"Gunn," I demanded softly. "Let it go."
"Absolutely fucking not."
To that, Christopher let out a small sigh, turning his attention to Gunner once again.
"Your objection to me is that you think I intend to hurt your friend?" he asked.
"My objection starts with you kidnapping her, covers you imprisoning her, and ends when you take your last breath."
To that, a small smile tugged at Christopher's lips.
I knew both these men.
And they both highly valued loyalty. So as much as Gunner was being a dick to him, Christopher appreciated his loyalty to me.
"What if I told you that it became much more than that?" Christopher asked.
"I'd say brainwashing is a crime."
"I don't think it technically is," I chimed in.
"You're not fucking helping, Mills."
"Do not," Christopher cut in, tone cutting, "speak to her like that."
"I can speak to her however I want to. I've been her coworker and friend for years. You're just some asshole who fucked her over."
I braced myself, almost certain it was going to come to blows, worrying about my ability to break it up when it happened.
I couldn't have been prepared for what actually did happen, though.
For what was said.
Christopher's gaze leveled with Gunner, keeping eye-contact.
"I love her."
He might as well have swung, because Gunner looked like he'd taken a fist to the face. He went slack-jawed. His eyes went big. There was a completely blank look on his face.
Meanwhile, I felt similarly struck.
The words made me physically jolt.
There was a simultaneous soaring in my chest and a dropping in my stomach.
Hope.
And fear.
That he didn't mean it.
Which was ridiculous. Because if there was one thing I had learned in my time with Christopher Adamos, it was that the man was impeccable with his word.
I mean, he had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase me the absurd items I had put on that list. Because he would not go back on his word to get me what I needed. Even if he knew I was screwing with him.
Gunner, however, did not know this about Christopher.
"Don't ever say shit like that when you don't mean it," he demanded.
"He does mean it," I objected.
"Mills," Gunner said, head hanging, shaking side to side, apologetic, likely thinking I was being pathetic.
Maybe I was.
But I was also right.
"He may be a lot of things you don't approve of, Gunn. But he doesn't lie."
Gunner's gaze moved between the two of us, face a mix of confusion, distrust, then, finally, resignation.
"You know what, fine," he said, throwing a hand up. "But I'm not going to stand here for this shit. I'm going outside to call Quin. Right outside," he added as a warning as he walked past Christopher.
"I like him," Christopher decided when he'd left the room.
"Of course you would," I said, rolling my eyes. "I'm sorry you had to come all the way here," I said after an awkward silence that was making my belly start to wobble.
"I'm not," he said, voice a soothing sound, making my gaze lift. "I wanted to see you," he told me, hand raising, tucking my hair behind my ear.
"I thought things were meant to end," I said, unable to help myself, needing him to contradict that comment.
"Always going to and meant to are very different things," he clarified. "Just because I knew you would leave eventually didn't mean I wanted you to. I wish you could have stayed."
"Why didn't you say that?"
"To accomplish what? To make you feel conflicted about leaving? What good would that have done?"
"It would have told me that it was more than a little nothing affair to you."
"It was more than an affair to me," he clarified. "But I couldn't ask you to leave everything else that mattered to you just to spend more time with me. I can't claim to know anything about love, Melody, but I'm pretty sure it isn't meant to be that selfish."
"You didn't have to ask me to give anything up."
"We live in different parts of the world."
"Yes, and in the golden age of the internet."
"I don't want to have a relationship through a phone screen, Melody."
"You don't know what kind of relationship you want, Christopher. Any more than I do. Since this is something new for both of us."
"I know I like having you in my house. In my bed."
"I like being there too. But, I think we are both reasonable adults who can learn to balance life and work and everything else out."
"So, you want to try to do that?" he asked, sounding hopeful.
"I don't know if you've heard, but I am pretty damn good at negotiating a deal so that all parties involved walk away happy."
"I think that might come in handy," he agreed, smiling as his arms went around me.
It did.
I negotiated him right out of his clothes.
And into my bed.
Everything else could wait.
EPILOGUE
Christopher - 3 days
I should have been back in Greece. Keeping an eye on my brother, making sure my business was still running properly.
It had been Quin—of all people—who had said something when he showed up the next day that had changed my mindset.
The point of being the boss is to delegate the workload so you can pursue the things that are important to you.
He'd been right.
I controlled my work the way I did because it was all that I had in the past. Especially once Alexander went away to school.
Now that there was something in my life that I wanted, Quin was right. It was time to trust the men who had been with me the longest, who I knew could be trusted. Especially now that all my men—Laird, Collis, and Marco included—had each had a session with the elusive man by the name of Holden, and I felt confident leaving my businesses, in his hands while I spent some time with Melody. In her house. In her world. With her friends.
In the span of two days, I had met every single person she worked with save for Ranger and his wife Meadow, because they lived further away.
I got to put faces to the stories she'd told me.
I toured around the town she decided to call home, getting an earful about the interesting criminal dynamics to be found there.
I looked through all the knick-knacks scattered around Melody's home, hearing little stories about which countries she'd bought them in, what job she'd been on when she picked them up.
It was much like back in Zagori. But instead of tiptoeing around the budding feelings between us, we were openly facing them, talking about them, analyzing them.
There was nothing sexy about calendars and work schedules, but there was something undeniably exciting in sitting down and hashing out the details on how we were going to make this work. How much time we would spend in New Jersey, how much in Greece, what would happen if she was called on a job.
"You're going to need to relax that jaw," she demanded when she brought up the topic. "Like it or not, I am going to keep working. If you wanted a woman barefoot in your kitchen until the end of time, you shouldn't have decided to catch feelings for me."