Boss With Benefits (Billion-Dollar Bet, #2)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

E MBARKING ON THE travel plans Maggie had discussed with him back in the office nearly six weeks ago and then followed up with an email he’d eventually opened once Ella had gone, Adam touched down in Rome first thing on Tuesday morning, certain he’d done the right thing in cutting off all prospects of a relationship with her and denying any feelings for her that he may or may not have had.

That photo had been far too close a call, he thought darkly as he listened to the plans for refurbishment outlined by the general manager of the seven-star hotel the Courtney Collection owned there. She was safe. As was he. They’d both had an incredibly lucky escape—for him that had been personal as well as professional—so he booted both her and their conversation firmly from his head with no regrets about any of it. He didn’t miss her or wonder how her promotion was going. He didn’t think of her and their three weeks together at all.

A week later, however, as he toured the factory in Hanoi, which manufactured leather goods for one of the businesses in the Collection, he had to admit he was struggling. Ella filtered into his head annoyingly often, and that scene by the pool kept nagging at his thoughts.

But he still held firm the belief that sending her home had been the best thing to do. He couldn’t have agreed to a continuation of the affair from Labor Day onwards, even though he’d had to bite back the Hell yes that had been on the tip of his tongue. She’d still strip him of control and civility and tempt him into recklessness, and from there it would be a quick descent into chaos and destruction.

It was only natural to miss her, he reflected in between meetings that felt interminable. They’d packed a lot into three weeks. The memories would soon fade. And he’d eventually shake the image of her stricken face when he’d accused her of making a mistake about her feelings for him. He had not been proud of himself for that, but he’d had to get her away before he’d caved in and agreed to—and with—everything she’d said.

But by the time he arrived in the Blue Mountains wine region of New South Wales at the end of August, he was wondering what the hell he’d done. Every moment they’d spent together and every conversation they’d ever had were etched into his head. And now, as he sat in a presentation about the projections for next year’s Shiraz sales, all he could think was, had he completely lost his mind? How could he ever have believed himself not in love with her? He was wild about her. He probably had been since the moment she’d dealt the jerk in the bar a knee in the groin and a martini down his shirt the night they’d met.

She was the only person who knew everything about him. She was the only person for whom he’d bought a private jet, resorted to subterfuge and arranged a romantic dinner. He thought she hung the moon and the stars. He worshipped the ground she walked on. She was magnificent.

She was also totally right about the hold that the past had on him.

En route from Hanoi, he’d happened upon an article in a magazine entirely dedicated to the green credentials of the Courtney Collection. The article was great—and so it should be when, where possible, he’d invested heavily in sustainable, ethical manufacturing and clean energy—but that wasn’t the point. The point was that two months ago, not that he’d have known exactly who was writing the article, when it was to be published and in which publication, but he would also have demanded to see a copy before it went to print. This one, however, he hadn’t even been aware of.

It had hit him, then, like a blow to the head, that he’d almost entirely stepped away from the company in order to focus on Ella and their affair. He’d ceded control and disaster hadn’t struck. His recklessness had not led to chaos and devastation. Everything he’d worked for was still standing. He’d built something strong and lasting. Which proved he wasn’t like his father in that respect, and perhaps not in any others either.

For years, he had feared that if he didn’t keep a tight control on everything and everyone, the genes he shared with his father would overrun him, but although he looked like the man, he wasn’t a chip off the old block. Yes, he’d once been selfish, thoughtless and irresponsible, but he’d been a teenager in a mess. Fourteen years had passed since then—years he’d spent knuckling down and forging his own path—and they counted.

The three weeks he’d spent away from the helm suggested that he didn’t have to keep quite such an iron grip on everything as he’d always believed. He could afford to take his foot off the pedal from time to time. He could afford to let go.

And not just of his issues with his father. But of those with his mother too. Because he wasn’t responsible for her death. Or maybe he was. Either way he’d never know.

Acquiring Montague’s certainly wasn’t going to give him any answers, he’d come to realise when he revisited the conversation he and Ella had had over pi?a coladas, awake and alone in the early hours in one hotel room or another. And it wasn’t going to bring his mother back. How could it? And what if it didn’t give him the absolution he craved? What if nothing would?

Did he really want to spend the rest of his life trapped in the past, hounded by his fears? Shouldn’t he try and take a leaf out of Ella’s book by accepting what had happened and moving on? If he just let it all go—as she’d suggested—he wouldn’t need redemption. He’d be free. Free to explore a relationship with his sister. Free to look to ahead instead of behind. Free to have Ella in his life with all the challenge, excitement and love she would bring to it.

So the only question that remained was, would she feel the same way?

It didn’t seem likely. When he thought of the manner in which he’d spoken to her, he felt physically sick. Driven by a ridiculous need to protect himself, he’d lashed out and hurt her. Devastatingly. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the bewilderment and pain in her eyes when he’d dismissed her feelings for him and denied his for her. The memory of it tore him apart and brought him to his knees.

He had to fix the mess he’d made of things, he thought grimly and repeatedly on the twenty-hour flight back to New York. He missed her more than he’d ever imagined possible. She was the most incredible woman he’d ever met and he couldn’t contemplate a future without her in it. He wanted her in his corner, in his bed, in his heart. He wanted everything she had to offer and give her everything he had in return. He would do whatever it took to get her back, he vowed above the Pacific, the southern states and then as they came into land. He just hoped he hadn’t left it too late.

For the first few days that followed her return to the city, Ella kept herself so busy she barely had time to breathe. Focusing purely on the practicalities, she filled the fridge and did the laundry. She watered the plants, sorted her post and then started prepping to go back to work and take up her promotion.

She had no intention whatsoever of wasting any more time on Adam, she reminded herself firmly whenever she was unexpectedly hit by a memory of something they’d done together or a conversation they’d had. She had never shed tears over anyone, let alone a man, and she wasn’t starting now. It was the super strong air conditioning that had stung her eyes on the long flight home, nothing else.

She wasn’t some wilting Regency heroine, pining over an unrequited love. She wasn’t a romantic any more than he was. She was a realist, a pragmatist, even if for those three crazy weeks, she’d temporarily forgotten that.

Every time she revisited that scene by the pool, which was far too often for comfort, she cringed. The things she’d said to him... The mortifying assumptions she’d made... The foolish feelings she’d thought she’d developed...

What on earth had she been thinking ? she repeatedly wondered with incredulous despair. Where had that soppy, sentimental wreck of a woman come from? That wasn’t her. That had never been her. Going all gooey at a few fairy lights and candles on the beach? Please. Fancying they shared some sort of an emotional connection? Honestly.

She simply couldn’t fathom how she’d actually believed herself to be in love with the man when she’d known right from the start that it was nothing more than a fling and he’d made her no promises. And as for putting him on some sort of a pedestal, as if he were a paragon of strength and protection to be worshipped, well, who knew what that had been about? She must have entered a parallel universe for a while.

But she was back in the real world now, back on track, and she needed no further distraction. So with more effort than she’d have liked, she shoved Adam from her head and forced herself to look forward. Which worked. Mostly. Enough, at least, to mean that come Monday morning, she was cool, calm and raring to go.

This was the start of the rest of her life, she told herself as she leapt out of bed and into the shower and resolutely did not think about the many showers she’d shared with the man who’d turned out instead to be a paragon of disappointment. It was what the whole of the last twelve months had been about—the chance to put everything behind her and move on with rising to the top of the auditing world.

However, the minute she stepped across the threshold of the company that had been her spiritual home for the last three years, something felt wrong. She ascended the lift to her floor and headed to the new office she’d been given, but with oddly little enthusiasm.

Nothing about the building had changed. Her colleagues were perfectly pleasant, even congratulatory, which should have delighted her way more than it did. It was just that she had the bizarre feeling she wasn’t the same woman who’d walked out the door six weeks ago.

Although supremely confident she could do the job, she felt off balance. For some reason, she was on edge. She couldn’t seem to shake the conversation she’d had with Adam about the circumstances of her promotion. She was hounded by the voice in her head, which sounded annoyingly like his, demanding to know whether she was really okay working at a place that was prepared to treat her so badly.

Despite her best efforts to banish it, it stayed there, relentlessly hammering away at her and dredging up memories of horrible conversations with management, the same management who’d so recently authorised the promotion that should have been hers all along.

It took the shine off her new role. It made her question her judgement and kept her up at night, tearing her apart in the early hours because she’d fought so hard for it and wanted it for so long, yet now...she didn’t. In fact, it gave her self-respect so much grief that in the end she had to resign, so yet again her career was disrupted because of a man she’d become involved with.

But even though it had been a tough call to make, the subsequent absence of angst absolutely confirmed that resigning had been the right thing to do. The company’s values did not match her own, and hers mattered a lot. And at least this time, she was in control of the professional decision she’d taken. It was now five days since she’d quit—Labor Day, in fact, not that the date held any significance for her at all—and she already had half a dozen interviews lined up. She had no doubt she’d have her pick of offers. So it was all good. It was all very good indeed.

Of course, resigning and leaving the office immediately to work out her notice at home had meant that she now had a lot of time on her hands with nothing much to occupy her brain. Endless trips to the gym might exhaust her body, but her mind seemed to be on overdrive.

But if she caught herself increasingly dwelling on her secret Caribbean affair, well, why wouldn’t she? It had been intense. She and Adam had packed a lot in. It was only natural that she experienced the odd moment of regret that he hadn’t wanted to continue their relationship, because she did miss the sex. Who wouldn’t?

She didn’t miss him, though. Oh, no. These days, she barely ever thought of the conversations they’d had and the things they’d done. She was over him. They were done. She wasn’t remotely interested in whether he’d won Helberg today and found the peace he sought.

And, yes, she might very occasionally have expended some energy reviewing how it had all ended, trying to figure out what had gone wrong, whether she could have done anything differently, but that was the analyst in her.

It would soon stop, she assured herself as she arrived back home after an hour on the treadmill. She was sure of it. At least she hoped it would. Because what choice did she have but to forget about him and forge ahead? It wasn’t as if he was suddenly going to appear right in front of her and declare his undying love for her. Heaven forbid.

Keys in hand, determined to fill the rest of the holiday with something productive, whatever that might be, Ella stepped out of the lift onto the fourth floor of her building—and froze. Adam was pushing himself off the window sill outside her condo as if he’d been waiting for her, as if she’d conjured him up just by thinking about him.

Her heart stopped. Her breath caught in her throat. Her vision blurred and her head swam, and for a second, all those defences she’d built to protect herself trembled because it had been so damn long and she felt like someone dying of thirst coming face to face with a glass of water. But she kept them in place. She steeled herself to stay calm and held at bay the emotions she could feel trying to muscle their way in. She’d been vulnerable before him once and he’d crushed her. She would not allow that to happen again.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said coolly, noting that he looked tired and drawn but stamping out the urge to take him in her arms and smooth away the lines, because how he looked was none of her concern, and he didn’t deserve her care anyway.

‘I’ve been travelling,’ he said gruffly. ‘I came straight from the airport. Can we go inside?’

Absolutely not. She couldn’t have him in her apartment. Even if she physically got him out, the memory of him in her space, space which she’d worked so hard for, would be unbearable. ‘No.’

He frowned. Rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, then gave a short nod and cleared his throat. ‘Right,’ he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans and locking his gaze on hers. ‘Then I’ll just have to do this out here.’

She ignored the slow burn of heat that looking into his eyes always generated and lifted her chin. ‘Do what?’

‘How have you been?’

Was that why he’d come? To enquire into her well-being? Surely a phone call would have sufficed. Not that she’d have answered it. ‘I could not have been better.’

‘Promotion going well?’

‘I resigned.’

He went very still. ‘What did they do?’

‘ They did nothing. I just kept thinking about how they treated me and decided that it wasn’t good enough. It was less than I deserve.’

‘That was brave,’ he said, a glimmer of what could have been admiration lighting the depths of his mesmerising blue eyes, although what did she care? It mattered not one little bit what he thought of her decision. ‘I have contacts if you need them.’

‘I have plenty of my own.’

‘Of course you do.’

For a moment, he just looked at her intently, as if trying to get a glimpse into her soul. Her heart thudded heavily, and a flurry of jitters flitted around her stomach, which was not how she wanted to feel, so she blinked to break the connection and pulled her shoulders back. ‘What do you want, Adam?’

He hauled one hand out of his pocket and shoved it through his hair. Then he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and she might have thought he was nervous if how he was feeling was of any consequence, which it wasn’t. ‘First of all,’ he said with another quick clear of his throat. ‘I need to apologise for what I said to you by the pool just before you left the Caribbean. It was unacceptable and cruel. I was thrown off balance by the photo. It triggered a reaction I’m not proud of. I’m sorry.’

Ella’s heart skipped a beat, but her guard remained up because an apology was the least he could give her. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she replied with a shrug that didn’t feel quite as casual as it should. ‘I was thrown off balance, too. We both said things we regret. Forget it. I have.’

He stilled. Frowned. A muscle jumped in his cheek. ‘Have you?’

She gave a short nod. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said firmly. ‘Totally. I really don’t know what I was thinking. Perhaps I was suffering from sunstroke. Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge, right?’

‘No,’ he said, taking a step towards her, a move that enveloped her in his scent and would have made her swoon if she’d let it. ‘It’s not all water under the bridge. And it’s not right at all. Although you were. You were bang on. About everything. I don’t buy private jets or arrange romantic dinners on the beach for anyone. I’ve never compromised my principles for an affair. I’ve only ever done those things for you. I am in love with you. I think I have been since the moment we met. You are the strongest, most incredible woman I’ve ever met. You frustrate me, you challenge me, you thrill me, and I want you in my life forever.’

Ella’s heart crashed against her ribs and then began to gallop. But she must not weaken. She must not give rein to the emotions battering at her defences. She must not let him crush her again. ‘Yet you hurt me,’ she said, her voice nevertheless cracking. ‘Badly. I told you I loved you and you denied it. You took something I told you, something personal, and turned it back on me.’

A flash of anguish sped across his face. ‘I know,’ he said, as earnest as she’d ever seen him. ‘And I’m sorry. I was spooked and lashed out, and I deeply regret it. The thing is, Ella, ever since my mother died, I’ve feared losing control. I’ve always believed that without it, I’d cause the sort of chaos my father did. That night in the bar, you stripped me of it. I immediately reverted to type, acting without a thought for the consequences. You continued to remind me of the recklessness I am capable of, and I resisted that. The photo did too, and I reacted in the worst way possible.’

‘So you got scared.’

He nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘That’s no excuse.’

‘I know,’ he said, his tone filled with remorse. ‘I have no excuse for any of it. But your take on my feelings for you wasn’t the only thing you were right about. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently. And I’ve realised that I do need to let go of the control and the guilt that have kept me trapped in the past. I am not my father’s son. I build things, not destroy them. And whatever my role in my mother’s death, I’ll never know for sure.’

His steady gaze continued to hold hers. ‘I don’t want to carry on living like this. I want to be free of it all. So this morning, I withdrew from the bet. I don’t need Montague’s. I don’t need redemption any more. I don’t need anything but you. If you’ll have me. If I haven’t screwed this up for good.’ He stopped, his breathing a little shallow, a faint flush tingeing his cheekbones. ‘Have I done that, Ella? Do you still love me? Or have I killed any feelings you had for me stone dead?’

Ella didn’t know where to start with answering Adam’s questions. She couldn’t think straight. She was reeling. Struggling to process everything he’d just told her. He loved her? He’d listened to her? He was ready to move on and had given up Montague’s?

As she stood there staring at him, her heart pounding so hard she felt as though it were trying to escape, one by one, her defences shattered. Every single lie she’d told herself vanished. And into the vacuum, every emotion she’d been battling to keep at bay flooded with the force of a tsunami.

God, she’d missed him, she thought, her chest aching, her throat tight. So very, very much. Despite her every effort, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. She’d been utterly miserable since she’d been back. And not because of the job, but because of him. Because he hadn’t shared her hopes and dreams. Because she’d taken a risk and lost.

Returning to the city had been like switching from Technicolor to black and white. Everything had felt so flat. She missed feeling alive. Being kept on her toes. When she’d been struggling to work out what to do about her promotion, even though she was perfectly capable of making her own decisions, she’d wanted his advice and support. She’d had a glimpse of what a proper relationship could be like and to have it snatched away had been excruciating.

But now he was here, putting everything on the line, and perhaps she ought to make him pay for the agony he’d put her through, but it hadn’t been deliberate. They’d both made mistakes. Neither of them was flawless.

‘You haven’t killed off anything,’ she said, wondering if the floor beneath her feet was actually shaking or whether it was simply the force of the emotions swirling around inside her. ‘I do still love you. But I’m not entirely happy about it. You crushed me. You sent me away. You’ve caused me nearly a month of misery.’

He closed the distance between them and took her hands in his. ‘If you’ll let me,’ he said, tightening his hold on her as if he wanted to never let her go, ‘I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. You’re not the only one who’s tenacious, Ella. I will do everything in my power to prove how sorry I am and how much I love you. I will fight for you and I will not fail. I will date you. I will woo you. I will bombard you with texts filled with heart emojis and emails laden with innuendo. You’ll have to give in eventually, if only to get some peace.’

Her heart pounding, Ella gazed up into his eyes, which were filled with sincerity, determination and the steadfastness that she loved so much, and the last of her resistance melted clean away. Who knew what the future would hold? she thought a little giddily as happiness began to spread through her, warming every inch of her as it went. There’d be much to discuss. Much to sort out. But they’d both taken giant steps into the unknown recently—him relinquishing Montague’s, her quitting her job—and so maybe now was the time to take another one. Because she loved him and he loved her, and the one thing she did know was that life with him would never be boring.

‘Well then,’ she said, her smile wide and bright and filled with everything she was feeling as she drew him with her towards her front door, ‘you’d better come in.’