This was hard. All of this. The whole house was up early again on Wednesday to send Faith off. In truth, we needed to get our asses busy. Southwind wasn't going anywhere unless we put in a lot more elbow grease. It felt like the world had paused a bit when Luke came back, but it really hadn't. We'd just shuffled around priorities, and now we needed to make things start happening.
But seeing Violet wander through the house scrolling through her tablet while wearing Luke's shirt? My heart tripped in my chest. I could just make out a pair of shorts peeking from the bottom, but her legs were bare, those wild colors standing out in the dim morning light.
Violet.
Magenta.
Cyan.
Sure, they blended together into more options where the splashes of ink overlapped, but those three colors were what marked her body, and it got me every time I saw it. I just didn't have a damned clue what to do about it. Fuck, I was so bad with women. I got nervous even thinking about it.
I could handle my mess with Ash. I was doing pretty good talking to Luke. Violet? That was completely different. We'd been friends. Yeah, I'd daydreamed about her a lot, but now that I'd felt her in my arms? I had managed to turn myself into an idiot, and I was convinced I was going to screw this up the same way I had the first time.
That was what I was thinking when she caught me watching. "Cy?"
I just ducked my head and laughed. "Busted."
"Coffee by the pool?" she asked, tilting her head toward the back door.
I knew Ash was already in his office, and I could hear him on the phone with someone. Probably Leslie up in New York. Luke was in the barn, doing his thing. My office was done, so I'd planned to help him, but I had time. So, grabbing my cup, I followed my woman outside, then took the chair furthest from the door. She claimed the opposite side, sitting so she faced the house - and me - then kicked her feet up on the chair across from her.
"I'm waiting for things to fall apart," she said, starting out blunt, just like always.
I nodded. "Southwind or us?"
"Both. You were thinking about us?" she asked, damned near reading my mind.
I dropped my feet on the chair beside her, trying to make my heart stop pounding too hard. That was a fear response, and I knew it. This was my body thinking it knew what came next, and it was wrong. She wasn't leaving me. She was worried about me, and that was completely different.
"Everything good in my life left me thirteen years ago," I told her. "One day, life was perfect. The next, it was gone. Pulled myself back together, then it happened again. It's like a fucking switch, right? Now, when things are good, I start looking for the first hint that it's going to crash."
"And what is it this time?" she asked.
My eyes dropped to the cyan splotch just above her knee. "Why'd you put me on your body?"
"You answer and I will," she said, her perfect lips curling into a smile.
"Faith's struggling. Luke will put her first." I paused to run my tongue across my teeth. "I'm not complaining about that, mind you. Just like I'm not complaining that Ash followed you around the world. I'm just bracing. And now we've got Paul Simmons involved in that case? That man has an agenda, and as much shit as he talks, I don't honestly know what it is."
"I do," she assured me. "He wants money and power. He thinks Southwind is nothing more than an investment. The man can't wrap his mind around charity, so all of this makes no sense to him. He thinks we'll break."
"I might," I admitted. "Vi, this thing we have? It was going great, and then we just put a big pause in it. A pause that could last a long time. I mean, it just went from a couple of weeks to over a month, and when Luke gets custody, it's going to be longer. Never mind that I don't have a fucking clue what we're doing. Any of us. Ash is in love with Luke. I'm in love with you. Luke's figuring it out - "
"He already has," she assured me.
"That he's bi, sure," I agreed. "But dating three people while raising a daughter? Juggling all of that without Meredith trying to say who he loves makes him an unfit parent? Not so much." I sighed. "Then there's you."
"Me?" she asked, seeming honestly surprised.
"You," I said again. "I don't know how to romance you. I don't know how to make you happy. I can be your friend, but us? You're nothing like a man, and my experience with women is limited."
She just chuckled, a little too amused by that. "I promise I don't need roses and chocolates. I don't want diamonds or clothes. Have plenty of both. Cy, you're doing fine."
"I'm a really good old friend," I told her. "I want to get at least a few of those looks that Luke gets. You know, the kind that makes you bite your lip and look away."
So she stood and made her way around the table, just to crawl into my lap. "I'm trying very hard to be a respectable woman," she said, her voice just a little softer.
My hands moved to her waist, stabilizing her as she straddled my legs, sitting on me like she was ready to go for a little ride. Yeah, and my dick knew it too. I tried to ignore it, but she was just so delicate. My fingers damned near touched around her itty-bitty waist. Her long, lean legs were crushed against my hips, those three colors hanging at the edge of my vision.
