Hold On (Play On #2.5)(14)

Oh wow. I suddenly felt sorry for Yvette.

“I felt like shit about it, for not knowing my own mind, but looking back I know there was a part of me deep down that knew she wasn’t the one. I just couldn’t admit that to myself, or her, for a really long time.”

I tilted my head in contemplation because I was surprised by the information he’d just imparted. “You believe in ‘the one’?”

Gray swallowed, almost as if he was nervous. “I do now.”

The air around us grew still at what he’d just implied.

Holy …

“Gray,” I whispered, not knowing what to say.

I found I loved what he was implying but it scared the absolute bejesus out of me, too.

“Never felt about her the way I feel about you and I’ve only just met you,” he continued, holding my gaze in his.

“Are you ready to order?” The waiter suddenly appeared, giving me a chance to collect my thoughts.

Once he had our order, I turned back to my dinner date. “We should think about this before it goes any further.”

He shook his head. “We can do that later.”

Panic made the butterflies in my belly flutter up toward my heart, their wings kicking it into hyper speed. “No, we can’t because I live on the other side of a pretty big ocean and that’s not a small problem. We should discuss what that means before we go any further.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. I want it so our hooks are so deep in each other it doesn’t matter what problems we face, we’ll do whatever we can to overcome them together.”

“This is insane. We just met!”

“Yeah, we did. And yeah, it’s crazy.” He leaned across the table again, his voice pitched low and sexy. “But tell me you don’t feel like you’ve known me forever. Tell me it’s not just about sex. You feel it, I know you do. This is more than just amazing sexual attraction. There’s a connection here, angel.”

“How can that be? How do you know?”

“I don’t know how I know. I just do. If people knew how this shit worked, someone would have written a formula for it by now so everybody got a piece of the good life.”

“Oh my God.” My fingers trembled as I reached up to push my hair off my face.

“We stumbled onto something special, Autumn. We would be fools to turn our backs on it when other folks aren’t so lucky.”

“You don’t know anything about me.” I continued to deny him.

“Then tell me. I told you about my family. Tell me about yours.”

The fact was, after hearing about his big family, I wasn’t so sure about telling him about mine. Although part of me was looking for an excuse to break the inexplicable bond between us, the other part of me was afraid that if I told him about my upbringing he might decide we were too different.

And how messed-up was that?

He’d turned my emotions into a war unto themselves.

“Autumn?”

I glanced out of the window toward the town he’d grown up in. “I’m from Glasgow. I have a big brother, Killian. He’s my half-brother, really—we had different dads—but that’s just a technicality. He’s my brother.”

“Had?” Gray picked up on the past tense immediately.

I looked back at him, and found his gaze curious. There was a small crease line between his brows that hinted at concern. “His dad is still alive but he wasn’t his dad. He’s Killian’s father and there’s a difference. He’s been in and out of prison most of Killian’s life. Mum met my dad when Killian was little and my dad adopted him, so he was really our dad. But they uh… when I was six and Killian was eleven we were on holiday with Mum and Dad and… our parents died in a helicopter accident.”

Suddenly Gray reached across the table and threaded his fingers through mine. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

I melted at the warmth in his expression. It was mixed with a sympathetic pain and I knew, deep down, that his emotion for me was genuine. It boggled my mind but it was true. Gray hurt when I hurt. How strange but beautiful was that?

“I’m okay. It was a long time ago. But it meant that Killian and I were raised by his biological father’s brother and James Byrne is not the nicest of men. He sued the events company, and their insurance company, and he won a lot of money for us. He’s very smart and has the golden touch when it comes to finances. He took that money and invested it for us in some high risk ventures that paid off. We each got our share when we turned eighteen. A lot of mine is still in investment and stock funds and it means I can live well. Hence the suite. But I’ll have to find a job sooner or later. It’s not the kind of money that will last a lifetime. And I want a job.

“My uncle didn’t think it was necessary for me to have one. He’s delusional enough to think that me not having a job proved to the rest of the world that he was wealthy enough for his niece to live like a socialite. When I was younger he ‘indulged me’—his words, not mine—and paid for me to continue my ballet lessons in the hope that any future success as a ballerina would give him social standing. But when I was thirteen I auditioned for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, which is one of the world’s top five schools of performing arts and extremely competitive. I didn’t get in. My uncle refused to pay for any further ballet lessons if he couldn’t parade me out to all his friends as if my ballet achievements were owed all to him.”