Always On My Mind (The Sullivans #8)(54)

His head was spinning with names and details. “The dogs are engaged? Or are you talking about your brother and his dog trainer?”

“Oooh,” she exclaimed, “Summer would love it if we had a little ceremony for the dogs, too. Good idea!” She paused for half a second before jumping to what seemed like a totally random question. “Do you like baseball?”

He gave her a look that said she should know better. “I’m a red-blooded American male. Of course I like baseball.”

“But since you’re from New York, you’re probably more of a Yankees fan than a Hawks fan, right?”

“Are you kidding? After seeing Ryan Sullivan pitch up close, I—” The last names suddenly clicked into place. “Don’t tell me your brother is the guy responsible for the Hawks winning the World Series this year?”

“Last year, too,” she confirmed with a happy smile. “He just got engaged to his best friend from high school. Vicki is an awesome sculptor. So awesome, in fact, that one of my other brothers hired her to work on his last movie.”

Grayson had thought he was catching up, but now she was losing him again. “You have a brother who works on movies?”

“I should make you guess this one.” She waited expectantly for him to figure out who the hell in Hollywood she could possibly be related to, before finally scrunching up her nose and sighing. “I don’t know why nobody ever sees the family resemblance. I’ll give you a hint.” She pretended she was holding a gun with her free hand and pointed it at him. “All the right friends in all the right places can’t save you now, can they?”

“Jesus,” he said as he realized her brother was Smith Sullivan, one of the biggest movie stars in the world. “Is there anyone you aren’t related to?”

“Well,” she said just slowly enough that he realized she was going to hit him over the head with yet another whopper of a sibling, “you know the wine we had with dinner the other night? My brother Marcus owns Sullivan Winery, and—”

“There’s an and?”

Lori started humming a song he’d heard on the radio approximately a thousand times in the past year. It was catchy and well written enough that somehow he wasn’t sick of it yet. “You know that song, right?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Marcus’s fiancée Nicola wrote it. And sang it.” She lifted her hands to his chest. “But before you totally start freaking out—”

“I’m not freaking out,” he said, but she ignored him, of course.

“—since I haven’t noticed that you’re all that into photography, you probably haven’t heard of my brother Chase.”

“I was on the board of directors for the International Center of Photography in New York City,” he growled. “Of course I know who Chase Sullivan is.”

Had he really been stupid enough to think that he could have uncomplicated, no-ties sex with Lori Sullivan?

Hell, in everything he did or saw or listened to for the rest of his life, he’d think of her and her family.

“And you know that my father died. I was only two, but my mother and older brothers tell the most wonderful stories about him, so it feels like I have memories of him, even though I really don’t.”

He pulled her against him, into the place he always wanted her, with her body pressed close, her cheek soft in the crook of his neck. When she’d told him about her father before, he hadn’t been kind, hadn’t told her, as he did now, “I’m sorry.”

“I am, too,” she said as she wound her arms around his neck. “Now will you tell me about your family?”

“It’s pretty much the opposite of yours. I don’t have any brothers or sisters. My father is still working the stock exchange and my mother helps run half the charities in the city.”

“They must be so amazed with your farm, with everything you’ve done here to make such a difference in feeding an entire community.”

He shook his head. “They haven’t seen it.”

“How could they not want to come see what you’ve created here?” She looked extremely insulted on his behalf. “I mean, I know it’s different from what they’re used to in the city, but a little mud isn’t going to hurt them.”

She was such a fierce defender of him, so ready to take his side. When, what, how had he ever done anything good enough to deserve this time with her? And how could he possibly find a way to keep her here with him for longer than two weeks without her resenting him for keeping her from her family, her career, her real life?

“I’ve never asked them to come,” he admitted.

“Oh, Grayson.” She lifted his hand to her lips and pressed a kiss to his palm. “Don’t they know better than to wait for an invitation when the only thing that works with you is just showing up and refusing to leave? How come Sweetpea and I are the only ones who have ever figured that out?”

All day, all night, Grayson had wanted to kiss her, but never more than he did right then, with her sweet emotions clear as the night sky in her beautiful eyes.

Leaving the hand she was holding between their chests, he threaded the fingers of the other through her soft hair. She was already tilting her mouth up to his as he lowered his down onto hers.