Stomach growling, she looked on in anticipation. He brought it next to her and pulled up a bar stool so that they were eye level.
Extending her hand to grab a cherry, he stopped her.
“Let me, Princess.” With a playful smile, he lifted a cherry to her lips. Inside, she felt that now-familiar heat pulse. He was tender, charming.
A threat to her plan of objectivity, too.
She popped a chocolate-dipped strawberry into his mouth. He licked the slightly melted chocolate off her fingertips, sending her mind back to the shower. Back to when she had thought this was uncomplicated.
Needing to take control of the situation, Erika cleared her throat. Her goal was the same as before. To get to know him. “What did you want to be as a little boy growing up?”
Finishing chewing, he tilted his head to the side. “Interesting question.”
“How so?” It had seemed like a perfectly reasonable question. One she had been meaning to ask for a while now.
“Everyone assumes I wanted to be a pro football player.”
To Erika, Gervais had seemed like the kind of man who wasn’t nearly as cut-and-dried as that. He might live and breathe football, but it didn’t seem as if it was the only dimension to him. Childhood dreams said a lot, after all. She’d wanted to be a shield maiden from long ago. To protect and shelter people. Her adult dream was still along those lines.
A nurse did such things. “And you did not want to be a football player like the rest of your family?”
“I enjoy the game. Clearly. I played all through elementary school into high school because I wanted to. I didn’t have to accept the offer to play at the college level. I could afford any education I wanted.”
“But your childhood dream?” She pressed on, before taking the cream-covered peach slice he’d offered her. She savored the taste of the sweetness of the peach against the salty flavor of his fingers.
Looking down at his feet, then back at her, he smiled sheepishly. “As a kid, I wanted to drive a garbage truck.”
Her jaw dropped. Closed. Then opened again as she said, “Am I missing something in translation? You wished to drive a truck that picks up trash?”
“I did. When my parents argued, I would go outside to hide from the noise. Sometimes it got so loud I had to leave. So I rode my bike to follow the garbage truck. I would watch how that crusher took everyone’s trash and crushed it down to almost nothing. As a kid that sounded very appealing.”
Thinking of him pedaling full-tilt down the roads as a child put an ache in her heart she couldn’t deny. “I am sorry your parents hurt you that way.”
“I just want you to understand I take marriage and our children’s happiness seriously.”
His brown eyes met hers. They were heated with a ferocity she hadn’t seen before.
This offer of a life together was real to him. His offer was genuine, determined. And from a very driven man. She needed to make up her mind, and soon, or she could fast lose all objectivity around Gervais.
Ten
It had only been three days since he’d gotten home from the loss in St. Louis. He needed time to think of his next strategy. And not just for the Hurricanes. With Erika, too.
Which was exactly why he’d pulled on his running shorts and shirt. Laced up his shoes and hit the pavement, footsteps keeping him steady.
Focused.
Sweat curled off his upper lip, the taste of salt heavy in his mouth. The humid Louisiana twilight hummed with the songs of the summer bugs and birds.
This always set his mind right. The sound of foot to pavement. Inhale. Exhale. The feel of sweat on his back.
He’d been quite the runner growing up. Always could best his brothers in distance and speed. Especially Jean-Pierre, his youngest brother.
Jean-Pierre had to work harder than all his older brothers to keep up with them as they ran. Running had been something of a Reynaud rite of passage. Or so Gervais had made it out to be. He’d always pushed his brothers for a run. It was an escape from the yelling and fighting that went on at their home. Whether the family was at the ranch in Texas, on the expansive property on Lake Pontchartrain or on the other side of the globe, there was always room to run, and Gervais had made use of those secured lands to give them all some breathing space from the parental drama.
Slowing his pace, he stopped to tighten his shoelace. Looking at the sparkling water of the lake, he realized it had been too long since he talked to Jean-Pierre. Months.
Gervais knew he needed to call him...but things hadn’t been the same since Jean-Pierre left Louisiana Tech to play for the Gladiators in New York. Sure, Jean-Pierre maintained a presence on the family compound, sharing upkeep of one of the homes where he stayed when he flew into town. But how often had that been over the past few years? Even in the off-season, Jean-Pierre tended to stick close to New York and his teammates on the Gladiators. When he did show up in New Orleans, it was to take his offensive line out on his boat or for a raucous party that was more for friends than family.
How Jean-Pierre managed to stay away from this quirky, lively city was beyond Gervais. When they were younger, the family had spent a lot of time in Texas. Which, make no mistake, Gervais loved, but there was a charm to New Orleans, a quality that left the place rarified.
He wanted to share those things with Erika. The cultural scene was unbeatable, and the food. Well, he’d yet to take her to his favorite dessert and dancing place. He pictured taking her out for another night on the Big Easy with him. She’d love it if she’d give him a chance to show her.
And though they’d fallen into a pattern over the past few days, he felt as distant as ever and all because she wouldn’t commit even though they had children on the way. Sure, they made love nightly now. And he relished the way her body writhed beneath his touch. But it wasn’t enough. He bit his tongue about the future and she didn’t say anything about leaving.
Or staying.
And he wanted her to stay. Starting to run again, he picked up the intensity. Ran harder, faster.
He didn’t want her to leave. He didn’t want a repeat of London. Before he’d even woken up, she’d packed her things and let herself out of the hotel suite. Though it had been only one weekend, he had fallen for her. Now they’d spent days together.
Rather blissful days. Mind wandering, he thought to the last night in St. Louis when they’d explored the rooftop garden that was attached to their hotel suite. There’d been a slight chill in the air, but things between them had been on fire. In his memory, he traced the curves on her body.
Though she might be pumping the brakes on the future, he was getting to know her. To see past her no-nonsense facade to the woman who was a little sarcastic, kindhearted and generous.
The thought of her just leaving again like in London...it made his gut sink.
Rounding the last corner on his run, he didn’t hold back. He sprinted all out, as if that would allow him to hold on to Erika.
This was damn awful timing, too. He knew he needed to focus on his career. To turn the Hurricanes into a financial dynasty to back the championship team Dempsey assured them they had in place. And this thing with Erika—whatever it might be—was not helping him. Sure, he’d nabbed that sponsor in Chicago. But every day he spent with her was a day that he wasn’t securing another sponsor that would make the Hurricanes invincible as a business and not just a team. They’d been teetering on the brink of folding when he’d purchased them, and he’d reinvigorated every facet since then, but his work was far from done to keep them in the black.
But damn. He could not. No. He would not just let her leave as she had before. This wasn’t just about the fact they were having a family, or that they were amazing together in bed.
Quickening his pace, he saw the Reynaud compound come into sight. The light was on in Erika’s bedroom.
His grandfather had taught him a few things when he was a kid. Two of the most important: build your dream and family is everything. Two simple statements. And he wanted Erika to be a part of that. To create the kind of home that his own kids would never want to run from.
* * *
Sitting cross-legged on a cushioned chair in the massive dining room, Erika absently spread raspberry jam on her puffy biscuit. Try as she might, she couldn’t force her mind to be present. To be in the moment.
Instead, her thoughts drifted back to Gervais and last night. He’d knocked on her door after his run. She’d opened the door, let him in. And he’d showered her in determined, passion-filled kisses. There was an urgency, a sincerity in their lovemaking last night. A new dimension to sex she had never thought possible.
Last night had made it even harder for her to be objective about their situation. She wanted Gervais. But she also wanted what was best for them both. Balancing that need seemed almost impossible.
A motion in the corner of her eye brought her back to the present. She found Gervais’s grandfather filling his plate at the buffet with pork grillades and grits, a buttered biscuit on the side.