Girltalk


“Let’s go look at the nursery!” The little beauty chirped gaily, and grabbed up Grace’s hand before she had time to properly prepare herself. 
Grace had every instinct to pull away, to keep her feet planted by Jonah, shake her head and say ‘I don’t wanna!’.  But she did nothing of the sort.  She was no coward.  And she’d done nothing wrong.  Was it her fault Jonah hadn’t had the ex-girlfriends talk with her yet?
She refused to feel guilty or ashamed or cowed by this diminutive little Venus.  She was Jonah’s best friend, aside from Nolan, and she was sick of getting shunted to the side whenever his girlfriends got jealous and insecure.
“There’s a nursery?”  Grace queried, a wry note sounding in her voice, her eyes meeting Jonah’s as she allowed the little heiress to pull her from the kitchen area.
He looked deeply concerned.  “Shall I come along?”
Velvet giggled brightly.  “You keep on cooking, chef!”  She called without looking back.  “It isn’t a nursery yet,” the girl told her confidentially, “But we have some big plans.”
Grace allowed herself to be led into the townhouse’s modest office, which was separated from Jonah’s bedroom by the downstairs bathroom.  The brothers hadn’t done too much with it.  There were a few unremarkable bookcases filled to bursting with Jonah’s books, and maybe some of Nolan’s.  There was a great antique standing globe that he’d been given by his Dad upon graduating college, a comfy leather armchair—old and worn in and, Grace looked away.  She’d had sex with him in that chair.  Best not to think about things like that, especially when she was doubtless about to be grilled by his newest paramour.
This would be a fine space for a nursery.  But Grace couldn’t quite swallow the fact that the two were moving so fast—sprinting toward domestic utopia, it would seem.
Velvet was babbling along gaily about which crib she’d registered for and what the color scheme would be.  “I don’t want just blue, blue, blue!”  She was saying as she strolled around the room, outlining how she believed the space would be best used.  “Too much blue just makes me depressed.  I’m thinking this bold little savage inside me wants reds!  He’s a real pain sometimes.  I think he’ll be a politician probably.  So probably reds and navy, very Americana, right?  But Jonah thinks red might not be soothing enough for the nursery, and if you do ‘soft red’ well that’s just pink and we don’t want to confuse people, right?”  She laughed as she rounded the room and ended up right back by the door they’d entered from.
Grace stood smack-dab in the center, turning slowly to entertain the idea of a crib and a changing table and all the other little pieces Velvet had blathered on about.  “You two are pretty damn serious.”  She said, though for the life of her she could have sworn she was about to say: “Blues and reds would make great boy colors.”
Velvet Calder Grey smiled brilliantly.  She leaned out the door and over her short stature Grace could see an alert Jonah, a Jones who didn’t know what to do with himself out there.  “Sweetheart, how many minutes do we ladies have to chat before it’s ready?”
Grace watched Jonah spin in place, assess the lunch-in-progress on the stove and then turn back.  “Maybe ten minutes?”
“See you in ten, then!”  She chirped, and then actually blew him a kiss.  
It took all of Grace’s energy to compose her face into something neutral when the girl spun around, closing the door as she did so.  If Jonah had reached out and caught the kiss her level of irritation and gross-out would be extreme.  Thankfully for her gag-reflex the man had instead smiled wanly and half heartedly picked up the wooden spatula again.
Then Grace was alone with the strange little creature.  The most beautiful woman she’d ever seen in real life.  They stared at eachother for what felt like a very long moment.
Then Grace smiled.  She tended to do this when all the things she had to say were less than polite. 
“He saved my life.”  The girl said earnestly. 
Grace raised her eyebrows but kept on smiling.  That sounded ridiculously dramatic.  From what she understood he’d done little more than comfort her after her embarrassing tantrum and then whisk her off back to his place.  Oh, and apparently he’d become quite cozy with her despite the fact that she was married and expecting someone else’s baby.  This was all very interesting, good fodder for a soap, but hardly heroic or life-saving.
But Velvet, seeming to pick up on Grace’s mute skepticism, nodded vigorously.  “He saved my life.  And I love him.  With all my heart.”
“You don’t need to convince me of anything.”  Grace said, feeling dismissive and distinctly awkward.
“You’re his best friend.”  The girl said.
“Yeah.”
“And you love him.”
Grace tisked and put both her hands on the aching small of her back, which, by the way, didn’t feel so small lately.
“I care about him, yeah, and of course I don’t want to see him hurt—“
“Why’d you really break up?”
Grace thought her eyebrows might climb so high on her forehead that they’d get swallowed up by her hairline.  “We decided we were better as friends.”  She repeated doggedly.  “Some people are not meant to be—romantic.”
This didn’t seem to make any sense at all to the little green-eyed vixen.  “But you loved him.”
“Of course.”
“Was he not good in bed?”
Grace’s lips parted.  “Do you always say whatever you’re thinking?”
Velvet didn’t look chagrined or chastised by this, instead she giggled and tried to look thoughtful.  “We only have eight minutes for me to figure out if we can be friends and if I can be with Jonah forever or not.”  She said without a lick of irony or sarcasm.
Grace blinked.  “That’s a lot of pressure.”  She said dryly.
Velvet looked sympathetic.  “I like you.”
Grace blew a sigh out of her lips.  “You don’t even know me.”  She tried to sound kind, tried not to reveal the irritation she was feeling at the silly, absurd nature of this little heiress.  Was this really what Jonah found appealing these days?  Romantic, impulsive, over-dramatic little flutterbrains?
“But you’re smart and funny and frank, and Jonah obviously admires you and cares about you, and I don’t want to be enemies.”
Grace lengthened her neck and pushed her hands into the throbbing ache near her tailbone.  Enemies?  The girl should still be in high school for God’s sake.  She seemed well educated, and she’d most definitely been to a finishing school, but she couldn’t do much to help the fact that she was seventeen.  Maybe a slightly older-than-her-years seventeen, but not by too much, in Grace’s estimation.
“I have no intention of being your enemy.”  She said as soberly as she could manage.
To Grace’s amusement the girl looked wildly relieved and pleased as punch.  “Oh good.  So where should we start?”
Grace had the churlish notion to simply stare back, a polite but expectant smile on her face, and wait for the little doll to make the first move.  Grace recognized that she had something the girl wanted and that meant she had all the power.  But looking at those big pale green eyes, and thinking about Jonah’s highly agitated state out there, waiting on tenterhooks while he tended the stirfry, Grace relented.  With a heavy sigh she waddled over to the desk by the window and lowered herself to sit atop it.
“What do you most want to know right now?”
The girl bit her precious lower lip and fretted, in a dither about which path she wanted to explore most before their lunch was ready.
“We’ll have plenty of opportunities to chat.”  Grace assured her in a soothing voice.  “We’re going to be good friends, afterall.”
Velvet’s little cupid’s bow mouth formed an astonished ‘o’ and she looked positively transported.
“You mean it?!”
“Hell yeah.  If you’re important to Jones you’re important to me.”  She said it as if it was a maxim, but if she were honest with herself she knew there was no precedent to support that at all.  She frowned just a little, thinking back across the years and coming to the conclusion that she’d never actually been especially nice to or supportive of Jonah’s girlfriends.  Hell, she’d been downright chummy with almost every single one of Nolan’s serious girlfriends, and she was usually great to the girls her brothers brought home, but for whatever reason, she’d never warmed up to Jonah’s ladies.  It was probably because he always insisted on choosing the worst girls for himself.  Not that they were awful people, necessarily—well some of them had been awful people, she was certain—but they were always all wrong for him.
“Oh good. Thank you thank you thank you.  Oh good!” 
Grace smiled despite herself at the girl’s relief and watched her lower herself into the rolling desk chair to be close enough and comfortable enough for girl talk.
Grace made the decision to try to get on board with this one.  Give her a chance.  Knock off all the antagonism she’d displayed toward Jonah’s love interests over the past five years or so.  She had serious doubts about this relationship, was pretty convinced it wouldn’t work out, thought it was moving way too fast and too far, but she swore to herself that she was going to hold her tongue, smile, and be a friend to them.  This girl obviously made her friend over-the-moon happy at the moment, and he deserved happiness, so what the hell?
She brushed off the niggling insinuation her conscience was making about ulterior motives.  This had nothing at all to do with Holden.  She forced herself to believe that this was not at all about making sure this little girl was firmly ensconced in a committed relationship before Holden got the chance to ‘reacquaint’ himself with an old family friend who just happened to have had a decade long crush on the man.  What man’s ego wouldn’t be stroked by that little bit of information?  But this had nothing at all to do with the fact that the most beautiful girl Grace had ever seen had openly admitted to being once in love with her weak-willed and infidelity prone husband.  Nothing whatsoever. 
This was about being a good friend to Jonah.
“—tomorrow if you’re free?”
Grace wasn’t perfectly sure but thought she’d just been invited for more girl bonding time the next day. 
“So long as I’m still pregnant.”  She answered. 
Velvet laughed gaily and then quite unexpectedly placed her hand on Grace’s enormous stomach.  Grace was a little unused to this, even after so many months of it.  It was the strangest thing, that people felt perfectly at liberty to invade your personal space and touch your body as though they had every right.
“What are you thinking for a name?”  Velvet asked, her voice warm and wistful as she ran her hands over Grace’s taut orb of a belly.
“Bennett.  Ben.”
Velvet gushed approvingly.  “Me too.”
Grace tilted her head.  “You too?  You’re naming yours Ben?”  It was a good solid name, but these boys were going to be in the same class, maybe one of them should re-think this a little.  And that someone really ought to be Velvet, since Bennett was Grace’s family name.
The girl giggled.  “No, no.  I’m naming him Calder.”
Oh.  Right.  Grace chided herself for being so airheaded.  It was an unfortunate consequence of the pregnancy.  She’d been frustratingly forgetful and daydreamy and downright thick-skulled so often lately.
“You’re not afraid he’ll sound like a fridge?”
She’d said it lightly, as a joke, but Grace honestly disliked the name.  Velvet clucked her tongue and tilted her head with a smile.
“Nolan said the same thing!”  She marveled.  “And Jonah’s not wild about it either, but.  Well.  That’s what you do.”
She was referring to the tradition of it.  The eldest girl of these well established WASPy families always named their firstborn son after their maiden name.  Everyone was doing it.  It was what was done in Cedar Falls.  Grace herself was doing it.  But Ben was a perfectly reasonable name.  Calder sounded like a dishwasher.
“Why don’t you make Calder his middle name?”  Grace offered.
Velvet waved her hands, indicating she would think about it later; at present she had more pressing concerns.  “We’ll talk babies tomorrow.  Right now let’s talk you and Jonah.”
Grace nodded.  Ok, she thought, let’s get this overwith.  “We started dating when we were sixteenish.”  She told her matter-of-factly.  “And it lasted right up till, oh, just before we headed off to college.”  Lots of high school relationships end that way. 
“Was he your first?”
Grace felt her brow crinkle.  “My first boyfriend?  No.”
Velvet’s perfect cheeks flooded with color but her eyes were clear and direct.  “Your first, first.”
Grace stared at her for a moment, knowing the girl had clarified but still finding her meaning elusive.  The question must have read on her face.
“Sex.”  Smiled Velvet, keeping her voice a near whisper, as if Jonah might be listening in from just outside the door.
Oh.  That.  Of course.  All that had seemed terribly important when she was seventeen.  Who had been her first, or his first for that matter.
“No.”  She assured the girl.  But he was the best, she thought to herself candidly.  No need to go spilling that little gem.
Velvet looked somewhat relieved at this news, but the relief lasted only a fraction of a moment before the next question sprang to her lips. “Were you his?”
Grace kept her face still.  “Shouldn’t you be asking him about that?”  She felt like an older sister.  She disliked feeling older in any capacity. 
“I will, I will, but you must know, right? Please just tell me.”
Grace warred with herself over whether she thought the girl’s thought-to-mouth policy was refreshing or really irritating.  She weighed her answer carefully.
“No.  I wasn’t.”  She remembered that summer too well.  They’d both ended up losing their respective virginity but not to eachother.  This green eyed girl had been in elementary school then.  Jesus.  Of course, to be fair, she, herself, was almost five years younger than Holden.  Men like younger women, she reasoned, get over it.
Again Grace watched a measure of relief march across that worried brow.  “Who was?”
“Ugh.  This college girl, Claire?  Kate?  I don’t remember her name—she was a camp counselor at the sleepaway camp.”
Velvet looked puzzled.  “Sleep-away camp?” 
Grace chuckled.  “What’d you do on your summer vacations?”
“Europe.  Asia once.  Egypt.  Why?  What’s sleepaway camp?”
Grace laughed.  “Just what it sounds like.  Summer camp, but instead of going home to your family every night you stay in cabins and live there for a couple months or whatever.”
Velvet looked fascinated but still out-of-her-depth.  “And there is sex at these camps?”
Grace erupted with laughter.  What planet was this chick from?  “Well it wasn’t a sanctioned activity or anything; it wasn’t like arts-n-crafts, archery, swimming, and oh, sex!”  She chuckled and Velvet laughed nervously.  “Um, hoo.  But yeah, a bunch of teenagers and young adults, hormones flying around, bodies changing, no parental guidance?  Yeah, there was sex at sleepaway camp.  Yes.”
From the look on her face Grace would have bet money that Velvet was making a silent vow never to send her children to sleep away camp.  She grinned at the girl.
“Jones fell in love with this counselor—all the boys were crazy in love with her, well, wait, ‘love’ isn’t quite the right word, but you know, and he was infatuated, and when she broke up with her meat-head boyfriend she took Jonah into her bunk for a while.”
Velvet’s jaw dropped.  “What happened?”
“Um, they fooled around for like a whole month and then it was the end of summer and Jones was ready to do the long-distance dating, wanted to make it work, and whatnot, but she turned him down.  I mean, she was going to be a sophomore in college and he was what, 15? 16?”
Velvet stared past Grace at the wall.
“And then you two started dating?”
Grace drew a breath and thought about it.  “Yeah, it took us both a while to mend our broken hearts, or, egos really, after that summer, and we kind of helped eachother get over those failed relationships, and then, yeah, we realized one day that maybe we should date.”  And by ‘realized maybe we should date’ Grace meant, of course, that they’d been hugging, like friends do, and then they’d pulled apart too slowly, and lingered in the embrace, and then: Bam.  They’d started making out like crazy. 
“Who was your first then?”  Asked Velvet, unable to contain her curiosity.
“That college girl’s meathead boyfriend.”  Grace confessed with a sardonic twist to her lips. 
Velvet covered her shocked smile with a hand.  “No!”
Grace nodded ruefully.  “Yup.  He was gorgeous.”  He had been.  “He wasn’t a counselor, he was more like, a handy-man or whatever around the camp.  Maintenance and stuff.  We fucked in the tool shed once.”  Whoops.  She should watch her language.
But Velvet looked delighted.  “Oh my goodness, was he any good?”
Grace weighed this for a moment before answering.  “He was gorgeous.”  She reiterated.  “And, um, powerful.”  She added, thinking of the rigorous poundings she’d engaged in at every opportune moment. 
Velvet tittered appreciatively.  “He didn’t make you come though.”
“Not on purpose, no.”
Velvet squealed with laughter.  “The first boys I fooled around with didn’t make me come either.”  She lamented.  “They were also quite gorgeous.”  She confided with a twinkle.  “One was this guitarist, he was in a band, but mother didn’t like that one bit and sent me abroad for a while.  That’s where I fell in love with Pietro.”  The girl sighed and her eyes got far away.  “I sucked his dick.”  She said plainly.
Grace laughed.  Some finishing school.  “Did he return the favor?”
Velvet laughed softly.  “He went down there and did a few things but, to be honest?  I think he was gay.  I was practically begging to lose my virginity and all he seemed to want from me was oral.”  She looked thoughtful.  “And kissing.”  She sighed and swept her bags across her forehead.  “He was so fucking good looking.  And well dressed.”
Grace grinned.  Then she sobered a little.  “So, was? Is?”  She stopped, took a breath and braced herself.  “Your husband, was he?”
Velvet’s eyes swam back to the present and her flawless complexion darkened perceptibly.  “My first? Yes.”  She said.  “And he’s quite good.”  She added bitterly.
Yes.  So she’d heard. 
Grace didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t be painfully awkward so she shut the hell up and let the girl recount whatever she was recounting in that pretty little head of hers.
“He gave me my first orgasm, and I thought—“  She took a breath and shook her head amazedly.  “—I thought he was like a god for being able to make me feel like that.”  She nodded to herself, a dazed look in her pale eyes.  “I would have done anything he asked, anything, just to feel the way only he could make me feel.”
Jesus.  How good was the guy?  He was only human right?
Velvet’s eyes snapped back to the present with the swiftness of a striking hammer.  “But Jonah is amazing.”  She said bluntly, even accusingly.
Grace felt startled.  Why was she looking at her like that, what the hell was she being accused of?  “Oh.”  Said Grace, dumbly.  “Good.”
“No, like, amazing.  Phenomenal.”
Grace nodded out of politeness.  “That bodes well.”  She said carefully.  She could imagine.  He’d always been considerate and creative and incredibly passionate.  And yeah.  Really fucking good.
“Was he not good when you were together?”
Oh.  There’s where the accusation was stemming from.  Grace blushed.  They’d learned a lot together.  Practiced, um, a lot.  Quite a lot.
“He was great.”  She said lamely.
Velvet tilted her head, not content with the euphemistic brush-off.
“Did he make you come?”
Oh, all the time.  “Yes.”  She tried not to think too hard about when the last time her husband had managed to make her orgasm might have been.  Too damn long.  She’d never faked a single time with Jonah.
“Then why’d you stop dating?” the girl asked, clearly mystified. 
Grace absently ran a hand over her belly as she tried to think of a way to explain without revealing their secret.  “After a while, even though the sex was always great, after a while we just felt more comfortable hanging out, being friends, you know.”
Velvet’s answering expression communicated very clearly that she did not know at all.  And that she was concerned it might happen to her.
“We weren’t meant to be.”  Grace said gently.  “We’re best friends, sure, but we aren’t soulmates.”  Such baloney, but it worked.  The girl’s impossibly large eyes seemed to grow another size or two and she lit up. 
“Soulmates.”  She murmured, her eyes misting over.  “I fell in love with him the minute I looked into his eyes.”  She marveled softly.
Grace was proud of herself that she managed not to roll her eyes.  If she had a dollar for everytime she’d heard that.  They were pretty spectacular eyes. 
“He seems head-over-heels for you.”  Grace admitted generously.
“Really?!”
“You’re living with him, planning a nursery, having phenomenal sex, and getting lunches made for you.  I think you might have found your soulmate.”  Grace kept her tone lightly teasing.  “And I’ve never seen him like this.”  She added after a moment of watching Velvet’s silly grin.  “He’s pretty deep in love.”
The girl smiled and cradled her round belly on both arms lovingly.
“So you don’t want him back?”  She asked tentatively.
“I’m married.”  Grace said reflexively.
“So am I.”  Velvet pointed out logically.
“I’m in love with my husband.”  She responded as gently but firmly as possible.
Velvet nodded, apparently satisfied. 
Grace wanted to ask more, but held off.  Maybe she’d screw up enough courage tomorrow.  She wanted to know if Velvet really intended on raising that baby here in the Delaney brothers’ bachelor pad.  If she really planned on divorcing her husband.  She could foresee worlds of heartache and pain awaiting Jonah if this girl let him play daddy for a while and then decided she was done with this rebound fling.  Because Grace knew Jones well enough to know he’d love that baby boy like a son.  Hell, he probably already did.  God dammit.  She found herself actually praying that this relationship stuck.  That this one would work out for him.
“Be good to him; He’s a once-in-a-lifetime.”  Grace heard herself say to Velvet as she stood.  She needed to pee before they sat down to lunch. 
Velvet giggled.  “You really are just like a sister.”  She marveled and wrapped her little arms around Grace wholeheartedly.
Grace returned the hug awkwardly, unused to feminine enthusiasm, and unused to hugging another very pregnant individual.  “We’ll have plenty of time to chat and bond and bitch and gossip tomorrow.  Right now I have to pee so bad I can taste it, and Jones is probably out there ready to throw himself into traffic he’s so nervous about what I’m telling you in here, so what’s say we put him out of his misery?”
Velvet released her from the deceptively viselike hug and beamed with warmth and satisfaction. 
“Yay.”  She said pleasantly.  “I’m starved.”













Velvet and Grace


“Velvet, I’d like you to meet my good friend Gracie.  Gracie, this is Velvet.”

Some of Velvet’s good humor evaporated at the sight of the gorgeous blonde by the kitchen island.  Tall, bronze, fair haired, heavily pregnant, and glowing.  Velvet suddenly felt very short and self-conscious.  Who the hell was this?  Whose baby was that?  Something like a panic was threatening to break out as the woman moved forward to shake her hand and Jonah pushed her forward to do the same.

“I’ve heard a lot about you.”  The woman said with an enviably captivating smile.  She was beautiful.  And Velvet’s opposite in almost every visible way, with the exception of being heavily pregnant.

Jonah laughed a little self-consciously.  “Gracie and I have been best friends since we were kids.”  He explained warmly.

Friends?  Velvet stared at the belly that was even larger than her own and prayed hard that it wasn’t Jonah’s.  If it was Jonah’s she’d throw herself off a bridge.  She hoped she was smiling pleasantly enough.  Lord knew she’d practiced hard enough at that goddamn finishing school her mother had insisted she attend.  Hopefully her smile was soft and kind and welcoming.

“Oh!”  She gushed sweetly.  “I’m so happy to meet any friend of Jonah’s!”  It sounded very genuine.  She shook the woman’s hand but then tugged a little, and went up on tiptoes to kiss her cheek in greeting.  The golden Amazon seemed embarrassed but stooped in time to make the second peck easier for Velvet.

Velvet had almost always wanted to be tall and blonde.  She knew it was premature and uncharitable to feel envious and jealous of this woman, but she was finding it difficult to avoid.  As a girl all her dolls had been blonde and tall and bronze and flawless like this woman.  And she’d always been pale, and short, and stuck with dark, dark hair.  She’d tried dying her hair blonde once during one particularly rebellious summer when she was fourteen. And it had been an unmitigated disaster.  She’d done it after Holden’s wedding; when her childhood crush had taken for his bride a tall, graceful, golden swan of a woman who—

Velvet took a step back and looked at ‘Gracie’ again, this time with a different sort of scrutiny.  The woman seemed startled at the sudden intensity of Velvet’s stare but she smiled warmly enough despite.  Perhaps she’d been forced to attend finishing school as well.

“Oh my goodness, Grace Sinclair?”  She asked her with an incredulous smile.

Grace’s smile deepened and she nodded.  “Yes.”

Velvet sighed with relief.  Not Jonah’s lover.  Not Jonah’s baby.  Not a threat afterall. Phew.  “Your wedding was absolutely exquisite.”  She declared earnestly.

Grace laughed and exchanged a quick glance with Jonah before replying.  “Thank you.”

“You were radiant!”  Velvet continued, meaning every word.  “You looked so regal—like something out of legend.”

Grace looked taken aback.  “Wow.  Thank you.  So much.”

“I think that was the most perfect wedding I’ve ever attended.”  She asserted eagerly.  Hell, that wedding had made her attempt to dye her hair blonde!  Which had, of course, resulted in a very disgusting color and texture and a very expensive trip to the salon to fix it, and then an extended trip to Europe; her mother believed she’d needed time away from the influences of Cedar Falls and a certain boy she’d been sneaking around with.  The disastrous dye job had had nothing to do with that boy and much more to do with her broken heart over a handsome young man who’d never paid her the slightest attention, but the rebellious streak probably did have something to do with that boy, and all the liquor he’d encouraged her to drink.

“Oh,” said Grace, her eyes getting far away, trying to recall, trying to place Velvet at the wedding.  “You were with your mother, right?”

Velvet nodded vigorously and climbed into a stool at the kitchen island with some help from an ever attentive Jonah, and signaled Grace to do the same.  Grace, Velvet noted, didn’t have to climb into her stool, and as a result looked flawless settling in, even despite the off-kilter balance of the belly. 

“You were there?”  Jonah marveled, moving to put the shopping bags down out of the way.  “I was there.”

Velvet smiled and tried to recall a tall red-headed man at the wedding, but she was drawing a blank. 

“Jonah gave one of the readings.”  Grace added fondly.

So he hadn’t been in the wedding party.  Velvet tried hard but she couldn’t remember him there.  From the look on his face he was having the same problem.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see you—“  He said, sounding sorely disappointed with himself.

Velvet giggled.  “I was fourteen-and-a-half years old!”  She said playfully.  “And not at all developed!”  He blushed and she wrinkled her nose, enjoying his embarrassment.  “I don’t blame you for not seeing me.”

“You were just a kid.”  He marveled. The way he looked at her now told her that he found her to be an absolutely beautiful woman, and she loved how powerful and strong that made her feel. Her mother still treated her like that silly fourteen year old she’d been when she’d shipped her off to Europe.  Vaughan always treated her like a little girl too.  A little girl he liked to fuck, but a girl nonetheless.  Jonah made her feel like an equal.  She loved him.

Velvet sighed and splayed the fingers of one hand over her belly, happy and content.  “We’ve seen eachother so many times before we saw eachother for the first time.”

Jonah’s face softened, his smile fading slightly, into an expression of wonderment, transported by the hopelessly romantic sentiment.

“Your family’s old friends with the Sinclairs, right?”  Grace asked after letting the two lovers share that moment of sappy smiling.

“Oh my goodness yes!”  Velvet answered excitedly, snapping out of that sweet moment with her hero.  The Sinclairs had gone into the windows & doors business not long before the Calders had started in the home appliance business, and their families were old friends.  Some relatives were intermarried, if she remembered correctly.  “We all used to have soirees and travel together, vacations and dinner parties and social events at the country club and all that!”

“Excuse me, Love, can I get you something?”  Jonah interrupted, pulling a tall glass from a cabinet.

“Oh lemonade, pleeeeeease.”  She said with a grateful smile.  She’d been craving that lemonade since just after she’d left the house that morning. 

“It doesn’t give you heartburn?”  Grace asked, sounding as if the very thought of lemonade was causing her acid reflux.

“Oh, no, it doesn’t.”  Velvet felt sympathetic.

“Wow.  I’ll stick to iced tea, Jones.”

Velvet smiled a little.  They all called him that.  All the people from his past.  She hadn’t yet used that pet name for him.  Maybe she wouldn’t.  Maybe she’d let that nickname stay with those who’d known him growing up.  Maybe she’d always call him Jonah, or some other endearment, but never Jones.  Maybe she would be different.

“Yeah, I’ve been lucky so far—none of the things they say will cause heartburn have been giving me any trouble at all.”  She listened to the lemonade pouring into her glass and felt a twinge of needing to pee, but she was too eager to get to know Grace to leave just yet.

“I’ve asked Gracie to stay for lunch.”  Jonah told her as he handed her the tall, cool glass.

Velvet felt thrilled and allowed it to show all over her face.  “Oh good!  Now we can talk and talk!”  She got the sense that underneath the polite, affable veneer, that the idea of spending hours in her company made Grace Sinclair somewhat less than comfortable.  Hmm.  Why?

Jonah chuckled as he refilled Grace’s iced tea and then moved to re-fill his own too.  “Velvet’s been relentless about getting Nolan to tell her incriminating things about my childhood.  Look out, now she’s got a new source to pump for information.”

Grace laughed shortly.  “Well if it’s dirt you want, you’ve come to the right place—I think I know where all of Jonesey’s skeletons are hiding.”

Jonah groaned, but the women laughed.

“Oh don’t be so conceited Jonah!”  Velvet scolded lightly, “We have other things to discuss besides your gorgeous self.”

“Don’t tell him he’s good-looking, he’ll get a big head.”  Grace cautioned dryly.

Jonah chuckled, shaking his head and holding his hands up.  “I’m just the humble chef.  I’ll be busy over here with the stir-fry, and I won’t speak unless spoken to.”

“Good.”  Replied Grace tartly.  “You’ve trained him well.”

Velvet laughed merrily.  “Yeah, he should know better than to fool around when two pregnant women are waiting for their lunch.”

Jonah tried to press his lips into submission and look appropriately contrite but there was no quelling his grin.  “I’m on it, I’m on it.  Your wish is my command.”  And he began dutifully shuttling the pre-cut vegetables over to the counter by the stove. 

Velvet turned to their guest with a buoyant smile.  “When are you due?”

They shared a look and then laughed with mutual appreciation.  It was that question that pregnant women tired of very quickly and yet it just had to be asked, it seemed.  “Early September, so, really, any time now.”

Velvet sucked in a breath.  How exciting!  “Oh my goodness, are you scared?”

Grace raised her eyebrows.  “I suppose I am, a little, but honestly I am ready to be done with being pregnant already.”

Velvet heard Jonah chuckle, but true to his word he didn’t interject, just continued with the lunch preparations.

“I’m scared.”  Velvet confessed.  “I almost wish I could just stay like this!”

“Don’t you want to meet him?”  Jonah asked, looking around for the proper utensil.  “Hold him?”

“You’re not here.”  Scolded Grace. “This is girl-talk.”

Jonah found the wooden utensil he’d been searching for and made an exaggerated motion that signified he was ‘zipping his lips’ and turned back to the stove.  Velvet laughed.  She adored him. 

“I guess I do.  I want to meet him and see him and all that, but I honestly love being pregnant.”  Sometimes she felt a little weird about that, especially when so many women behaved as if it were awful and uncomfortable and miserable.  She almost felt guilty that she was having a good time with it.

“Ugh!”  Groaned Grace, looking harassed.  “Yeah, I felt that way a couple months back too—but when you get close I bet you’ll change your mind.  It’s like: alright already, enough!”

Velvet laughed.  “What are you having?”

“A boy.” 

Velvet felt tingly and giddy and maybe even a little sentimental.  “Oh!  I’m having a boy too!  They’ll only be about a month or so apart probably.  This is so exciting!  Is Holden thrilled?  I bet he wanted a boy first.  Are you excited?  Or did you want a girl?  I wanted a boy so I’m so excited.  Oh, I hope they’ll be friends!  Let’s have them be friends!  How could they not be?  We can all be friends and go on vacations and trips and have birthday parties and live right near each other and everything!”

Velvet realized a little too late that she was doing that thing she often did when she was excited: letting every thought in her head find voice in a rapid-fire, over-zealous, dizzying string of babbling.  Grace looked faintly overwhelmed.  Velvet bit down on her own lips to keep from spewing more inanity.  She always felt like a stupid little girl whenever she did this.  Except when she did it to Jonah.  He always seemed to thoroughly embrace her rambling and even appreciate it.  So far, anyway.  She hoped he would always enjoy it as much as he did now.  Vaughan loathed her babbling.  Of course, Vaughan had some very interesting ways to shut her up…

Velvet flushed even as Grace laughed kindly at her crazy stream-of-consciousness.  Velvet smiled apologetically and tried hard to stop thinking about Vaughan’s cock in her mouth.  She hated him.  She didn’t want him anymore.  She needed to forget every single thing about him that she’d ever liked or found attractive, or pleasurable, or sexy, or arousing, or dreamy… or else she was in trouble.  Serious trouble. 

“Um, yes, I am happy.  It didn’t matter to me, girl or boy, but yeah, Holden is strutting around as if he’s accomplished something great by having a boy.”  She laughed and Jonah rapped over-loudly on the wok with the wooden spoon before resting it on a papertowel on the counter, and turning his attention to the rice.

Velvet felt guilty enough to imagine he’d caught her thinking about Vaughan.  She had to remind herself that such a notion was ridiculous.  He couldn’t read minds.  He was remarkably good at reading her moods and emotions, remarkable both because he was so perceptive and because he’d only known her for about two weeks—but perceptive is not telepathic.  Her secret thoughts were safe.  Were her own.  He didn’t need to know.  He couldn’t know.

“Oh my goodness.  Holden as a dad.  Wild.”  Velvet said, a little breathy.  “You know I had the biggest crush on him?”  Grace raised her eyebrows in polite surprise, but Velvet knew her confession had set the woman on edge.  Velvet laughed gaily.  “Oh yes, for years and years and years!  Ever since I was maybe seven years old.”  She laughed at herself and took a sip of lemonade.  Over at the stove the vegetables sizzled and popped and Jonah had stopped to listen but was pretending not to listen.  “I always thought he looked just like prince charming from the Disney movies, and well, like I said, our families were always together so I developed quite a crush.”

“Oh my.”  Grace said with that captivating, almost too-wide smile of hers.  “And did he, was he ever aware?”

Velvet laughed loudly.  “Oh my God!  I imagine I made quite a little fool out of myself trying to get him to pay any attention to me, but he was so much older than me—The most attention I ever got from him was like an older cousin.  He was never mean or anything, but, no, he never ever looked at me in the way I dreamt he would.”  She giggled and tossed her eyes to where Jonah was half-heartedly pushing the vegetables around with the flat bamboo spatula.

Grace looked enormously relieved.  Velvet wanted to shake her head.  How could this gorgeous, tall, blonde, bronze, beauty ever feel threatened by her?  The notion was ridiculous.

“We should have you both over for dinner some night!”  Velvet exclaimed.  “I haven’t really spoken to Holden in a year or more!  I mean he must have been at the party, but I didn’t see him.”  Velvet frowned.  She kept bringing up the party like that, and she really didn’t want to.  She almost wanted to forget the whole thing, except that she needed to remember it, needed to remember what her husband had done to her, and needed to remember what Jonah had done for her too. 

“That would be nice.”  Grace said, but her eyes were on Jonah.  “I’m sure Holden would love to get reacquainted now that you’re not just some little cousin-like-creature to him.”

Velvet chuckled.  “In his eyes I’ll probably always be that annoying little girl that followed him around like a love-sick puppy, but it would be nice to do ‘couple things’.  Especially since you and Jonah are such good friends!”

Two things were warring at the forefront of Velvet’s brain.  First was the notion of getting to do ‘couple things’.  She was so thrilled about this possibility.  She and Vaughan had never once done anything with another couple.  None of his friends were married, and, well, neither were any of hers since most of her friends were still in high school.  It was a warming and pleasant feeling to think that she’d get to socialize as part of a young, but not school-aged set.  And the fact that she and Grace were going to be new mothers at the same time was even better!  Now she’d have an ‘in’ with the social circle of mothers in Cedar Falls—and it didn’t hurt at all that Grace was married to Holden Sinclair, which meant that her son would be, well, the same social rank as Velvet’s.  They’d probably both attend Cedar Prep together!

The other thing she was exceptionally intrigued with was this friendship the woman had with Jonah.  Velvet had never, ever had a male friend in her life, and so far the closest thing she had to it was with Jonah’s brother Nolan—but that relationship was still in its infancy, so Velvet really had a lot of trouble imagining a male best-friend.  Unless maybe if he were gay.  Most of the magazines she read often asserted that straight men and women could not actually be friends.  Not really.  That there would always be an underlying sexual tension.  That eventually they would sleep together. 

Of course, that was for single men and women, and of course Grace was married and of course now Jonah was with Velvet.  Velvet smiled, as she always did when she thought about being together with Jonah.  Then she frowned.  But, Grace had not always been married to Holden and Jonah had not always been with Velvet.

Grace was saying something and Velvet had missed most of it.  “—next Saturday, as long as I haven’t had the baby by then, of course.  If that happens all bets are off.”  She smiled and laughed lightly and Velvet followed suit, taking her cue quite blindly.  Hopefully Jonah had been paying attention.  She’d ask him later.

“So how long have you two been friends?”  Velvet asked casually, though she was beginning to feel an uncomfortable prickling on the back of her neck.

“Forever.” Replied Grace, sounding as if it were exhausting to think about.  “Our parents are all best friends—bridge partners and all that jazz, so we were practically raised as one big family.”

Velvet nodded.  “Like me and Holden and the Wards.”

“Yeah.”  Said Grace.  “Only we were all close in age—Sam is about two years older than me and Jonah, and Marty and Nolan were in the same grade, so we were all really good friends.”

Velvet thought about little Caleb and felt a special empathy for him—being so much younger than the others, tagging along behind them, never quite a part of the action.  She promised herself she’d become his friend, if he’d have her, since they were kindred spirits in that way.

“Were you a tom-boy?”  Velvet asked, thinking about all those boys.  She herself hadn’t been allowed to climb trees or play sports or anything remotely tom-boyish, and she’d always thought girls who could do the things boys did were the luckiest girls alive.

“Hell yes I was.”  Grace laughed and shifted on her stool.  “I kicked all their asses more than once.”  She boasted, then, “That smells incredible Jones.”

It did smell good.  Velvet was still a little taken aback at the idea of a girl fighting with boys.  “You fought Jonah?”  She couldn’t imagine it.  Not at all.

“Fought and won.”  She said proudly.  “Of course it wasn’t really a fair fight—for one thing I was about a foot taller than him at the time and for another, he’d never hit back, so it was less than satisfying.”

“You were a bully.”  Jonah muttered as he began twisting the can opener on a can of baby corn.

“Can there be mango?”  Velvet asked with honey in her voice.

He twisted the canopener one final rotation and removed the cut lid.  “Sure can.”  He answered with a soft smile.  “That boy loves mango, doesn’t he?”

She giggled.  She’d never cared for mango before getting pregnant, and now she wanted it in almost everything!  She watched Jonah reach a long arm over to the enormous fruitbowl she’d picked out a few days before, and admired his long, lean, youthful form.  He managed to dump the water from the can into the sink and then dump the baby corn into the wok even while retrieving the mango from the bowl. 

“I was a little bossy.”  Grace conceded. “But yeah, it was always easy to beat the Delaneys because their parents had taught them never to hit a girl.  Pretty hilarious.  I had a much harder time with my brothers—because there’s some code written into a guy’s DNA that tells them sisters don’t count as girls.”

Velvet giggled.  She was an only child.  She couldn’t imagine getting into physical altercations with boys, not even as a little girl.  It was wild to imagine.  Besides, the woman sitting beside her at the kitchen island, the woman who’d looked like a queen, a swan, on her wedding day, didn’t look like the type to scrape and brawl with boys.

“Oh,” Said Velvet, putting pieces together, “Sam and Marty?”

“Yeah, and I was the middle child, and the only girl, so I had to get tough or life was going to be a bitch, you know?” 

Velvet didn’t know but she nodded sympathetically anyway.  “So you’re a Bennett.”  She Said.  “Doc Bennett’s daughter?”

Grace got a look on her face that was a smile but a sort-of-tired smile, as if she got that question a lot.  “That’s me.”

Velvet remembered now.  Yes.  It had been a good match.  Holden Sinclair and Grace Bennett.  Everybody loved Doc Bennett.  Everybody expected the man would run for mayor one day, and that he’d win in a landslide.  Hell, he’d probably run unopposed. 

Grace’s eyes narrowed as she observed what Jonah was doing to the mango.  “Christ almighty, Jones, why are you molesting that fruit?”

Jonah tisked but Velvet giggled.  Grace certainly sassed Jonah like they were brother and sister.  She reminded Velvet a little of Nolan. 

“I’m still learning here, try to cut me a little slack.”

Grace stood and crossed around the counter and Jonah promptly surrendered the fruit and the knife to her without needing to be asked.  Velvet blinked and then looked at them together.  They’d make a very handsome couple.  Their babies might have red-golden hair and purple eyes, and they’d be tall and slim and graceful and kind. 

Grace lectured Jonah softly about where and how to best slice a mango, how to tackle the task, and he looked serious as he tried to absorb the lesson fully.

“Did you two ever date?”  Velvet asked suddenly, unable to curb the sudden impulse.

Violet eyes and hazel eyes looked up at her in unison.  They really did look good together.  Dammit.  And she was just getting to like Grace.  She so desperately wanted to be friends.  Velvet didn’t have many girlfriends and she was hoping she’d found a good one in Grace, who was also friends with Jonah and with Nolan and, oh god dammit, why did sex have to enter into everything and ruin it?

“We did.”  Jonah answered, trying to sound non-chalant but coming-off as mostly cautious.

“In high school.”  Grace qualified, as if that made it better.

Velvet smiled, pretending to be charmed and fascinated and amused.  She was only seventeen.  Excusing the relationship by saying ‘in high school’ didn’t lessen the impact one little bit.  Her heart was pounding like mad and she felt a strange tickle in her spine, as if someone had filled her vertebrae with helium.

She tossed her hair behind her shoulder, swept her bangs over her eyebrows, and laughed sweetly.  Jonah looked as if he were waiting for her to explode.  Grace looked wary too, but there was almost a hint of a challenge in her direct hazel stare.

Jonah adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat.
“Were you serious?”  Velvet pre-empted.  She wanted to conduct this little survey on her own terms.  Jonah would have all the time in the world to explain it his way after Grace left.

Grace looked at Jonah but he kept his eyes on Velvet.  Smart man.

“Yes.”  He said as Grace replied with a more non-committal “Yeah, pretty serious I guess.”

“Really?” Velvet did her utmost to behave as if this news was perfectly adorable.  “Ohmygoodness, how long?”

“Oh geez, I don’t remember.”  Grace said with a laugh and a wave of her hand.

Velvet smiled and then turned her inquisitive green stare on Jonah alone.

“Two years, five months.”  Replied Jonah quietly.

“Wow.”  Grace said, clearly a little shocked that he knew with such accuracy.  He’d loved her.  Very much.  Velvet’s face felt tight.

“You two seem like you’d be great together.”  She said, sounding genuine because this statement wasn’t a lie.  She watched Grace’s eyes sink to the floor and the seemingly unflappable queen actually started to fidget.  Jonah stood as if frozen, hardly breathing, hardly blinking.  “Why’d you break up?”

Discovering why people’s previous relationships ended was supposed to tell you a lot about them as a partner—or at least that’s what the magazines claimed.  Velvet hadn’t yet had the opportunity to have the ‘old girlfriends’ talk with Jonah, she’d been enjoying their budding relationship too much to give other women a thought.  Now she felt a little blindsided and resentful that she hadn’t been prepared for this.  Two years and five months?  She hadn’t yet been with him for two weeks and five days!

Grace didn’t pipe-in this time, nor did she try looking for Jonah’s eyes again.  His eyes stayed fixed on Velvet, fixed on her as if he were afraid to look away lest she disappear or maybe pounce.

“We became very, very good friends.”  He responded slowly and carefully.

“Yeah.”  Agreed Grace, sounding a smidgen relieved that he’d chosen that pleasant euphemism.  “We decided we were better as friends.”

Better as friends.  Rather than?  Lovers.  Velvet sucked in a breath.  Well of course.  Of course they’d been lovers.  They’d dated for two years and five months in high school.  They probably fucked like goddamn rabbits.  Everywhere.  All the time.  Every chance they got, probably.  She wanted to cry.  But she wasn’t feeling remotely teary.
“Sounds like you stopped having sex.”  Velvet said sympathetically, and she kept her eyes fixed on Grace this time instead of Jonah, offering a small challenge of her own, though in her peripheral vision she could see she’d finally shocked Jonah out of his stillness.  He rubbed the back of his neck and adjusted his glasses and did any number of other small, uncomfortable adjustments, even as he chuckled half-heartedly.

Grace blushed, but she grinned and her frank hazel gaze lifted to meet Velvet’s challenge.  “We decided we were better as friends.”  She repeated, but it was clearly an agreement with Velvet’s shrewd assessment. 

So they’d cooled off in the bedroom and that’s why the relationship had ended.  How peculiar.  Was that something that happened often to people?  Velvet didn’t know.  So far none of her relationships had ended naturally, and she was having a hard time imagining ever not wanting to have sex with Jonah.

“Was there someone else?”  She asked both of them, either of them.  The sooner she discovered whether or not Jonah was that type of man the better.  Everyone had warned her about Vaughan Grey and she’d been an absolute idiot.  She wasn’t going to make the same mistakes this time.

“No, no, no.”  Grace dismissed, but Jonah was much more intense.

“Absolutely not.”  He said to Velvet in a low voice, as if no one else existed in the world but the two of them.  He knew what she was trying to discern, knew her fears, understood her deep vulnerability.  She lifted her eyes to his again and caught a glare from the lenses of his glasses before she could actually see his perfectly violet eyes staring at her, deep into her.  “Never.”  He added firmly.

She forced herself to take a deep breath.  Okay.  So no cheating.  That was a relief.  But still… He’d just left her when the sex slowed down?  That seemed pretty awful.  Or, no, maybe she’d left him and he’d never really gotten over it all the way?  Maybe he was still in love with his best friend? 

Velvet slipped out of her chair with grim determination.  Jonah moved to help her but he was too late—she was down and waddling toward Grace before he’d even made it around the island.  “Let’s go look at the nursery!”  She chirped, with a bright, bubbly smile.

So Are You In Love?



“So are you in love?”  Grace asked, seeming, quite suddenly, like she wanted to drop the subject she herself had brought up.

Jonah raised his eyebrows.  On the one hand he was tempted to follow her lead, abandon the strange and unsettling topic of discussion, and move on to the present; but something pulled at his conscience.  “Have you been thinking about it a lot?”  He asked quietly, ignoring the tempting question she’d thrown down almost like a casual gauntlet.

She shifted in her seat on the barstool, looking harassed and uncomfortable with her advanced state of pregnancy and with the conversation both.  “More than usual.  Kinda to be expected, right?”

Yes.  He nodded as he swallowed around the lump forming in his throat.  “I think about it every time I see you—I mean, since you announced—“  He trailed off and gave a half smile, gesturing weakly to her enormous belly.  The day she’d told him she and Holden were expecting.  He’d been so happy for them.  Then he’d gone out to Nolan’s bar later and gotten drunker than he’d been in years, but he really was happy for them.  She tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes.  “No, Gracie, I couldn’t be happier for you, honest, it isn’t like that.  No regrets.”  Only, sometimes he had regrets.  Sometimes.  “You’re going to be a mom.”  He marveled with a small laugh.  “And you’re going to be great.”

She groaned, even as she grinned, and she shook her head.  “I’m making you babysit all the time.” She warned, resting one hand on her belly and pointing a finger at him.

“I hope so!  My family owes you for how often you watched Caleb in high school.” they shared a laugh together.

He wanted to ask her what she planned on doing about Holden, but thinking about the man he’d considered his friend made him almost blindingly furious, so he decided he needed some time before helping her with that particular issue.  What an absolute fool her husband was.  He really didn’t know if he’d be able to be civil to the jerk anymore.

So instead of saying what was on his mind, feeling that despite her assertion that she liked him because he spoke his mind she might not respond too well if he did so on the matter of her cheating asshole of a husband, Jonah moved back to where he’d begun trying to cobble together some kind of stir-fry sauce.  Deciding he wanted it to have a citrus twist he headed to the fridge once more, for the orange juice.

“So are you?”  She asked more soberly.  “In love with her?”

He frowned slightly at the orange juice carton before retrieving it and turning to face his friend.  “At first sight.” He responded simply.

She studied him for a long moment, gauging him somehow, and he couldn’t quite interpret the face she was making.  “And you’ve been to bed?”

He pushed a gust of air out between his lips.  He placed his focus on pouring a measure of OJ into the mixing bowl.  “I thought you’d gathered that much already.”

“And?”

Jonah laughed a short, surprised laugh.  She’d sometimes asked about his lovelife while they were dating around in college, but she hadn’t done it in so long—since before her wedding probably.  “And?”  He stalled, a sheepish smile curling his lips and a heat rising on his neck and ears and cheeks.

“I’m easily irritated and not very patient lately.”  She commented dryly, reaching for her iced tea and having a long, healthy draft of it. 

Jonah snickered and fetched sesame seeds from the new spice rack Velvet had purchased earlier in the week.  She’d mentioned that Vaughan’s home had already been complete when she’d moved in and that he’d dissuaded her from her impulse to decorate, so Jonah had immediately encouraged her to do as she pleased with the condo.  He wanted her to make it hers.  And she’d wasted absolutely no time at all in taking him at his word.  She’d promptly replaced each of their low-end appliances with brand new, top of the line Calder appliances.  He and Nolan had protested the enormous expense but she’d laughed them off—‘Don’t be silly boys, it doesn’t cost me a damn thing!’  And they’d reluctantly supposed that was true enough.  But everything else?  The new shower curtains and window treatments, the new sheets and towels and kitchen accessories, the new plates and cups and patio furniture, all of the other things she’d been coming home with daily must have been adding up to a small fortune.  It was as if she were throwing herself into redecorating as a coping mechanism.  Jonah recognized the compulsion for what it was, but it made her so giddy and exuberant and happy that he allowed her to do it without comment.  Nolan had grumbled something about not recognizing the place after just two weeks, but he had been exaggerating.  Velvet liked the townhouse and had so far done an admirable job of keeping most of their original furniture and what little décor the brothers had decided upon before she walked into their life.  ‘I just want to flesh it out—‘ she’d said happily over dinner one evening ‘highlight the choices you’ve already made and fill in the gaps you’ve left!’

“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”  He teased, shaking the sesame seeds into the mix.

“You don’t need to say it, I can tell by your blushing that it’s to your liking.”

Jonah laughed deeply.  How could it not be?  Velvet Calder was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life.  And she was perfect.  And he was head over heels in love with her.  She was something of a dream come true.  A fairytale princess come to life.  A fantasy become flesh.  And yes, the sex was very much to his liking.

“You aren’t put-off by the belly?”  She asked, keeping her tone sort of teasing, but a muscle in Jonah’s cheek twitched to hear the naked vulnerability hiding just underneath the question.  Goddammit he wanted to punch Holden Sinclair in his gaddamn jaw for doing this to his Gracie.  Gracie, who’d always been strong and sassy and confident and who would never have taken this kind of bullshit from a man she was seeing—not when he’d know her.  Now she was becoming unsure of herself, dependent, she was losing her self-worth and becoming the kind of woman she would have scoffed at once upon a time.

“I think it’s gorgeous.”  He replied honestly. 

She raised her eyebrows and laughed.  “I suppose the boobs aren’t too bad either, huh?”

Jonah rolled his eyes even as his face split into a wide grin.  “You’re incorrigible.”  He said.  “But, yeah—not too bad at all.”  He admitted ruefully.  “Yours are looking particularly spectacular, I must say.”  He said without agenda.

She laughed appreciatively.  “Oh thank you sir—they ache like a beast, but at least it’s all worth it if people have been taking a second look at me.”

“Gracie, you’re stunning, even on your worst day.”  He assured her.  And it was true.  She was a beautiful woman.  She’d been an adorable little girl, had gone through maybe a couple of awkward years near junior high, and then had blossomed into a very lovely young woman.  As kids she’d almost always been a little taller than him, and he had been very relieved that puberty had finally reversed the ratio; nevertheless she stood above most women at a little over 5’8”.  She had a long, lean, healthy frame, and now with the added softness of pregnancy she was absolutely captivating.  He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her that her condition agreed with her. 

Jonah ran his eyes over her swept-up sandy blonde hair and her direct hazel stare, at her long but distinctly feminine nose and at her wide lips, which enthralled everyone in any given room whenever she broke into that huge, charismatic grin of hers.  He took in the strong cut of her jaw, softened slightly with the pregnancy, the almost impossibly long curve of her neck, and then back up to the small spray of light brown freckles sprinkled over her nose and cheeks, barely visible in the healthy glow of her tan and presently in the pink flush of heat and maybe a touch of summer sunburn.

She was beautiful, but accessible, real.  Her husband was an idiot for looking anywhere else.

“What are you thinking?”  she demanded, scrutinizing him as he gazed at her.

He felt a little bit caught.  It wasn’t his right to be looking her over like that, not anymore.  Not that he’d meant anything by it, but nonetheless…  “I was thinking that if you were my wife there wouldn’t be a single day that went by without you hearing me tell you how beautiful you are.”
He smiled sadly and held her eyes with his.

She nodded slowly.  “Yeah, you used to be a real broken record about that.”  She teased with the words but the tone was more of a ‘thank you’.

“Yeah, and what’d I get in return?”  He laughed, “Jokes about my girly-eyes, if I recall?”

She laughed loudly and he felt warm at the sound.  “You had every girl that ever saw you swooning over them! ‘Oh!  You’re eyes are soooo pretty!  Oh, Jonah, those eyes are my favorite shade of violet!  Ohmygoodness are they reeeeeeal?!’  Ugh.  I had to do something to keep you down to earth.”

He tried to stop grinning but only succeeded in twisting he mouth to the side.  “Well thanks for knocking me down a few pegs Gracie.” 

She nodded “Don’t mention it.  I had your best interests at heart.  Nobody needs a conceited redhead with Liz Taylor eyes strutting around like a peacock.”

His stomach muscles were beginning to ache from laughing, and his cheeks were getting sore too.  “I miss you.”  He said without guile.  “You should come by more.”

Since she’d become serious with Holden their once comfortable friendship had become considerably less so.  Jonah had given her the space she’d seemed to need, stepped back while Holden had wooed her because he hadn’t wished to appear a threat or a rival for her attention, but he’d been careful not to let the friendship slip away entirely.  Hell, besides Nolan, Grace Bennett had been the very best friend Jonah had ever known, and she’d known him since preschool. 

So they remained good friends, saw each other often enough, stayed in each other’s lives, but naturally her main focus was on the man she’d fallen in love with, the man who’d asked her to marry him.  The prick that apparently didn’t deserve her.

Jonah had given a reading at their wedding.  He’d been at Holden’s bachelor party.  He and Nolan had them over for game nights fairly often, along with the Bennett brothers and a few other mutual friends.  They all saw eachother at large social gatherings and often at smaller family get-togethers as well.  And conversation was always easy, always fun, always warm.

But he missed this.  Just the two of them, chatting and joking and giving eachother a hard time.  And laughing.  She had a way of tapping right into his sense of humor that was second only to Nolan.  He hoped one day to be able to laugh like this with Velvet.  To be able to know each other so well that they could always make each other laugh belly-laughs and grin like idiots.

“I miss this too.”  She responded. 

They fell into a comfortable silence.  After a few minutes of whisking and some suggestions from Grace as to how to improve the sauce, Jonah was just about ready to start heating the oil.  He filled a pot with water and rice and set it on the burner.  “Should I do noodles too, d’you think?” 

“You never cheated on me, did you?”

Jonah turned to her, feeling a little blindsided, concern and caring coloring his expression and his tone.  “Never.  I would never do that.”

She nodded.  He opened his mouth to say more when there came a light rapping on the door.  He recognized it as Velvet’s knock and he blinked. 

“I think we should talk more—“  He began, moving around the island and heading toward the yellow door.

“Maybe.”  She said with a dismissive wave of her hand.  “But now right now.”

He frowned, but nodded his agreement.  The light knocking came again and he broke his eye contact with Grace and bounded toward the front door, a fluttering in his abdomen and a lifted, expansive feeling in his chest.  He felt this way everytime he saw Velvet.  “Coming!”  He called, nearing the door and quickly pushing his hair into place and pulling on his shirt a little.  He checked his breath with a little huff into his cupped hand and nodded decisively. 

Jonah swiftly pulled back the multiple bolts and the chain and finally twisted the handle to open the door.  He swung the door inward and his breath caught in his throat at the sight of her.  God.  She was perfect.

She grinned up at him, her pale-green eyes sparkling, her dark hair shining in the blazing august sunshine, her delicious little mouth rewarding him with a pleased-to-see-you smile that belonged only to him.  “Hiya, Handsome.”  She murmured, a giddy lift to her attempt at being flirty.

He bent down and took her small face in his long fingers and kissed her deep and full on the lips.  “Welcome home, Beautiful.”  He told her when at last he drew back, slightly out of breath.  He said that to her everytime she returned to the townhouse.  He made a point of it.  ‘Welcome home.’ You are welcome here, and this is your home.

She made a contended little sound and reached up to hold one of his hands to her soft cheek, nuzzling into it and grinning.  “I love you.”  She told him softly.  “And I love coming home to you.”
He kissed her nose in response and she giggled.  “But you’d better let me into that air conditioning before I melt!”

He chuckled and kissed her glistening forehead.  It really was intolerable out there today.  He moved aside, taking a few bags from her arm as she moved into the house.  “How many trips do you think I’ll need to make?”  He asked, looking out toward her little car.

She laughed.  “Oh no, what I bought today wouldn’t fit in the car, I’m having it delivered tomorrow morning.”

He rolled his eyes to the heavens but he smiled.  “What are we getting now?”  He inquired pleasantly.  “It feels like Christmas everyday around here.”

She laughed merrily and tossed her keys into a little candy dish by the front door.  “I think you’re going to be very, very pleased with your present Mr. Delaney.”  She purred, moving to him and slipping her hands up his chest.

Her hands on him made him feel transported, and that sexy tone of voice made his heart speed up.  “Oh?”  He asked, pausing in the front entryway and letting her run her fingertips over his shoulders and down his arms and back up over his chest sensually.  “I get a present?”  his voice was thick, his wits slow.  She was bewitching. 

“Mmmmmhmmmm.”  She said, nodding slowly, blinking slowly and holding his gaze in hers.

“What is it?”  He asked, flicking his gaze to her lips and beginning to salivate.

“I got you a brand new—“ she traced a finger from his clavicle down to his sternum, “very luxurious—“ the finger trailed down to his belly button and he felt his abs go taut, “very delicious—“ she said with a small, breathy giggle as her finger arrived at the waist of his jeans, “King sized—“ she grinned wickedly and captured his now thickening cock in her delicate little hand, causing him to suck in a sharp breath and smile with amazement “Bed!”  she finished with a trill of giggles and he wrapped his fingers into her thick, dark, silken hair and pulled her mouth to his for a hungry and grateful kiss.  The hand on his package stroked and pulsed eagerly.

He heard a polite clearing of the throat from the kitchen area and pulled up abruptly, blushing.

“We have company.”  He replied, to Velvet’s questioning expression. 

Her eyes opened wide and she bit her lip.  “Ooops.”  She giggled, and it took all his self control not to pick her up and bring her to the bedroom right then.  She was so goddamn adorable.  He was the luckiest man alive.

He chuckled and stroked her cheek one last time before turning his attention toward the rest of the townhouse, where Grace stood by the kitchen island, ready to be introduced. 

He smiled an apology to his friend, who cocked an eyebrow but looked amused, and he moved into the space, one hand on Velvet’s small back, the other still loaded with her shopping bags, which he used to cover the erection she’d just given him.

“Velvet, I’d like you to meet my good friend Gracie.  Gracie, this is Velvet.”