Friday afternoon, Maxon and I are conferring in his office. I swiped the carseat from Britta’s car, and daycare allowed me to drop Jamie off with a phone call from his mother. But I have no idea how I’ll pick him up again at the end of the day. I’ll have to work that out with Britta soon, but for now I refrain from calling to check on her in case she’s asleep.
“I have a hunch who our potential buyer might be,” my brother says, barging into my thoughts.
“For the Stowe estate?” At his nod, I shrug. “Let me have your brilliant speculation.”
“Well, the buyer’s representative said she was previewing for a wealthy, high-profile client who’s been living in Dallas, but he wants to return to his home state and is looking for privacy.”
This is the first I’m hearing of this conversation, but immediately one name springs to mind. “Noah Weston.”
“Yes. Exactly. He just retired from the NFL.”
“Hall-of-Famer, for sure.” I nod. “You’re right. He’s originally from Honolulu, isn’t he? But he’s been playing in Dallas for most of his career. The guy gets hounded by the press everywhere he goes, so naturally he would want privacy.”
“And I doubt money is an object,” Maxon drawls. “Holy shit. I always wanted to sell this place, but to a guy like Weston?”
“The cherry on top,” I agree. “Any chance he’s coming along to view the house, too?”
My brother shakes his head. “His rep is flying out alone next week. She’ll let us know exactly when. But apparently, her client just sold his house in Texas and will be ready to make the move quickly. I know the Stowes are eager to unload this place. If the rep likes the property…this might work out.”
I’m salivating at the thought. “Hot damn. I’d like the paycheck. And I’d love to meet that guy.”
“Me, too. Both would be epic.”
We meet celebrities from time to time when they decide Maui would be a great place to keep a getaway. But… “Noah Weston is a man’s man and a stud on the field. From what I hear, he’s not a douchebag off the field, either.”
“Right? He seems cool.”
I laugh. “We sound a little like fan girls at a Bieber concert.”
“Yeah.” Maxon grins. “Good thing Rob took the day off. He, like, worships the guy. He’d be leg humping us for even the suggestion that he might get to meet Weston someday.”
“Watch…” I say cynically. “This buyer will be some old oil executive who’s had enough of corporate life and wants his slice of paradise.”
Maxon chuckles in return. “You’re probably right.”
A noise at the office door has me whirling around. I’m stunned to see Britta coming in. She’s wearing black yoga pants, a tank top with a Shaka sign that reads HANG LOOSE, and some flip-flops. Her hair is in a ponytail. Her face is white as a sheet, except her nose, which looks red from blowing it.
I jump to my feet and rush over to her. She looks even frailer up close, and it’s all I can do not to put my arms around her. “What are you doing here, angel?”
She won’t meet my gaze. “Just grabbing some work to take home and Jamie’s carseat before I pick him up.”
“I would have brought it and him out to you.” If she’d let me. I frown her way. “You should be in bed.”
“I feel a lot better this afternoon. I couldn’t lie around anymore. And you don’t need to make another trip out to the house. I appreciate everything you did, but I’ve got it under control now.”
“It was my pleasure,” I assure her. “I’m happy to spend the evening with you two tonight. I’ll cook something more exciting—”
“Makaio is back.”
And she let him in. After he failed to take care of her? After he left Jamie to get sick because he didn’t want germs? Yep, I see she’s wearing her engagement ring again.
Goddamn it.
“Can I see Jamie this weekend?” I won’t last a whole weekend without him, and when I visit, Britta will have to see me, too. Maybe she’ll remember how good it felt to spend time together over the last few days and decide that Banker Butthole isn’t for her.
“I don’t think that’s going to work out.” She swallows nervously. “Iolana, Makaio’s sister, is going to keep him this weekend. Um…Makaio wants to take me away since we missed Valentine’s Day.”
I see red.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask her if the way I took care of her and Jamie over the last two days mattered at all. I can’t, even if I think it did mean something to her. That’s why she won’t quite look at me. She feels guilty. But the bottom line is, she’s still engaged to Makaio Kāle. Until that’s off, she’s going to choose him every time.
“Am I supposed to be happy?” It’s kind of a dick reply. Since I’m feeling like a deeply pissed-off dick, it fits. “I love you and he’s not right for you.”
She flinches. “That’s not your decision.”
“I think you still have feelings for me.”
“You’re wrong.” Now her voice is shaking, like she’s more nervous than before.
“So what did that kiss on your bed mean, Britta? What was that about?”
“You confused me for a few minutes. But I’m going to marry the man who, despite whatever conclusion you’ve drawn from these last few days, will stay with me.”
I grit my teeth and hold in my temper. The old me would have blown up and walked off, waited for her to apologize. And if she didn’t, I’d have needled her until she did because her words hurt me. The me now acknowledges that I shredded her heart and put her through hell. Just walking back into her life because I claim to be a good guy who’s gotten my shit together now is unreasonable.
But, fuck, my patience is wearing thin.
“Tell me something I can do to prove I’ll never leave you again. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
She shakes her head. “He came to see me after his presentation this morning, took off work to check on me. We talked.” She draws in a shaky breath. “He wants to get married on April fifteenth. I agreed.”
Her words seize the air from my lungs, then take a sledgehammer to my heart. “Of this year?”
“In eight weeks. Yes.”
“Why?”
She still won’t look at me. “Will you please sign Jamie’s papers and—”
“No.”
The last fucking thing I’m going to do is roll over and play dead. Britta’s got another think coming if she imagines for one moment that I’m giving up the notion of being a family with her and Jamie.
Finally, she looks up at me, seemingly fighting tears. “It’s over, Griff.”
“You’re wrong.”
Until this point, we haven’t had a direct discussion about the future I foresee. Between sniffling and coughing fits didn’t seem like the right time. Besides, I thought it might work to my advantage to slide in under her radar, show her I’d changed, earn her trust, then bring it up when her attitude was softer.
Apparently Makaio isn’t as gullible as I thought. And my time to finesse this situation has run out.
Before I can say anything else, Maxon approaches. He’s a safe distance away, like he knows he’s interrupting something. I’m sure he thinks he’s stopping my temper from turning this conversation into all-out warfare.
I might thank him later. Right now, I just want to rip his head off.
“Hey, Britta. Feeling better?”
“Yeah. The antibiotics have really helped.” Her gaze slides over to me once more. “I’m going to grab a little work and do it over the weekend. I’ll be back for sure on Monday.”
I want to snarl. I want to physically stop her from leaving for a romantic weekend with a guy who has a stick so far up his ass I’m shocked it’s not coming out of his mouth. And I’m beyond infuriated that I can’t do a fucking thing to stop her now.
Maxon slides a gaze my way, probably to see if I’ve turned volcanic yet. “Sure. Glad you’re feeling better. See you then.”
“Thanks.” Britta rushes over to her desk, looking relieved not to have to see the rage and disappointment on my face anymore.
I cut my brother a glare. What the hell? I ask him silently.
He tosses his hands in the air. What was he supposed to do? Something to convince her that Makaio isn’t the man for her. Britta isn’t listening to me because she doesn’t trust me. But my brother… She values his opinion. Hell, she asked him to be with her when she gave birth.
But this isn’t his fight. It’s mine. I need to do whatever it takes to end this shit.
And now I’ll have just under two months to do it.
Fuck.
Britta grabs an empty messenger bag and shoves some papers into it. She checks her voice mail messages, then tucks her laptop into the briefcase.
“Have a good weekend,” she says to Maxon.
“Call me if you need me…for whatever.”
I hear his subtext; if she needs him for a big brother, a sounding board, a heavy to kick Makaio’s ass.
She nods, patently refusing to look at me. “Thanks.”
With that, my brother slinks back into his office and shuts the door. The silence between us is almost deafening, except I can hear my harsh breathing. I’d be yelling, but her skittish expression is killing me. And I know Britta. She’d be fighting if she thought she was right.
If she knows better, what the hell is she doing?
“I’m not signing the papers.”
“Do what’s best for your son,” she implores.
“Oh, I am,” I assure her. “You should take your own advice. Don’t marry a blowhole who chose not to take care of you both properly when you needed him. What good is he if he stays with you and doesn’t fucking put you first?”
“I’m not arguing with you about this. It’s my choice. I got by without you during the most difficult three years of my life. Stop insisting I need you now.”
She shoulders her way past me and bangs the door open. The wind catches the heavy wood and slams it shut behind her. She’s gone.
I’m devastated.
I’ve tried to be understanding, be a good guy, prove I’ve changed by listening and coaxing her trust. Fuck all that now. I’ve got to stop acting against my grain. Or I’m going to lose her—and Jamie—forever.
“Griff…” Keeley puts her hand over mine across the table during dinner and drinks the following night, after I catch her up. “I can only imagine how you felt.”
Like shit. Like Britta had pulled the rug out from under me. Like she didn’t care at all.
I’m still angry. I’ve been angry for more than twenty-four hours. The way I feel right now, I don’t know if I’ll ever not be angry.
But the fact she’s gone away with him is killing me, too. Right now, she could be fucking him and not giving me another thought at all.
I swallow a lump of resentment. “I’ve got fifty-six days and twelve hours to change her mind.”
“Well, that gives you time to keep talking to her and showing her you’ve changed—”
“I’ve been doing that.” I beat my fist on the table. “It’s not working.”
“It’s barely been a week,” she argues.
“I can’t be sure another eight weeks like the last one will get me any closer to making her and Jamie mine for good.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” Keeley shakes her head. “After what you put Britta through, you can’t rush her. What did you think was going to happen, Griff? That you’d pop up in her life again and she’d be so damn happy to see you that she’d break off her engagement and glue herself to your side forever? That finally telling her you love her after failing to say it three years ago would thrill her so much she’d drop to her knees, kiss the ground you walked on, and forgive everything?”
When she puts it like that, I feel sheepish. “No.”
Well, not exactly. But as I shift in my seat, I realize that she’s closer to the truth than I’d like.
“I don’t know her, so I’m not sure what it will take for her to believe that you’re not the same selfish bastard you once were. For me, it’s about actions. They do speak louder. Words are cheap. So are promises. But what you do now, how you treat her, whether you put her first…that’s important. I’d bet money she made note of the fact that you were there during her illness and Makaio wasn’t.”
“It didn’t change anything.”
“Not that she admitted to you. But you haven’t let her sort anything out. You haven’t been patient.”
Fuck patience. It’s beyond time to be ruthless.
I need the right plan.
I don’t mention that to Keeley just now. She’ll only try to talk me out of it in some circular argument I can’t win.
I give her a noncommittal hum. “So what will you do when you see my brother again?”
“You don’t want to talk about it, I see.” She gives me a humorless laugh, and I know better than to think this subject won’t come up again during our next conversation. “If I see Maxon again. He hasn’t even tried to call me since I came back to the island. It’s been two days.”
“Trust me when I tell you he hasn’t lost interest. At all.”
“You keep saying that. What is he waiting for?”
I grin. If someone’s going to be coupled up soon and it’s not me, I’m glad it will be my brother and this amazing woman.
“What was that you said about patience a minute ago?” I raise a brow at her. “Don’t worry. It won’t be much longer.”
“Just because I see him doesn’t mean we’re going to wind up happily ever after. Stop grinning at me like that. I’m serious.”
“So am I.” My smile deepens. “And you’re wrong. It couldn’t happen for two nicer people.”
The phone in my pocket vibrates. I’m pretty sure I know who’s calling me at nine p.m. on a Saturday night. When I look at the display, sure enough…
“Hey, bro,” I say to Maxon.
Keeley snaps to attention and points at my phone. That’s him? she mouths.
I nod.
“Hi,” he says in my ear. “You with Keeley?”
“Uh-huh.” No way I’m letting her in on my conversation with my brother and potentially ruining his big surprise.
“Is she all right?”
“Uh-huh,” I answer without looking Keeley’s way.
“You can’t talk? Is that it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But you’ll have her there tomorrow night and you won’t tell her a thing?”
“Uh-huh,” I promise.
“All right. You’re saying you’ve got everything under control and it’s taken care of on your end?”
“Uh-huh.”
Maxon breathes a sigh of relief in my ear. “Great. Yeah… I’ll talk about business to throw her off track. So I got a phone call from our potential buyer’s rep about an hour ago. She’s arriving in Maui on Monday afternoon. She wants to preview the Stowes’ place on Tuesday.”
“That fast. It sounds like the buyer is really interested.”
“That’s the vibe I’m getting. But we need to go out there and make sure the house and grounds are looking their best tomorrow morning.”
“Sure. If not, we’ll come up with a strategy then.”
“To snag this mysterious buyer or our reluctant women?”
I laugh at my brother. “Yeah.”
He’ll know I mean both.
“You got it.”
We ring off, and Keeley looks ready to ask me a million questions. I cut her off. “Business call. We already have someone interested in the Stowe estate.”
I fill her in, minus the speculation about who the buyer might be. She listens with half an ear, finishes her wine, then pleads exhaustion. I think she’s just sad that Maxon didn’t ask to talk to her.
Back at my condo, it’s close to ten, but I’m nowhere near ready for bed.
I feel sadness settle over me. It weighs as much as a goddamn elephant sitting on my chest, suffocating me. So when Keeley shuts her bedroom door, my options for distraction are limited, but deep down, I’ve made up my mind.
I’m going to torture myself.
It’s not the first time…but I’ve indulged in this self-inflicted agony thing more than a few times in the last thirty-nine months. The previous time, I swore it would be the last. Obviously, I was full of shit and I’ll probably hate myself for this later. But I’m like an addict. Relapse is just a matter of time.
I can’t stop thinking that Makaio might not have been making love to Britta an hour ago. He might be doing it now. Or maybe he’s doing it again. And there’s not a fucking thing I can do to stop him.
With a curse under my breath, I pour myself a few fingers of Lagavulin 21. I’m old enough to drink, and my Scotch better be, too. I swirl it in my glass. It burns going down.
Am I really going to do this?
I toss back the rest, enjoying the fire blazing its way down my throat and into my belly.
Yeah. I really am.
I make to pour another few fingers of the booze. Oh, fuck it. The shit’s only five hundred bucks a bottle. I grab it by the neck, take it with me into the bedroom, and decide to stop procrastinating.
It’s time for the ultimate pain I can inflict on myself. Tonight, I’ve got an added bonus. I swiped the CD Keeley left me out of Britta’s car and brought it into my bedroom. I set the bottle on my nightstand and start the next unfamiliar tune on the disc. According to the case, it’s called “For a Lifetime” by a band called Lustral.
The song is chill. It’s got a sense of…waiting. Like something is about to happen. When the background singers come in and chant the title a few times in something just above a whisper, the tune shows its gravity. I can’t stop listening.
I also can’t stop my feet from moving forward, into my closet, up to my safe. I scroll through the combination and push aside all the papers I keep and my stash of ready cash. I reach for the black velvet box in the back and lift the lid.
Yep, it’s still sitting there. Two carats of princess-cut diamond in rose gold with sparkling pavé clusters set in the thin band to resemble little flowers.
I’ve kept it for nearly four years.
The minute I saw it, I knew it belonged on Britta’s finger and that I was the man who needed to put it there.
At the time I saw it, we’d only been dating a bit more than three months. We had only been having sex for two weeks.
Winter was about to tip into spring, and on a gorgeous day, I took a drive to Wailea with my top down. Britta’s mother was in town, and I was supposed to have dinner with them later that night. I parked at an outdoor mall and eyed an Italian place for lunch. As I headed that way, I walked past a jeweler’s window. This ring glinted and dazzled. I couldn’t stop looking at it.
A voice in my head told me to buy it for Britta. She’s too young, I told myself at the time. She’s not ready. Hell, I wasn’t, either.
But that voice insisted if I walked past the ring, I’d be making a mistake. So I spent a small fortune on it. And I held on to it, all through the spring, when I felt as if I really got to know Britta. Through the hot summer, when we seemed to forge something deep, so I asked her to move in and she said yes. Through the early fall, when I truly began picturing what it might be like to live with and love this woman for the rest of our lives. With some help from friends and neighbors, I threw her a surprise party for her birthday in October. It was too crowded to pop the question then. But a month later? I thought proposing to her and hearing her say yes would be the perfect birthday present to me.
Damn, I had this great plan… I told her I wanted to take a sunset beach cruise for my birthday. She bought the tickets. Unbeknownst to her, I hired a string quartet. I had a speech planned with a private dinner for two afterward where I fully intended to finally tell her that I loved her and wanted to marry her. And I reserved a swanky suite, along with champagne and dessert.
Perfect.
Except it never happened.
Six days before, I found out about Maxon’s secret deal with the Asian prince and lost my shit, ripping our business apart. Ironically, my brother had broken up with Tiffanii the night before when he discovered she’d been cheating with both a pilot and a wealthy playboy. I walked out on Britta, leaving when I had no idea she was pregnant.
November first was the worst day of my life, hands down. Every person and thing that made me happy was gone in the blink of an eye.
With that thought, I strip and get in bed, ring in one hand, bottle in the other. I swallow down another mouthful of the burn while I rub the precious metal between my fingers and imagine her wearing it while I’m making love to her, while she’s got on nothing else but the symbol of my possession.
I’m harder than fuck.
The song rolls on. She sings that the world she clings to is the one where she’ll walk beside me and she wants to show me what it feels to be complete. She’s been waiting for me for a lifetime. Yeah, I feel like I’ve been waiting for Britta that long, too. The background singers add a panty, breathy vibe. It’s sensual. And if I toss a little more booze into my system and close my eyes, I can almost imagine Britta beside me.
Yeah, that’s her hand wrapped around my cock. That’s my ring on her finger giving an edge to the pleasure of her stroke. Her thumb swipes over the head, circles the crest, teases the hell out of me with the slow pace until my back is arching, my breathing is uneven, and my balls hang heavy with need. Now she’s looking into my eyes as she drags her fingertips up and down my shaft, urging me on. The band of her engagement ring slides over my most sensitive spots. She’s here with me—in body, in spirit, in heart.
How can I give her any less than my all?
Another few strokes later, the pooling pleasure builds to a crescendo that, just like the song, becomes a climax. The singer cries out in what sounds like pleasured pain. I do the same, basking in the thick swirl of ecstasy.
Then the song ends. So does my glow.
I open my eyes. Blink. Sadness crashes in.
I’m alone in my bedroom with half a bottle of super-expensive swill, sheets that need a change, and a ring that might never be on Britta’s finger.
No. Fuck no.
This is pathetic.
What am I doing?
I don’t know. Tears sting my eyes. I try to drown them in more booze.
But I can’t torture myself like this again. Somehow, someway, I’m going to turn our relationship around. I’m going to show that woman what it would be like to live with me. I’m going to prove I love her. And the next orgasm I have will be with Britta Stone when I’ve got her between the sheets of our bed and I’m making love to her for the first time for the rest of our lives.