He turned and walked toward the door of his office. “I’ll meet you at the courthouse tomorrow, and I’ll look for your email about the tuxedo.” He closed his hand around the doorknob, giving it a twist, and then pulled it open and looked at her.
She seemed disappointed to be leaving but happy to have been there. She walked out with him into the front office, and Eva stared at her computer monitor with an unwavering gaze. They reached the door to the elevator, and Felicia turned to face Derrick.
“Thank you so much for the visit, darling. I can’t wait to be your wife and spend the rest of my life loving you and making you happy.” Felicia grinned at him and slipped her arms around his neck, bringing her mouth to his.
Despite the fact that she was doing her level best to ignore what was going on right in front of her, Eva could not help but look up as she heard Felicia speaking, and she wished she hadn’t when her eyes took in the sight of the other woman kissing her lover. Her heart caught in her chest and felt as if it might explode. Tears stung at the back of her eyes, and her throat tightened as her blood began to race through her body.
She made herself look down and focus with laser beam intensity at the keyboard beneath her fingers. She wished she had thought to turn on the radio so that at least there would be some kind of music to drown out the words that Felicia had spoken, or at least the silence following them.
Derrick pulled away from Felicia and reached for the door to the hallway. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said quietly. Felicia grinned and nodded, turning and walking away as if she might be floating on air. She reached the elevator, pressed the button for the elevator car, and then turned and looked back over her shoulder at Derrick, blowing him a kiss.
He gave her a nod and closed the door, turning with a heavy sigh toward Eva.
The Final Chapter
“I’m so sorry that you had to see that, and that she came in here at all. I wasn’t expecting her. She didn’t say that she was going to come in. She just… showed up. I don’t want her to be here around you. I know that must be difficult for you, and I don’t want you to be hurt by that. This is hard enough on both of us without her being here and making it more difficult.” He took a few steps toward her, and she turned her head away and looked at a file on her desk, keeping her view from him.
“It’s fine. We know it’s going to happen,” she spoke in a tight voice. She couldn’t make herself say anything else. She couldn’t make herself look up at him. She could only hold herself there in a stiff and statuesque position, trying not to make any kind of a dramatic scene or moment with the man she loved in the wake of his fiancé leaving the office.
“You know I love you,” he said in a soft and tender voice, and she could hear the pure emotion in his tone. She knew that he meant every word of it. He left and walked into his office, and she looked up and her heart began to beat again. Blood began to flow through her veins again.
Her mind began to turn, and her thoughts took shape. She bit at her lower lip as something formed in her mind. She knew that he loved her. She knew that he meant it every time h
e said it, and she knew that nothing could ever really stop real love.
Hope began to fill her, and she rose from her desk and walked into his office, her eyes moving about the room until they stopped on him as he stood beside the windowed wall at the far end of the room. She went to him, and he turned and slid his arms around her.
“I love you, too,” she answered him. “I love you so much.” She gave him a smile.
He finally smiled back at her, and it felt to him as if the dark cloud that had enveloped the office had lifted, and it was just the two of them in their serene bubble again, with nothing wrong in the world around them.
“God, I need you… more than you will ever know. I need you.” He kissed her softly and sweetly. “I don’t ever want to have a day without you. I wish I could have you for the rest of my life,” he said as she kissed him back and the fires between them began to grow.
He pulled her to him and pressed her against his body, and she moaned quietly as she let the flames of need and desire begin to consume her, loving how swiftly and deeply their passions burned. “I want the same thing, Derrick, and I want you to know that. I would spend the rest of my life with you,” she told him as they began to peel each other’s clothes off.
They moved to his sofa, kissing and touching, teasing and tasting, smiling with pleasure and excitement as he laid her back and buried himself in the depths of her, taking every bit of her mouth, her neck, the soft curves of her breasts, and her hardened and dark nipples into his mouth.
Together, they rocked and wrestled as one until they finally clung to one another and cried out in release and bliss, him flooding her body with his orgasm, and her quivering in his arms with the total ecstasy of hers.
When they could breathe again, he laid back down on the sofa and pulled her down with him, holding her against his chest as he stroked his fingers up and down her back. She listened to his heartbeat and smiled, and then looked up at him.
“Derrick, I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but I feel as if you might not realize it. I think if you did realize it, it could change everything for us,” she began as her own heart began to pick up speed and she felt hope swelling in her.
“What is it?” he asked, looking down at her and bringing his fingertips to her cheek to touch her gently there.
“Well, I was thinking, you know you don’t have to marry her. I love you. You love me. We both want to be together. I know we haven’t talked about it, and we haven’t been together long. I know that this might sound very sudden coming from me, but I want you to know that when I say that I love you, it’s with everything in me… and I know that your love is that strong for me as well.” She smiled as happiness began to radiate from her core.
She reached up and held her hand to his cheek. “Derrick, you don’t have to marry her. You could be with me. You could marry me. I would give that to you. I would give you the rest of my life if you wanted it. I would be so honored and glad to be your wife, to spend all of my days with you and start a family with you. We don’t have to be apart. You could choose me, if you wanted to, and then we wouldn’t have to end. Then there would be no one else but the two of us, forever…” she trailed off, feeling as if she had had an idea so brilliant and wonderful that it might outshine the sun and every star in the sky. She knew that it was rushing things with him, but she felt confident that they both loved each other so much that it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, and she might have just come up with the only way, and the best way, to solve the issue of him marrying Felicia.
“I mean, think about it. You said you don’t love her. You said you don’t want to be with her. You could be with me. I would be glad to marry you. I’m sure your father would want your happiness above anything else, right? This could happen!” She was growing more and more excited about the prospect of it as she spoke.
The pit of his stomach grew rock hard again, and he felt his mouth dry as he listened to her words, letting himself imagine for a fleeting moment that what she was saying could be a reality. He wished with everything in him that it could. He wanted it to be possible. He wanted it with everything in him.
He almost couldn’t speak for a minute, swallowing and holding her more tightly to him. He closed his eyes and kissed her forehead, pressing his lips there firmly and lingering in the hold and the kiss before letting her go and looking down at her once more.
“I do love you, Eva, and I wish with my whole heart that I could spend every day of the rest of my life with you. I wish that we would never know a day when we couldn’t be together, but unfortunately, that’s not the reality of our lives. That’s not what can or will happen.” He hated every word that he uttered, and it pained him to say each one of them.
She frowned and leaned up on her elbow, giving him a confused look. “What do you mean we can’t? We love each other, don’t we? We want to be together. There’s no reason in the world why we can’t. Is there? What are you talking about?”