Eight Ways to Ecstasy (30 page)

“I think your bunny is staring at us.”

Rylan lifted his head and craned his neck to the side. Sure enough, the stuffed rabbit they'd unearthed the other day was still sitting on top of one of the boxes on the other side of the room, his little plastic eyes pointed straight at them.

He chuckled, dropping back down. “Poor guy's going to be scandalized.”

They were still spread out naked on the floor, the wadded-up ball of his suit jacket tucked under his head as a pillow. Kate was curled against him, one hand on his heart and her head resting on his shoulder. It was going to get uncomfortable before too long, and they would have to move, but at the moment the whole place could go up in flames and he'd be unperturbed.

He was home.

With his heart glowing almost too brightly to bear, he shifted to press a rough kiss against her hair, squeezing her tight against his side. For a long moment, they rested there just like that, quiet and content.

Then she smoothed her hand down his chest, repositioning herself so she could look up at him. “Did you mean it?”

Categorically, yes. But…“Did I mean what?”

He'd said a lot to her, both today and the last time they'd met, and he'd meant every word of it.

Her gaze flicked between his face and the room around them, like she was realizing there was a lot to choose from, too. After a moment she settled on, “About this room, first of all.”

“That it's yours?” He nodded. “Absolutely. I can have someone come by while I'm at the office tomorrow and move all those boxes out. You can bring your easel or whatever else you want.”

He hoped she would.

“I'd like that,” she said, and the warmth behind his ribs redoubled. It didn't burn him, though.

It filled him, taking all his hollow spaces and bringing him to life.

Another beat passed before she asked, “The office, huh?”

Right. Because they hadn't talked about this, really. “Yup. You're looking at the new CEO of Bellamy International.”

It didn't hurt him to say that anymore. But something in him tensed all the same.

Kate just hummed, though, tracing little circles against his skin. “You're okay with that?”

“I am.” For so long, he'd run from it, but the running part of his life was over now.

“It never seemed like something you wanted…”

“It wasn't, back when I met you.” He'd been so angry then, unable to think of anything beyond his father's fuck-ups and the box he thought he'd been forced into, the one that had been suffocating him for years.

But only because he himself had closed the lid. Because he hadn't made any choices of his own.

Well, he was choosing now. He'd decided on this life and this girl, and all of it felt right, straight down to his bones.

Combing his fingers through her hair, he took a deep breath, making her head rise and fall with the settling of his lungs. “But I had a lot of time to think about things. I…” And he hadn't told her this, either. “I went to see my father, after you walked out.”

“You did?”

“It was a disaster.” His father's bitterness and his lashing out had taken both him and Lexie and rocked them hard. “But it was good, too.”

Kate made an encouraging noise, flattening her palm out against his ribs.

“I'm my father's son,” he said, and it didn't weigh him down anymore. “I don't have to pay for his mistakes, but I can learn from them.” He met her gaze. “I can run his company and make it my own. I can take care of my family…”

And that word hit him square in the gut.

He'd fought so hard his entire life to protect Evan and Lexie and to help them get what they wanted from their lives, but it had been about protecting them
from
his family.

But they
were
his family now.

Kate was his family now.

“I can do things right,” he said, throat hoarse, voice numb.

All that time he'd spent romanticizing his parents' early years, hoping that maybe, at some point, they'd been in love. That before the bickering and the acrimony they'd been happy.

And yet the bitter distance they'd fallen into had kept him from ever letting himself have that with anyone.

He was happy now. He was in love. He could hold on to that. He would.

And it was as if Kate was right there inside his thoughts, reading his damn mind. Because her breath sounded as shaky as his own.

“And did you mean…” She swallowed, an audible gulp against the stillness of the air. “About the rest of your life?”

Funny how time had always been dogging them. Fate had conspired to give them seven nights in Paris, and they had only made it to five. Here in New York, they'd agreed to seven more, but in the end they'd needed eight.

He didn't want to sign on for another hitch. He didn't want to keep counting his time with her in single days and single nights. He didn't want to keep counting at all.

He wanted forever.

His throat burned as he answered, “With all my heart.”

Just like that, the world around them narrowed to a pinpoint. It all went blurry except this moment, in this room. With this girl.

This girl who was staring up at him, nodding. This girl whose whole mouth bloomed with the most perfect, beautiful smile.

A happiness he'd never known spread like sunrise across his chest, his own lips lifting, the skies clearing in his mind at last, except—

Except—

He could have cursed himself. He still didn't have a ring.

God, his entire life with every resource at his disposal. He could've bought her a rock you could see from space, something glittering and expensive and ridiculous.

Something small. Smooth-edged, with a stone set flush to the band for when she spattered it with paint.

But right here, right now, he only had himself.

Himself and her and all the gifts she had brought to his life.

The rest of the world filtered back in, his vision returning to him. He twisted his head to the side, because right there, a bare foot away from him…

The paintings she'd done, the ones she'd made to work through her feelings, the ones that had brought her back to him—they were all of him. Except one. He remembered shooting the photograph she must have painted it from. They'd been kissing, lost in each other and in the press of flesh on flesh, and he had raised the camera. Pointed it at them and clicked the shutter.

And there they were. Their eyes closed, their lips pressed tight to each other's on the canvas, fine strands of lines sliced through the layers of pigment tying them one to the other.

He reached out. The raw edge of the canvas was exposed at the side, frayed strings peeling off from the fabric's coarse weave. He wrapped his hand around a loose thread. He pulled.

It came away so easily.

Sitting up, he took her hand in his. And he couldn't breathe. Outside of her and this room, he couldn't
see
.

Ever so slowly, he looped the canvas thread around her finger. The fourth one, on her left hand. He held the ends in his trembling hands and looked into eyes the color of his life and of art and of trust. The color of love.

“Kate. Will you—” He couldn't even get it out.

Spend your life with me.
Marry
me
.

Because then her lips were on his, and it felt like the first and last kiss of his life.

“Of course,” she said.

He tied the knot. He bound them together.

And all the empty places in his heart were full.

The doorbell rang at five o'clock on the dot.

Looking up from the place settings she'd been rearranging for about the thirteenth time on the ridiculously large dining room table Rylan had insisted they needed, Kate met his eyes across the room.

The corner of his mouth flickered upward. “You ready for this?”

Her nerves fluttered. “Not like we have a lot of choice.”

“It'll be fine.” His hint of a smile edged higher into something real. Striding across the room to meet her, he took her hand and intertwined their fingers.

She took a deep breath. It
would
be fine. The place was even more spotless than his housekeeper usually left it. Everything had finally been unpacked, the additional purchases they'd made artfully arranged on the shelves and walls. All the food had been dropped off by the caterer hours ago, and what needed to be warmed up was in the oven, filling the house with scents of savory and sage. Making it smell like a home.

Just—she'd spent her last dozen Thanksgivings alone with only her mom and a bunch of Chinese takeout. The idea of opening up their house to all these people…

And it was
their
house now. She hadn't given up her apartment, and she wouldn't until her lease was up. But more and more of her things had migrated over here. Slowly but surely, her studio on the third floor was coming together.

The doorbell rang again, and her heart raced. Rylan squeezed her hand. Nodding, she let him lead her to the door.

This whole thing had been her idea after all. “Orphan Thanksgiving,” she'd heard it called. A bunch of people with nowhere else to go, choosing to spend the holiday together. Sharing fellowship and breaking bread. It was one hell of an eclectic crowd, though.

Her and Liam and a couple of the others from her program who couldn't afford to fly home this year. Chase and Sophie, whose parents were off skiing in the Alps and on safari in the Serengeti, respectively. Rylan, for whom this
was
home now, and Lexie and—

They threw open the door, and Kate did an actual double take.

A dark-haired, blue-eyed man with a glass-cutting jaw leaned against the railing of the porch.

“Evan,” Rylan said. Of course.

Rylan's brother gave them each a smirk that was so familiar it almost hurt. Rylan welcomed him in, extending his arms, and Kate tilted her head to the side.

It was a hug, for sure. Maybe the briefest, most awkward hug she'd ever seen, but a hug all the same.

And it was subtle, because at first glance, the resemblance was so striking. But with the two of them standing close together, the differences stood out more sharply.

The longer hair, styled even more messily, and the studs on Evan's leather jacket and boots. The hint of ink peeking out from beneath his sleeve.

After barely a second, Evan pulled away, stepping past Rylan and into the house, and his gaze met hers. “You must be his bride-to-be?”

Kate's cheeks flushed warm, her fingers going instinctively to the new weight on her left hand. She twisted the ring around her knuckle, a simple sapphire and platinum band they had both picked out, and held it up for his inspection.

A crinkle appeared in his brow, but it smoothed over after a second. “Lovely,” he said, and he extended his own hand. “Evan.”

“Kate.”

He grasped her palm and kissed the back of her knuckles, and in the background, Rylan growled.

“Down, boy,” came another, sharper voice.

Somehow, Kate had missed Lexie coming in with Evan, but she looked to her with gratitude now. Lexie patted Rylan's shoulder before slipping around him, nudging Evan out of the way to give Kate a hug. That was new, but Kate didn't protest.

She glanced around her as she let her go. “No Dane after all?”

She'd only met Lexie's assistant once, while popping into the Bellamy offices to pick Rylan up for lunch, but that big man by Lexie's side had made an impression.

Lexie rolled her eyes, but there was something deeper there beneath the flippancy. Something…bitter. She waved a hand. “Family thing.”

“Too bad.”

“For him, maybe.” Edging away, she held up a bottle, calling over her shoulder, “I raided Daddy's wine cellar.”

Rylan nodded at her. He and Evan had remained near the door, engaged in a quiet conversation she couldn't make out, but it made her frown all the same. Tension was just pouring off them.

“Best to leave them to it,” Lexie counseled, heading off toward the kitchen and motioning for Kate to follow.

“You sure?”

“They can be as bad as Rylan and our father ever were.” The corner of her mouth tugged to the side as she pulled out a wine opener. “Too much alike and yet not quite close enough to see eye to eye.”

“Rylan only ever speaks well of him.”

“Behind his back, sure. But some things were said to his face when Evan was headed off to school…” Trailing off, Lexie shrugged. “They'll figure it out.”

Before Kate could worry too much about it, the doorbell chimed again, and whatever was going on between Rylan and his brother was moved to the backseat. In no time at all, the place was full, and Kate didn't have time to think about the tension in the air as she did her best to slip into some image of a hostess she'd only ever really seen in movies, pouring wine and making introductions. When Liam arrived, she held her breath. But Rylan just slung a casual arm around her waist and held his other hand out for Liam to shake, an easiness to him she would've been hard-pressed to imagine a few short weeks ago.

It looked good on him.

Finally, the timer on the oven went off, and the turkey and sides and fixings were transferred to serving platters and carried into the dining room. Rylan held out a chair for her near one end of the table and she sank down into it.

Then he took his own beside her, on the end.

And then it struck her—and maybe Lexie and Evan, too, judging by the tight looks on their faces. He was sitting at the head of the table.

Where he had always belonged.

Evan was the first to recover. Shaking his head, he picked up a butter knife and clinked it against the side of his glass, and the whole table settled down. One by one, all eyes turned frontward, toward Rylan.

And he rose, tall and gorgeous and so assured, and Kate's heart pounded hard in her chest. This was her future right here. Her present and her forever. Her family, seated around her table in her home.

She had never felt so warm.

Rylan's gaze darted around the room for a moment as he took it in. Then it settled on Kate, and the smile that curved his lips was soft and true.

Glancing away, he nodded. “I wanted to thank you all for being here tonight.” His throat bobbed and his voice dipped, losing some of the stiffness it had held. “As some of you know, I wasn't home for Thanksgiving last year.”

Kate's chest gave a little pang at the thought of Rylan in Paris, still running after his world had fallen apart. Angry and alone.

He reached a hand out to her, and she took it. Staring right at her, he said, “So it means even more to me to be here this year. I'm…so grateful to be able to spend today with all of you.” Looking up again, he cleared his throat. “And I'm grateful for a couple of other things, too.”

He tightened his grip on her hand, and the seriousness to his mouth melted away.

Oh, hell.

“I'm grateful to announce the recipient of this year's coveted honors fellowship from Columbia University's Fine Arts Department is dining with us tonight.”

Kate's whole body flashed hot, and she shook her head at him, but he wasn't about to be deterred.

“Congratulations to our very own Kate Reid.”

Exhaling hard, she bowed her head in acknowledgment of the polite clapping. The less polite, more raucous applause from the end of the table where her grad school friends sat. Catching her eye, Liam raised a glass to her, and she lifted her own in reply.

After all her worries. After her fear that she would never find her vision or her voice. After she'd flouted the committee's theme…

She'd found her voice all right, and the day after she'd shown her paintings to Rylan, she'd loaded them right back into Liam's truck and driven them to campus. She'd marched into her appointment and explained that to her, sanctity meant reverence. It meant looking at something—at
someone
—and seeing so much more than what lay on the surface. It meant being willing to give up all reservations and all fear.

It meant love. It meant trust.

And her sacred space would always be in Rylan's arms.

Apparently, she'd been pretty convincing.

“And I have one other announcement to make,” Rylan said. Running his thumb over her ring, he shot her a brilliant, shimmering smile. “Next June, we'd like to invite you all to share another meal with us.”

Kate's stomach dipped when he tugged at her hand, urging her to stand. Rising, she let herself be pulled against his side.

And then she couldn't keep it in anymore; forget that half of them already knew. “We're getting married,” she announced.

Dipping his head, Rylan kissed her hair, a firm, fiery press of lips as he said beneath his breath, “Tell them where.”

Where else?

She gazed up into his eyes, and her heart was filled with so much love, she thought she'd burst.

“In Paris.”

Where the story of their love had begun. Where a beautiful, lost man had come up to her, looking for so little both from her and from himself. Where they'd found more than either of them had ever dreamed.

And where the rest of their life together would start.