Lovely Pink

hinges in perfect step with the Halloween decorations lining the stone steps and scattered across the landing. I could hear music blaring and people shouting from inside, but I couldn’t see who was greeting me.
I tilted my head to peek around the door, but then pulled back quickly, anticipating a horrifying monster face to punch out and scare the crap out of me.
No freaky Halloween gag-greeting exploded from behind the door.
But there was something.
Actually, it was someone.
And not the host of the party, either.
“Hello, Pink. I’ve been waiting for you.” He smiled, his eyes registering my costume before widening his mouth into an even bigger grin. “That’s a very pretty dress, but I think the sign you’ve pinned to the skirt needs to go, baby. No more running away.”
“Gr-aay?” I stuttered, momentarily shocked to see him. Grayson Lash looked as delicious as usual, this time in bespoke gray pinstripe from head to toe. In keeping with the Halloween theme, a nametag in the shape of a crayon with GRAY written on it, in gray magic-marker of course, stuck to his jacket. “What are you doing here?”
“Lance invited me, but I’m really here just for you, Pink,” he answered in his sexy drawl, “and you already know why.”
“What do you want, Gray?” I regretted my question the instant the words left my mouth, because he was correct—I did know.
He laughed and shook his head slowly as he stared me down. “You’re gonna make me say it again, even though you know exactly what I want.” He gave me another thorough perusal, his lingering look in the vicinity of my cleavage making my body heat spike in places that hadn’t seen any action in nearly two months. The exact same amount of time since I’d seen Gray. “Hell, you’re even dressed for it,” he added on for clarification.
“Why are you really here?”
“Because I want you to marry me,” he said clearly.
Gray’s tall frame filling Lance’s doorway went a little blurry before my eyes as my vision clouded up. Suddenly, there didn’t seem to be enough air left for me to breathe—in all of North America.
I was going down…and it was probably going to hurt.
There are moments in life when time moves so fast you can’t possibly process what’s really happening to you.
This was definitely one of those moments.
“Welcome back.” The words fell from soft lips hovering right above mine, the unmistakable sound of relief in his tone. “I wasn’t sure if you were breathing there for a minute. I was about to start CPR on you. Don’t fuckin’ do that again, Pink. You scared the hell out of me.” Gray’s words were harsh, but delivered gently as his fingers stroked across my temple.
“What happened? What did I—” I tried to sit up from what appeared to be a…bed? “Why am I in Lance’s bed?” I asked, confused and disoriented.
He frowned and increased his hold on me. “How do you know this is Lance’s bed? Have you been in it before?”
“Yes.” My mind was spinning from the unreality of Gray literally on top of me in a bed. I couldn’t stop my brain from processing exactly how the weight of him felt pressed against me. Damn good, unfortunately.
The warm chocolate brown of his eyes turned dark and his frown deepened. “You have? When? I’ma hafta kill him now.”
“Stop it. I’ve been in his bedroom before, not his bed.” I had to admit the possessiveness Gray was displaying didn’t offend me. It should have annoyed me greatly, but I found it endearing. It showed he cared about me on some level, the extent to which he cared was still something I was trying to figure out.
“Why in the hell have you been in Oakley’s bedroom?”
I pushed against him again in an attempt to get him off. It was like trying to move a brick fence. “This is cute, it really is, Gray, but I don’t care for your tone or your implications. Lance is a friend and that’s all he is. You know this very well, so stop being a stupid ass.”
“You still haven’t told me why you’ve been in this bedroom before,” he shot back.
“For the record, I don’t owe you explanations about any of the reasons I go into other people’s bedrooms, but if you must know I brought him dinner a few times when he was laid up after his car accident…as any good friend would do.” Gray’s chocolaty eyes blinked down at me, processing the truth of my explanation.
“Oh yeah, his accident,” he mumbled a little less possessively.
“Enough with this big, dumb ape routine you’ve got going.” I shoved with both hands to his chest while twisting my lower body as hard as I could, in an attempt to get him to budge. “Will you get off me, Grayson Lash!”
His response was to give me another one of his signature lazy grins before moving off to his side. The second his body separated from mine, I felt the loss of his warm weight almost painfully. I’d also felt an erection when I’d bucked my hips to get him off me.
This was not good.
Gray was the one person who held the power to turn my life upside down, and I could see he was still determined to try. The premonition I’d felt so strongly while walking up the steps to Lance’s front door? That feeling I was teetering on the precipice of a shifting change?
The very one.
Well, Gray had just confirmed precisely what “shift” was going to mean for me—and it meant I was in big, big trouble.
My mind started whirling with facts and details of what I already knew. Conversations that we’d had. Comments made here and there by my grandparents, and even my mother over the years. My mother’s strange message about my inheritance coming due made a lot more sense to me now. She misspoke on the phone. It wasn’t an inheritance, but rather it was an inheritance debt that was coming due with my twenty-fifth