“I can still get it myself,” he murmured. “Sit back down. Finish yours. I’ll get mine. We’ll take a moment to breathe, you in an effort to forgive me, me to reflect on my mistakes so I don’t repeat them. Then I’ll make us breakfast. We’ll get dressed. And we’ll go collect your things.”
She still wasn’t ready to let it go, and she shared it again, this time by saying, “I’m not going to break my promise, and it’s insulting your first thought on our first morning was that I did.”
“Then I apologize for that too,” he returned smoothly.
“I’m so grateful you gave me this opportunity to have beauty, Stellan,” she said drily, and sarcastically. “I can already see the path and how bright and cheery being happy is going to be.”
“Please, honey, don’t say anything more,” he whispered. “I surprised you when you were doing something private. I insulted you. And before all that, I doubted you. It’s already bad enough. Don’t make it worse.”
She looked to the French doors for a moment before she heaved a breath.
“Get your coffee,” she murmured, pulling lightly on her arm still in his hold.
He let her go but otherwise didn’t move a muscle.
She headed directly back to the chair she’d vacated.
Stellan waited until she sat, and only then did he move back into the house.
He could well imagine Susan’s response to all of that and decided that the sister of his heart who’d replaced the sister of his blood (who’d also had his heart) might be a woman he told everything.
However he would not be sharing this clusterfuck of first-thing-in-the-morning, first-day-of-what-could-be-the-rest-of-their-lives-together, colossal fuckups.
He made his coffee, took it out to the pool deck, and noted the pad was still closed, sitting on the table. She’d retrieved her pen, and it was resting on the sketchbook. And she was seated as she had been, curled into herself, now likely unconsciously due to self-protection, the fingers of both hands wrapped around her coffee held up to her chest, her eyes glued to the pool.
He sat at the angle beside her, not opposite her, stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles.
He sipped, openly studying her.
And he did this with an emerging feeling of shock.
This shock came from the realization that in the entirety of his life he’d wanted precisely six things that he could not buy, broker, maneuver or simply take.
His father not being a weak, pompous, self-important, self-indulgent, supercilious, useless mound of flesh.
Segueing from that, his father not marrying his second wife. A woman who’d had a brother who’d hidden the monster within from everyone but Stellan, who’d hated him on sight, and Silie, who’d done the same and thus avoided him like the plague that he was, only to be raped by him when left alone in the house together.
Segueing from that, his sister, unable to deal with the fact that their father would not allow any form of justice to be served, for if it got out he’d allowed a monster in his own home, a monster who’d torn the innocence and light and beauty from a fourteen-year-old girl who’d never even been kissed, he’d never live it down, so she’d made the momentous and terrible decision to end her own life.
Fortunately independent of that, he’d wanted Amélie.
And independent of that, Simone.
And finally, he wanted very badly to thoroughly peruse what was inside that sketchpad.
Simone broke the silence, mercifully alleviating the pain forming in his chest that felt like someone had parked a building on it.
“In case you didn’t notice, I’ll share I can be a screaming bitch when my feelings are hurt and hold on to that a lot longer than I should, not to mention, I strike out when I’m feeling cornered.”
He fought back his relieved smile and murmured, “That was noticed, darling.”
“And I don’t want you to go to my place because it’s a pit,” she declared, talking to the pool, as she had when she broke their silence. “And not a pit because I’m a slob, which I am, but because my place is just simply a pit, so it’s not worth being tidy but also because my place is such a pit, I don’t spend a lot of time there in order to actually tidy.”
“I have a housekeeper,” he reminded her.
“This I know,” she muttered.
“You can be as much of a slob as you like. Margarita will, of course, ride your ass about it, as she does mine every morning she shows and finds my clothes on the floor or my towels in the sink. I just ignore her, and she’s glad I do because if I wished to pick up after myself, she wouldn’t have the ass of another member of her brood to ride.”
“I doubt very seriously she’ll like picking up some random woman’s clothes off the floor, Stellan.”
“Considering no random women have slept in my bed and she’ll know what it means when a very much not random woman is sharing my home with me, you’d be wrong, Simone.”
That earned him her eyes. “You’ve never had a woman in your bed?”
“I didn’t say that,” he replied. “They’ve never slept in my bed.”
Her lips twitched.
“They’ve been fucked there,” he elaborated.
“I’m sure,” she mumbled to her coffee at her lips before she took a sip.
“I must admit, darling, they’ve also been tied there,” he shared carefully.
“I’m sure about that too,” she returned, sounding unfazed at having that information.
“And I’ll allow there might have been a catnap or two,” he muttered.
Her eyes twinkled.
Christ.
It was now, in his shirt, by his pool, eyes twinkling, that she’d never looked more shatteringly pretty.
“But I’m afraid, as ungentlemanly as it may seem, they’re gone before morning,” he finished.
“I feel like you should award me a crown with a pink satin sash placed over my chest with the glittery words ‘She made it until morning.’”
“My sashes, my darling, are black, they’re silk, not even a hint of glitter, and I’m relatively certain I could be creative with your enchanting chest, but their more frequent uses are at wrists and ankles.”
She shook her head, now fully smiling, took another drink from her coffee, and looked back at his pool.
“I don’t care where you live, Sixx, because you live here for now,” he said quietly. “And if my home says I’m wealthy and have exceptional taste in interior designers, your home will say you lead an interesting life and you don’t spend it doing things that are not only uninteresting but are a waste of your time.”
“Stellan Lange, will of steel, demonstrated even when he’s determined to see the best in me,” she remarked.
“This is true, with one alteration, that being when I’m determined to introduce that to you.”
Her gaze slid to him and that …
Now that …
The warmth and gratitude and sweetness.
Stunning.
“Shall I make us breakfast, darling?” he asked quietly.
“You’re criminally gorgeous, insanely wealthy, excruciatingly generous, irritatingly intelligent, and you can cook?”
“Are you beginning to understand my frustration at you not jumping at my offer in front of the fire last night?”
“I forgot ridiculously arrogant.”
He burst out laughing, did it rising from his chair, bending to her and catching her behind the head.
He kissed the top and straightened, letting her go but dipping his chin to look into her eyes.
“Eggs and toast or pancakes?” he asked.
“Surprise me,” she answered.
He smiled.
Her gaze fell to it and it came back.
Warmth and gratitude and sweetness.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
“I’ll be here,” she replied.
Yes.
Yes, she would.
Stellan moved into his house, for the first time that morning breathing easy.
*
“I told you it was a dump.”
Stellan had closed the door to her dark, cramped studio that was not cramped due to Simone having a good deal of belongings, but cramped because, no matter how many belongings she had, it would be cramped because it was miniscule.
And he stood there marveling at the fact it also smelled dank when it hadn’t rained in Phoenix for over four months.
Dillinger had given him her address, of course, and he’d noted it, of course, but the south side of Phoenix was not his stomping grounds.