your mom?”
Now, Connor laughed. “I told her about you the day after Halloween. I said I’d set something up for this week but then time kind of got away from me. Is there anything else you need to know, or is now when I get to lay you down on that rug and finish what we started because I’m really fucking ready to do that again?”
Emerson stood and slipped off her jacket as she backed away from the sofa in the direction of the bedroom. “The rug got painful after a while, and I don’t intend for this to be over quickly. Make-up sex should take a while.”
Connor stood and ran a hand along his jaw. “See, I disagree there. Make-up sex requires fire. Passion. Urgency.”
She slid her fingers to the buttons of her blouse and began to pop them open slowly. “Everything comes to those who wait.”
Connor stepped in her direction, a slow and steady prowl. “What if I’m not a patient man?”
The way he looked at her made her want to melt, to strip her clothes off and to hell with the burns of the stupid blue rug.
Emerson slid her blouse down her shoulders and let it drop to the floor. “Who says we only get to do it once? We could do fast, then do it slow.”
“Are you negotiating with me again, Dyer?” He reached for his belt, sliding it through the belt loops before dropping it on the sofa.
“I intend to make negotiating with you a permanent habit,” she said. “Just putting you on notice.”
Connor grinned, then suddenly leaped for her, pinning her against the wall, his hard erection pressed up against her. “I just remembered something,” he said, placing a row of kisses behind her ear.
The sensation made her knees weak, and she was grateful for Connor’s weight keeping her pressed to the wall. “What is it?” she gasped, aware of just how breathless her words sounded. He did that to her. Caused her to lose control.
“This. You and me. It’s a permanent thing, right?” Connor stopped kissing her and stepped back a little, giving her breathing space. He placed his hand to her cheek. “I’m serious, Em. This. Us. It’s going all the way, right? Not today. Not right now. But we’ll get a place together. We’ll get married, someday. Kids, if we decide we want them. I want more than make-up sex. I want a commitment that you feel the same way I do. That from the moment I lay you down on my bed, we’re building a future.”
He held her gaze as he spoke, and she felt every single word.
“I want that, too,” she whispered. “All of it. I was worried it was too soon to say it.”
Connor leaned forward and kissed her. Slow, deep, drugging kisses. The kind that turned her to mush. “From the moment we met, you’ve never had a problem saying what was on your mind to me. Don’t start now.”
Emerson smiled. “You are never going to let it go that I sat in your seat, are you?”
Connor bent forward and swept her into his arms.
“Never.”
Epilogue
Snow was beginning to fall hard as the last truck pulled out of the distillery on Christmas Eve. Deliveries that would make their way around the country in time for New Year’s. Emerson ticked the last order off the list and sighed with relief. Stan had left half an hour earlier. She’d sent him home because there was no point in both of them waiting for the truck to leave.
She checked the clock on the wall. Noon exactly. They were closing early after a hellishly frantic push for volume. With the new shift pattern Jake had established, production had increased by twenty-three percent. And the supply cost negotiations Emerson had conducted, along with the dollar increase in retail price, had generated seven points more margin. Things were moving in the right direction.
“Did it get off okay?” Connor asked as he strolled into the warehouse. He wore a thick black hoodie and a beanie, dark blue jeans, and a thick-soled pair of boots. Some days he still wore his suits. Like the days when he went to Finch Liquor Distribution to help his father as Connor transitioned out of the business, or to help him find and interview a new CFO to replace Cameron. The security footage had proven what Connor suspected. That Cameron had gone into his office and taken his document.
He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close, and kissed her