Page 55 of Seven Nights

“Would you let me finish a fucking sentence for a change, Kate?” Wrapping his arms around me, Griffin glares down at my face. “Fuck paternity suits and contracts and any other kind of damn agreement. I want you. I want to give you everything you're entitled to as my equal—as my wife.”

Cold numbness spreads through my body. Did Griffin Montgomery just propose marriage?

I tilt my head back, trying to read his expression. “What are you saying?”

“I love you, Kate. That's what I'm saying.” He gives a nervous lick of his lips, his entire face contorting with a moment's anguish. He sways, closes his eyes and holds me more tightly. “And it's a first for me. Not just the words, but the feeling. I'm crazy about you.”

Dumbfounded, I just stare up at him. He finds me like this when he opens his eyes again. He touches his forehead to mine.

“Baby, you're not saying anything.”

“You don't know me.” Straining away from him, I shake my head. Yeah, I’m pretty damn sure I’m in love with him, but I doubt my sanity. Now that he has said he loves me, I doubt his sanity, too.

“I don't know you,” I tell him. “Not really.”

A few seconds skip by and then he nods.

“So get to know me. That was what you wanted before—me opening up, communicating. Right?”

“How?” I say it out loud, but it’s more a question to myself. His home base is Chicago but his many business holdings force him to be a frequent world travel. I am locked into Detroit. I work nights—his nights are for play.

“Take the directorship—”

“No.”

I shake my head hard enough to hurt myself. Griffin’s arms fall to his sides. A cold chill creeps down his face as he braces for my rejection. He takes half a step back, but it feels like a mile to me.

“I can't right now.” Closing the distance between us, I place my palm against his cheek. I would give almost anything to keep him from retreating, but we can’t have a future together when my present is so muddled. “I'm just saying I have to get to know you independently—not with this between us.”

Pausing, I gesture at the table and documents behind me.

His expression thaws, but a shadow of wariness remains.

“Trust me,” I coax.

I press my cheek against his broad chest and listen to the heart beating beneath. A faint tremor runs through me because I do not what will happen next. Then Griffin relaxes. His arms fold around me and, for this moment at least, everything is perfect.

Katelyn

I stareup at a stucco ceiling, my head on a feather pillow. My cellphone rests against one collarbone. The vibration of Griffin’s voice through the speaker penetrates the thin layer of skin and burrows down into the red marrow.

For five weeks, we have talked to one another every day. Our sleep schedules make it difficult. He is either getting ready for bed when I am getting ready for work or the reverse. Sometimes we video chat. Because I grow weak looking at him, I try to keep those to a minimum.

“You’re drifting, Kate.”

There is a gentle, correcting tease to his tone. Closing my eyes, I can see the way his mouth shapes each word. Picturing the pout of the Y brings my nipples to a sharp point.

“What did I miss?” I ask, the purr in my voice broadcasting that he was in my thoughts even if I zoned out on what he was saying.

“I asked why you didn't change your last name, given the way you feel about your father.”

The question is a carryover from our last conversation. The dossier he had his security team work up on me before our first meeting so many months ago gave him the basic details. My mother’s competency proceedings were sealed, but there was the docket number, the party names and the hearing date that coincided with me leaving the Olympic trials before final selections were made official. Then there are the changes in the property records from the deal I forced with my father to ensure someplace for me to care for my mom and an allowance to meet our expenses while she was still alive.

I often feel like God gave me all those winning times at the trials so that I would have a bargaining chip to hold against my father. The entire running world wanted to know what the hell happened to Iron Kate. He could either sign the agreement or I would stand in front of a microphone and camera to let everyone know, in complete detail, that Judge Willow, pillar of the community, was a heartless bastard.

“My mother wanted me to keep it,” I answer as old sorrows wash over me. “It was literally her last coherent request…the wind does not break a tree that bends.”

I choke on the memory.

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