“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.”
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