Page 223 of The Darkest Chase

Even the trip where we booked a little bed and breakfast in Greensboro had fresh surprises. I loved every damned minute.

Technically, it was a business trip for Talia. She was looking for a new supplier for a special type of red cedar, but there was no mistaking her pleasure in dragging me along to tour the lumberyard, chattering away about wood grain, cuts, and finishes.

Her love for the family craft shined through in every enthusiastic word and touch, even if most of it flew over my head.

I listened anyway, learning as much as I could.

If it matters to her, it’s important to me.

Sure, I could pay a little more attention sometimes when I can’t pry my eyes off her high-necked sweater—a staple of her wardrobe in the cooler months, along with turtlenecks—when I know what’s underneath it.

Her addiction to saucy pink lingerie is now complemented by the roses I add to her skin, dragging my mouth over her and making her bloom so sweetly for me.

She is my garden.

I still burn, too, remembering how I marked her up the night before when we almost broke the B&B’s bed, getting so sweaty we had to change the sheets before we could sleep.

She still blushes like it’s the first time.

Especially every time I give her that look.

And I fucking love that, too, along with a million other things.

Now is not the best time to be thinking about the fact that I can’t keep my mind off her legs, her peach of an ass. Fuck, that curve of her waist as it dips just below the full swell of her breasts, the way she always wears pastel-pink bras that turn her nipples into dark shadows of temptation—

A voice cuts in again.

The only man I’ll ever share her with calls my name, his voice distant through the car window.

I glance up as Gerald Grey waves to a nurse through the glass doors of the clinic, then turns to stroll down the walk toward me. The man looks like he’s aged backward ten years—spry, alert, energetic, his blue eyes calm and clear.

He hasn’t had more than one or two spells where he slips into the past in the last few months.

It's made Talia so happy.

And anything that makes Talia happy makes me happy, too.

Gerald pulls the passenger door open and climbs into the Jeep. “Just you today, son?”

Son.

It always gives me pause when he calls me that.

I know it’s a thing with older folks. They call any man younger than them son, but lately I’ve grown so fond of Gerald Grey it doesn’t bother me.

I’ve never known a man who cares so much for his family. It’s a new experience, and for him to offer that same kindness to me the way he does my Talia strikes deep.

It shakes me.

I’d never turn away from it, though.

Hell, I crave it.

Especially when Gerald shows me, in his own way, the kind of man I want to be as I make a new life with Talia.

While he buckles up, I smile.

“Just me today. Talia’s still struggling with the Bridezilla job. I think she’s on her twenty-seventh revision.”

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