With Crayons and Love (Romantic Suspense) [COMPLETED]

Chapter 17 - Finest

A week had gone by in much the same fashion. I took Stella to my parents' house, went to work at the Tribune, picked her up and drove home, and settled the day with a little dosage of Grant Gable. Routine was not the word to describe it, for every time I saw him a mixture of feelings I couldn't decipher would take ahold of me. Overwhelm my chest, and my body, so that I was left wanting and tensely sedated. However that made sense.

There was something about having everything you wanted in your possible grasp, and being unable to have every taste of it. I couldn't have every taste yet.

As I drove home from work with Stella in her seat, I felt the anticipation, the tension in my bones from having worked over a desk for longer than usual. My boss had asked me to stay another hour, an hour that would be paid, of course, and I was driving home at near to seven, with hardly any sunlight to soften the blow of staying after-hours.

Weeks ago, I would not have minded, but presently, with Stella in my car, I knew the hour was an hour less where she would be at home and relaxed and able to sleep without interruption.

I was growing into a prune.

And it couldn't be helped.

At home we showered, and having already eaten at my mother's, I fixed us some hot chocolate with the gigantic marshmallows Stella loved.

"Mm. Gooey." Stella mumbled, picking up a chocolatey marshmallow and taking a whopping bite for her size.

"They're pretty good. I like the smaller marshmallows, though. They're easier to eat."

"But so tiny you have eat a hundred to be full!" And just like that she took the last marshmallow from her mug and ate it in a single bite.

"Stella! Careful. I would have a heart attack, a heart attack, if you choked. I wouldn't know what to do."

She laughed, obviously unaffected. "Call the hospital, duh."

I rolled my eyes with a smile. "Duh."

I was washing my empty mug when a knock sounded at the front door. My pulse quickened, but calmly, I stopped the running water and dried my hands on a rag.

"Hmm, I wonder who it is," Stella sang. "Grantey Grant Grant."

I laughed, went to her and kissed her cheek. "Don't tease."

"Oh, fine," she huffed, disappointed, but I knew she wouldn't, in her terms, betray me.

I opened the door and found him standing there, with his hands behind his back and a sly grin over his lips.

"Took you a while to open the door. Where you debating on whether or not to let me in?"

"How'd you guess?"

I turned around with a smile of my own and the certainty that he would follow.

"Look at what I brought the prettiest girls in all of Chicago. Pastries. The finest in all of Chicago, of course."

He went to where Stella sat at my small dining table and kissed the top of her head, placing a pink box on the wooden surface.

He was dressed casually in a black t-shirt and denims, his hair smoothed back with the water of a fresh shower. Delectable, he looked absolutely delectable. And just like that the heat entered my body, and I knew I wouldn't be able to subdue it for as long as he was here. With every passing day I spent with him it grew increasingly harder not to push him against a wall to feel him, to take from him.

I dreamed of him, a few dozen times, giving and taking from me.

I knew I was blushing. In what I hoped was casual movement, I walked to him and smiled.