Chapter 18: Slow Hands

Ronan's POV

By nine that night I had spoken to eleven lawyers, four reporters and the bank.

Then Gill took the phone out of my hand and turned it off.

"Maureen is out Monday at nine," she said.

"The accounts will thaw when the judge reads Adele's statement. You've done everything a person can do from this chair."

"Gordon has the gala next Saturday," I said. "Every donor and camera in Los Angeles in one room. He will use it."

"Not tonight."

She stood in front of me in the dark kitchen in one of my shirts.

It was gray, and it came to the middle of her thighs.

"Camille has until the gala," I said. "If she hasn't said it by then, I will."

"Out loud, in front of everyone?"

"I gave her my word for two years. I'm giving her one more week."

Gill nodded slowly.

"Good," she said. "Now come to bed."

I followed her down the hall.

I had been a careful man for two years.

I had learned where every threshold was and which doors opened inward.

I had learned to want nothing I couldn't reach from sitting down.

She stopped at the side of the bed and turned around, and she unbuttoned the shirt.

It fell off her shoulders.

My control, the thing I had kept in both hands since the crash, simply let go.

"Stop being careful with me," she said.

"I'm not."

"You are. You have been all week. I can see you counting."

"Gill."

"Tell me what you want, Ronan. Not what you can manage. What you want."

I looked at her standing there in the lamplight, with her hair loose and her chin up.

"I want to be on top of you," I said. "I want to feel you under me."

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