The Satin Sash

Toni buried her face in her hands and groaned. “Can we please veer off the topic of marriage? Ask me something else. Anything else.”

“Grandchildren.There’s a topic for you.Your daddy and I want some.”

Anything except that.

“Mom, my career is just picking up. I can’t think of having a kid now. I wasn’t even able to take care of Daffy.” She pointed to the surly old furball eyeing her from his permanent place on the living room couch.

“But you and Grey talk about it?”

She snatched a glass from inside a cabinet and poured herself some water. “No.We do not, because neither of us wants one right now.” And because nobody could truly understand how difficult it was to talk to Grey. He listened, he wasn’t judgmental, but he was just so . . . so . . . logical.

It was practically impossible to get him to talk from the heart.

“Let’s talk about something else and stop torturing me. Dad, that deer over the fireplace looks miserable.Tell me about him.”

Her father’s chest expanded an inch or two. “Ahh, that’s a ten-point piebald whitetail deer. A really big buck, by anyone’s standards. Now I’m planning to go bear hunting to Alaska. I’m growing a beard and . . . well, speak of the devil and he appears! Good evening, Grey. How are you?”

What Toni felt hearing Grey’s distinct, low-pitched voice was indescribable. Like being swamped with whipped cream, covered in melted chocolate fudge.

“Homer.”

Even at this hour, his suit, the Hermès tie, everything about him was perfect. A smile curved her lips as she watched him pat her father’s back and move to her eagerly awaiting mother.

“I hope you don’t mind I let myself in, Beth, I stood out there for quite a while.”

“Grey, darling, that’s one crazy chime out there an

d half the time it doesn’t work. You’re always most welcome here.” Mom pulled him down to kiss his forehead, and Toni noted he no longer stiffened when she did.

When Grey popped a chocolate-chip cookie into his mouth, he didn’t get a slap. Her mother’s grin covered her entire face. “Take more, Grey—take all you want! I made those just for you.”

And then he was coming over to Toni, and her legs went rubbery. In his eyes she saw that glimmer he had for her, a mirror to the delicious emotion she felt every time she saw him.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to me?” he huskily murmured. The next second she was wrapped in all steel, all heat, all him. He brushed his lips across hers, their breaths mingling.

When he pulled away, he riveted her with eyes that smoldered with emotional intimacy.

Tilting her head farther back, she raised her hand to undo his tie like she always did. She draped it across the back of the couch, undid his two top buttons, Grey docilely letting her, and then she plunged her hands into his hair, playfully fussing it.“Wrapped up early?”

He gazed at her lips with a distinctly famished expression. “Seems like.”

“A good thing, too,” Mom chimed in.“I’m just about to serve.”

The next minute, they were sitting at the round oak table by the window. Once dinner was under way, their first bites were taken in companionable silence. Toni had always suspected that Grey secretly loved spending time with her parents. They said anything that came to their minds, but for the most part, it seemed to amuse him. No one ever listened with such quiet attention to her mom’s boring anecdotes of Toni’s childhood.

Toni could not stop eyeing her lover. The effortless way his hands moved. His lips. He was an Adonis, and he was hers. It was an intoxicating thought.

As he listened to her father’s hunting stories, she noticed how Grey, with his youth and sophistication, was so opposite of her dad. Her father was open and talkative, while Grey was reserved and contained. There was just something innately controlled and interesting about Grey she’d never seen in another man. With the possible exception of his father.

Grey’s father was the most handsome, compelling, sixty- five-year-old man Toni had ever seen. The man seemed immune to time, he was so attractive. Full head of luxuriant silvering hair, powerful square face, plus those same golden eyes she had fallen in love with.

He was also the biggest bastard she’d ever met.

All she’d needed to understand why Grey didn’t talk of his parents had been that one formal dinner, where they’d treated Toni like some lowly life- form out for Grey’s money—not that Grey’s money was theirs, because RS was Grey’s and Heath’s alone.

Grey had endured no more than two or three of their thinly veiled insults before calmly setting down his napkin and saying, “Mom. Dad. Enjoy your dinner.”

He’d pulled out Toni’s chair, so solid and composed when she’d been mortified at leaving the table so abruptly, and led her to his car. He said nothing on the way home. Nothing when they arrived. Nothing when they made love.The following week, while she was e- mailing a new proposal to one of her clients, he’d surprised her by whispering, “I wouldn’t change a hair on your head, do you know that?”