Page 46 of Holiday at Home
“I shouldn’t—” I start, but he silences me with another kiss, gentler this time.
“You don’t have to do anything,” he murmurs, his forehead pressed to mine. “But if you let me love you tonight, I swear I’ll treat it like the gift it is.”
Something breaks loose in me then. All the fear, all the resistance, washed away by the way he’s looking at me. Not like a man starved, but like a man home at last.
“Simon,” I whisper, the word trembling out of me. “I want this. I never stopped wanting you.”
As I speak, I realize just how true those words are. He’s carried a piece of my heart with him all these years. And now that he’s home, I’m finally whole.
We leave the half-empty glasses behind, hands tangled as he leads me down the hall. The air feels charged, my pulse tripping with every step, every brush of his shoulder against mine.
In the bedroom, the lamplight pools golden across the quilt. Simon pauses, searching my face one last time.
“I told myself,” he begins, voice rough with restraint, “that if I ended up in front of a half-naked Violet again, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. It was all I could do not to take you right there in the foyer this morning.”
I see what he’s doing, giving me a way out.
A way out I don’t want.
“Don’t you dare stop, Simon Holiday.”
With a wry smile, I pull my sweater over my head and let it drop to the floor. Instead of the utilitarian beige bra I had on this morning, I’m wearing black lace.
Simon’s eyes go hooded and hot.
The kiss that follows is urgent, hungry, but still threaded with that same tenderness—as if he knows this isn’t just about desire but about rewriting the ending we never got.
Clothes fall away in the soft shadows. His touch is reverent, mesmerizing, every movement a vow. My laughter tangles with his groan as I pull him closer, and then there’s no space left at all.
The world blurs to sensation—heat, breath, whispered names—and the ache that’s lived inside me for years is replaced by something so much fuller.
When the night finally slows, he gathers me against him, pressing his lips to my temple.
“See?” he whispers. “I’m still your Simon.”
And the part of me that isn’t afraid of tomorrow relaxes for the first time in years.
19
Simon
I wake briefly as Violet slips from bed. She strokes my hair, then leans down to press a kiss to my forehead.
“It’s early, Simon. Go back to sleep.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I mumble, laughing quietly to myself as I close my eyes and drift back into the comfort of dreams.
Who knows how much later, a noise jolts me awake. For a second, I can’t tell what pulled me from sleep, just the echo of movement downstairs, a muffled thud followed by the low hum of voices.
I sit bolt upright in bed. My pulse pounds.
That’s too many people to be Violet.
She woke me earlier when she slipped out of the bakery, kissed my forehead, and whispered something sweet into my ear. So, unless she’s suddenly started a dawn staff meeting, something’s wrong.
Is someone breaking into her house?
I swing my legs out of bed and stumble for my pants. My hands are clumsy with sleep as I jam them on backward, curse, fix them, then look for something—anything—to defend myself. I grab the first thing I find.
