“I am not a hound,” Decker muttered, scowling at his infernal man’s broad back.
He was reasonably sure he and Macfie would spend the rest of their days bickering like a pair of dowagers, and he would not have it any other way.
The door slammed shut, and he did not flinch.
When it opened again, all thoughts of Macfie were swept easily aside at his wife entering his office, Lila at her side. Decker drank in the sight of Jo, from her upsweep of dark hair to her perfect mouth to her thoroughly feminine form, draped in black. She made mourning weeds look glorious.
Right, of course she did.
Decker stood at their entrance, bowing to both of them before skirting his desk and moving toward them. “My darling Josie, my sweet Miss Lila. You are one quarter hour early.”
“Mr. Macfie advised us to arrive at this time,” his wife told him, smiling in that way she had that made him long to take her in his arms and kiss her senseless. “He suggested the traffic would be too thick otherwise, and judging from the snarl of carriages out there already, I should think he was right.”
There Macfie went again, thinking of everything. How the devil did the man do it?
“Mayhap I will give the Scottish oaf an increase in pay,” he said, grinning.
“Mr. Macfie is hardly an oaf,” Jo said. “I have become rather fond of him.”
“He gives me peppermint candies whenever I visit,” Lila added. “I have three in my reticule now. I have been saving them.”
“Peppermint candies, hmm?” Decker repeated. Well, at least he now knew the way to his sister’s heart. The way to his wife’s was paved with cream ice.
“We should be on our way,” Jo added. “The ceremony will be starting soon enough, and we dare not miss it.”
No, they dare not indeed. The Children’s Hospital he had already endowed before his mother’s death—before, even, his marriage to Jo—was opening this afternoon. There was to be a grand ceremony. Not the sort of thing Decker ordinarily troubled himself with, as he abhorred taking a bow for his philanthropic endeavors. But in this instance, the ceremony was special.
As was the dedication of a memorial cot in his mother’s name.
Seraphina Decker would never be forgotten. Her legacy would live on, and on, and hopefully over time, the children’s hospital would give thousands of children a second chance at life.
“Let us go then,” he told the two most important ladies in his life, offering each an arm.
Together, they left his offices, making their way to the waiting carriage.
It was the sort of day when he needed them at his side.
Right. When was it not that sort of day?
Jo was brushing out her hair, seated at her looking glass, when Decker came to her. He was clad in a dark-maroon banyan of fine silk, his feet bare, his hair tousled so that the same rakish lock she loved fell over his brow. She did not rise, merely watched him approach her in the mirror. Their gazes met and held.
A frisson of awareness jolted through her, as always.
“Good evening, Mr. Decker,” she said softly, stroking the brush through her hair again because she knew how the act never failed to inspire an answering surge of desire in him.
She was still learning him. Each day, she discovered more, and each day, he showed her how much he loved her just as she strove to do the same for him. He was becoming better at keeping his walls lowered. And for her part, Jo fell in love with the man she had married a bit more, it seemed, with every passing moment.
“Good evening, Mrs. Decker.” He reached her, settled his hands on her shoulder, and then pressed a kiss to the side of her throat. “You smell good enough to devour, woman.”
She could not suppress her smile. Decker loved the scent of her perfume on her throat. The moment she had made that particular discovery, she had made certain to add a bit of scent behind each of her ears, and then another drop at the hollow where her pulse pounded.
“Mmm,” she hummed her approval. “Perhaps you ought to devour me then, my love.”
“In time,” he agreed, kissing her throat, her ear, nibbling the sensitive place where her neck joined her shoulder. “May I?”
She relinquished her brush to him, sitting still as he worked the bristles through her hair in slow, gentle strokes. “If you ever decide to cease being a