Page 369 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
That burble of excitement was still with me on Sunday afternoon as I headed out to the airport. I had hoped beyond hope that Bailey would be coming back soon, but I hadn’t dared to hope that she would only be in Nevada for the weekend. Waking up to a text from her that morning, asking me to pick her up as soon as I was off work that evening, had made my day. I’d spent the entirety of Sunday trying to make things extra perfect around the lodge for her return.
Of course, that was my job anyway, and I doubted that she would notice that I had gone out of my way at all. But it gave me something to do, and anyway, there had been a few longer-term projects, like fixing all the shaky tables in the cafeteria, that I was happy to cross off my to-do list.
I scanned the crowd outside the airport, but I still didn’t see Bailey. I tried not to feel disappointed. Had something happened? When I checked the arrivals board, it said that her flight had landed. But maybe she’d needed to take a later flight to finish up some last-minute things?
Or maybe she just wasn’t coming back. I knew that that thought was crazy and unfounded. She had said that she was coming back. And she had come back before. I just had to trust her. But what if…
Suddenly she was there, right next to me, her arms around me. “Oh my God, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” she said into my shoulder.
I managed to get my arms around her as well. “Long flight?” I asked.
“I mean, you’ve been on this one. It’s only a short flight. But I couldn’t wait to get here, and I wasn’t feeling very well during the flight,” Bailey confessed.
I frowned down at her, worry pulsing through me. “Are you sick?” I asked her. She did look a little pale. Maybe this was why she had come back so quickly; had she gotten sick and cancelled all of her meetings for now? But that meant she was probably headed back to Vegas sometime soon. I tried not to sigh.
But Bailey’s face cleared, and she shook her head. “Let’s just go home,” she said cheerfully. She looked around. “Where’s Ethan?”
“One of his friends is having a sleepover tonight for his birthday, and to celebrate the three-day holiday weekend,” I explained.
It was another thing that had made that text from Bailey all the more significant that morning. Ethan was going to be out of the house until at least the eleven o’clock pickup the following morning, which meant that Bailey and I had the house all to ourselves tonight. If I was going to tell her that I loved her, this was definitely the time to do it.
Sure enough, Bailey grinned at me, clearly understanding the significance. “I hope you got that friend a really great birthday gift,” she teased.
I laughed and led her over to my car. “Come on, let’s go.”
Bailey was kind of quiet on the drive home, and when I glanced over, I saw that she still looked a little pale. I felt kind of bad, knowing that she wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t know why she was trying to hide it from me. But just because we were going back to my place, it didn’t mean that we had to do anything. I could pamper her a little, take care of her, make sure that she was all right. Maybe that was selfish of me and I should have just taken her home. But she seemed to want this as well.
When we got inside, I set the keys down on the hallway table and turned around just in time for Bailey to kiss me. “Have I mentioned that I missed you?” she asked, leaning in to me.
I laughed. “I missed you too,” I told her, holding her close. “But come on, how was your meeting? Are you free of the casino business once and for all?”
Bailey sighed, tilting her head up towards mine. “Can we not talk about that just yet? I just want to relax.” Her look turned sly. “And maybe show you how much I missed you.”
I tried not to feel worried at that. From the sound of things, she wasn’t out of the casino business after all. Did that mean more visits to Nevada? At best, it meant that she was still stretched thin between her work at Brooks Mountain and the work that she was doing for her brother’s company.
I felt an irrational flare of frustration at Ian for letting things happen this way. But of course, if Ian had had his way, he never would have had to call in his sister for help in the first place. I knew that. Still, I had it in my head that I should chat with him. Tell him how much Bailey was taking upon herself at the moment. Surely as her protective older brother, he could find some way to get Bailey to scale back the work that she was doing for the casino so that she would have more time for herself and for her own business.
But then again, Ian had to know just how things were going at the moment. He had been out here to visit the resort not too long ago, and now he had seen Bailey in Nevada just this weekend. He knew the kind of stress that she was under.
Before I could puzzle over that any longer, though, Bailey was tugging me imperiously down into another kiss. I pulled her close, kissing her with everything I had, hoping she could tell just how much I missed her, how happy I was to have her back. The kiss whispered a promise of the night to come. I knew that she was stressed out with all of her work stuff, and I could tell that she was feeling under the weather. I was going to pamper her, treat her like the wonderful woman that she was.
I thought back to the conversation that I had had before with Ethan. And my resolution. I pulled back, just far enough to speak the words against Bailey’s lips. “I love you.”
It seemed kind of anticlimactic now that I had said it. There were no flashing lights, the world didn’t end, nothing really changed. Except then Bailey smiled softly at me, her eyes warming, and that was all the response that I needed. “I love you too,” she whispered back.
She leaned into me for a moment, just pressing her body against mine. But having her there close to me, I was powerless to hold back. I kissed her again, and then a third time, even more fervently. She moaned as I nipped at her lower lip, her fingers coming up underneath my shirt to trace across my bare skin.
“I have some news for you,” Bailey announced as we broke apart for air. I nearly groaned. So now she wanted to talk about her meeting?
I kissed her again and again. There was a part of me, I realized, that wasn’t sure that I wanted to know the news. If she was going to have to go back to Nevada, even if it was just for a couple weekend trips like the one that she had just come back from, would I be okay with that? I mean, I would have to be. I couldn’t lose Bailey over something like that.
But what if it wasn’t just weekend trips? What if they wanted her back there for good? That wasn’t anything that I was ready to hear right now. I didn’t want to think about all of the logistics of our future just now. I wanted to revel in the fact that I had finally managed to tell her that I loved her.
This wasn’t the way I had anticipated the night going, anyway. I had cooked dinner for us already, and I had expected that we would sit down and chat, that eventually I would tell her that I loved her. That maybe we would curl up in front of the fire and trade steamy kisses on the couch before finally moving towards the stairs.
But right now, I realized that I wasn’t ready to hear about her trip, and I couldn’t seem to keep my hands off of her anyway. She didn’t seem to mind, though.
So I kept kissing her, and she forgot about her news at least for now. Bailey giggled as I led her towards the stairs. “All right, we’ll talk later,” she joked.
