Page 6 of Her Possessive Valentine

God, this woman is something else.

She hangs up the phone, and I turn to Vaughn. “Well, aren’t you looking dapper in your monkey suit? If you cut your hair, I might’ve thought you were a real part of this company.”

He scowls at me and opens his mouth to retaliate, but Victor jumps in first. “Haven’t you heard? Our little boy is part of the company. It’s his first day.”

“Of course, I heard. It’s not every day you get to see a caterpillar turn into a beautiful butterfly. But I think it’s time you two spread your wings and flew the hell out of here.” I gesture with my head toward the door. I’m not fully serious. They can stay here as long as they like, but I have to get going.

“Not until we’ve spoken about dinner.” Victor stands, and Vaughn joins him. “Tonight. The Baron Steakhouse. The Valentine boys painting the town red.”

“You were here the whole time.” I look around my desk to make sure I didn’t somehow slip through a wormhole to some different reality. “I’ve got a date, and it’s not with you two.”

Victor smiles while Vaughn’s face sinks.

“Something about this is oddly familiar,” Victor says, but his smile only grows wider.

“Bad timing for one while the other has some fun?” I ask. Not too long ago, he dropped me for a celebration in favor of taking his now-wife to dinner.

If luck’s on my side, I might find myself in a similar position with Vaughn sometime soon.

“All right, well, fine,” Vaughn says, “but you owe me.”

“And I’ll pay it back in spades once you’ve survived a month without crying to Mom that it’s way too hard.” I wink at him while his face grows increasingly red with annoyance.

Little brothers. Always happy to give, but never to receive a good teasing.

“But I’ve gotta get out of here.” I grab a few things off my desk for my meeting and start walking to the door. Both follow me out.

Onto the slog of my day, at least I have something to look forward to once it’s all done.

4

HANA

“You know, a first date at an apartment is usually a red flag,” I say in gentle jest, still trying to make sense of this whole thing. One minute, we’re making jokes in my coffee shop. The next, I find myself a few feet away from Vance’s front door.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m beyond stoked, and he makes me feel safer than I’ve felt in years, but this is all out of the norm for me. My evenings aren’t spent with handsome men in lavish apartments. They’re spent coiled up in bed with a good book or a TV show.

The few times I have gone out in recent years have been with men who were either seeing someone—more often than not, someone who comes to the Hanging Gardens—or duds who think they know what a woman wants. I guess that’s why my jealousy spiked when I saw Vance speaking to another woman. Crazy as it sounds, I wanted a chance. Hell, even just to talk would have sufficed. A moment to bask in his shadow, feel what so many others must feel.

Warm, safe, and happy.

But now that I’ve got it, what do I do? Make stupid jokes about red flags?

Stupid, Hana!I reprimand myself.

“There’s a lot of red,” he says, “but none of it is on a flag.”

His cryptic sentence isn’t helping me figure out how to handle myself. A lot of red? What’s that even supposed to mean?

We stop at his front door, and he slots the key into it. He pauses a moment, draws in a deep, nervous breath, and opens it up.

And it seems I don’t have to wait long to get my answer. Red rose petals line the edges of a red carpet Vance laid out, leading through the entryway and into the living room. At the end of the carpet sits a round table, two chairs on either side, with lit candles in various places across the room to give a low, ambient light.

“Holy shit.” I nearly fall over at the effort Vance put into this. I expected our night would involve a meal, maybe some playful banter, with it ending in his bedroom. Why else would we do it in his apartment, right?

But seeing how Vance pulled out all the stops leaves me speechless, excited, and eager for what the night has in store.

“I hope it isn’t too much.” Vance slides one hand over the small of my back while the other guides me inside. A cold, hand-sized print remains against my skin when he pulls it away. My body’s attempt to tell me it wants more, no doubt.

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