Twin Babies with the Billionaire for Christmas

16. Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Tristan

I tap my foot impatiently in the elevator as I ride up to Rachel’s floor. A flooded apartment right before Christmas sounds like a recipe for being homeless over the holidays.

I know she’s mad at me, but I hope she will at least let me help her find someplace to stay. It’s the least I can do after being a dick to her outside the restaurant.

“What is wrong with you?” I ask myself out loud, dragging a hand through my hair.

It was hardly Rachel’s fault that Denise had brought up an old work scandal. She didn’t deserve my held-over frustration from the incident with Amy.

I walk down the hallway to Rachel’s door and knock. I can hear her talking on the phone, but I can barely make out the words.

I hope that she doesn’t leave me standing here like a fool, for too long.

“Yeah. Okay, I guess. Sure. Bye,” she says, the sounds getting clearer like she’s right on the other side of the door.

I rock back and forth on my heels as I wait for her to open the door. Suddenly, she swings it open and then I’m staring into her green eyes which look haunted with rage.

“Welcome to my swimming pool,” she says, her tone harsh with irritation as she steps back to allow me in.

I walk inside and cringe when I hear my feet splashing through standing water in the foyer.

“Holy crap,” I say, looking around at all the water…everywhere. I also can’t help but notice a complete lack of any sign of the holidays. It’s a little sad.

“Yeah…” she says ruefully, pulling her hair back into a ponytail with her hand and closing her eyes.

She presses a hand to her stomach as if she doesn’t feel good.

“Come here,” I say, putting my hand on the small of her back and guiding her toward the sofa. I notice that she still has her coat on, and I pull it off her shoulders before I help her to sit down. “Can I get you anything?”

“A place to live?” she says dryly, sounding completely exhausted.

“When can they fix this?” I ask.

She sighs. “Someone is on their way over to shut off the water, but other than that, they told me it’s close to Christmas and they can’t promise me anything until after the New Year.” She buries her head in her hands.

I had suspected as much, but I had hoped, for her sake, that they might be able to get things sorted out sooner. Although, from what I can see, this is not going to be a simple cleanup process. Even outside of the holidays, this looks like weeks of work to clean up.

“You can stay with me,” I say to her before I can stop myself. I know she will probably say no, but I want to offer.

She moans into her hands, but otherwise, she doesn’t respond.

I blow out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and come to sit next to her. I place my arm around her shoulders and give them a squeeze.

“I should be so angry at you,” she mumbles into her hands.

I smile a little. “Yeah,” I agree, “frankly, you should.”

She finally lifts her head from her hands and looks around at the mess of her apartment. She sighs loudly and flops back against the sofa cushions.

“I don’t even know how I should feel about anything that happened today,” she admits to me. “However, I don’t have a place to stay and I don’t really have the money for a hotel, especially in Seattle.”

“My place is huge,” I reassure her. “You can have your own space and I won’t bother you at all. That is unless you want to keep working on my book.”

She meets my gaze for a moment, and I hate the look of betrayal that I see in her eyes. I also feel like I see something that looks strangely like guilt shining out at me before she looks away.

“I need time to think….and to look over those documents…before I make a decision about the book. I don’t want to be connected to a book that hides the truth. If you have been doing things like…what we’ve been doing…I need to be honest about it in the book. We would need to have a serious talk before I could continue working on the project.”

I nod, although I actually don’t care about the book. I just care about keeping her close enough to me that she will see that this was all a big misunderstanding.

I am finding that I would be very upset if she decided to hate me.

“You can have the other wing of the penthouse,” I tell her. “It will be your own private space. You can work on your other book if you want. I might be able to help with all of this…mess…too.”

She smiles wanly at me, then sobers abruptly. “Oh my gosh,” she says, pursing her lips. “It’s almost Christmas. You don’t want to have some random person staying with you over the holidays. That would be so weird.”

I shake my head. I want to tell her that I can’t think of anything that I would like more, but I don’t. I know that telling her that I had already been dreaming up ways to trick her into spending Christmas with me will only make her more uncomfortable at the moment.

“We already talked about this,” I remind her. “Neither of us does the holiday season. It’s just some days in December that you will be staying with me, that’s all.”

She manages a small smile for me and a little, tight nod. “Okay,” she agrees, her voice very quiet. “But this is just temporary, and I reserve the right to move out without notice if you do something else I don’t like.”

“Pinky promise,” I say to her, holding out my little finger.

She lifts a brow and stares at my hand, then rolls her eyes and completes the pinky promise oath with me.

“Now it’s official,” I say with a silly grin.

She’s spared having to come up with a reply by the arrival of the landlord’s emergency contact. She shows the man all the running water and the mess, and he vanishes for a few minutes to turn off the water.

When he comes back, he looks uncomfortable as he tells Rachel that he can’t get anyone to answer the door at the apartment one floor up, which will slow down the process of dealing with the mess.

“When can you get the cleanup crew in here?” I ask, taking over the conversation because Rachel looks like she’s about to dissolve into the water on the floor.

She looks exhausted and heartsick, and just plain old fed up.

“Ummm,” the man hedges. “Well, it’s almost Christmas so…”

“I’ll get someone to come over tomorrow and get started on things,” I announce, pulling out my phone and dialing the emergency cleanup group that I used when one of the floors of our office location flooded.

They don’t come cheap, but I can easily afford to help Rachel out. This will be a small job for that kind of company.

“Oh, but we have our own cleanup people,” the man says, squirming a little.

I wave a hand at him and take out my wallet. I get a business card out of my pocket and shove it in his general direction. “Tell your boss to call me tomorrow. We can figure it out. I can afford to pay for the repairs myself so that she doesn’t have to wait until January.”

He keeps trying to protest, but I ignore him as the call center at the cleanup company picks up the call. I describe what is needed and give them Rachel’s address, then promise to head over here with them the next day.

By the time I hang up, Rachel has consoled the representative of the apartment building and ushered him out into the hall.

She shuts the door behind him and turns around to look at me, her hands on her hips. “Tristan Black, I swear to God, I will never be able to repay you for all these favors at this point. What are you trying to do to me?”

“I’m being a good…friend,” I say, relieved that I didn’t slip up and use another word to refer to us. I don’t honestly even know what we are at this point, but 'friend' is not how I think of her in any case.

She harrumphs, but she accepts my help. I think she’s probably just too tired to fight me anymore.

“Did you pack up some clothes?” I ask her. “The cleanup team will pack up the rest of your stuff that didn’t get damaged by the water and move it into storage if you want.”

She reaches out and pulls a rolling suitcase over to her from the kitchen and gestures to it. “My entire life in a bag…again.” She stares down at the bag with a desolate look on her face. “It feels like I literally just got done unpacking all of this and now it all has to be packed up again.”

I feel bad for her. She looks done in, and I know for a fact that she’s not truly over all the things that happened in Alaska. And I’m sure what Denise put in her head just triggered it all again.

The least I can do is try to help her out, even if she decides that she never wants to talk to me again after she’s had a little time to get back on her feet.

“Come on,” I tell her. “Let’s get you away from the great flood and into some pajamas. We can order takeout and eat it in front of the fireplace if you want.”

Her smile is a little wobbly, but at least she doesn’t look like she’s about to burst into tears or punch me anymore. “Okay,” she says.

I collect her bag and step out into the hallway first, waiting until she’s locked the door and turned back around. I hold out my hand without thinking, inviting her to take it, then wince and awkwardly bring it back into my body and tuck it into my coat pocket. I had almost forgotten how mad she was at me about an hour ago.

As we stand in silence in the elevator, it’s hard to imagine that just twelve hours ago we were as close as any two people could be. Would she be able to forgive me? I hoped so. I was fast realizing that I couldn’t imagine a world without Rachel in it, and that scared me…a lot.

Do you love her? my brain asked as I walked her to my car and held the door for her.

I watch her slim, toned legs as she swings them into the car and feel my heart turn over in my chest. She glances over at me, a question in her glade-green eyes and I manage a slight smile to cover my spiraling thoughts.

As I walk around to put her bag in the trunk, I feel like my heart might beat out of my chest. My God , I think to myself. I do love her .

And I just scared her away with a little help from Denise. Why hadn’t I been honest with her about my feelings for her? Why hadn’t I thought to tell her about the incident with Amy at work?

There were so many things that I could have done differently, and yet, I had treated her like she was just another casual hookup of mine who just happened to be writing my story for the world to read.

I could not have been more stupid, and now, I might lose her. I feel sick at the thought. I close the trunk lid, and pause for a moment, trying to figure out what to do next.

Suddenly, a thought occurs to me, and I smile. It’s almost Christmas, after all.

Maybe it’s time to start believing in things like Christmas miracles.