More Than Need You (More Than Words 2)

“Hi,” he says in my ear. “You with Keeley?”

“Uh-huh.” No way I’m letting her in on my conversation with m

y brother and potentially ruining his big surprise.

“Is she all right?”

“Uh-huh,” I answer without looking Keeley’s way.

“You can’t talk? Is that it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But you’ll have her there tomorrow night and you won’t tell her a thing?”

“Uh-huh,” I promise.

“All right. You’re saying you’ve got everything under control and it’s taken care of on your end?”

“Uh-huh.”

Maxon breathes a sigh of relief in my ear. “Great. Yeah… I’ll talk about business to throw her off track. So I got a phone call from our potential buyer’s rep about an hour ago. She’s arriving in Maui on Monday afternoon. She wants to preview the Stowes’ place on Tuesday.”

“That fast. It sounds like the buyer is really interested.”

“That’s the vibe I’m getting. But we need to go out there and make sure the house and grounds are looking their best tomorrow morning.”

“Sure. If not, we’ll come up with a strategy then.”

“To snag this mysterious buyer or our reluctant women?”

I laugh at my brother. “Yeah.”

He’ll know I mean both.

“You got it.”

We ring off, and Keeley looks ready to ask me a million questions. I cut her off. “Business call. We already have someone interested in the Stowe estate.”

I fill her in, minus the speculation about who the buyer might be. She listens with half an ear, finishes her wine, then pleads exhaustion. I think she’s just sad that Maxon didn’t ask to talk to her.

Back at my condo, it’s close to ten, but I’m nowhere near ready for bed.

I feel sadness settle over me. It weighs as much as a goddamn elephant sitting on my chest, suffocating me. So when Keeley shuts her bedroom door, my options for distraction are limited, but deep down, I’ve made up my mind.

I’m going to torture myself.

It’s not the first time…but I’ve indulged in this self-inflicted agony thing more than a few times in the last thirty-nine months. The previous time, I swore it would be the last. Obviously, I was full of shit and I’ll probably hate myself for this later. But I’m like an addict. Relapse is just a matter of time.

I can’t stop thinking that Makaio might not have been making love to Britta an hour ago. He might be doing it now. Or maybe he’s doing it again. And there’s not a fucking thing I can do to stop him.

With a curse under my breath, I pour myself a few fingers of Lagavulin 21. I’m old enough to drink, and my Scotch better be, too. I swirl it in my glass. It burns going down.

Am I really going to do this?

I toss back the rest, enjoying the fire blazing its way down my throat and into my belly.

Yeah. I really am.

I make to pour another few fingers of the booze. Oh, fuck it. The shit’s only five hundred bucks a bottle. I grab it by the neck, take it with me into the bedroom, and decide to stop procrastinating.

It’s time for the ultimate pain I can inflict on myself. Tonight, I’ve got an added bonus. I swiped the CD Keeley left me out of Britta’s car and brought it into my bedroom. I set the bottle on my nightstand and start the next unfamiliar tune on the disc. According to the case, it’s called “For a Lifetime” by a band called Lustral.

The song is chill. It’s got a sense of…waiting. Like something is about to happen. When the background singers come in and chant the title a few times in something just above a whisper, the tune shows its gravity. I can’t stop listening.

I also can’t stop my feet from moving forward, into my closet, up to my safe. I scroll through the combination and push aside all the papers I keep and my stash of ready cash. I reach for the black velvet box in the back and lift the lid.

Yep, it’s still sitting there. Two carats of princess-cut diamond in rose gold with sparkling pavé clusters set in the thin band to resemble little flowers.

I’ve kept it for nearly four years.

The minute I saw it, I knew it belonged on Britta’s finger and that I was the man who needed to put it there.

At the time I saw it, we’d only been dating a bit more than three months. We had only been having sex for two weeks.

Winter was about to tip into spring, and on a gorgeous day, I took a drive to Wailea with my top down. Britta’s mother was in town, and I was supposed to have dinner with them later that night. I parked at an outdoor mall and eyed an Italian place for lunch. As I headed that way, I walked past a jeweler’s window. This ring glinted and dazzled. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

A voice in my head told me to buy it for Britta. She’s too young, I told myself at the time. She’s not ready. Hell, I wasn’t, either.

But that voice insisted if I walked past the ring, I’d be making a mistake. So I spent a small fortune on it. And I held on to it, all through the spring, when I felt as if I really got to know Britta. Through the hot summer, when we seemed to forge something deep, so I asked her to move in and she said yes. Through the early fall, when I truly began picturing what it might be like to live with and love this woman for the rest of our lives. With some help from friends and neighbors, I threw her a surprise party for her birthday in October. It was too crowded to pop the question then. But a month later? I thought proposing to her and hearing her say yes would be the perfect birthday present to me.

Damn, I had this great plan… I told her I wanted to take a sunset beach cruise for my birthday. She bought the tickets. Unbeknownst to her, I hired a string quartet. I had a speech planned with a private dinner for two afterward where I fully intended to finally tell her that I loved her and wanted to marry her. And I reserved a swanky suite, along with champagne and dessert.

Perfect.

Except it never happened.

Six days before, I found out about Maxon’s secret deal with the Asian prince and lost my shit, ripping our business apart. Ironically, my brother had broken up with Tiffanii the night before when he discovered she’d been cheating with both a pilot and a wealthy playboy. I walked out on Britta, leaving when I had no idea she was pregnant.

November first was the worst day of my life, hands down. Every person and thing that made me happy was gone in the blink of an eye.

With that thought, I strip and get in bed, ring in one hand, bottle in the other. I swallow down another mouthful of the burn while I rub the precious metal between my fingers and imagine her wearing it while I’m making love to her, while she’s got on nothing else but the symbol of my possession.

I’m harder than fuck.

The song rolls on. She sings that the world she clings to is the one where she’ll walk beside me and she wants to show me what it feels to be complete. She’s been waiting for me for a lifetime. Yeah, I feel like I’ve been waiting for Britta that long, too. The background singers add a panty, breathy vibe. It’s sensual. And if I toss a little more booze into my system and close my eyes, I can almost imagine Britta beside me.

Yeah, that’s her hand wrapped around my cock. That’s my ring