Can't Get Enough (Skyland, #3)(128)

The article also indicates that the “whistleblower” who exposed the businessmen funding CFE’s suit against us is actually Andrew Carverson’s daughter, who leaked private documents stored at his home. The piece goes on to detail Maverick’s announcement minutes ago that he would no longer be purchasing the Vipers, a team he has recently been vocal about buying.

“I know it sounds funny coming from someone who has a lot of money,” the article quotes Maverick. “But money isn’t everything. Not when corrupt individuals are out here trying to roll the years back to a time when people who looked like me had fewer opportunities. How could anyone I love trust me if I set that aside to do business with someone now using legislation designed to protect us to set us back? How could I trust myself?”

How could anyone I love trust me…

Love. Love. Love.

The word reverberates through the chambers of my heart, echoing and piercing the tender flesh of my emotions.

Maverick did it. He really did it.

He is making this sacrifice for our community, yes. For Aspire, yes. But for me. I know it on a cellular level where my skin vibrates, anticipating his touch again. I don’t have an outlet for this emotion running rampant through me right now. I have to tell someone the good news.

I know him. I trust him.

Shit, I love him.

And he chose me.

“Aunt G!” I shout, rushing out of the office and down the hall to the kitchen. “Guess what…”

I don’t finish the words because a gargantuan arrangement of champagne roses dominates the kitchen counter. There must be fifty of them in one vase. Not sure if that math can even be mathing right, but the smell of those roses, the beauty of them—the significance of them—takes my breath away.

“Oh, God!” I cover my mouth and turn wide eyes on my mother and aunt, who watch me with smiles on their faces. I pluck one of the roses from the vase and lift it to my nose. “He sent these?”

“No,” Mama says, nodding her head toward the living room. “Delivered them himself.”

“Delivered them…” My poor overworked, overstimulated brain can’t keep up. “You mean he… he’s…”

“Go get him.” Aunt G winks conspiratorially. “You made that man wait long enough.”

I turn on my heel and rush into the living room. Maverick faces the window, his back to me, long and powerful, the muscles flexing under his T-shirt. When he turns, I run across the room, holding nothing back. I barrel into him probably before he even has time to process that it’s me. The oomph of air that pushes out of him mists my cheek, and he tightens his arms around me.

“Hey, Gorgeous,” he whispers in my ear, running his hands down my back to rest at the curve of my hips.

“Hey?” I gape at him, incredulous on so many levels. “You do what you did and just come in here saying hey? Is that all you have to say?”

“I told you I was going to show you, right?” He cups my face in two large hands, his thumbs brushing tenderly over my lips. “So do you see now?”

“I see.” Tears streak my cheeks and I cover his hands at my face with my own. “You love me.”

“Damn right I love you.” He dips and captures my mouth in a kiss that searches my soul and squeezes my heart. Makes the blood sing in my veins like that wordless jazz tune we danced to on a yacht under a moonlit sky. I hear the words to the song now. They’re love and trust and right now and forever and always and enough.

“What about your dad?” I ask, when my lungs are so air-starved we have to break the kiss.

“He was the one who told me do it. Well, I’d already decided, but I knew buying this team was almost as important to him as it was to me.”

“I know this was hard.” I caress his nape and knit my brows in concern. “What’d he say?”

“He said there is nothing and no one I would have chosen over your mother. If you feel that way about Hendrix, I’ll kick your ass myself if you buy this team.” He gives me a wry grin. “He does have a few inches on me and he’s in great shape for an old man.”

“And you do feel that way about me?” I ask, breathless and undone by the force of such a man putting me first this way.

“I already told you I love you. Now you just fishing.” He chuckles. “But if there is any doubt, yes. I feel that way about you. Nothing is more important.”

“I love you too,” I say, pressing a kiss to his lips. “And maybe just as important, at least to me, I trust you.”

The laughter fades in his eyes, on his lips. “That means as much to me too. Thank you. And I’ll never take either for granted.”

“As much as I love that you chose me, it bothers me so badly that Carverson gets what he wants, gets to walk away unscathed.”

“Unscathed?” Maverick’s mouth hardens, firms into a line I would never want to cross.

“He won’t be. Not by the time I’m done with him.”

“You have a plan?” I ask, hoping that we win our case, but also hoping, as petty as it sounds, that the man who robbed Maverick of this dream suffers for it.

“Oh, I always have a plan.” He plucks the rose I didn’t even realize I was still holding from my fingers. “How do you think I got you?”