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“THAT’S...NOT REALLY how I remember it going down in the pond,” Dylan panted, lying on his back and gazing with wide eyes up at the dark sky.
I nestled against his side with a little shiver. “We couldn’t have done that in the pond; the crawdads would have gotten us for sure.”
He chuckled silently but looked down with concern as I shivered again. “Are you cold?”
“Maybe,” I said. When he gave me a dubious look, I smiled. “It’s my Tennessee temperament. I’m not used to these New York nights like you.”
He laughed again, pulling me to my feet and wrapping me snugly in a towel. “For the record, I’m not used to New York nights like these myself. Although I’m catching on quick.”
I considered this silently for a moment, as he went to get a towel for himself. Now that he mentioned it, throughout all my headline skimming and random YouTube searches over the years, I had yet to see Dylan in a serious relationship. Sure, he dated now and again. Models, actresses, the daughter of the British Ambassador. But nothing ever stuck. The longest I think he’d ever been with someone had been a couple of months. Tops.
My eyes flickered around the twinkling lights of the city as I wondered why. It’s not like there weren’t plenty of options. And I couldn’t imagine that Dylan Murphy—billionaire extraordinaire—would have trouble getting a date. Then, my mind circled around to the bigger problem.
No serious relationships since he moved out here? Then he turns up with a wife?
Yeah...the media was going to be relentless.
“So,” he walked back to me across the wet tile, a towel wrapped around his waist, “I think that was a really good first effort, but I’d be willing to bet—”
“What is everyone going to say?” I asked suddenly. “I mean...when they find out?”
He froze in his tracks, looking at me speculatively, before hanging his head with a sigh.
“Come on,” he gestured me to the door, “let’s talk inside.”
I followed him past the little reading space and down to our rooms on the fourth floor. To my surprise, he caught my hand as I headed automatically for my room, and took me to his instead. Although there was no one else in the house, he shut the door behind him.
My eyes widened slightly as I looked around. While it might have been as daunting as the rest of the house, I’d almost have to say that I’d gotten the better end of the deal. There was hardly a single personal item to be seen. Any knick-knacks and unnecessary trinkets had either been successfully shelved in storage—or more likely—he’d never had them here in the first place. Not like the Dylan I used to know—the one who used to collect concert tickets and movie stubs with religious fervor. That Dylan would have balked at a place like this, and changed it immediately.
The room was just empty. Barren—even.
To top it off, there were a couple unopened U-Haul boxes shoved into the corner, like he’d yet to unpack. Even though I knew he’d moved in here six years ago.
All that was made up for, however, by the monstrous bed set square in the center of the room. It looked like some kind of homing beacon, beckoning everything else towards it. I was more than a little tempted myself.
A sound caught my attention from the adjoining room, and I glanced over to see that he’d started a bath. He emerged a second later in a cloud of steam and gestured invitingly.
“Let’s say we warm you up a little?”
I dropped my towel shamelessly to the floor and flounced inside, leaving him breathless in my wake. He loved the bathing suit I was wearing. “If you like...”
He had one of the same tubs as I did, narrow, but deep—standing beneath the window on four gold-inlaid feet. I climbed in with scarcely contained glee, closing my eyes as the warm water worked its way through my shivering skin and into my muscles. A second later, he slid in behind me, wrapping his arms tentatively around my waist as he pulled me against his chest.
Although there was much to say, we didn’t talk for a long time. We simply closed our eyes and stretched out in the warm water—wrapped around each other in a surprisingly chaste way.
After a long while, he leaned his forehead against the back of my hair with a sigh.
“I have no idea what they’re going to say.”
I stiffened in spite of myself, bracing against a whole host of things yet to come. “I thought you said you could handle your company.”
“My company, I can. I hold the majority stock, and even if I didn’t, there’s no one there who would directly challenge me. Even if they did, it wouldn’t be for something like this.” His voice tightened. “I’m talking about the press. I don’t know what—” He cut off suddenly and tried to rephrase. “Rose, it could get a little...chaotic, for a while.”
A thousand images of paparazzi-hounded celebrities flashed through my eyes, and I shrank back into him without even realizing it.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Maybe it won’t be that big of a—”
“Rose?”
I sighed and leaned my head back against him.
“Yeah.”
“But hey,” his fingers found me beneath the water, tickling my sides and drawing a reluctant smile to my face, “that doesn’t mean we can’t still have fun in the process.”
I raised my eyebrows doubtfully. “Fun? Do you have any idea how un-photogenic I am?”
He grinned. “Okay, to start—I happen to know from personal experience, that isn’t true. I still have your prom picture in one of these drawers. And, about the media...it’s just for a little while. They’ll lose interest the second the next big story comes along, which in New York, is always just days away, I promise.”
“But Dylan,” my true concern floated to the surface in a haze of steam, “I’m going to walk away from all this. Go back to Tennessee, where, if any photographer ventured, they’d be eaten for breakfast. You’ll have to stay here in the aftermath,” I hesitated a moment before finishing, “after the divorce.”
The word alone was enough to silence us both.
Although it was the next natural step in what we were doing here, neither one of us had ever mentioned it aloud. If Dylan was anything like me, he didn’t like to think about it. While his parents were happily married, I was a child of semi-frequent divorce, and I was in no hurry to add my name to the roster. In this arrangement, however, I saw no way around it.
Instead of basking in anxiety like me, he tightened his arms—pulling me back so he could whisper in my ear. “I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t be fine,” I pressed. “You’re going to be here all by yourself, in this big empty house, getting labeled who-knows-what, when you’ve worked so hard to build a reputation.”
“Rose?”
I paused for a breath.
“Yeah?”
“You’re rambling.”
There was a beat of silence, then I burst out laughing as he recycled my own words from just days before. There was a kind of playfulness about him now. Something that he didn’t have when he’d first flown out for his little brother’s wedding. Something that was slowly returning, day by day.
When I finally quieted down, I twisted around so I could see his face. There were drops of bath water stuck to the tips of his eyelashes, and before I could stop myself, I leaned in for a quick kiss.
Smiling, I playfully nudged him. “You kept my prom picture. Creep!”
His eyes slowly opened and fixed upon my face with a crooked smile. “It was a good picture, I thought. Don’t flatter yourself. I’m sure I have mine somewhere too.”
“I highly doubt that.” I bit my lip with a grin. “As I’m fairly sure Greta Mae put you under house arrest that night for setting fire to her roses.”
He slipped a couple inches lower into the water. “Actually...that sounds familiar.”
I laughed again and leaned back against him, feeling the muscles in his chest and stomach tighten and contract.
“You’ve come a long way since then,” I murmured quietly.
“Not as far as I might have thought I have this beautiful woman staying with me...she doesn’t seem all that impressed.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” I said with a little frown. “I’m sure she’s just a bit more taken with you as a person, than with all the stuff you’ve amassed.”
“I was just hoping to impress you, that’s all.”
“You have and I’m so proud of you.”
I softly kissed his lips.