Page 38 of Loving You Always
“It doesn’t feel right.” Walsh rubbed the toe of his shoe over a nick in the hardwood floor.
“From a purely business perspective, I’d get a massive return.” Martin ran his eyes over the expensive paneling and the high ceilings. “When we moved here, TriBeCa hadn’t exploded the way it has now. It’s gone up, down, and back up again since we bought it.”
“But it’s not purely business. You held on to this house all these years, saving it for when Mom would come back. You just cried your eyes out over a fifty-dollar ring. I know your secret now, Dad. You’re sentimental.”
“Don’t be fooled.” Martin crooked his mouth to one side, shifting his legs into his buccaneer’s stance. “I don’t have much time for sentiment right now. I have to focus on wrapping up our friend the sheikh.”
Walsh went on high alert at the mention of the account he’d abandoned to remain near Kerris after the accident.
“I thought Miller was sewing that up.”
“He missed a stitch or two.” A hint of contempt deepened Martin’s voice. “That boy. He’s brilliant, and hungry, but sometimes he’s so busy measuring his own dick he misses the little things.”
“His dickisa little thing.” Walsh amused himself with his own crassness, and was surprised when his father laughed aloud, slapping him on the back.
“That’s pretty good,” Martin said, still smiling. “Look, I’ll hold off on selling the house, and maybe you should come with me. You know Kassim better than all of us now, and he likes you. He asked me how your friend was doing last time I spoke to him. I didn’t know you’d hijacked his jet to fly to Rivermont.”
“Yeah, and in the middle of the night. Looking back, I can’t believe my own balls on that one.”
“Guess you get those from me, too.” Martin’s face was straight, but his eyes held a crooked twinkle.
Walsh laughed, trying to remember when he and his father had joked this much. Maybe never.
“So what do you say?” Martin persisted. “You coming to Saudi or what?”
“Why not?” Walsh shrugged one broad shoulder. “Beats moping around the city.”
“What do you have to mope about?”
“Nothing, it’s just…well, Cam and Kerris are getting a divorce.”
“Seems like that would be cause for celebration.” A puzzled frown sketched Martin’s forehead.
“I don’t feel much like celebrating since she won’t see me.” Walsh sat on a step of the staircase. “I’m giving her a year.”
“A year? She’s a beautiful girl. You think the men in Rivermont are blind, son?”
“Don’t remind me.” Walsh closed his eyes in now-familiar agony. “I keep imagining some bastard getting next to her while I sit back giving her ‘space’ like a neutered pet.”
“So what gives? It’s not like you to lay back.”
“North Carolina requires a yearlong separation, but then the divorce will be processed pretty quickly.” Walsh bounced his feet on the stair beneath him, allowing his own words to excite him. “She’s been through a lot, not just recently, but a lifetime of crap. She wants time to work on herself. And I, like a lovesick idiot, am actually giving it to her. For the last month, her friend Mama Jess has been updating me. If it weren’t for her, I’d be down there screwing this all up.”
“And you’re sure waiting is the best course of action?”
“Right now, it’s the only course of action,” Walsh said through tight lips, leaning his elbows back on the step behind him. “But I feel like a bull at a rodeo, locked behind the fence.”
“A bull, huh?” Martin laughed. “Don’t let Kassim hear that. I’m sure he’d like to put you out to stud. If we go to Saudi Arabia, he’ll have plenty of Arabian ass to flash at you.”
“I don’t want anyone else.” Walsh was sure that his father, and just about every man he’d meet on the street, wouldn’t understand. His father had loved his mother until the day she died, but Martin hadn’t been celibate for the last fifteen years.
“And you’re not frustrated?”
“Only for her.” Walsh shifted with a little discomfort, aroused by the mere memory of Kerris. Her taste. Her scent. The feel of her pressed and yielding against him. “I’ll wait a year.”
“And after that?”
“I’ll win her,” Walsh said, his natural self-assurance asserting itself.