Rusty Nailed (Cocktail, #2)(39)

“I can’t put into words how happy I am to see you, Simon. I really can’t,” I whispered, arms tight around his neck.

“I missed you too,” he answered, trying to set me down on the bed, but I was fighting him. “Babe, let’s get you into some dry clothes.”

“Kiss me, please,” I asked, pulling him down to me.

He kissed me. And I kissed him back, needing to feel him. I wrapped my arms back around his neck, around his back, under his North Face, needing skin. He rocked against me, needing it too. “Caroline,” he groaned, pulling back to look into my eyes. That made me tear up again, just seeing his face so unexpectedly close to mine.

When you were in a long-distance relationship, of course you made the most of the time you were together. But sometimes, it was the unexpected that really made the difference. The unexpected emotions you were hit with when you saw that face, looked into those eyes, felt those lips. The unexpected reminder of why you fell in love with this person could hit you so powerfully. And this was that time.

I memorized his face, felt every line and every pattern, drew his temple, his nose, his dimple, the bow of his lip, drew it all with my fingertips and memorized it once more.

“I love you, Simon. Love you, love you, love you so much,” I chanted as he laid me down, peeled the clothes from my body and his own, and entered me.

He groaned my name, answering my cries with his own, loving me sweetly. And when my orgasm crashed through me, it was wonderful and secondary to what this was.

He was here with me. Not photographing pilgrims.





chapter eleven


The time between Thanksgiving and when we left for Philadelphia flew by. I was always at work before everyone else, and almost without fail I closed the office every day. I put out fires, I trained Monica, I even did payroll a few more times. It was crazy, hectic, impossibly frantic. There were days when I barely saw daylight, ate every meal straight from the microwave, and the only time I sat down was to pee. And even then, I was reading e-mails. Please, like everyone doesn’t bring their phone to the bathroom to read?

And through the crazy, the hectic, the impossibly frantic life that I was leading, I was getting my shit done. I was not only handling it, I was actually now ahead of the curve. I’d turned some kind of time management corner and was holding my own. I walked not with a drag but with a bounce; I rushed from meeting to meeting and job site to job site with a renewed sense of purpose. I was tired, but I was happy in a weird way. I was getting the swing of things. I was still stressed, but it was a good stressed.

I was ahead of schedule on the hotel project, and I was even able to start working on a few Christmas projects. If you were very wealthy, you didn’t do your own Christmas decorating—heavens, no! You hired it out. Initially I thought that with Jillian being gone I’d need to contact some of the other design firms we were good neighbors with to farm some of it out, but I couldn’t do it. I needed to make sure that everything at Jillian Designs functioned the same way as when Jillian was actually in residence. So I slept less. And got to work on decking the halls with boughs of Red Bull.

Simon was home. His trip to Plymouth should have kept him busy until right before the reunion, but now he had some free time. Something he usually didn’t have much of. But now he did. After coming home one night to a present in his own shoe from Clive, he agreed that instead of spending a few nights a week over in Sausalito, it would be easier to just move out there and bring the little shoe pooer. So Clive was now a country cat. And he had a stay-at-home daddy.

The two of them had a ball, exploring the new house and spending hours looking out the window wall. Clive had never had so much room, and he relished all the closets and beds he could hide in and under. Simon took over the nightly game of Hide the Pounce, something that I unfortunately didn’t have time for anymore. One chilly night I came home late and found Simon holding Clive up to the window, making paw prints where it was foggy and talking about how far away the city of San Francisco was.

He grinned when he saw me, but didn’t stop talking about how cold the water was and how Clive should not try to swim back to the city. Clive nodded sagely and pressed another print to the window.

Now that Simon had so much free time, he was biking most days, sending me texts and pictures from all over Marin County. He had a favorite restaurant, a favorite place to get coffee in the morning, a favorite deli; he had a new favorite everything.

For the record, his favorite position remained whichever one I was in when he was inside me. And while I was exhausted most nights, I still managed to sneak in naked times with my Wallbanger. Such a hardship.

And with all this free time came unexpected visits. Office pop-ins. Several phone calls a day. He was around all the time, and didn’t seem to understand why I wasn’t around all the time. He logically got that I was working more than ever, and that I was happy. Didn’t stop him from trying to pull me back into bed each morning.

And shit, that was hard. Because it is incredibly difficult to get out of bed every morning when you have a rumpled Wallbanger holding on to your pajamas. Because, and I say this with pride, his favorite position remained whichever one I was in when he was inside me.

Seriously, though, he was around all the time. He’d also reminded me several times that I was not. Hmm.

Jillian and Benjamin were leaving Italy and heading to Prague, planning on spending a few days in the city and then exploring the Czech countryside. I marveled over the pictures she e-mailed me, letting her tell me all about the amazing time she was having with her husband. She was relaxed in a way I hadn’t seen her in years, and she was sure to tell me how much she appreciated her “office dynamo” handling everything so that she could take this time with her new husband. It was weird hearing her refer to Benjamin as her husband; they’d been engaged for so long he’d been her fiancé the entire time I’d known her.