smiled as I looked over at Laura. We were in bed—our usual Saturday morning ritual well underway. I made coffee; she made her infamous breakfast sandwiches. We carried both back to bed with the paper. I spent a lazy hour enjoying the tranquility of perusing the headlines, while Laura worked on the crossword puzzle, often interrupting me with a query.
“Flightless bird—three letters?”
“Emu.”
“Storage area—six letters?”
“Hmm…locker?”
“Oh, that works!”
I smirked and kept reading.
“Thrusting implement?”
I looked up with a frown. “What?”
“Four letters—starts with C…or it might be a D—definitely ends in K though.”
“Are you shitting me with this?”
“Yes.”
Then she fell backward, laughing at her silly joke. Chuckling, I lifted her feet on my lap and stroked her ankles, the way I knew she liked. She sighed in pleasure and smiled at me, tucking an arm under her head. She was relaxed, her dark hair spilling out around her, her eyes warm as they looked at me.
I loved seeing her like this.
In the office, she was Laura—cool, professional, and a force to be reckoned with. She hadn’t earned the nickname “The General” for nothing. She dealt with the crews, suppliers, and problems efficiently and without apologies. She dressed the part, her outfits businesslike and feminine yet never crossing the line. She wore her hair up, often tucking an errant strand back into place. Some days, it took everything in me not to be the one who reached out and smoothed the curl behind her ear while I dropped a tender kiss to the skin for good measure. It was getting harder to resist.
When dealing with her father, she was still efficient and bossy, although her words were tempered with fondness—unless they were arguing over budgets or his terrible eating habits.
But alone with me, she became my Laura. Her body language changed, and she became fluid and supple. All soft curves and rounded edges—like liquid mercury. Her smiles were filled with light, her gaze warm and gentle, and her words uttered in the gentlest tone, the tenderness I had longed for on full display. Her laughter was low and sultry and happened often. I loved making her laugh.
“You’re such a nut.”
She grinned at me. “But you love me.”
I tightened my hands on her feet. “I do.”
Her face turned serious. “Tell me.”
Lifting her feet off my lap, I moved and hovered over her, holding her gaze. “I love you, Laura. More than anyone or anything. You’re my entire world.”
She became peaceful, her smile shy. “I love you.”
Lowering my head, I traced her collarbone with my tongue, swirling it on her delicate skin. I dragged my mouth up her throat, tugging gently on her earlobe, smiling at her shiver. “Now, about that crossword puzzle. Maybe I need to help you with a physical demonstration of that thrusting implement?”
“Yes…Jackson…God…yes…show me.”
She was wrapped in my arms, snuggled close. The newspaper was scattered all around us on the floor, one overturned cup of coffee dripping a dark stain onto the paper. I traced the skin of her arm with one finger, up and down, over and over again.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered.
“How good it feels when you’re in my arms.”
She snuggled tighter. “I know.”
“I want you here all the time.”
She tilted up her head. “Jackson?”
“I hate it when you go away and I can’t talk to anyone—say anything about how much I miss you or worry about you. I hate hiding how much I love you.”
“Then we need to make changes.”
I yanked on my hair in frustration. “I know. I just don’t know how.”
“We sit down with my father and tell him.”
I snorted. “That’s going to go over well. Pretty sure by the end of the conversation, I’ll have a busted lip and no job.”
“Do you really think he’ll be that upset? He thinks so highly of you.”
“In addition to being opposed to the age thing, and me not being good enough for you, I think he’s going to be angry over the fact that we’ve kept it hidden all this time. He’s gonna be mad on a lot of levels.”
She shook her head. “You are good enough for me—and good for me. He’ll see that. He may be mad at first, but my dad loves me, and he wants me to be happy. You make me happy.”
Cupping her cheek, I smiled. “I like making you happy. I’m not sure about how fast he’ll come around. He was pretty insistent on no one in the company getting close to you.”
“Then we should face it now, and it’s done.” Her voice