The Satin Sash

  The memory of them posing three nights ago, smiling for those blasted cameras,Toni’s smile so stiff on her lips—a sad, forced smile she’d placed on her face because he’d asked her to put it there . . . Grey hated it. Loathed himself for having asked her to do it. Hated forcing Toni to bend to these people. She was right; it wasn’t their fucking business. And Grey did want to tell them to screw themselves. Them and his father.

  She was so brave, so spirited, a fiery creature of passion and life. . . .

  She’d have rather chowed on cement than placate the press, but she had done it for him. Out of love for him.Though he’d thought it impossible to love her any more than he already had, he did. He cherished her. Adored her.Wanted to, needed to, marry her.

  By the time Louisa appeared through the sliding glass doors, flushed and excited and dressed indecently like always, he was simmering with impatience. Charging across the store to lead her to his corner, he sat her down on the upholstered chair next to his and briskly lifted the tweezers up to her line of vision. “It’s a gray diamond.”

  Louisa’s expression was an interesting mix of awe and confusion that looked almost painful.

  “Do you think Toni would like it?” Grey pressed.

  She raised stunned blue eyes to his; she didn’t seem to be breathing. “Are . . . are you going to propose?”

  “This is between you and me. What happens at . . .” He gave a meaningful glance at the store logo. “Fried’s, stays at Fried’s. Until the ring is on her finger.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Do you like it?”

  After a timid moment, she took the tweezers between awkward fingers, gave the stone an expeditious look, then lowered her hand. “I just don’t believe Toni ever intended to marry.”

  “Nothing is set in stone.” Grey turned to the jeweler, who’d been eyeing their exchange with a benign look on his face. “And this is?”

  “Two hundred seventy- five thousand.”

  Louisa’s hand flew to her mouth, not quite in time to cover her gasp; then she coughed and patted her chest with the other.

  “It’s a GIA certified diamond, sir.”

  Pleased with this new important detail and unfazed by the price, Grey raised his hand to the jeweler’s inhumanly devoid gaze and tapped the base of his wedding finger.“Would this include it being set in a band?”

  “A setting, yes. I’d suggest platinum, with white pave diamonds surrounding the central stone to bring out the color in it, and a very delicate band.”

  “Could we arrange for a wire transfer to be made to the store today, Louisa?”

  She was on her feet, twisting a bracelet around her wrist. “Sure, it’s—Yes, anything is possible.”

  “Splendid,” the man said.

  Grey drummed his fingers on the glass in a restless gesture, studying his fidgeting assistant. “How should I give it to her, do you think? The old- fashioned way, roses, dropping at her feet?”

  Louisa’s sudden laugh had a raspy, unattractive quality to it. It almost sounded cynical. “Toni isn’t that old- fashioned.”

  “You’re right. Hmm.” He considered his Toni in all her dimensions, caring and funny and explosive.“Something fun, maybe. Balloons and a mime?”

  “A mime?”

  “Something she won’t expect.” Grey smiled at his own inge niousness, his mind racing full speed. “Yes. I like that.”

  Stubborn, stubborn Grey.

  Toni had been sitting at her workstation all morning and had accomplished nothing but a headache.

  Dropping her pencil, she pushed her chair back and wound her way around the living room, plumping the pillows. How would she get him to admit it, to stop being so hardheaded? She knew that he knew deep down she was right. Heath belonged with them. Grey adored him in his own way, and not talking to him was tearing him apart, too! They couldn’t push Heath out of their lives. He was all instinct and passion and courage, and Toni wanted him, needed him, with them. How would she make him come back? How could she make Grey accept him?

  While she set the kitchen into a semblance of cleanliness and order, she heard a knock. She was so lost in her thoughts, she didn’t hesitate to stroll over and open the door, thinking it might be one of her neighbors.

  Instead, she came face-to- face with the same pair of twilight black eyes that haunted her dreams, her nightmares, and all her daydreams in between.

  Looking tired, Heath Solis ran a hand through his rumpled hair, and his lips slowly, slowly, curved into a devastating smile.

  Her stomach tumbled to the floor. Her breath went with it. “Heath?”

  “The one and only.”

  He lifted his right hand and held up her satin sash like a white flag announcing the end of a battle.

  She didn’t realize she was clinging to the door until her knuckles protested in pain. She loosened her hold, trying to stand upright. “I wasn’t sure when you’d find my sash . . . or that you’d even want to come.”

  He dropped a duffel bag at his feet and took a step forward, prying the door from her fingers and shutting it behind him. He did not let go of the sash. “When have I not come when you wanted me?”

  She sucked in a breath when he reached out to trace the boat-neck collar of her shirt with his free hand. Gooseflesh broke out along her skin as his finger trailed the edges. Her heart could not beat any faster and she survive it.

  “Heath.”

  His hand journeyed higher, up the curve of her throat. His eyes tracked the caress up to her lips. Her mouth opened, her eyes drifting shut as he pushed his thumb into her mouth. “Heath . . .” She tilted her face higher, drawing his digit inside and wrapping the heat of her mouth entirely around it. Longing spread through her veins, stretching her system taut. He tasted salty, and she wanted to continue licking until she had tasted every part of his skin.

  “Oh, my god, Heath.” She tore her eyes open, pressed her breasts into his chest and tangled her fingers in his hair, and then his arms were unyielding vines around her, squeezing out the little breath that remained in her.

  “Christ! You feel so good, you smell”—he sucked in a breath of her hair—“so good.”

  She clutched the cotton of his shirt in her fists and smelled him, too. Earth. Sweat. Heath. She flattened her hands over his pecs to encompass as much of him she could. The drum of his heart beat strong and steady under her palm. “I missed you, Heath. It’s been horrible without you. Everything’s been just horrible lately,” she confessed.

  His eyes were weighted, the lashes silky, almost resting on his prominent cheekbones. Framing her mouth with his thumbs, he studied her lips with the hunger of a wild man, but seemed hesitant to take them. “Fuck, Cat, I’m so screwed.”

  “No. No.” She clutched his face between her small hands. “You’re home.You’re home, Heath.”

  He drew back a little. “Do you mean that?”

  She bit her lip, nodding.

  “Shit, come here.”

  He crushed her mouth with his. His tongue pushed inside, demanding, insistent, voracious, twirling against and around her. “I want you, Cat.” He lifted her off the floor and spun her around.“All of you, the good and the bad.”

  She laughed. “Oh, it’s all good.”

  And they were laughing, kissing, when a closing door broke through their merriment.

  They swiveled their heads to the entry. And there stood Grey. With an enormous black gorilla at his side. The gorilla grasped a bunch of colorful helium balloons in his meaty hand.

  “Grey?”A puzzled noise rose up her throat.“W-what is a gorilla doing here?”

  Grey wasn’t listening to her. His gaze was riveted on Heath, his unguarded expression registering shock. Pain, anger. His lips hardened. “Heath.”

  “Grey.”

  With a strained move, Grey rubbed his two index fingers up the bridge of his nose, whispered something into his hands before he dropped them at his sides.

  Toni gulped. In her anxiety and desperatio
n to reunite the men, she had failed to predict the sheer enormity of the blazing hostility between them. It was suffocating. Her lungs burned for oxygen, her knees wobbled, and she could not seem to move.

  “Unbelievable,” Heath muttered as the gorilla proffered the tangle of balloons ceremoniously before her. “Where on earth did you find that thing, Richards?”

  Grey looked ready to explode in some kind of internal combustion, and Toni felt the turmoil in him as if it were her own.The guy in the gorilla suit was jumping with glee, either too stupid to realize what was happening or too frantic to do his job to care. But the stark emotion in Grey’s simmering gold eyes was so vivid, his face seemed to grow black with his pain.

  Releasing a freakish king-of-the-jungle sound, the hairy black beast lumbered forward and dropped to one knee, extending a gift to her. A dangerous weakness crept up the back of her legs, loosening her spine. She took the small box with trembling hands.

  Grey cursed and went to stare out the blinds.

  And Toni flicked the box open. A beautiful diamond ring sat nestled at its plush velvet center. The stone was brilliant, dark and different and sophisticated, and so beautiful it robbed her of her breath. It was Grey. And it was heartbreaking.

  “Grey, what is this?”

  He was seething with energy, frustration and anger sharpening his words, each piercing her like a needle. “You know what it is.”

  “You said . . . you said we wouldn’t do it. Ever.”

  “Well, I want to do it now.”

  The gorilla was punching its chest, doing goofy stuff around the room; then it made a silly noise and tooted a little horn.That was all it took to make Grey lose it.What had not happened in thirty-five years happened when the gorilla tooted that little horn.

  Grey threw himself at the man, grabbing him by the shoulders. In the oversized suit the guy was no match for him. In a flash of fury, Grey jostled him out into the hall, yelling, “Out, out, out!”

  The slam of the door made the walls vibrate. Motionless as concrete, Heath and Toni regarded him with caution as he returned, but Grey only had eyes for her.Wounded eyes. Eyes full of accusation and torture.

  He stared at Toni with those eyes. Toni, with the box in one hand.With her sash in the other.With her heart in her eyes and no oxygen to speak with.

  Out in the hall, she heard voices. Doors. The elevator dinging. But the inside of her apartment was dense as a coffin; there was no life here.

  “Did you give Heath your sash?” Grey asked in a voice so taut it sent prickles of unease down her back.

  “Yes.”

  “May I know why?”

  Her throat felt dry as sandpaper as she swallowed.“So he’d come back.”

  Plunging a hand into his hair, Grey circled the room. And circled. And circled.

  Toni stared hopelessly at the ring again. Oh, how she’d wanted this ring. How she wanted to marry Grey. Vow her love for him before the world and god and a roomful of people.What she would give to be his wife! But how could she? How could she now, with Heath here, humbly asking to be part of her, too? Her eyes clouded with tears. Her throat worked as she tried to speak.

  “Grey, about the ring . . .”

  “Forget it,” he said blandly. And as though this were any ordinary day, with that confident, take-on-the-world stride of his, he disappeared into their bedroom, pulled open the closet doors, and very carefully began to draw out his clothes.

  When Toni realized his intentions, she hurled both the ring and the sash on the bed and rushed to stop him. “Grey, what are you doing? No!” Panicked, she seized the hangers in his hands and frantically tried to shove the clothes back inside. “Don’t do this—don’t leave me!”

  “Grey,” Heath said in a threatening voice from the doorway.

  Grey pivoted, his face taut with rage as he pointed a commanding finger at him. “You stay the fuck out of this, Solis.”

  While Toni struggled to return the armful of shirts to his side of the closet, he reached for his laptop on the nightstand. He unplugged it, shoved it into his leather briefcase, strapped it inside.

  Toni rushed to him, her eyes stinging, the words barely getting past the painful obstruction in her throat. “Grey, don’t you dare leave me. Don’t you dare!” She grabbed both his biceps and pushed her face into his neck, shaking her head a thousand times, certain that she was falling, torn by not knowing what to do, and fearing that this time Grey wouldn’t catch her.

  He cursed under his breath and dropped his forehead to her shoulder. His chest heaved so roughly she thought his clothes would tear. “Grey.”The word was a shaky plea against his collar. “It would work, you know it would.The three of us . . . the three of us love each other.”

  Even as she began to speak, he was shaking his head, shaking his head faster, blocking her out, blocking out her words. She trapped his jaw in her hands, her voice almost a shriek. “Please, please, listen to me! We can be together. All three of us. Grey! Please listen.”

  The fury and misery in him raged rampant in his eyes. “No,” he hissed. Grabbing her throat in his hand, he lay his thumb on her pulse, a hairsbreadth from pressing. “You,” he said in a savage snarl she had never, ever, heard before. “You listen to me.” His hand trembled and he let go of her. “It’s him or me.” Snatching the sash from the bed, he rammed it into her chest, where her clammy hand came up to cradle it against her.“You’ve only got one of those.You get one pick!”

  Heath narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to regret this, Grey.”

  “I already do.”

  Toni laughed. That nervous, she’s-lost-her-mind laugh, and it was mingled with tears. She brought her fist to her mouth, trying to strangle the laugh, but the sounds that came out in the attempt were even worse, and it made both men stare at her incredulously.

  Grey’s expression transformed from ominous fury to a twisted, pained grimace as he caught her face, streaming with tears, in both his hands. And then he was hauling her to him, crushing her in his arms.“Don’t cry on me now, Antonia. Don’t fucking do this to me now!”

  The raw agony in his plea battered her. She tried sucking back the tears, but her sobs came from somewhere so deep and wretched. She couldn’t even say from where; only that she couldn’t stop them. The tears flowed unchecked and her body spasmed, racked by the force with which they tore from her. She had never clutched his shoulders so hard, so violently.

  Then something happened. His arms tightened surprisingly harder around her, and Grey buried his face deep in her hair and choked on the most awful, heart-wrenching sound she’d ever heard, and she knew he was sobbing, too.

  He had never held her so hard, hard enough to crush her bones, and she wanted to disintegrate right there in his arms.

  But instead, a moment later he was transferring—transferring her, fast and not gently, to another pair of arms, and his footsteps sounded across the room. He was leaving. So fast. So surely. Like he couldn’t wait to get out of there. Out of her life.

  Toni sagged at the definitive click of the door. She fell in a heap at Heath’s feet, tears rolling down her cheeks in rivers.

  Heath kneeled before her, collecting her—all limp bones and muscles that felt lax with grief—against him.“Cat. Sweetheart.” He gathered her close and rocked her, and she knew by the way his hands shook that he was at a loss, that he’d never handled a woman in this situation before, and no matter how she tried, she could not seem to compose herself for him, either.

  “Toni, I’ve ruined your life. Jesus, I’ve ruined your life.”The way he spoke it as he rocked her, like a chant of hatred, a curse at himself, made her wipe at her tears with furious hands.

  “No, don’t say that.”

  “Yes, I have.Yes, I have. Oh, baby, I have.”

  Tenderly, she filled her palms with the tightness of his jaw, crying softly. “I love you. Grey loves you, too—you’re like his brother. He’s too stubborn to admit it.”

  He was gripping at her, rubbing against her
. “Use me.” He was pulling at her hair, ravaging her neck.“Use me for what you need. I can be Grey for you. I’ll make love to you. I’ll tell you all the things he—”

  “Heath, stop it, stop!” she cried anxiously, and locked her eyes on his. “You’re my Heath. Stop this.”

  “Oh, Cat, this is killing me.” His back against the wall, he shifted her onto his lap and petted her hair so roughly, she thought he’d tear it out at the roots. His voice was gruff and affected.“I’ve never felt like this before, did you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Look at me.”

  She did. She looked into those eyes, luminous on hers, expressive and meltingly tender. She grazed her cheek across the familiar calluses in his palms as he cradled her. “I missed you, Heath Solis.”

  He was drinking up her face as though it were his only sustenance. “I missed you every day, Cat, every single day. Christ, I don’t want to leave. I swore to myself nothing would make me leave this time. But if I stay he won’t come back.”

  “He will, Heath, he will!”

  “He won’t, Cat. He’s stubborn as they come.”

  “But he loves me,” she said brokenly.

  The grim set of Heath’s mouth and the bleak look in his eyes had her wildly shaking her head in denial before he even spoke his thoughts out loud. “If I stay, you lose him.”

  “Don’t say that—that’s not true!”

  “I’m no match for Grey,Toni.”

  “You are! You make me smile—I adore being with you, I want you in my life, and Grey adores you, damn him. I hate him!”

  “Fucking look at you!” Heath roared as he gestured down at her, at this heap of clothes that she was, tear-stricken, trembling, someone she would pity. “Look at you without him! And did you get a fucking good look at him?”

  “Well, I was a little busy at the moment!” she screamed.

  “Then I can tell you what he looked like. I can—goddammit, it’s killing him!” Frustrated, his throat hoarse with agony, he smashed her body to his. Her thighs opened for closeness, their bodies fitting together, heat to heat. He ducked his head to hers, his mouth furiously nipping, biting between words. “Take me in, kitten. Take me in your body one last time.”