Page 11 of Give Me More
Grace wiped her hands against each other, sending remnants of powdered sugar floating in the air. As if she hadn’t thought that would happen, she reached for a napkin.
“At least your mom isn’t sending text messages to you, the only unattached child, saying things like ‘the clock’s ticking.’ I got one just a couple days ago saying ‘maybe you’ll meet a hot guy on the beach. You don’t need a marriage certificate to have a baby.’ Can you believe that? Now she’s even telling me to get pregnant before I get married. What parent does that?”
Obviously, Videtta Hopkins did. And apparently, Grace didn’t like it. RJ didn’t like how this conversation was going. The tendrils of resentment mixed with unsettling desire created an enormous weight in his chest. He took a gulp of his significantly cooled-down coffee and prayed it would relieve some of the pressure. It had been an awfully long time since he’d thought about children, or rather the ones he wouldn’t have because he’d decided not to ever let another woman into his heart again. And unlike Grace’s mother’s stance on reproducing, if the woman wasn’t in his heart, she certainly wasn’t having his baby.
“How’d you respond to her?” Again, this wasn’t the question RJ really wanted to ask.
What he wanted to know was so simple—why the hell had she walked away from him and the love he thought they’d shared? But really, what did it matter now? He knew that some people needed closure for things like this, but not him. Nothing she said was going to change the fact that his heart had been broken and he could never trust giving it to anyone, especially Grace, again. Nobody knew how much strength it had taken for him to move past her leaving before; if it happened again, he wasn’t certain he’d survive.
She shrugged. “I ignored the text. Which I know really pisses her off and maybe borders on disrespect or some other parental rule, but I just can’t think about any of that right now. I’ve got other stuff on my mind.” She put her hands on her keyboard then and tapped a few keys. “Speaking of which, I know you really came here to talk about my meeting with Veronica, so let’s get to it.”
He sat there for a few moments while he presumed she pulled up her notes up. The war going on within him—one side warning he keep a safe distance, the other edging him toward her like a magnet, drawing them together in spite of everything that made sense—continued until he finally sighed wearily. Then he stood and walked over to her. She jumped when he touched a finger to the corner of her lip.
“You missed a spot,” he said softly, and wiped the powdered sugar away.
Well, damn. Moments after that very intimate touch, Grace’s voice was surprisingly steady as she briefed him on her notes. She silently commended herself for not leaping across the table to straddle him. She’d wanted to. Oh man, had she wanted to.
She’d spent the twenty minutes after he’d sent her that text in the bathroom, brushing her teeth and running her fingers through her hair. She’d slept in a tank top and panties and hadn’t yet decided what her outfit for the day was going to be. The shorts and T-shirt were on the top of the pile in the drawer so they were it. And he still hadn’t mentioned yesterday’s kiss.
Neither had she, for that matter. The memory was startlingly clear in her mind and the desire between them was very much still a real thing. Case in point, the way her pussy had throbbed the second his finger touched her lip and the subsequent dampness of her panties thereafter. It was insane, yet undeniable—she still wanted RJ.
At least, she wanted to have sex with him. Anything beyond that was out of the question. That ship had long since sailed and there was no going back. Not that she wanted to anyway. This current situation reminded her that walking away from RJ had been the right decision. The Gold and King families had rented an entire resort for a wedding. Reporters and fashion bloggers all over the world were clamoring for any clue about this very event because they desperately wanted to be the ones reporting on what promised to be a glamourous spectacle. Not because they wanted to see Riley and Chaz commit to their love and each other. No, that was buried beneath the prestige of being in this family, the same way she knew she would’ve been.
“So Veronica wants you to write her book?” RJ’s brow wrinkled, his eyes narrowed.
“Is that all you got from my notes?”
He angled his head and frowned. “It was the biggest bullet point, yeah. Are you kidding me?”
Now the cursing came.
“What’s she thinking?”
“If you ask me, she’s thinking that it’s just a matter of time before she becomes the ex-Mrs. Tobias King number eight and she’s trying to get her ducks in a row.”
In addition to the feud with Ron, Tobias was known for his many marriages. And Veronica, who’d been married twice before herself, was known for burying her husbands and keeping control of their estate. So Grace figured the two were in a standoff of sorts and in the meantime having “hot monkey sex,” as Veronica had described it.
“It’s unacceptable, and she definitely left that little detail out of the conversation I had with her last night after dinner,” RJ said.
This piqued Grace’s interest because she hadn’t really thought RJ was going to discuss the article with Veronica. She probably should’ve, though. RJ wasn’t known to mince words with anyone, for any reason. And as ticked off as he’d been about this story combined with Veronica’s open invitation to Grace, it made sense that he’d want a confrontation with the woman.
“What’d she say to you?” Grace opened a new document and kept her fingers poised over the keys, ready to take notes.
RJ’s brief hesitation and the leery look on his face she spied when she lifted her gaze from the screen said he noticed her actions and wasn’t sure about proceeding.
“Look, last night I had a thought.” She cleared her throat and sat up straighter. “What if I tell the story of Ron and Tobias, pioneers and visionaries reshaping the fashion industry. I start from the beginning—the best friends throughout grade school and college, the grooming of two dynamic leaders at the hand of Ronald Gold Sr. There’s a stumble in their path that ultimately spurs them on to the top of their industry. What were the steps they took to get there?” She’d started toying with the idea after she’d thought about what happened between her and RJ in the cabana for the billionth time yesterday.
He rubbed a finger over his chin, the hair of his goatee causing a rasping sound. “Focus more on everything they did to get where they are instead of the cause of the feud.”
Well, put that way it sounded like she’d gloss right over the feud, which wasn’t totally her goal. “The feud wouldn’t be the focus of the story. Your father and Tobias would be. The families they both built and oftentimes put before their fashion houses. The secret to their success. How these two, who were once best friends, became enemies and competitors, the best of the best, and now are becoming family once again.”
That sounded really good. She hurried to type it before she forgot the exact wording.
“Veronica said she didn’t see a problem inviting you here because the media would write what they wanted about us otherwise. This way, we had a semblance of control over the dialogue.” He made a sound that had her looking up at him. “I guess what she said makes sense.”
Grace agreed. “I mean, you’re sitting here right now sharing your conversation with her and I’m sharing my ideas for the story with you.”
“That doesn’t mean I have control over what you write.”
