"You're up."
"Because you left the balcony open," I said accusatorily, going over to the coffee maker. The wall clock in the kitchen said it wasn't even nine o'clock yet. Knowing Cameron, he had probably already squeezed in a workout in the home gym and gotten a look at his emails already.
"Oh, shit. Really?"
"You totally did that on purpose," I said, looking for a couple of mugs for us.
"I wouldn't have, knowing how grumpy you'd be this morning."
"I'm not grumpy."
"No, you'd just rather spend the whole morning in bed than with me."
"That's not true," I said, walking over to the breakfast table with our coffee. "What I wanted was for you to spend the morning in bed with me before you had to leave."
"Is that right?" he asked, bringing our loaded plates of food over. Hash browns, eggs, and turkey bacon. "If you had your way, I wouldn't see the light of day, would I?"
"No, you wouldn't," I laughed, “but I know that you'd obviously spend every waking moment with me if you weren't so busy. Right?" He grinned as he sat down.
"The correct answer to that question is 'of course, honey,' so I'll go with that." I laughed, appreciating his attempt at humoring me. I had adjusted to his new schedule, but that didn't mean it was ideal. It was working though. We were making it work. Him being busy meant Porter Holdings was doing great. After the lull it had experienced with the deaths of his parents and his departure, there were several new operations in various stages of development. He had picked up where his father had left off, so nobody had been laid off.
"I know you're busy," I said with an exaggerated sigh.
"Bet you regret handing me over to Brett now."
"No. You've been different since coming back."
"Yeah? How? Besides being swamped?"
"I don't know, more settled, I guess. Like there's a reason now, and you know why you're here. Why you're doing all of this."
"I'm glad it looks that way," he said with a small smile.
"The company's back on its feet, made a full recovery, and most likely going to exceed revenue records this year."
"I can't take credit for all that. I'm just doing my job."
"Well, you're good at it. Nothing wrong with being proud of that."
He shrugged. "I just want to do my best, make the most of everything, you know? My parents left this all to me; I want to make them proud. So that if they could ever see me again, they'd know they made the right decisions." I smiled.
"I think you're doing great."
"Thank you. I think you are too," he said.
"What? How?" I asked, taking his empty plate from in front of him with mine over to the sink.
"Because you're patient," he said, coming up behind me. "I know it's not fun canceling dates because of me." He wrapped his hands around my waist, hugging me to his chest.
"I understand. You have other commitments."
"It won't always be like this," he said. Yeah, they were still in a kind of transitory period, which meant a lot more direct involvement from him.
"It's okay," I reassured him. He held me tight to his body, kissing my temple.
"Thank you. You..." he trailed off. His hands were wrapped around me. "You're naked under this robe." His hand came up and pulled one side of my robe down, almost far enough to expose my breast.