“Don’t apologise for that. You’re the fix, not the problem. That’s why I’m calling in my slot. I want the afternoon.” Hepaused and I heard something click. His lighter. “I need a boring and domestic afternoon with my girl. You’re going to eat. You’re going to nap on my chest while I pretend to read and secretly just watch you breathe.”
That part hit harder than the implied filth.
“Booty call plus admin. Very efficient.”
“I’m an empire builder, baby. We multitask.”
A small, reluctant smile pulled at my mouth.
I swallowed. “You really need me today?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Something inside me settled at the honesty of it.
“Okay. Then you have me.”
“Say it in my tongue,” he said.
“You’re so demanding.”
“I’m so in love with you. Humour me.”
I rolled onto my back again, staring up at the ornate ceiling. I whispered it back to him.
He made a sound that wasn’t quite a groan.
“I’m going to marry you,” he muttered in Crow, half under his breath, like he’d forgotten I could catch enough now to understand the shape of it.
“I have to get up,” I complained.
“Yes. Out of bed, feet on the floor. I want to hear it.”
“You want to supervise me standing up.”
“I want to know you’re not going to curl back into a ball. Feet. Floor. Now.”
Bossy bastard.
I sighed dramatically, flipped the covers back and swung my legs over the side. “Fine. Feet. Floor. Are you happy?”
“Good girl.” Relief threaded through his voice in a way that made my own shoulders unclench. “Now you go eat. You’ll text me a photo of your breakfast so I know it’s not just coffee. Youhandle your call. Fourteen hundred, you’re coming home to daddy.”
I should have been terrified of how much I loved that.
42
Madeline
I should’ve taken the garden staircase. The thought hit the second I saw my mother standing dead center in the foyer, silk robe, lecturing a maid about the unforgivable crime of slightly-too-yellow roses.
“The brief was cream, not custard,” she snapped, gesturing at the vase.
My heels clicked on the last two steps. My mother’s head snapped toward me.
Her expression changed so fast it gave me whiplash.
“Oh. Madeline. Come here.”
