by Peggy Jaeger
I was struck mute the moment we were alone. Mute and mortified. I’d barged into his house unannounced and had now clumsily ruined what was probably a priceless family heirloom.
Jesus. My life so sucks at times.
“Sit down, Ella.”
“I’m so sorry,” I managed to say.
“Like Mom said, don’t worry about it.” He folded himself into the chair opposite me and stretched out his legs. “I’ve spilled more things in this house than anyone can remember. And things much worse than tea.”
“No, not that. I mean, yes, that, the tea. I’m sorry about that. But it’s not all I’m sorry about it. Not only that, I mean.” I stood there, babbling like an idiot, and didn’t know how to stop myself.
He took a large chug of the water, all the while his attention focused directly on me. When the bottle was empty, he recapped it. “Come on, Ella. Sit down. And relax.”
“Impossible,” I mumbled, plopping back down onto the cushioned chair.
“Good. Now, take a breath and then tell me why you’re here.”
I heaved a huge gulp of air in, held it for a beat, then let it out.
“I wanted to say something to you, and I needed to do it in person.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
Another breath gave me a moment to gather my thoughts.
“First, I need to apologize for what I said to you outside my building last week. I jumped to a conclusion I found out later was wrong. So completely wrong. I know you didn’t say anything to Culverson about Dolly. Culverson’s daughter, Caitlin, is a friend of Daisy’s. She knew about Dolly and that Vivienne had asked me for money to help with the expenses of her care. Caitlin informed her father and, well, like you saw, he used that knowledge. I had no right accusing you of being the one who told him, and I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. It was wrong, so wrong of me.”
While I’d been speaking, Buddy kept his gaze directly on me, just as when he’d been drinking. He didn’t nod; he didn’t say anything or give any indication of what was going through his mind while I apologized.
“Hand in hand with that apology is a sincere, heartfelt, and deeply grateful thank you.”
He cocked his head to one side.
“For the Baxter Foundation grant for Dolly.”
His eyebrows lifted, but he stayed silent.
“Vivienne came to see me the other day. To thank me. I had no idea what she was talking about when she told me what you’d done for Dolly, the way you’d fast tracked her name through the foundation. Thank you, well, doesn’t seem like enough to say. You didn’t have to do it, arrange any of it, especially after the way I’d treated you. I told Vivi I didn’t know anything about the Baxter Foundation, what it did, how it helped people. She was…surprised. That’s when she told me about your involvement. I was feeling small and petty about the way I’d treated you. After hearing about your kindness, well, let’s just say I’m not my biggest fan right now.”
I wasn’t sure, but it looked like a corner of his mouth lifted a bit at my little verbal self-flagellation.
“I thought you deserved to hear both those things directly from me, not in an email or a text, so I got the first flight I could in order to tell you in person. I actually went to Cal’s condo to apologize to you the moment I found out about Daisy and Caitlin, but you’d already left town.”
He shrugged. “There was no reason for me to stay any longer. I’d come to Manhattan on business of my own and then got waylaid into helping Tony. You’d flat-out refused his offer. After we left your office, he said something like, ‘She’ll come around after thinking about it for a day.’ You’d realize the money he was offering would go a long way in helping your family. I told him I was sure you wouldn’t go back on your word. I’m not convinced he really believed me. After the scene outside your building later, I figured there was no reason to stick around anymore. You’d made your mind up that I’d been the one to tell him, and it didn’t look like I could say anything to change that.”
I dropped my gaze to the table and shook my head.
“I was an idiot, and I reacted like one. Again, saying I’m sorry doesn’t sound like enough.” I lifted my head and gave voice to the one question that had been plaguing me since Vivi’s unexpected visit.
“After what I’d said to you, accused you of, how I’d treated you, you went ahead and did what you did for Dolly.”
He nodded.
“Why? Why would you do something so amazingly caring and kindhearted when I’d treated you so horribly?”
“It wasn’t about you. Well,” he played with the water bottle still in his hands, “not all about you, anyway. Your stepsister needed help. I knew a way to offer it. That’s what the foundation does, what it’s reason for existing is. Helping people during a medically catastrophic time.”
“But you wouldn’t even have known about Dolly if you hadn’t been with me when I got that phone call.”
“That’s true.” He shrugged. “But I was, and I did.”
“You said it wasn’t all about me. What do you mean?”
For the first time, his gaze drifted away from me. Staring off at the Potomac, I wondered if he was really seeing it. Or was something else drifting across his mind?
“Here we go.” Sarah Prince came back, a roll of paper towels in her hand. “I told my housekeeper about your vinegar trick, Ella. She said she knows it works wonders because she’s been using it for years. Kudos to you.”
Buddy and I both helped her sop the tea-soaked tablecloth.
“I’ll have Harold bring this in with the tray,” she said, rolling the cloth into a ball and shoving in on the bottom of the service tray. “Well, have you two been having a nice chat?”
When her son didn’t respond, I did.
I grabbed my bag from the spot I’d dropped it under the chair, rose, and plastered a smile on my face.
“I think we’re done,” I told her. “Thank you so much for allowing me into your home, Mrs. Prince, uninvited and unexpected. I appreciate it more than you know.”
I stuck out my hand to shake hers.
“You’re leaving? So soon? But you’ve only just arrived.”
With a nod, I said, “I’ve taken up enough of your son’s time.” I turned my gaze to Buddy, who’d stood as well. “Again, thank you seems so insignificant, but…” He stayed silent. “I can see myself out.”
“Nonsense. Buddy?”
“Oh, no, it’s fine.” I said. “Please. I’ve been enough trouble.”
She waved that careless impatient hand at me that women of wealth and privilege learn in the cradle. She repeated her son’s name.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
He wasn’t sweating as much as when he’d first come out to the terrace, but the heat from his body was scorching as he moved to my side. He didn’t touch me, simply cocked his head, lifted a hand, and said, “Ella?”
I didn’t want to argue with him in front of his lovely mother, so I followed him back though the house and into the foyer.
“How did you get here?” he asked once we were at the front door.
“Cab. I’ve got the number so I can call for a pickup.” I pulled it out of the side pocket of my bag, along with my phone. When the screen didn’t light up, I murmured, “Damn it. Can I use your phone? My battery died again.”
“You really need to get a new phone,” he said. The roguish twinkle in his eyes didn’t get past me.
“I haven’t had the time to pick up a new one.”
We stood there, me with my dead phone in my hand, Buddy with all his hotness on full display, just staring at one another.
“What time is your flight?” he asked.
“Midnight. I bought the ticket yesterday, and it was the only flight I could get.”
“That’s almost thirteen hours from now. What where you planning on doing the rest of the day?”
This time I lifted my shoulders. I blew out a breath then said, “Truthfully, I thought after I saw you, I’
d go back to the airport to see if I could get on standby for an earlier flight.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t?”
“No. Stay here for the day. Let me take you to lunch.”
“Oh, you don’t have to. Really. You’ve done so much for me already, I feel…”
He took a step closer. Being within touching distance of him and keeping my hands to myself was a real testament to my usually lousy willpower.
“What? What do you feel, Ella?”
His voice had dropped, his tone lowering to just this side of intimate. He lifted my free hand—the one without the dead phone in it—and immediately began the knuckle rubbing thing he had to know drove me to distraction.
Gazing into his gorgeous eyes, I lost the capacity to think coherently.
“Ella?”
I blinked a half dozen times, hard, to try and focus.
“Confused.”
His brows pulled together in the middle of his forehead, and he cocked his head to the side as his mother had done minutes before.
“The last thing I’d think you’d want to do is spend any more time with me after what I did to you. What I accused you of doing,” I clarified.
He moved in closer and squeezed the hand he held.
“I’ll admit, I was hurt, really hurt, by what you said.”
“I know, and I’m so sor—”
“Stop apologizing.”
I clamped my lips together.
“It hurt because after the night we spent together in your bed, I figured you knew the type of guy I am. That’d I’d shown you who I was. And I told you, point blank, I don’t play games. In business or in my personal affairs.”
I nodded.
“I would never have used you, Ella, to gain any kind of leverage in a business deal. Never. That you thought I did cheapened and negated what we’d shared. And it made me question what I was feeling for you.” He took another step closer until our bodies bumped. “What I’d been feeling from the moment you turned around from Cal’s fireplace, your hair in a kerchief, ashes on your cheek.”
He reached out and skimmed his index finger down the area he’d rubbed that day.
“I wanted to mean something to you, Ella. Something more than just a quick lay, a way to scratch a sexual itch.”
I felt the heat shoot up my neck and cheeks and welcomed the shame because, for once, I knew I deserved it.
“You weren’t,” I said. “I know you don’t want me to apologize again, so I won’t. But I will tell you this.” This time I was the one who moved in closer. “I never thought of you like that. Not once, even after the first night when I thought I’d never see you again. I’d finally found someone I could see myself being with, and circumstances made it so it wasn’t to be. I never regretted for one moment the time we had together after that, either. Even when I thought you’d betrayed my confidence, I couldn’t deny what being with you meant to me. What being around you…did to me. How you made me feel.”
His gaze trailed back and forth between my eyes, searing me, burning.
“I wanted to mean something to you too.”
He must have read the truth on my face because he moved in and kissed me. Pure, chaste, the briefest of touches, but enough to make my knees quake.
“You did,” he said. “You do.”
For the first time since I’d gotten on the plane, my nerves calmed.
“Stay,” he whispered against my mouth. “Spend the day with me. Please.”
I couldn’t have said no if I wanted to. Which, of course, I didn’t.
After he brought me back to his mother to wait while he took a quick shower, Buddy then helped me into his very fast, very powerful sports car and drove me around D.C., where we spent the day simply being together. No agenda. No timetable. No annoying cell phone calls. Well, mine was dead anyway, but he put his phone on silent right before we drove away from his home.
We walked the mall from one end to the other, ate ice cream cones from a one of the hundreds of food trucks that lined the streets, and talked nonstop about anything and everything.
He told me why he’d established the foundation to honor his grandmother’s memory after learning how she routinely gave anonymous donations to childhood cancer hospitals and wounded veterans causes, two very near and dear charities to her heart. She believed she and her family had been blessed with wealth, health, and prosperity and that it was their moral responsibility to ensure others who weren’t were afforded similar privileges and the best care possible.
We talked about our childhoods, our families, what our dreams and wishes had been growing up. Our first kisses and our first heartbreaks.
When dinner time rolled around, he brought me to a tiny cubbyhole of a restaurant where the staff knew him by his first name, the tables were all filled with couples, and the food was out of this world. All through the meal, he held my hand in his, smiled and laughed at some of my outrageous client cleaning stories, and made my toes curl whenever he lifted a bite of food into his fabulous mouth. We each shared how much our businesses meant to us, both personally and professionally. I’d never dated a man who saw me as an equal in a business sense. Buddy did.
All too soon, it was time to head to the airport. In the car, we grew quiet. I kept thinking that this had been one of the top ten days in my life and certainly the best first date I’d ever been on. Our one-night stand didn’t really count as a date. Neither did that whole evening after the hospital. This was, officially, the first date date we’d gone on, and I realized it was probably going to be our last. With him situated in D.C. and me ensconced in New York, I didn’t see much in the way of a continued, exclusive relationship. We were both seriously invested in our business lives, and I knew I couldn’t just up and leave mine and start somewhere new. I had my girls to think of, plus Nell and Danny. I wasn’t about to leave the life I’d made for myself to be with a man, and no man I’d known would ever think of doing that for a woman.
We’d most likely stay in touch, see each other when Buddy came to New York on business or to visit his aunt, but nothing permanent or long term was likely to develop. I had to be okay with that, even though the thought made me so sad.
I wanted to broach the subject, but I’d been mulling it over so long in my mind, I looked up and realized we’d arrived at the airport.
“You’ve got over an hour before your plane boards,” he told me, putting the car in park but leaving it running.
“Security shouldn’t be too long at this hour.”
“Don’t bet on it. The line’s always ridiculous, no matter what time of the day or night it is at this place.”
“Oh. Well, I’d better get going, then.”
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. I didn’t want to say goodbye.
“You know what,” he said, engaging the engine again, “I’m gonna park and walk you in.”
“No, you don’t have to. It’s fine.”
“I want to.”
Ten minutes later, the security line came into view.
“You weren’t kidding,” I said, looking at the hoard of midnight travelers waiting to be let into the main terminal. “Getting through this line is going to eat up a good chunk of the time I’ve got. I’d better get on it.”
He’d held my hand since we’d gotten out of the car and tugged on it now, pulling me into his arms. Torso to torso, I tipped my head back so I could look at his face. In truth, I could have looked at it every day for the rest of my life.
“Thank you for a wonderful day,” I said. “And for accepting my apology.”
He kissed the tip of my nose. “You’re welcome for the first, and for the second, there was never even a thought not to.”
“Bud—”
“Shh. We’re on a tight time frame here. No more talking.” He made sure of it by moving down to my mouth and silencing me.
I’ll admit freely I’d never liked public kissing. Seeing it or doing it. There were too many nosy eyes watching you do something tha
t should be intensely private.
But when Buddy pulled me into his arms, laid claim to my mouth and my very soul with a kiss so blatantly erotic and panty-melting, it should have been illegal in the fifty states and Guam, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about being the ogling subject of PDA. All I wanted to do was stand there for the rest of the night and be kissed by a man who A) knew what he was doing, and B) had me pining for the first time in my life for the kind of relationship all the books called everlasting and happy.
We could have been the only people in the crowded terminal for all I cared. This man stripped me bare of all my inhibitions and insecurities and made me fearless and bold. Made me feel desired and cherished while at the same time allowing me to be strong and myself. There were no pretenses between us. No hidden agendas. Maybe it was because we’d first come together on a purely physical level instead of getting to know one another the normal way through dating and the tit-for-tat information sharing common with a building relationship. Maybe it was because, as he’d asked me in the Marchant over coffee, “you feel it too, don’t you? This connection?”
I had then and did now.
And I didn’t regret a moment of it.
Buddy pulled back and rested his chin on my head. “I wish you didn’t have to leave.”
I swallowed the emotion choking me and sighed. “Me neither.”
His lips skimmed down my temple to my cheek.
“It’s almost midnight, Cynderella.” His lips twitched at the corners. “It might not be a carriage with four mice masquerading as horses, but your plane’s waiting to take you home.”
He took a step back and let me go. I had to bite back a whine from no longer being in his arms.
“Have a safe flight,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Promise?” Why I wasn’t upset with myself for sounding so needy was a mystery.
His grin went crooked.
“You won’t know for sure if you don’t charge your phone when you get home.”
I grinned back at him. Every bit of embarrassment flew out the window as I leaned in and kissed him, hard, on the mouth.
