A Forever Love (21 page)

He pressed his lips to her cheek. “Thank you.” He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry. You were right, Aubrey. You were right about everything.”

With his words, her remaining anger deflated like a balloon that had been pricked with a pin. Gone was the heat of anger, replaced now with the heat she always felt when she stood beside Justin. Her cheeks flushed. He held both her hands, and his eyes locked to hers. In this very moment, she wished for the briefest instant that Max wasn’t there, that he was fast asleep in some room somewhere in this monstrosity of a penthouse, because the visions dancing through her head were visions of Justin naked and the make-up-slash-you’ve-been-gone-too-long-sex that would surely ensue. Justin’s pupils dilated and his lips parted. They were so close; she took a tiny step forward—

“Hey, Dad, you got anything to eat? I’m starved after that flight.’

Aubrey jumped back. How could she forget? She wasn’t here for herself or for Justin and certainly not for sex … Well, not really for sex. She was here for Max so that he might experience his father’s world, meet his uncles, and take his place as a member of the Travati family.

“Of course. Stocked the refrigerator and the cabinets just for you. Let’s take a look. I think I got everything you like and then some.” Justin slowly dropped her hand. Before he turned toward the kitchen where Max waited, he mouthed the words, “Missed you.”

Aubrey’s sex tightened with the look that accompanied Justin’s silent message. Damn. She’d missed him too. His touch. His laugh. The way that with one look he made her legs turn to rubber bands and nearly crumple beneath her. Yes, she’d missed Justin. And it wasn’t only Justin. She’d missed the feeling of unity, of cohesiveness they’d started to develop the longer he was at Rockwater Farms. They’d begun to make something, an entity that seemed right, a group of three. She followed Justin into the kitchen. Max stood in front of the refrigerator with the two doors opened wide.

“Mom, you want anything to eat?” He looked over his shoulder toward her.

Justin turned to her as well. Her breath caught in her chest. That instant of father and son, side by side, both of them looking at her, captured her breath. Stole the life force right from her lungs. My goodness, there would never be a more wonderful sight than this, her two men, the two men both strong and gorgeous and so … so … Travati in their stance.

“No thanks,” she said softly.

Justin and Max looked at each other and then turned back to plundering the plethora of food in front of them.

“Oh yeah! You got my favorite kind of soda, the Jarritos.”

“I don’t know how you drink that stuff.” Justin pulled out a large rotisserie chicken from the refrigerator. “But I know you love it.”

Max pulled out a glass container and lifted the lid. He sniffed. “These smell just like Aunt Nina’s mashed potatoes.”

Justin raised a brow. “She sent the recipe to my chef.”

“You have your own personal chef?”

“So do you,” Justin said and handed Max a spoon.

Max dug into the mashed potatoes cold, taking huge chunks and eating them as though he’d not plowed through three separate sandwiches and a piece of cake on the plane.

Aubrey’s stomach whirled. The idea of food caused a sour feeling to swirl through her belly. She’d never experienced motion sickness, but since they’d climbed onto the plane, she hadn’t felt right. She sat on one of the leather barstools beside the gargantuan granite kitchen island.

“You okay?” Justin asked. Concern pulled at the corner of his lips. “You look a little green.”

“Maybe a little water,” she said and pressed her fingertips to her forehead. Please don’t let her be sick. She couldn’t be sick. This was her time with both her guys. Perhaps the only time they’d all spend together. This was the first time that Max would experience New York. See the sights. Be a true tourist. Because eventually this city would claim Max Travati as its own. It might not be now and it might not be during college, but one day he would live here, most likely permanently, and he would take over Travati Financial.

Justin pulled a glass from the cabinet, filled it with water, and handed the glass to her. “You okay?” He lowered his voice and leaned in closer to her. “Maybe you should lie down? Take a rest?”

“So what’s up for tonight?” Max turned to them. He still held the container of mashed potatoes in one hand but now also had a rotisserie chicken leg grasped tightly in the other.

Justin smiled. “It would seem the trip has exhausted your mother. I was thinking tonight we might lie low. We could go see a show or even head to the Yankees game.”

“That’s lying low?”

Justin nodded. “Travati Financial has a box. You want to go?”

“Do I want to go? To a Yankees game? Heck yeah!”

Max’s grin split his face. Even with her stomach sour and her head pounding, she loved seeing her son so very happy.

“Mom? You going to be okay?”

So sweet that he would even stop to ask, considering how excited he was.

“I’ll be fine. That’s perfect because I can take a long bath. Read. Relax. I’m sure it’s jet lag and fatigue. That way I’ll be one hundred percent for tomorrow.”

Justin nodded and smiled. “Go get ready. We’ll leave in twenty minutes.”

Max bolted from the kitchen then stopped. “Uh, which room?”

“The one with the signed jersey from A-Rod on the wall.”

Max’s eyes widened. “A-Rod? Are you kidding me?”

“Nope.” Justin smiled. “Go check it out.”

Max raced from the room and even here, in this giant penthouse, she heard the pounding of his feet going up the stairs.

“You okay?” Justin leaned in and pressed his hands to the back of her neck and started to rub in slow circles. The tension eased out of her body with his touch, but a different kind of heat now pulsed through her muscles with his continuous rubbing of her neck. She leaned back into his touch.

“Mmm, that feels so good.” She closed her eyes. She wanted his hands all over her body, his lips on her sex, him deep inside her. She wanted all of him and she wanted him now.

“Wish I could stay here and take that bath with you,” he whispered in her ear, his voice sandpaper rough with need and want.

“Me too.”

“Maybe later. After our son is in bed.”

“Maybe.” She leaned deeper into his touch, and his lips pressed to the side of her neck. The hot touch caused her nipples to tighten and ache against her bra. Yes, for a moment again she wished that Max were asleep in his new room in his father’s penthouse so that she and Justin might escape to his room and she could release her sexual frustration and want for her husband.

Husband
?

Her body stiffened. Justin wasn’t her husband. She pulled forward and turned to him. His eyes searched hers as if to ask again if she was all right.

“What is it?” That raised brow.

“Nothing … I just …” She stood and pulled away from his touch, sliding her hands into the back of her jeans. “I just keep picturing us all together.” She watched Justin. “When we’re together, at the end of your trip to Rockwater Farms and now, I keep picturing us as a family. That’s confusing to me because I know with your work and my work and with everything in our lives that us being a family simply can’t happen.”

“Why not?” Justin asked. His voice was low. So sexy. Energy thrummed between them. “Why couldn’t we be a family? I love you, I love Max, and now you’re telling me that you love me too? Families have been formed for worse reasons.”

Aubrey’s heart pounded. “But how would we? You’re here. I’m in Kansas. How could we make that work?”

“I don’t know,” Justin said. “And I don’t care, we simply would. We’d make it work because that’s what we’d want. We’d want to be a family. The three of us. Together.” He pulled her close and stared into her eyes. His intensity, his desire for this, was much more than she would have expected, enough to nearly sweep her up into his enthusiasm.

“But … I mean …”

He pressed his fingertips to her lips. “There is nothing that would make me happier than to have the two people I love, the two people who mean more to me than anything in the world, become my family. The two of you, you and Max and me. There are no reasons why we can’t make that happen for all of us.”

Aubrey wanted to believe him. She wanted to think there would be a romantic fairy-tale ending to their story, one that would be the three of them living together, but what about his business in New York and her business at Rockwater Farms? How did you make a romantic relationship work when one person lived in Manhattan and the other in Kansas?

“You know, I spent three weeks in Kansas and was able to take care of everything but an emergency. I could do it again. And you have Cassidy. Surely for one week a month she and Nina could soldier on at Rockwater Farms without you.”

Maybe … her head was spinning. Again the sour feeling in her stomach. “I … I think I need to lie down.” She grasped Justin’s arm, and he helped her to her room and the hot bath and the bed so that she could put off her decision until her thoughts were clear.

Perfection could be purchased for the right price. Or near perfection. Justin pulled the box from his sport-jacket pocket and snapped open the case. There on the navy blue velvet was a near-perfect six-carat stone in a platinum setting. Clear. Hot. Sharp. Gorgeous. All the traits that the woman he hoped would soon be his wife exhibited. Even the perfection. Or near perfection.

Across the living room, in the dining room, Max stood beside his mother while she straightened his tie.

Warmth flew through Justin. He would never grow tired of walking into his home and seeing them both here. Aubrey said something and Max grinned. He replied and they both laughed. This was their second evening and the night that Justin would introduce Max to his uncles. The first night had been the Yankees game. They’d had the entire Travati Financial box to themselves, aside from two rock stars and a Norwegian monarch that Travati Financial had invited to the box for the evening. At first Max seemed stunned, but then he was just Max. A fourteen-year-old kid at his first Yankees game.

Today had been filled with touristy things. The World Trade Center, the 9/11 Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. The kid wasn’t even tired, but Aubrey? She’d gone back to the penthouse before the Statue of Liberty, claiming fatigue and sour stomach. But when he and Max returned home, she looked fresh and happy and ready for tonight.

Max seemed nervous on the ride back to the penthouse. He shouldn’t be—these men were his uncles, his family, and they would love him as though he were their own son. They would treat him as a Travati treated family. Loyal to a fault.

Family.

The stone sparkled on its bed of velvet. He wanted Aubrey to be an official part of his family. To be his wife. To be the woman he spent the rest of his life with. He pressed the case closed and tucked it back into his jacket pocket, then looked toward the door. There stood Leo and Devon, both of them shifting restlessly, both of them looking nervous.

Justin strode toward them. “You’re here.” He clasped first Devon and then Leo. “Where’s Anthony?”

Leo exchanged a look with Devon.

Devon rolled his gaze toward the ceiling. “Something’s come up at the office. He asked that we start without him and said he’ll be here in time for dessert and coffee.”

Justin’s chest tightened and a deep heat coiled in his gut. He would not be disrespected. He would not allow his brother to disrespect his son. Justin wanted to give his brother Anthony the benefit of the doubt. Before Justin’s illness, before Max, before Aubrey, Justin wouldn’t have wanted to leave the office before ten p.m. He rarely did, even now. The past three weeks though, he’d missed Aubrey and he’d missed Max. He’d numbed the pain by working. Made himself believe that if he worked, he didn’t have to feel any of his feelings. Not now, not ever.

“They’re in the dining room,” Justin said.

Both the brothers walked through the living room. Max stood when they entered. His gaze flickered from his mom to his dad and then finally landed on the two men beside his father.

What was his son thinking? What did he see in the two men that flanked Justin? One was shorter and thicker with dark eyes, but the same black scruff of hair as Max that hung over his forehead and nearly flopped in his eyes. Devon was the rabble-rouser. The man who always wanted a good time, whom women fell for and men wanted to be. On the other side was Leo. Closest in age to Justin, he was thoughtful and smart and taller than Devon but shorter than Justin. He cut an imposing figure, with the jet-black eyes of their mother but the black Travati hair. He kept his hair trimmed above his collar, much like Justin. Leo wore a suit and Devon had more of a hipster vibe, while Justin was all Wall Street.

“Leo, Devon, this is my son.” Justin’s voice trembled and nearly broke. This moment, damn this moment. Tears burned the back of his eyes, and he pressed one fingertip into the corner of his eye, then grasped his son’s shoulder. “This is my Max.” He nodded. His nostrils flared. Pride and love and joy shot through his body. A giant mass of emotion flooded his senses. He looked across the room to where Aubrey stood in an emerald-green dress, her red curls framing her porcelain face, her eyes understanding the depth of emotion that thrummed through Justin. Max was her son too. Her forever love. Max was their child together.

Leo reached out and clasped Max to him. He slapped his back. When he pulled back and looked into his nephew’s eyes, Leo’s eyes glistened too. He looked from Justin to Max. “I’m so happy to meet you. I’m …” He tore his eyes away while one hand rested on Max’s shoulder and his other hand rested on Justin’s. “I just … I’m so happy you’re here. That we have the next generation. Welcome, Max. Welcome.”

Max smiled and nodded and looked at his dad and then spun his head and glanced at his mother.

Devon hugged Max too. “Man, you’re tall!” Max was nearly as tall as his Uncle Devon. “You like sports? What are you playing? Huh? Football? Soccer?” He reached out and grabbed Max’s arm. “Football. You got too much Midwestern muscle not to be playing football.”