and nonsensical, soon replaced by instinct, by touch, neurons firing as he used his hands to find her, to find them.
The feel of her hands on his hip, curving around to find a better grip, the sharp sound of his reaction, the dull blade of need inside making the wound of separation bleed a little more. All these pieces of pain co-existed inside him, shards of himself he’d collected over the years, tossed in a small bag he wore on his back.
As she smoothed his skin, kissed his abs, slid her cheek along the thickening thatch of hair on his belly, he found himself dropping the bag, wondering why he ever needed to carry it at all.
Lighter now, carried off by the wind, he crashed into her and they traveled so high, where no one could see them, above the clouds, his body over hers, her legs around him again, his mouth on hers, the boundary between them gone.
Just air.
And then they closed that gap, too, until the only barrier left was one that only time could dissipate.
She came with a quiet sound of pleasure, her openness so sweet, his own finish one of excitement, their bodies well worn after spending the night together but his thirst for her unquenched. Suzanne was luminous, cheeks pink, eyes wide and searching.
“I love you.”
“I never stopped loving you,” he said, giving her a tiny piece of herself back, one he’d withheld from that bag of shards.
“Thank you.”
The light shining through the cream-colored sheets made her body take on a matte finish, her skin being played with by the light as if she were a toy for amusement. Rays and particles danced in concert to find the most beautiful arrangement of bisecting points and angles, lines and slope. Her body was a mathematical equation, a calculus problem to solve with his hands, his mouth, his body.
His heart and soul.
Computing the area under a curve required deep study.
Very deep.
So deep you lost yourself.
And never wanted to find your way out.
Chapter 15
“I can’t believe it’s been eight weeks already,” Agnes complained. “And there aren’t any more classes for three weeks!”
“We need the holiday break, Agnes. People are busy shopping and visiting relatives,” Gerald explained for the umpteenth time. Suzanne helped to deliver new balls of clay to students, taking in the class.
“Tell that to my kids. Ungrateful little worms. I split myself open how many times, only to have them all move across the country. They don’t call.” As she watched, Suzanne marveled at the depths of the old lady’s cantankerous personality. When she was ninety-something, she wanted to be just like Agnes.
“You Facetime every day with your grandkids in Kentucky, Agnes,” her friend, Corrine, corrected. “And your grandson is in college in Boston. He’s at your house every weekend.” Corrine looked like one of those young women who guest-starred on that old ‘70s show, The Love Boat. A blonde model/actress known only for a few years back then. Suzanne had watched the show with her grandparents on cable, and she struggled to remember the name.
