A soft smile spread across her face. “Is that your way of telling me you’re falling in love with me, too?”
I heard the hesitation in her voice, the vulnerability behind her words. Bending my face closer to hers, I whispered, “No, this is: I’m falling in love with you, sweetheart, and there’s not a damn thing you can do to keep me away.”
I didn’t miss the slight intake of breath or the rapid rise and fall of her chest as her breathing picked up. And I sure as hell didn’t miss the way her body pressed up into mine as she murmured, “Fucking hell, Donovan, why did we waste all that time?”
My thoughts exactly, but fuck, life was a mysterious bitch and worked her shit out in her own good time. Thank fuck we got here in the end.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Layla
I stood in the morning sunshine and looked up into Donovan’s eyes as he murmured his goodbye. Wrapping my arms around him, I grumbled, “I don’t know why you can’t take the day off and spend it with me?” Last night had been amazing, and I just wanted to spend the day in bed with him. I didn’t want to let him go.
Trying to extricate himself from me, he said, “Baby, we’ve been over this. You’re not safe until I deal with Phil, and I need to do that today.”
I pouted. So unlike me, but he brought all kinds of weird behaviour out in me. Fuck, was that what they meant when they said women did crazy shit when they were in love? I’d never really loved a man before, but I knew what I felt for Donovan was off the charts crazy. “Send him to me and I’ll deal with him, and then you and I can get back to what we do best.”
His heated gaze shot more desire through me. God, this man was too much. When his hand slid around me a second later and yanked me to him, I wanted to climb up into his arms and force him to change his plans.
With his hand planted firmly on my ass, he growled into my ear, “Get ready, sweetheart, ‘cause once I’ve sorted this shit out, I’m coming back here to fuck you until you can’t walk properly.”
My legs swayed under me at his promise. I grasped his face and said, “You don’t play fair.”
“You wanna tease me like you just did, you’ll have to learn to play my way,” he growled again.
Oh fuck, I wanted more than anything to learn to play his way.
With one last long stare, he let me go and walked to his car. He opened the door, looked back at me, slid his aviators on and then got in. As he drove off, I decided today would suck while I waited for him to return.
***
Four hours later, Sharon and I were knee-deep in shit while we dealt with crappy customers, missing stock deliveries, and an air conditioner that had decided to pack it in. I’d just finished a phone call with one of our suppliers when she turned to me and said, “Jesus, some of these customers need a swift kick up the ass.”
I totally felt her. I sagged against the bar and wiped the sweat from my forehead. It was a miserably hot day today, and with one air conditioner down, the heat had filled the room to the point of irritation. Nodding at her, I said, “Some of them need more than that.”
She grinned at me and poured us both a glass of water. Passing it to me, she said, “Regardless of shitty customers, I’m so thankful to you for giving me this job.”
I gulped some of the water down and considered what she’d said. “Donovan hasn’t told me much about you, but he has told me a lot about his father. I got the impression he thinks you might leave him.”
She stared at me, and I wasn’t sure if I’d overstepped a boundary or not. Sharon was a hard woman to read and held her cards close to her chest, but I’d sensed a vulnerability in her that led me to think she might need someone to talk to. “I am going to leave him. I told him this morning I was done.”
“Good for you, babe.” I’d really grown to like Sharon while she’d been working here, and this piece of news pleased me to no end. Marcus Cole didn’t deserve the love of a woman like Sharon.
She blew out a long breath. “God, that was a hard decision to finally make. After all these years together, it’s hard to walk away from someone you love even though you know you shouldn’t.”
“Why do we do that?”
She frowned. “Do what?”
“Love men who don’t deserve it? I watch women do it all the time, and it baffles me.”
“I think, for me, Marcus was my first love. I’ve never known anyone else, never had anything to compare him to. And then you add in two kids, a lifetime of memories and everything in my life connected to him . . . that’s hard to walk away from. Especially at my age, where you wonder if you’re too old to find someone else.”
“I don’t think you’re ever too old, and I also believe a woman is better off on her own than letting a man treat her like shit.”
“Yeah, I can see that now, but you’ve got to remember, I grew up in the club lifestyle and all I’ve ever known is women who put up with this kind of shit.”