Love Beyond Words (City Lights: San Francisco Book 1) by Scott Emma

Author:Scott, Emma [Scott, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

Monday morning came too soon.

He lay draped over her, naked, his head pillowed on her stomach as she stroked his hair absently.

“I have to go,” she told him eventually, sighing. “I have class and then work. I can’t afford to skip any more shifts.”

“You can…”

“No,” she said. “I can’t. I don’t want you to do that.”

“To do what? Help?” He moved to lie beside her, propped up on one elbow. “Natalie, I can make things very easy for you.”

“You can make my rent disappear with a snap of your fingers, you mean.”

“Well, yes…”

“No.” Natalie said. “You told me why it’s okay for you to buy me gifts, how it’s important to you. Well, this is important to me. I can see myself just getting lost in it all, like how I get lost in your books. I’ll just sink into you…your life, your home, your money. What happens to the rest of me?” She stroked his cheek. “You catch my drift?”

He smiled. “I think so.”

“This weekend was perfection and I’d love more like it. Not the fancy stuff necessarily, just more dates. Movies, dinner, dancing. You can pay for all of it to your heart’s content. I mean, even that sounds presumptuous.”

“No, that sounds absolutely appropriate.”

“But if I stop working or let school fall away, I won’t be much good to anyone and…Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because you’re a gift the universe set down before me, and I don’t know what I did to deserve such a treasure.”

“Stop right there,” Natalie said. “I’ve been marginally good all weekend about blubbering—only one total break down in a café but who’s counting? If you start in with your talk I’m going to break my twenty-six-hour-long streak.”

He laughed heartily and kissed her shoulder. “Okay. I’ll call you a car. You’ll let me do that, yes?”

She glanced at the clock. “I have a little time. You don’t have to kick me to the curb just yet.”

“In that case…” He kissed her again, this time with intention behind it. She felt a thrill surge up her spine…and then the security system beeped.

“That would be David,” Julian said. “Not the best timing, but I’m eager for the two of you to meet.”

“Does he always come and go as he pleases?”

“Officially, he works four days a week but I’ve long ago stopped trying to convince him to do less. He takes care of all the things I’m too lazy to do myself. He spoils me, really.”

They got dressed but one glance in the bathroom mirror and it was pretty clear how they’d been spending the morning. Natalie ran her fingers through her hair and followed Julian into the living area where a tall, lanky young man in his early thirties stood glancing about uncertainly. He wore a nice suit, if a bit rumpled, and his brown hair looked as though he drove a convertible with the top down. His smile stretched from ear to ear, but didn’t touch his eyes in the slightest.

“Hi, there,” he said, hurrying over to Natalie, hand outstretched.

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