Wait. He meant me. He was looking at me. My heart did cartwheels. I pressed my lips to fight a smile, but it was pretty much impossible. He’d gotten me with that line. He was flirting with me. Why couldn’t I be that smooth?
The man stretched out his arm and offered me a hand. “I’m Dion,” he said.
“Georgia,” I said back, taking his hand and shaking it.
I had no idea that all my life I’d been looking for this man named Dion. Dion McNeil. We met at this club, and even after exchanging numbers and parting ways, I couldn’t get him off of my mind.
He sent me text messages every single day. Every morning he’d send me a “Good morning, Beautiful” text, and I’d respond with “Good morning, Handsome.”
Dion eventually became the love of my life. I did all my duties at the mansion in a timely fashion, just so I could go to meet him for dinners or for a drink at a bar. I became a much better flirt, but I think I was just becoming comfortable with him altogether.
As time progressed, he would invite me to his apartment, where he’d cook dinner for me and let me watch him prepare it. He was a great cook, had even gone to culinary school for two years but never finished.
I suppose it didn’t matter, though, because he was currently a sous chef in a really popular Miami restaurant called Louie’s. I’d learned that about him when we first hooked up, along with other facts. His favorite color was red. He’d lost his parents when he was two and grew up with an uncle named Brandon. He also used to be a hand model. He did have nice hands for a chef, I would admit.
For a while, life was great with Dion and at the mansion with Lola. And then, around Christmas of 2006, nearly a year after I’d started working for Lola, Dion asked me to marry him.
We didn’t do anything big. We went to the courthouse and sealed the deal with a kiss and two gold wedding bands. I was Mrs. McNeil, and I was so damn proud to have his last name.
But it was after we got married when things started to change.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Dion wanted me to move in with him. But he knew about my job. He knew I had to be at the mansion every day and night so the Maxwells’ ship could continue running smoothly.
“Just quit. I make enough money to take care of both of us,” he’d said to me as we lay in his bed one night. We’d been married for a little over a month then. I was naked beneath his sheets and he was shirtless, his back pressed to the headboard. He was running the pads of his fingers up and down my bare arm.
I ran my hand over his chest and sighed. “I know you can, but Lola needs me at the mansion. I’m also under a contract, Dion. Even if I wanted to quit, I can’t for another eight or so years.”
“Eight?” he repeated, and I sensed irritation in his voice.
“It’s a ten-year contract, babe. I told you that before.”
I looked up and his mouth twitched. Then he moved my arm from his torso and climbed out of the bed. I pushed up on my elbow, watching as he tugged on his boxers. “Dion?” I groaned.
“Don’t call my name like that, Georgia. So, you’re telling me I’m going to have to wait ten years to live with my wife?”
“Why are you acting surprised by this, Dion? You knew when we first met that I had obligations to Lola and the mansion.”
“You’re choosing her over me,” he muttered.
“No, I’m not! Don’t say that!” I sat up fully. “This job pays me well. Look, maybe I can’t quit, but if I talk to Lola, maybe she’ll be okay with me leaving the mansion a little earlier from now on to spend time with you, and coming in a little later.”
Dion turned around then, and his eyes softened. “And if she isn’t?”
“She’ll have to let me, Dion. We’re married now. She’ll understand. She knows what married life is like.”
He sighed and came back to the bed, and relief unfurled in my belly. He grabbed one of my hands and wrapped his around mine. “I just don’t want to live without you, G. I want to come home to my wife. I love you too much for you to be away from me all night.”
I leaned forward and kissed him. “I know, I know. I’ll talk to her.”
And I would . . . I just wasn’t sure when. When I’d applied for the job, it was never my intention to fall in love or get married, so I was fine signing a ten-year contract with Lola. I didn’t think I’d find a man who loved me as much as I loved him, but life is funny like that. It throws things at you that you don’t quite see coming. I’m sure you know all about that.