Hot Under Pressure (33 page)

“Oh my God, you did not just say that.”

“Hey, you’re the one who wanted me to talk. Don’t blame me if it ain’t all poetry.”

The words sparked a memory, and in her excitement Skye sat half upright, pushing Beck over onto his side. Her fingers flew to the neckline of his shirt and dragged at it, which made Beck laugh.

“Hey, hold on. Weren’t you the one worrying about the judges walking in on us? I’m sure they’d love to see you trying to get me naked.”

Skye gave up on the shirt collar and burrowed one hand under the hem of his T-shirt until she could stroke her fingers across the tattoo she’d caught a glimpse of that night at Queenie Pie.

The marked skin over his right shoulder blade felt smooth and warm, no different from the skin stretched taut over the rest of Beck’s back. Keeping the tips of her fingers tracing the lines of script she remembered swirling out like a spiraling sunburst, Skye felt a shudder of heat work its way through her.

Not attempting to hide her response to touching him this way, Skye met Beck’s hot, intent eyes. “Speaking of poetry. Want to tell me what this says?”

She felt the tense and flex of his muscles against her fingers, but his gaze never wavered.

Skye trembled, but she was almost certain she knew what he was about to say.

“It’s not real poetry,” he grumbled, and it was as if time turned back and they were cuddled on their futon in the Chinatown studio with Skye trying to get a look at the composition book Henry kept under his side of the mattress.

Instead of arguing with him about it, she tucked her face into the hollow of his neck and snuffled quietly at the warm smell of clean sweat and man. This part always used to be easier for him if she wasn’t looking at him. “Tell me.”

When he started to speak, she smiled, pleased on a deep, visceral level that she still knew him this well. But when his words registered in her brain, the smile faded from her lips.

What she felt was too huge for a mere smile to contain.

“‘But still each morning the girl and the boy belong more fully to each other, until it seems they were born face to face.’”

Her mouth moved, following along silently with the last phrase, her head full of the rest of the poem, line after line of devotion Henry had scribbled down and read to her on their wedding day, in a back office at City Hall.

Those were the words he’d turned into art on his body. That was the life experience he’d wanted to record in flesh and blood, a permanent reminder of Skye and their life together inked into his skin.

The last icy sliver of doubt—the scared whisper in the back of her head telling her she was a fool to think there was any chance of a future with a man who’d changed so much in the last ten years—melted away in the warm rush of love and recognition.

“It’s you,” she said, the words hitching out of her mouth in breathless gasps. “It’s really you. Henry!”

Henry Beck. The boy who’d given Skye her first kiss, who’d woken her body up and made her feel special. Beautiful. No matter how much he might have changed, matured, grown—he was still the same man inside.

And they would have a lifetime together to learn and grow to love those surface differences.

“It’s me,” he promised, his mouth pressed hot against her temple, his breath stirring her hair. “But this time around, I promise to tell you how I feel. I want you to know. I never want you to think…”

His throat clicked as he swallowed, and Skye could feel the jerk of his back under her hand. “I said it in there, in front of the judges and everyone, but I need to make sure you heard me.”

Beck pulled back and grasped her shoulders, staring down into Skye’s upturned face. Her heart beat at her ribcage like the wings of a trapped bird. She was still straddling his thighs, her knees aching against the rough rubber matting, but all of that disappeared as her vision tunneled down to Henry’s deep, velvety brown eyes.

“I know I never said it much before, when we were together. But I felt it every day, and I should’ve made sure you knew. Skye Gladwell, I love you.”

Happiness pushed so hard at her insides, she felt as if she’d swallowed the sun. “I love you, too. Even though I tried, I could never figure out how to stop.”

Beck brought his hands up from her shoulders to frame her face. The slow, lazy circles he rubbed against her cheekbones with his thumbs made her shiver. He kissed her again lightly—almost reverently—and it reminded her of the way he’d kissed her that day at City Hall.

She laughed softly against his lips, and he pulled back to raise his brows in a question. “Nothing—I just feel like we’re reaffirming our wedding vows, or something.”

A thoughtful look swept over his handsome face. “That’s not a bad idea. It wouldn’t be just the two of us in City Hall anymore—we both have people who’d stand up with us.”

Joy fizzed and sparked through her like ice cream dropped into a root beer float, sweet and thick and heady. Grinning her biggest, most unrestrained grin at him, Skye teased, “I don’t know, what about our bet?”

“Bet?” His voice was distracted; he seemed more absorbed in the path his fingers were tracing down her neck.

“Those judges are going to come back in here,” she reminded him—reminded both of them—with a shudder of rising arousal. “And tell us that you won. Which entitles me to a quickie divorce, after a night of passion with you.”

His gaze snapped back to hers. “Forget the bet,” he growled, moving in a controlled rush to roll her beneath him, pinning her once again under the solid, steely weight of his muscular body. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“You think this was easy?” Skye laughed, luxuriating in the hot weight of him pressing the breath from her lungs.

“No bet,” he told her. “No divorce. We’re staying married.”

She knew—of course, she knew—that was what he wanted, but to hear him say it out loud, in so many words … Skye melted. “The bet’s off,” she agreed.

Henry Beck stared down at her, and Skye took the moment to memorize every detail of his beloved face. The uncompromising angle of his jaw, the firmness of his mouth, the incongruous sweep of his long, dark lashes. His hair swung forward, coming loose from its band, and Skye reveled in the fact that she could lift her arm and push it back behind his ear.

She could cup that strong, rough-stubbled jaw, and bring those warm, parted lips down to hers.

Beck took her mouth in a heated, wet kiss, devouring her with years of hunger behind every slide of his lips, every thrust of his tongue. Skye gave herself up to it, a matching hunger clawing at her belly and making her arch against him.

They broke apart, panting, and Beck gave her a slow, wolfish grin. Leaning down to nuzzle along the softness of her jawline, he whispered in her ear, “No divorce, but I’ll take the other half of my winnings. You, in my arms, tonight … and every night.”

And as he tilted his head to claim her mouth again, Skye closed her eyes and threw herself into the storm of passion and love, trust and friendship, and she knew.

She’d never been so happy to lose a bet in her life.

Epilogue

One year later …

Nina Lunden gazed around the crowd assembled in the waiting room feeling as if she’d taken too big a sip of her husband’s famous hot chocolate. Her throat burned a little, but it was good, and the warmth spreading out from her stomach made her sigh contentedly.

Having all her family together in one place—there were no words.

Even if they had to get together in a hospital.

Pushing her worries aside, Nina focused on the positive. Any time spent together was precious, especially now that they were so spread out around the country, with Danny and Eva taking trips all the time, and Beck permanently relocated to San Francisco and working at Queenie Pie Café with his wife.

“Jules and I are heading down to the cafeteria, Mom.” Her sweet Max leaned over the plastic arm dividing their chairs and nudged her shoulder. He, at least, was home for good, where she could keep an eye on him—and Nina promised herself she’d never take that for granted.

“Can we bring you back something?” he asked. “Maybe a coffee?”

“Hot chocolate would be nice,” Nina said, smiling over at her oldest and his wife. Jules gave her a smile back—she, Gus, and Nina had spent a lot of nights sipping hot chocolate together after a long dinner service at Lunden’s Tavern.

“It won’t be as good as Gus’s,” Jules warned. “Anyone else want—” She paused, casting a frowning glance around the bland, sterile little room. “Hey, where’s Win?”

“Where do you think?” Danny wandered over after covering his sleeping fiancée with her long fur coat. Faux fur, Eva had assured Nina, who’d had to work to repress a smile.

Eva was a complete darling, once Nina got past worrying that the self-proclaimed party girl was only toying with Danny. But all it took was one dinner at the townhouse she and Danny were renting together for Nina to see exactly how head over heels Eva was, and how desperately the young woman wanted to fit in with Danny’s family.

All the young ladies her boys had brought home had that in common, Nina reflected. It was a pretty good gig for a mother-in-law, actually—she’d had zero trouble bonding with Eva, who needed a mother more than anyone Nina had ever met. Jules, of course, was already the daughter Nina and Gus always wanted.

And then there was Skye. Nina would be forever grateful she’d had the chance to sit through Beck’s beautiful culinary poem to the woman he loved, right next to Skye herself. That day had formed an instant bond between Nina and Skye, and it was a relationship Nina treasured.

“Ever since Win got that new phone, he’s on it all the damn time,” Danny complained. “I feel like we need to stage an intervention or something.”

“Hey, maybe while we’re here we can look into surgical options,” Max said, standing up and stretching so hard that Nina heard his spine pop. “There’s got to be a doctor somewhere who can separate Win from his phone.”

“Leave him alone,” Jules ordered. “He probably went outside to call Drew. You know Win gets nervous around hospitals.”

“Hey, I can sympathize.” Max held up his hands in surrender. “All this waiting is making me antsy, too.”

“Come on, itchy feet,” Jules said, hooking her arm through her husband’s and tugging him toward the door. “A little walk will do you good.”

Nina smiled to herself, remembering a time when Jules wouldn’t have been secure enough to joke about Max and his tendency to wander. Of course, that was before he figured out that what he’d been searching for all over the world was waiting for him back home. It had been a while since Nina had seen that faraway look in her oldest son’s blue eyes. These days, he was more likely to be focused on his work at Lunden’s, coming up with new recipes for Jules and Gus to try in the kitchen.

Thinking about her husband had automatic worry tightening her belly, a reflex she hadn’t been able to shake since the first time he collapsed in the Lunden’s kitchen. Before she could catch her breath, Eva stirred and sat up, rubbing her eyes as Jules and Max hurried back down the hall and into the waiting area.

“You didn’t get very far,” Nina started to say, but then she saw the doctor approaching behind them, and before she knew it she was on her feet, heart beating an unsteady staccato against her ribcage.

“Any news?” She thought she sounded pretty calm, all things considered, but her two wonderful boys weren’t fooled. They moved to flank her, strong arms around her back and across her shoulders, and the weight of their love anchored her to the industrial rubber hospital flooring.

The doctor gave them all a tired grin, and Nina’s heart began to throb with joy and relief before the woman even started to speak.

A warm, familiar palm clasped the back of Nina’s neck. She’d know those strong, callused hands anywhere.

“Gus, you’re just in time!” Jules crowded in closer as Nina leaned back into her husband’s broad chest.

“Had to call in to the restaurant. They’re slammed but kicking butt. Then I grabbed this kid on my way back in. Couldn’t let him miss the big announcement,” he rumbled. Gus’s steady, strong heartbeat pressed against Nina’s back as Winslow Jones bounded over to the group, his nervous energy ratcheted up as high as Nina had ever seen it.

Surrounded by the family she and her husband had made out of the restaurant that was their life’s work and their legacy, Nina took a deep breath and faced the doctor once more.

*   *   *

“He’s perfect.”

Beck stared down at the red, wrinkled face of the tiny baby curled against his wife’s softly heaving chest.

Skye hummed in sleepy agreement, her eyelids fluttering as she tried to stay awake.

“Go to sleep,” he said. “You earned it, babe. I’ll stay right here.”

He hadn’t moved from her side for the last nine months. He wasn’t about to start now.

“I don’t want to,” she protested, those pretty rosebud lips drawing into a pout that nearly killed him. “I want to remember every second of this.”

“We will,” Beck told her, resting one palm lightly, protectively on the baby’s small, blanket-swaddled back. “I couldn’t forget it, even if I tried.”

Every instant was emblazoned on Beck’s brain, from the first tearful, terrified confirmation that Skye was pregnant to the decision to leave Queenie Pie in her sous-chef’s hands so they could come to New York and have Dr. Rosen take care of Skye during her final trimester.

The pregnancy had been textbook from beginning to end, morning sickness to labor pains, but you never would’ve been able to tell it from how scared he and Skye had been. It was like walking around in a constant state of panic and dread, and it hadn’t been good for Skye.

But once Beck came up with the idea of asking Devon and Lilah Sparks for the name of the obstetrician who’d helped them through their difficult pregnancy and safely delivered their healthy baby girl, everything got better.

Yeah, it was stressful to leave the restaurant behind, just as he was starting to find his place there and build a rapport with Fiona, Nathan, and the others … but if the tradeoff was Skye being able to sleep through the night without waking up sobbing from nightmares, it was more than worth it.