All Chapters of The Hostage (Book 2 of The Arrangement Series): Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

For the next week or so, Amberleigh and Leo only rarely left the warehouse to take evening strolls around the less smelly parts of the city, often to watch the sunsets from various viewpoints. Hell, they rarely even left the bed where they watched movies, talked about their pasts, their hopes for the future, made love repeatedly, and quite often watched the sunrise in each other’s arms.They danced. They laughed. They dreamed. They ate, mostly in the evenings when her nausea was the least aggressive. Amberleigh kicked Leo’s ass at Pinball. He let her win various other games, creamed her at many more, but he could legitimately not beat her at Pinball and a healthy competition erupted between the two of them over it. Each time he would beat her high score, she would just surpass it again. But Amber knew she was the real winner in this situation in more ways than one.They instituted naked cooking lessons which were lots of fun. Amber found it extremely hard to focus when her instructor

It turned out the twenty boxes of cereal wasn’t the only damaged caused in the storage room that night. Amberleigh felt a small puncture in her bottom lip and found the imprint of her nails in Leo’s back. Both of them had marked each other well in the throes of their rough passion, but of course it was nothing compared to the emotional mark they had left upon one another. They were in love with each other and there was no fucking use denying it no matter what shit and damage it was bound to cause them both.It took quite a while to finish cleaning up the mess that night. Amber did help Leo make sure all the cereal was out of all his crevices, while he returned the favor in the shower they shared. They had a nice intimate dinner by candlelight where he spoon fed her some of his raspberry lemon cheesecake after she had eaten all hers, then he stole a sweet kiss directly after. Both were feeling quite exhausted by the time they made it to bed, but a promise was a promise after all. The

Over the next several days, Leo kept his promise not to initiate any conversations about the baby, but he was more than happy to participate in any Amberleigh started. He even joked that he needed to get a job now that he was an unemployed chef and babies were hella expensive. Between Courtney’s bitchiness and Grayson’s lax and indifferent attitude, Leo had been outed from the penthouse, replaced by another chef. He wasn’t too broken up about it though. Amber knew Leo still occasionally communicated with Grayson, though their conversations were always tense. Right now both of them were still hot-headed and angry, trying to get personal jabs in at each other. But she knew over time, when their anger cooled, they would miss each other. There was no way they couldn’t with the bond they shared and all the shit they’d been through together. She hoped that one day the two of them could patch things up, but it didn’t appear to be anytime soon. Especially with

The bathroom door collided roughly against the wall, not that the two men noticed as they were both engrossed in firing insults at each other. Even still in the middle of their fight, Leo was getting ice for Grayson’s hand. That spoke volumes about his character. He would still take care of Grayson no matter fucking what. Even if Grayson didn’t want his help or didn’t deserve it or how badly he hurt Leo in the process. Not that he certainly didn’t need it though. On the outside weighing in, it would be easy for Amber to assume that Grayson really was just an entitled, ungrateful selfish bastard who took more than he ever gave. But she could see something else about the billionaire that most would miss. Yes, Grayson was all of those things, but he was also so much more. The real reason he lashed out at Leo tonight wasn’t just because he was angry that Leo was snuffing his wedding and trying to control his life, he also felt guilty as fuck. The billionaire felt guilty

What was more fucking awkward than telling your baby daddy he was going to be a daddy and that you were now in a relationship with his best friend? Being trapped in a small bathroom with him, his probably soon to be ex best friend while, the world outside seemed to blow itself apart. At least it had grown somewhat quiet on the uncomfortable banter front, after Leo had convinced a reluctant Grayson to take shelter with them in the bathroom in the first place. But the billionaire was determined to still be a stubborn dick and sat as far across the room from Amber and Leo as possible. Amber and Leo were being good and following those grade school taught safety rules, get in a room with plumbing and least amount of windows, hunker down in the bathtub, and hopefully not kiss your ass goodbye. Leo had his hand clenched on her knee, though for more for whose benefit, she couldn’t be sure. He kept reading them out updates about the storm. Amber kept herself occupied by shining her smartwatch