Page 112 of Finding Lord Landry

“Mambo No. 5” suddenly blasted through the car speakers, scaring the absolute shit out of me. I clicked to accept the call and didn’t even let Landry get a word in before shouting.

“Are you fucking crazy? Stop changing my ringtone, you asshole! I almost wrecked the car!”

His honeyed voice came through the speakers, calming me against my will. “I’ll be honest. I feel a little bad about that one because I didn’t mean to imply that ‘a little bit of you’ referred to a certain body part. No worries, I’ve discovered a song called ‘My Dick’s Too Big’ by the Saddle Tramps to undo the damage. I can switch it out when you get back to the house. Wait. That still sounds like an insult? Maybe I can?—”

I pushed the button to end the call.

Three seconds later, the ringtone blared again.“A little bit of you makes me your man…”

I jammed the button. “Goddammit, Landry. What do you want? This is honestly worse than the time you made me watch a reality show about artisanal salad crafting, aka twelve hours of my life I’ll never get back.”

“I wish you hadn’t brought that up.”

“It’s triggering, I know,” I agreed.

“Because now I’m craving honey ginger dressing and pepitas.” His voice sounded muffled like he was turning away. “Tully, do you guys have pepitas for a salad?”

I hung up the phone before remembering the damned ringtone.

“A little bit of you makes me your man…”

Now that I was married to a billionaire, I was tempted to throw my phone out the window just to be rid of the nuisance. But I was neither wasteful nor a litterbug.

And I was still, in fact, a phone addict.

“Everett Landry Davencourt,” I gritted after answering the call. “You’re the one who sent me to the store for red peppers and corn because… you know what? No. I’m not getting into another salad argument right now. I am one minute from turning into the ranch. Can you slow your fucking roll and wait for me to get there? I know you’re in a hurry to show me something, but?—”

He cut me off, his voice suddenly sounding serious. “Don’t turn into the ranch. Keep going straight for one more mile and then turn left when you see the old wooden barrel.”

I knew the barrel he meant. It was sun-bleached and weather-worn, sitting crookedly at the end of an abandoned gravel drive. In summer, it sprouted colorful volunteer wildflowers that tossed their heads in the breeze. In winter, it was mostly buried by snowdrifts.

Now that it was very early spring, I imagined it was dark with damp from the recent snowmelt.

“What’s wrong?” I asked quickly, already assessing what our options were if there was an emergency.

“Nothing, promise. I just want to show you something.”

Landry’s calm tone immediately set my mind at ease. Despite the stress of the past two months—of traveling back to New York for work, returning to London for Ed’s retirement dinner, and sitting through hours of legal work with Tully in Majestic to update Landry’s and my estates—I was happy.

Our hope was to split our time between Majestic with the Brotherhood and Lellie and London with Landry’s family. Yes, I would still continue to travel back to New York periodically to oversee Sterling Chase administrative personnel, but my hope was to do most of that work remotely.

Landry had already had my apartment moved in its entirety to his penthouse, which had resulted in a highly inappropriate but admittedly very satisfying Spite Suck in the men’s room at Liberty London while I was picking up a few things for my grandmother’s birthday.

Of course he’d waited until we were in public to tell me about it, which meant, in addition to the semi-public fellatio, I decided he could spring for a Birkin bag for my grandmother after all.

Which reminded me…

“I was thinking about heading down to Boca a few days earlier than we planned,” I began, seeing the low outline of the old barrel in the distance. “My grandmother has a friend named Agatha, who has a nephew?—”

“No.”

I glanced at the phone display on the dash in surprise. “No? No, I can’t travel of my own free will to visit my grandmother a few days early for her birthday? I’m sorry. Since when are you the boss of me?”

And why do I always turn into a petulant teen in an argument with him?

“You’re not going early because I need you here. And whatever your plans were with Ethan, you can forget them.”

My chest lightened as I realized I wasn’t the only petulant teen in this relationship.

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