Except we weren’t babysitters. We were parents. We were supposed to be responsible.
I lifted my head to look behind Edward. “Is she watching us? I swear she’s watching us.” Really, she was still captivated with her reflection.
“Of course she is,” he said, not bothering to look. “She adores us. We’re the most absolutely fabulous people in her world.”
He added two fingers on his next thrust, and I had to grip my nails into Edward’s shoulder to keep from crying out. “Is it bad, though? If she sees this?”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No! No.” She couldn’t really see anything anyway. His body blocked her view, and she wasn’t even looking, and if she did, she wouldn’t possibly understand, and with all that self-reassurance, I was able to relax and let the orgasm wind itself up, tighter, tighter. “I’m almost there,” I panted, my eyes closed. “Almost—”
With no warning, the pleasure cut off abruptly. Edward pulled his hand from my panties and sat back against the bench, a smirk on his face.
I sat up, propping myself on my elbows. “Why did you stop?”
“Seriously, Celia. The baby is right there.” When I glared, he said, “It was supposed to be a punishment.” Then he smugly brought a finger to his mouth—a finger that had just been inside me—and sucked it clean.
I was wound up and blue-balled and I’d never been so happy. “I hate you a little bit right now.”
“I always love you best when you hate me a little bit.” He missed my scowl because he stood then and walked over to the desk. When he returned, he had an unmarked envelope in his hand. “I have something for you.”
“What is it?”
“Open it.”
I took the envelope from him, and sat up to open it while Edward attended to Cleo, who had started to fuss intermittently between her coos. It wasn’t sealed, so all I had to do was lift up the flap to pull out the folded document. It was several pages of legalese. A contract of sorts. Or an option to buy, I realized as I skimmed through it, my pulse ticking up when I saw Hudson’s name and my name and Werner Media mentioned.
“Edward!” I looked up at him, a magnificent god with the most beautiful baby cuddled against his chest. “He’s selling us the shares?”
“He’s selling us the shares.”
“Oh, my God. He’s selling us the shares.” I read on, scanning for a catch, and finding none.
Then suspicion kicked in. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. This was all you. Hudson had it prepared before I met with him.” He took his place again on the floor, propping Cleo up in his lap.
My ovaries would have burst if I wasn’t so distracted by the document in my hand and the man who undoubtedly coerced Hudson in some terrible way to get it.
“You met with him—?”
“Last night,” he said, misinterpreting what I was after, though I hadn’t known that bit either.
“...and?”
“And he gave me that envelope. Which I have now given to you.”
“You didn’t…?” I shook my head in frustration, trying to fit the picture together. “I don’t understand. Are you saying it’s over?”
“We could counter, if you like. Demand the majority instead of just one percent.”
I stared at him, then stared at the paper in my hand. Then stared again at him who was too preoccupied with playing peekaboo with Cleo to notice how intensely I was staring.
I just…
I was shocked, to say the least. Edward had put Hudson on his Revenge list at least three years before. That was when he’d mentioned it to me, anyway. He’d likely wanted to go after him the minute he’d first read my journals, which had been at least six months before that. We’d fought over his desire for vengeance. I’d nearly given up a chance at having Cleo because of it. It was so much a part of our marriage, it was almost a foundation stone.
Which was a shitty way to look at it. I wondered what our relationship might be like without this battle between us. We’d still find something to fight about, I wasn’t worried about that. But maybe there’d be more of the good. Less of the jealousy. Less of the spite.
I looked again at the document. Hudson had offered to sell us enough shares to make us equal. We could probably announce it publicly, even, without the detail that Hudson had owned the majority before instead of the other way around. We could once again be partners, on equal ground.
Like Edward and I were partners, but also not like that at all.
“I’m happy with this,” I said, setting the document down on the bench out of Cleo’s reach.
“Then I am too.”
“Okay,” I said as I scooted up next to him so our shoulders touched. It was time to feed Cleo. She wasn’t complaining too much, but she was rooting around on Edward’s chest.
Except I was still stuck on my husband’s beef with Hudson. I couldn’t believe Edward was able to let it go. He never let anything go. Maybe he was still planning to ruin him behind my back. Or maybe he’d already done something he didn’t want to tell me, which, in either case, would mean I was the one who should let it go, because I definitely didn’t want to keep fighting about Hudson Pierce for the rest of our lives, and whether it was true or not, it was a gift to believe it was done.
But I could never do what I should. “And nothing else?” I asked. “You really aren’t going after him?”
“I’m really not. I realized it wouldn’t get me what I want.”
“What’s that?”
“You.”
My breath caught in my ribs. “You already have me.”
“Exactly.” He shifted Cleo to me so I could breastfeed, but he stayed sitting next to us, his brows furrowed.
I let him be alone with his thoughts and focused on the hungry baby in my arms. When she was settled and latched on, I had my own thoughts to parse through. Edward had basically told me he’d felt second place to Hudson. I, too, had felt second place. Edward tunneled in on his schemes, always seeking retribution from this person or that, looking for something to fill some sort of aching need inside him.
So many times I’d wished I could fill that need. Wished that I was enough. Was that what he was telling me? That I was as much to him as he was to me?
“I’ve been burning for a long time, bird,” he said, breaking the silence. The somber tone immediately grabbed my attention, and before he’d said more I already knew it was something he vitally needed me to hear. “I’ve been completely consumed with rage and spite, these twin fires that ate everything in their pathway. No matter what I fed them, they continued to burn, burn, burn. Everything was fuel, and there I was, throwing flames at whatever I deemed deserving to be burned down.
“Then you came. And while I’d always been facing backward, always looking to the past, you beckoned me toward the future. It took a while to get me to turn all the way around, but now that I am, my back’s to the inferno. If it’s still burning, I don’t see it. All I see in this direction is you. And Cleo. And whomever else you end up forcing me to love. Everything that seemed to matter so much before is just smoke, rising in the distance.”