Stranded for Christmas with my Boss (Forbidden Billionaire Boss Daddies)

16. Jensen

Chapter sixteen

Jensen

B esides the light murmuring of the television that I’m not even watching, silence settles in my penthouse as I lounge on the couch. My eyes roam around the large living room, which looks so much bigger when I take into account how much space isn’t taken up.

Moments like these remind me of how empty this place is. Most of my life happens outside of my own home, and it has been that way since I went to college. I’ve always been out and about doing things. Creating things. Avoiding the past and what I don’t think I can fix about myself.

It’s hard to avoid anything when I’m here alone to face it, though.

My phone buzzing is a welcome distraction, and I reach forward and grab it off the coffee table without hesitance. I sit up straighter when I see Alyssa’s name on the screen. What is she doing texting me so late at night?

Hey, sorry to bother you so late. I’m dealing with an issue at my apartment, and emergency maintenance isn’t picking up the phone. I’ll have to deal with the issue tomorrow, so I might be late or might not even be able to show up, depending on when they decide to show up and fix it. I’ll give you an update as soon as I know something tomorrow.

I don’t even think twice. I call her, listening to the phone ring twice before the line picks up.

“Hey, did I wake you?” Alyssa asks, already sounding guilty.

“No, I’ve been awake. What’s the maintenance issue?” I ask her as I lean back into my couch cushions.

“My front door won’t shut properly,” Alyssa sighs. “It’s an old piece of crap, so I shouldn’t be surprised it broke, but I just don’t feel safe leaving my apartment for a long period of time with a broken door. It’s definitely not the Hamptons around here.”

A broken door. That seems easy to fix.

“I’m guessing you don’t have any tools.”

“I have scissors and a hammer.”

“Text me your address. I’ll come over and fix it for you,” I offer as I haul myself off my couch and venture to the kitchen, where I keep a stocked tool kit under the sink.

“You want me to show up for work that badly?” Alyssa teases me before her voice becomes more serious. “You don’t have to go through all this trouble, Jensen. I can have maintenance deal with it tomorrow.”

“I don’t like the thought of you sleeping in an apartment that’s not secure,” I reply, feeling uneasy at just the thought. “What if someone breaks in? Text me, okay?”

“I…all right,” Alyssa says, giving in. She knows that staying in her place tonight with a broken lock puts her at unnecessary risk. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I tell her before hanging up and grabbing my tool kit from under the sink, moving quickly so that I can get her door fixed by at least two in the morning.

Even after I fix it, I’ll still offer her the day off, but I doubt she’ll take it.

I see a text with her address waiting for me on my phone’s lock screen. She’s not too far away from me, but she’s definitely in a different area. Judging from all the things she admitted to me about her finances and her parents’ situation, I can assume that she’s in a small studio in one of those older buildings in an even older neighborhood.

Kind of like the neighborhood I grew up in.

I push those thoughts from my mind and head out to my car, stepping into the chilly night. There are still cars zipping by and people trudging up and down the sidewalk, but it’s far quieter than usual.

I drive to her apartment building, passing by other old, brick buildings with small entrances and limited street parking. I end up having to park down the street from her place, but a walk through the cold doesn’t bother me.

Using the directions she gave me, I enter the three-story building and take the nearest flight of stairs that I can find up to the top floor, keeping my steps quiet as they lightly echo through the building. As I walk down the hallway, I can hear faint voices and laughter from other units, but other than that, it’s eerily quiet.

When I reach Unit 305, I gently knock on the door so that I don’t startle her. Anything more than a gentle knock is going to sound like I’m pounding on her door.

Alyssa cracks the door open and peers through the tiny gap. She throws the door open with a sigh of relief. “Oh, it’s you. Thank you for helping me out. Seriously.”

I smile and walk inside, my eyes briefly sweeping over, as I guessed, a studio apartment. It’s far homier than my place, though, showing off little bits of her personality.

Colorful curtains. A few books stacked on her coffee table. A whiteboard calendar and to-do list mounted on the wall near her kitchen. A framed picture of her family in the living room.

“It’s not much,” Alyssa says when she sees me looking around.

“I like it,” I assure her. “Way more cozy than my place.”

Amusement glints in her eyes as she crosses her arms over the oversized graphic sweatshirt that she’s wearing over leggings. And fuzzy socks. “I know you can afford an accent piece or two.”

“I guess I just don’t know where to start,” I say with a light laugh before taking a look at her door. “I have an idea where to start here, though. Is it just now giving you trouble?”

“It’s always been finicky, but this entire place is old,” Alyssa sighs as she watches me inspect the door hinges, the doorknob, and the doorframe.

She’s right about it being old. The doorknob’s gold-colored surface is chipped and scraped, and the white door itself has a few big marks and gouges on it. And it’s cheaply made.

“All right, I’m going to mess around with a few things,” I tell her as I crouch down and open up my tool kit. I might as well start with tightening the hinges. It looks like they need that regardless.

“I just got back from my parents’ house, so I’m starving. Want to share a pizza with me? It’s the least I can do.”

I look over my shoulder at her, seeing a hopeful expression on her face. I can tell she feels guilty for dragging me out here, even if it’s no big deal to me.

“That sounds great,” I say, watching her face brighten.

“Pepperoni?” Alyssa asks as she steps back toward her kitchen.

“Perfect.”

While she calls the closest pizza place for a late-night delivery, I work on the door, moving through my list of why it won’t close and stay closed.

“So, how do you know all this handyman stuff?” Alyssa asks as she holds a bottle of beer out to me.

I lift an eyebrow, surprised but grateful for the offering. “My dad. I had to help him fix things around the house when I was young.”

Alyssa leans against the wall as she sips on her beer, keeping me company. “What are your parents like?”

“That’s a very loaded question.” I find myself laughing, but there is no amusement in my voice. All I can think about is the worst of my parents, which clouds any good memories I have growing up.

“Oh…have they passed?”

They might as well have. It’s not like I talk to them anymore.

“No, my sister Holly and I aren’t in contact with them,” I tell her before pausing and taking a drink of my beer. Do I really want to delve into this part of my past with her?

I don’t talk about it with anyone but Holly and Austin.

Alyssa frowns and sits on the floor closer to me. “Something bad happened?”

Her voice is tender, more like a polite nudge than a firm push for me to open up. Honestly, it’s tempting to tell her. We’ve already been so up close and personal with each other in other ways that adding one more layer of depth to our already complicated relationship doesn’t seem as big of a deal as it should be.

I still busy myself with checking the position of the strike plate, not meeting her eyes as I speak. “My parents had a pretty bad divorce when Holly and I were young. They were terrible to each other. Yelling all day and night. Throwing things. Breaking things. Holly was too scared to sleep in her own room and started staying in mine.”

Alyssa’s eyes grow wide. “That’s awful.”

“A lot of kids have to deal with their parents’ divorce, but I hope it’s quicker than ours was. All the hatred they had for each other dragged on for years. They accused each other of cheating. Lying. Stealing each other’s things and money. But they refused to leave for years because they had nowhere else to go,” I mutter, bitterness seeping into my voice.

How can I not get swept up in the emotions of my past when my mind travels back there?

Alyssa sips on her beer before speaking. “Did they ever…hurt you guys?”

“Physically? No, not really,” I reply. A ghostly memory of my father’s tight grip on my arm wraps goes through my mine, and I’d been slapped in the back of the head a few times by my mother. It was nothing compared to what they could’ve done, though. The important thing is that they didn’t hurt Holly.

“I’m really sorry, Jensen. No one should ever have to go through something like that.”

I pause after shifting the strike plate and look over at her. “It’s…in the past, but I will say my sister and I definitely aren’t the best when it comes to matters of the heart.”

A look of sympathy forms on her face. “If that’s all you knew about love, that’s a tough hurdle to get over.”

She has no idea, and my inner conflict with the thought of being with someone has grown far more complicated since meeting her. I don’t make it a point to get attached to people, but I’m in her apartment fixing her door and telling her my deepest, darkest secrets.

That sounds like an attachment. That sounds dangerous.

“I think I figured out the problem,” I tell her as I turn my attention back to fixing my repair. Before I can shut the door and test it, I hear footsteps down the hallway, making me poke my head out. “It’s the pizza guy.”

Alyssa slips past me and retrieves the large pizza she ordered. She steps back into her apartment and nods to me. “All right, the moment of truth.”

Well, now there is pressure on me. I’m pretty sure I found the cause of the issue, but it’s not like I’m a handyman for a living. I always just got bossed around and yelled at by my dad for not fixing something correctly.

I push the door shut, hearing it click. I draw my hand away and grin when the door doesn’t budge and stays closed.

“You did it!” Alyssa says with an excited smile. She leans closer to me and gives me a half-hug.

My arm winds around her shoulders, drawing her body against mine. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel pretty victorious right about now. It looks like something from my awful childhood paid off in the long run.

I fixed a beautiful girl’s door. Not a euphemism.

“Do you want to stay for a little? You promised you would split the pizza with me,” Alyssa says as we break apart. She gives me a pointed look that tells me not to test her.

“I worked up an appetite,” I assure her as I follow her into the kitchen, watching her place the large pizza box on her wooden kitchen counter.

Alyssa grabs two plates and hands me one with a large slice of pepperoni pizza on it. She turns to me, resting her back against the counter. “You really came through for me.”

In a way, she did too. She heard out the moody story of my past and didn’t push me to make things right with my parents or anything like that. That’s the last thing that I’ll ever do.

“I wasn’t going to leave you hanging,” I tell her before biting into my pizza. It’s New York pizza. It’s as good as ever.

“What if you didn’t know how to fix it?”

“I would’ve called my emergency maintenance guy and had him fix it. For a generous price, of course.”

Alyssa smirks. “You’re going quite above and beyond, aren’t you? Just for little old me?”

Now, she knows that she means more than that to me. I’ve treated her like more than just my assistant, which is professionally wrong, but she’s a good person. She draws out a part of me that I’m barely even familiar with.

He’s not some moody asshole, though. So, that’s a bonus.

I set my plate down on the counter and take another sip of my beer, my mind racing as quickly as my heart. We’re approaching the line, but it’s starting to fade more and more from view.

I step closer to her, the counter keeping her from moving an inch. “But you like it when I give you special treatment.”

Alyssa’s cheeks redden as she puts her plate to the side, her thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. “I don’t ask for it.”

“But you want it,” I reply, hearing her breath hitch as I move even closer until there are mere inches between our bodies. “Don’t you?”

Alyssa’s eyes lift to mine, her full lips slightly parting in surprise. She didn’t expect me to make this move, and neither did I. I was just going to eat some pizza and then head out to get some sleep.

But we’re all alone. Away from the office.

That’s ridiculously tempting, and I don’t miss the way her eyes sweep over me. The quick rise and fall of her chest. She is just as tempted as I am.

“Yes,” she breathes out.

I brush my fingertips through her hair, my hand settling on her nape as our eyes continue to lock. My other hand cups her chin, tilting it upward. “And fucking is your favorite kind of special treatment.”

Alyssa’s eyes widen, but she nods.

That’s what I thought.

My lips collide with hers in a heated kiss, my hand moving from her nape into her hair.

Alyssa’s responding moan becomes muffled as our kiss deepens and intensifies with each passing second. She grabs my sides, holding tight like she’s afraid I’ll slip away.

I grip her hair, feeling the gentlest wisp of her tongue against mine. She knows that drives me crazy. My other hand slides around to the small of her back, pulling her away from the counter and pushing her flush against me instead.

Alyssa winds her arms around my neck, pressing her chest against mine. She knows that I can feel every curve of her body, whether she’s wearing clothes or not. “I need you.”

Her words make heat burn within me, colliding with the desire pumping through my veins. My erection already strains against the front of my joggers, pressing against her hip. “You have me.”

Those words run deeper and truer than I even realize.