Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 93140 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93140 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Lily turned to look out at the water. “She’s gone.”
Chapter 29
* * *
Ireland
Sometimes you chip and chip at a brick wall until you’re exhausted and still make no progress bringing it down. And other times, you pull out one brick and the entire thing starts to crumple. Leilani was the brick that had kept Grant’s wall standing. Everything seemed to have changed since sunrise this morning. It wasn’t anything you could tell from the outside, but it was in the way Grant showed me himself.
After he woke up, he’d driven me home and said he needed to run a few errands. But he’d asked me to pack an overnight bag and be ready when he came back in a few hours. To my surprise, he took me to his condo downtown. The building was a fancy high-rise overlooking the waterfront, with a doorman and security desk.
The uniformed guard nodded as we walked in. “Both your deliveries came and the crew just left, Mr. Lexington.”
“Thanks, Fred.”
I waited until we were in the elevator to quiz Grant. “You have a crew?”
Grant chuckled. He intertwined his fingers with mine. “You’ll see.” He slipped a card into a slot on the elevator panel and pushed a button: PH.
“Penthouse? Well, aren’t you fancy? You should have told me your lair was this nice. Maybe I wouldn’t have been such a pain in the ass about coming here.”
Grant lifted a brow. “My lair?”
“I thought it sounded nicer than fuckpad.”
He pulled me to his side and kissed the top of my head. “I’m actually glad you refused to come here.”
“Oh yeah? So why are we here now?”
“You’ll see.”
The elevator arrived on the fourteenth floor and opened directly into a huge foyer. A large, round marble table greeted us as we walked in. I looked around. The apartment was enormous. To the right was a sleek, modern stainless-steel kitchen, and straight ahead, a few steps down was a sunken living room with a full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the water. I walked straight to the glass to admire the view.
“Oh my God. This is gorgeous. I don’t know why I was picturing some dark and seedy place. Oh wait…maybe I do. It’s because of what you used this place for.”
Grant came up behind me and snaked his arms around my waist. “Used is the key word. Past tense.”
I turned in his arms and wrapped my arms around his neck. “Are you saying you won’t be using this beautiful apartment for any sexual activities anymore? That’s sort of a shame.”
“Not at all. I plan to use it for lots of fucking. Starting with you bending over and pressing your hands against the glass in just a little while. But the place is now a lot more exclusive.”
“Exclusive, huh?” I teased. “Higher end one-night stands?”
Grant rubbed his thumb over my lip and stared at it. “Just you, beautiful.”
The tenderness in his voice made my heart flutter. Ever since our talk this morning, my emotions had been all over the place, and I started to feel myself getting a little choked up. Grant saw it in my face and smiled as he brushed his lips with mine.
“Come on. Let me show you around.”
We walked down a long hall. Grant opened each door as we passed and pointed from the doorway, but didn’t go inside.
“Office.”
“Guest bedroom.”
“Bathroom.”
But when we got to the last door on the left, he opened it and took my hand to lead me inside what was obviously the master bedroom. The room had the same big floor-to-ceiling windows, a beautiful fireplace to one side, and a king-size bed in the center. Like the rest of the apartment, it was pretty stark on decoration, but what was there was beautiful and high quality.
Grant walked to the bed and sat down, pulling me onto his lap. “Mattress is brand new. It was delivered today.”
“Was something wrong with the old one?”
He looked into my eyes, and I felt the warmth of his gaze spread through my chest. “It had seven years of things I can’t take back on it.”
And those bricks just keep falling.
I cupped his cheek. “That was really thoughtful.”
“Figured we could pick up some new bedding this afternoon before we christen it.”
I smiled. “You better be careful, Mr. Lexington. Buying a new bed, taking me shopping—a girl could get used to all this sweetness.”
Grant looked at me in a way he hadn’t before. Something was different. And that something made my heart race. I had put off making a decision about the long term, hoping something would organically happen to make it for me. And I suddenly realized it had: I’d fallen for him.
“Get used to it, sweetheart. It’s what you deserve.”
Falling…falling…falling so deep.
I was basically a pile of mush inside, and my self-protection mechanism had me needing not to fall so far that I lost myself. So I changed gears and smirked. “While we’re picking up bedding, maybe we can pick up a few decorative things, too. The apartment is beautiful, but it’s kind of…sterile. It needs some warmth.”