Page 67 of The Suit

“Take as long as you need, come back sweaty.”

He whispered something in her ear that made a rosy flush spread on her cheeks as she let out a soft giggle. I turned around, not wanting to be part of their moment.

“Hey, Columbia? Can you make those muffins I like?” shouted Penn as he walked out the door.

Murray rolled his eyes. “Dickhead.”

“Hey,” Rafe’s hand found mine, and pulled me over toward him. “You okay? You’ll be okay with Kit?”

It had been years since I’d bitten my nails, and up to last week I’d forgotten what it was like to have nervous knots, but both were happening right now. Kit and Murray were heading in the direction Penn went, taking Bell with them, and I waited for them to leave before I looked up at Rafe, his blue eyes searching my face for any indication of how I felt.

“No, I should go. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be here.”

Rafe’s head tilted and his eyes narrowed in the way they always did just before he was about to deliver the punch of his argument. “You’re not going, and it is a good idea.”

My teeth automatically gritted at his tone, even though they were the words I’d wanted to hear. “You’re not the boss of me!”

“I was last night,” his wink made my body heat up again in all the places that hadn’t yet cooled down.

“Rafe!”

“I’m not going to stop you, but I don’t want you to go. That good enough for you?”

It was. The simplicity of six words and I turned to putty in his hands. His magic hands, the ones I was worryingly starting to wonder how I was going to live without.

“Okay, I’ll be here when you get back.”

“Thank you,” he kissed my cheek and ran off in the direction of Murray and Penn, once more giving me no time to appreciate his fantastic ass.

13

Beulah

Given the size of the kitchen – built for feeding a small European country - it was far too quiet without anyone in it, so I started the search of the cupboards for all the ingredients we needed for brunch, though the cupboards were surprisingly sparse. I’d only found eggs by the time Kit returned.

She chuckled when she saw what I was doing. “Have you not met Pierre yet? I mean, there’s no way he’s going to let us make brunch. We could try and make Penn’s muffins, but when we were here last time I did it without asking, and he grumbled about it the entire weekend like I’d tried to put him out of a job,” she held her finger up, “so I suggest we can grab a bottle of champagne and have that instead. Then we can get to know each other and wait for them to return.”

I laughed at her, surprised at how much I was enjoying this. “That sounds perfect because I’m terrible at cooking. Did Bell go down for a nap?”

“Yeah, she’s great at sleeping. Takes after her dad,” she grinned, her eyes lighting up with so much love it made my heart ache.

I took two glasses from the cupboard I’d seen Rafe use yesterday while Kit grabbed the champagne from the fridge, and we walked outside. It was already beautifully warm, and we found another sitting area away from where Rafe almost fucked me into oblivion last night - something I was grateful for, because sitting there and concentrating on anything other than what he’d done to me would be a near impossible feat.

The crystal-clear blue water of the enormous swimming pool sparkled below us as we sat down, and Kit popped the cork. The beach was closer to us than it had been last night, stretching out beyond the gates at the end of the path that curled along the side of the lower gardens.

“What did Penn call you?” I asked, taking the glass she handed me. “Thank you.”

Her brows knitted slightly as she tried to remember, “Oh, Columbia? Was that it?”

“Yes, what was that?”

“It’s what Murray calls me. I was at Columbia and the boys were at Harvard; Harvard was my back-up school,”

I blinked in surprise at Harvard being anyone’s back-up.

She pointed at my face while sipping her champagne. “Yes, that’s exactly the expression Murray had too. Now come on, I want to hear all about what the boys were like at school. Reigning terror no doubt.”

I actually giggled at that one, a noise that hadn’t left my lips – ever - in my entire life. “Wow, Rafe really hasn’t told you anything about me at all has he?”

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