Page 42 of Loved

"Okay. Home it is."Home.I pulled the car away from the curb. I think it had been a long time since anywhere had felt like home. But I was pretty sure that anywhere we went would feel like home. As long as she was beside me.

***

When we pulled up to my apartment building, there were even more news vans parked outside. My hands tightened on the wheel. Why couldn’t they just leave us in peace?

People with microphones jumped out of the vans as I turned into the parking garage. I sped up to the third floor and pulled my car into an empty spot.

"Maybe we should've gone somewhere else," I said. I really didn’t want her to be subjected to all this. But we’d be recognized together anywhere now.

"It's fine. They'll probably leave soon. Aren't celebrities always doing weird stuff? Kanye West and T-Swizzle will get into a knife fight or something and the paparazzi will move on. Especially if you don't give them anything good to talk about."

I laughed and stepped out of the car. I opened her door and grabbed her hand, escorting her to the elevator. "You do know that I'm not a celebrity, right?"

"Right. You're just a super sexy, eligible bachelor worth 2.8 billion dollars. You're not a celebrity at all."

We stepped into the elevator.

"Yeah, I'm not worth 2.8 billion dollars." I pressed the button for my floor.

"Oh, right." She said it in a way that made it seem like she thought I had a lot less than that. Maybe because of the divorce? But that wasn’t the case at all. I was really good at investing. And I owed some credit to Mason and Matt’s father too. Mr. Caldwell handled most of that for me with his firm.

I smiled down at her. "I'm worth way more than that." I slid my card into the reader and stepped into the apartment.

"You have more than 2.8 billion dollars? That's insane, James. What on earth are you going to do with all that..." She stopped talking when she saw a huge box in the middle of the living room floor.

I smiled. The new T.V. I’d had Ian grab was wrapped in blue wrapping paper with a huge bow on top. There was a small box sitting on top of it, also in blue wrapping paper with a matching blue bow.

"Oh." I smiled. "I almost forgot about that. Apparently I'm going to buy you gifts with it." I walked into the living room. But Penny just stood in the foyer.

"James, you already got me a birthday gift. I don't need anything."

"It's not for your birthday. Besides, it's kind of for both of us." I smiled at her.

"But..."

She was terrible at receiving gifts. "Oh come on. You don't even know what it is yet. If you don't like it, I'll take it back. Just open it."

She walked over to me. "I don't want you to spend your money on me. I just want to spend time with you." She stood on her tiptoes and ran her hands through my hair.

"I know." I placed a soft kiss against her lips. It was one of the many reasons why I’d fallen in love with her. I picked up the small present and tapped my hand on the large box. "Please just open it." I really wanted her to like it. And she’d just told me she wanted to snuggle up for the rest of the night. We could do that on the couch instead of the bed. This was going to be fun.

She finally looked excited too as she grabbed one of the folds in the wrapping paper and pulled it down. She pulled the paper as she walked from one side of the present to the other, and then pushed the paper out of the way.

"Is this a T.V.?" She smiled up at me.

"Well, after this morning I wasn't really sure if you'd want to go to classes the next few days. So if we're camped out here, I thought you'd like to have a T.V. to watch. You seem to love T.V."And I don’t want a cat.

She laughed. "That's incredibly sweet. But you know, I have a T.V. already. I can just bring it here. Melissa won't mind. She's always at Josh's anyway."

"Yeah, but it's tiny."

"There's nothing wrong with my T.V." She laughed.

Yes there was. The people on it were the size of my pinky finger. "I was going to hang it over there.” I pointed to the wall across from my sofa. "And I measured and this T.V. is the perfect size for the distance between the couch and the wall. And since Rob is coming, I wanted something to watch the Giants games on. So..."

"You're adorable,” said Penny. “I'm definitely not going to make you take back that T.V. Clearly you want it."

"But do you like it?"

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