Luca opens the back door for me where Stella and Layla are seated, but before I can climb in, I reach up and give him a kiss on his cheek.
He touches his cheek where my lips just were. “What was that for?”
“For everything you’re doing.” I wink at him. “And to keep that fire going.”
He grins when he hears Landon muttering under his breath. He was watching us in his side-view mirror. Without a word or a greeting to Landon, I slide in beside Stella, who gleefully pushes herself into the middle seat.
“You’re coming with us?” Stella squeals in delight as she buckles her seat belt.
“Yup. I sure am. Your father was kind enough to invite me to join y’all today.”
Luca snickers, and I meet Landon’s scowl in the rearview mirror with a smile.
He can scowl all he wants, but the man had his face between my thighs last night along with what is likely his favorite appendage. If turning into a douchebag asshole is his routine after every time we have sex, then a come to Jesus chat is headed his way right quick.
I am not that girl anymore. The one who lets herself get walked all over.
I know I should hold back. Play the I just got divorced and this is a rebound card. But I can’t make myself swallow that pill. And now I’m mixing metaphors. Just fantastic.
But this man does things to my heart. To my body. To my mind. Is what I’m feeling real or is it just a byproduct of not feeling like this for so long when I was supposed to? Is my heart that desperate for attention that it’ll cling onto the first man to come along who catches its attention, or is Landon the guy I’ve been missing all this time?
I shouldn’t have said yes to today, but a fair appeals to my Texas-girl heart. Especially the one who’s growing to love fall in New England along with the girl sitting beside me and the man sitting in front of me.
“I can eat my weight in fried dough,” Layla informs me, pointing out the fact that she’s wearing pants with an elastic waist.
“That’s me with nachos or anything else Tex-Mex food related. You should see me with Texas chili and cheddar jalapeño cornbread.” I groan. I miss real Texas chili.
“Wow. That sounds so good. Can we make that when I come over again with Stella to do cooking class?”
“Sure. I used to make that once a week at least. It was my daddy’s favorite.”
That’s when I scowl. Daddy. The fuckwad hardly warrants the endearment or title.
I have no idea what to do about my parents and the predicament they thrust both David and me into. I don’t want them to push our marriage and its misery out into the public eye. I’ve already been ignoring calls from press, and that’s without any scandal attached to it. But in this week, my parents, despite their threats, haven’t leaked anything to anyone.
Forty-five minutes later, we park in a grassy lot beside a fleet of other luxury cars right on the side of the entrance to the fair. “Looks like we’re the last to arrive,” Luca notes, and I glance around the lot, spotting a group of people standing off to the side speaking with a man wearing a uniform.
“Did you rent the entire place out?”
Landon shakes his head at me in the rearview mirror. “No. We just made some arrangements, is all.”
Arrangements. Such a billionaire thing to say. It’s funny, I almost forgot that not so insignificant detail. With Landon, it’s easy to forget who his family is because he seems so far removed from all of that. He just strikes you as a wealthy guy.
It makes me like him more. Not because of his money, but because of how he doesn’t flaunt it the way so many do. I ran in circles with millionaires and billionaires, and showing off their wealth is what they did. It’s what they lived for. Like the size of their bank account was their only measure of worth.
Landon doesn’t care about any of that because he has nothing to prove to anyone.
His cool, sophisticated arrogance is a weapon no doubt most are intimidated by. His family’s wealth outrivals nearly everyone’s in the world. And yet he’s this guy. A single dad who built a greenhouse for his daughter, does the dishes himself, and spends time with his family, taking them to the fair. His priorities are life goals so many overlook in the name of greed and power.
The passenger door is opened for me, and Landon takes my hand, helping me out, his intense gaze clinging to my face. He doesn’t say anything. No comment about why I’m here, interloping on his family day. He just stares for a second longer, then shifts his focus over my shoulder to the group of people I was just marveling at, watching as Stella, Layla, and Luca join them.
The door shuts behind me, and I turn, unable to do this with him. I wanted to ruffle his feathers, but now that I’m here, I’m the one rattled. I feel a tug on my pinkie finger, holding me back a step as Landon loops his through mine. My heart gives a quick lurch in my chest as he squeezes.
“Hi,” he says, and I can’t fight the resulting smile at that if I tried. Or the way my insides swoop and swirl like the rides I’m watching in the distance.
“Hi.”
“I should have been the one to invite you. Not Luca. I was afraid it might be pushing things too fast for us, so I didn’t.”
So that’s what that frown in the car was for.
“I can be here for Stella.”
“But what if I want you to be here for me too?”
Damn him. My heart…
“You look beautiful.”
I swallow hard. “Thank you.”
“Will you let me win you a stuffed animal and then make out with you on the Ferris wheel?”
I close my eyes and blow out a controlled breath through my nose. “How could a girl ever turn down an offer like that?”
He gives my pinky another squeeze and releases me.
“Come on, Elle,” Luca calls out. “Come meet the whole fam-dam-ily and our extended group of miscreants. They already know all about you. Good gossip travels quickly. Especially by text.”
“Fucking Luca,” Landon snarls under his breath, but a laugh escapes all the same.
“How are you twins?” I ask as we crunch our way over the mostly dead grass, maintaining a distance I’m desperate to erase.
“In the womb, I got all the brains, looks, and brawn, and he got all the leftovers.”
I laugh again. Landon makes jokes that shouldn’t be funny, but because they come from him and he’s so deadpan about them, they slay me. Or maybe it’s just the man doing that. He gives me a wry smile that lights up his eyes, and just like every time he smiles at me, I want to press my lips to his to know what it feels like against them.
He has the sexiest smile I’ve ever seen.
When I met him—the real Landon, not the fake Luca—he didn’t smile. Or talk this much.
I’ve pretended not to notice, but I do. I make him smile and talk, and he makes me feel special because he shares those things with me. I’m in dangerous territory. I need to listen to my head, but my heart has always had its own agenda. When it loves, it loves wholly and without restraint. It’s always been my greatest weakness, but one day, when the situation is just right, I know it will be my greatest strength.
But today is not that day.
23