I was behind the ball and needed to catch up if I could figure out how to be the best help to Lizzie moving forward.
7
Lizzie
I groaned, waking from sleep and stretching. Somehow, I was tangled in a thick gray blanket and a pillow from my bed was beneath my cheek. I sat up, wiping my face, and flinched when I saw Garrett.
He was here. It took me another second to swipe the grogginess from my brain. He was here. And I’d fallen asleep in his lap. At some point he’d moved, but I didn’t wake with the couch pillow beneath my cheek like I’d fallen asleep with. At some point, he’d made the effort to go to my room and grab the one I always used. Plus my big blanket from the back of the couch.
He’d always been like this. Always knew exactly what I needed and then he didn’t hesitate to make it happen. I was the idiot who didn’t see it for far too long.
“Hey.” My voice was still thick with sleep and my gaze dropped to where his brows were pinched, a book held in his hand with more draped over his lap.
The rest I’d left out were strewn about the coffee table in front of me. Starting Your Own Business. Build Your Empire Your Way. Hell, he’d even opened my file folder and had spreadsheets laying out.
He waved the back in his hand in my direction. Entrepreneurship 101. “What’s this?”
His tone was too tight to be happy or curious. The flat line of his lips a hint of his frustration.
My stomach rolled, and not because I hated that look on his face.
“Excuse me,” I mumbled, and his quiet but fierce curse followed me as I hurried off the couch and into the bathroom. I made it to my knees in front of the toilet before the little bean inside of me woke up and gave me its standard hello. I’d rather think of someone trying to reassure me they were okay than moaning about being so damn sick.
Since I’d barely had anything in my stomach, it didn’t last long. By the time I splashed water on my face and gave my teeth a quick brush, I felt a hundred times better.
I opened the door to the bathroom and found Garrett in the kitchen. He was plating up crackers, the kind I’d asked him to get me, and then declined, before I fell asleep. On it were chunks of cheese from my fridge and some peanut butter. I’d be amazed that he knew me so well except we’d had many arguments about whether peanut butter or cheese went better with crackers.
“No banana this time?” I teased and hid my smile as his shoulders fell.
He was so damn protective. And not only that, he had initiative. He didn’t even ask if I needed anything, just got to work trying to figure out what might help. Maybe it was because he grew up without a father and was the man of the house well before he should have been, but this trait was, hands down, one of his sexiest.
“Will this work?” he asked, sliding the plate across from him at the island. “You’ll have to tell me what you can eat.”
“I can take care of myself, you know.”
“Yeah, but now you don’t have to, at least not all the time.” At the reminder of the issues we still needed to figure out, his expression blanked. He turned to the fridge, grabbing a bottled water from it. “Do you need more pop?”
“Please. Actually, how long did I sleep?”
“Not long. An hour I guess.”
“I’ll get the one from the living room then.” I went to slide off my stool but he stopped me, holding out his hand.
“I’ll get it. You sit.” He pointed a finger at my plated food. “Eat.”
I was munching on the crackers when he returned, although munch was a stretch. Nibbling it in mouse-sized bites was closer to reality.
“I didn’t mean to snoop,” he started. “I saw the baby books on top and figured I’d get caught up with what you’re reading and going through, but then I saw the business books.”
“I’m not mad at you for being curious.” I took a sip of my ginger ale and waited to make sure it’d stay down before taking a larger bite of the cracker. “I’ve been considering doing something different.”
Vulnerability was never something I excelled at. Confidence? Sass? Charisma? All that I had in spades. I commanded boardrooms full of men and earned their respect in a way they didn’t call me a bitch behind my back. I spoke in front of full auditoriums, filled with a corporation’s employees while I explained changes to their retirement accounts, enrollment processes and based on their age and agendas, how they should be funding their plans. I could gain control of a party and crowd with the snap of my fingers and I could be the best smart aleck, but vulnerability? I preferred to hide that deep behind my intelligence and confidence, thank you very much.
Being this way with Garrett? It was a million times harder. Ridiculous since he was the only man I’d ever truly trusted outside my dad.
His fingers tapped impatiently on the countertop. Twisted veins popped from beneath his muscular arms and the backs of his hands as he held himself back from pushing me. He’d learned long ago I went at my own pace and that pace quickly alternated between a high-speed chase and a turtle crawl.
I took a bite of another cracker. Washed it down with ginger ale. Across from me, his irritation pulsed like a quickly growing storm. One of those that whipped down the street and wiped out summer humidity as quickly as it appeared.
I could do this. I had to do this. If anything, I owed him.
Blinking, I lifted my head, barely able to meet his dark expression. “I was thinking of starting my own company. Maybe moving to individual financial planning for a while, starting over.” I chewed my bottom lip. Had it gotten hot in here? I grabbed the front of my shirt and shook it to cool me down. It was hard to tell with the way my body temperature could swing like a chimpanzee on a tree, back and forth from frigid to burning these days.
“Where?” he asked, and it came out on a rasp, so rough I barely heard him.
I shoved my tongue to my teeth, tried to settle the nerves prickling my skin and on a rushed exhale, answered, “Vegas.”
His lids closed, his lashes fanned out in a way beauty products couldn’t replicate with the best of their efforts and his shoulders slumped.
“You were thinking of starting a business in Vegas?” He lifted his head torturously slow and all those emotions racketing my body, bouncing around and confusing my libido as well as my stability made my chest ache and my core pulse.
“I decided as soon as I found out I was pregnant. Yeah.”
“You were moving there for me.”
For us, but… “Yeah.”
Something beautiful and heavy swirled between us, something so real, so tangible, if I’d lifted my hand it was entirely possible to feel the way he loved me even though he hadn’t moved a single inch.
Garrett pushed off the counter and strolled to me with panther-like grace and stealth, but there was nothing peaceful or graceful in the hard etched lines digging into his features.
He reached me and I swiveled on my stool before he pressed a leg between my knees and stepped in between my spread legs. It was the only place we touched. His denim covered legs pressed to my inner thighs and still it felt like he was making love to me with his hands and his mouth and the rest of him.
“What stopped you?” His voice was full of grit and emotion, and I flinched.