Page 44 of Staking His Claim
Ella fit this place...
He bent his head. His lips met hers...pressed...waiting.
Hers parted.
The kiss deepened.
Closing his own eyes he sank into the softness that was Ella, a softness he’d never expected to discover, and concentrated on imprinting the instant in his memory to pull out and analyze later. To make sense of the inexplicable. For now, he simply absorbed the feel of her body against his. The warmth. The womanliness. The sweet, lilac scent that was the unique essence of Ella.
Finally, when his head lifted, his breath was ragged and he felt dazed and disoriented.
To his enormous dismay, Ella recovered first.
“Well,” she said, the bright flush on her cheeks already starting to fade, “I don’t think we need to take a look at the master suite after that.”
* * *
Ella glanced at her watch.
They were back downstairs, standing on the spacious veranda protected from the sea breeze that ruffled the tops of the great trees that flanked the house.
“Need to be somewhere else?” Yevgeny drawled. He leaned against the balustrade, blocking her view of the well-kept gardens below. “Or are you in a hurry to leave?”
Ella looked up at him.
The sun splintered in the gold of her eyes, blinding him for an instant.
Yevgeny blinked.
Ella was speaking, and he struggled to focus on what she was saying.
“No, I was simply thinking that if this was a weekday I’d be in my office working.” She made a sweeping gesture with her arm. “Solving other people’s problems and missing out on all this beauty.”
It was a relief to break away from the spell of her golden eyes, to swing around and follow where her arm indicated, out over the vista of the gardens to the azure sea and the hazy horizon beyond.
The crazy feeling was back. Affinity. A vision of him and Holly and...
He drew a deep, shaky breath.
“I have a proposition for you.”
“A proposition?”
Ella lifted a hand and nudged her glasses up. If he’d known better he might have thought she was apprehensive. But this was Ella—she didn’t have an apprehensive bone in her body. “Play hooky with me tomorrow.”
That gave him twenty-four hours to decide how to broach the topic they most needed to discuss.
Holly...
“Pardon?” She blinked at him.
“Take the day off—we can take Holly out for the day.” It would be easier with the baby there. “And enjoy the December sun and fresh summer air. It’s almost Christmas, take some time out.”
Her brow creased in a frown. “I have a meeting.”
“Can you postpone it?”
She shook her head slowly. “It’s important.”
“Holly is important—nothing else comes close. In five years’ time will you even remember what this meeting is about? Because Holly will still be important then.”
Ella pushed her glasses up her nose. “I can’t—not tomorrow.”
“No one else can do it?” he persisted, frustrated. This was important—too important to be overshadowed by work.
Ella shook her head again. “I’m the only one who knows all the fine details.”
His frustration bubbled over. “Then you have a problem—you need to learn how to delegate.”
“To whom? No one else—”
“Can do the job as well as you?” He raised an eyebrow.
Ella nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s what I mean.”
“Then you have two problems—maybe more. You’ve surrounded yourself with the wrong people, you’ve failed to train them adequately, you don’t empower your staff by giving them responsibility. Or all of the above.”
“None of the above.” Ella’s teeth snapped shut. She gave him a “take that” look.
Yevgeny narrowed his gaze. “Then you’re guilty of bad planning.”
She made a peculiar sound, and stalked to the end of the veranda, where she stood with her back to him, looking out over the garden. Her shoulders were stiff. In the pause that followed Yevgeny found himself watching her...anticipating her next volley. Until he caught himself.
He padded to where she stood, and her shoulders stiffened. This was not what he wanted. “Ella—” He broke off as heels clicked on the tiles behind him.
The Realtor had returned.
Ella still hadn’t responded. Yevgeny sighed. “You go to your meeting. I’ll take Holly to the park.”
To his surprise, she didn’t object.
“Are you going to put an offer in on this house?” Ella asked too softly for the Realtor to hear, her back still to him.
He nodded, suddenly tired of the dance around the truth, and then realized she couldn’t see his acknowledgement. “Yes,” he said. “This will be my home.”