Protect Me - A Steamy Bodyguard Romance (You Can't Resist a Bad Boy Book 5)

by Layla Valentine

  “Ashley, come on. You obviously need to get something off your chest,” I said coolly, watching as she wrung her hands anxiously. I wanted nothing more than to get to the bottom of the issue, and from there, maybe we could figure out the next steps to take.

  She continued to fidget for a moment, glancing at me from the corner of her eye.

  “All right, but try to keep an open mind,” she started, her voice quaking with apprehension. I hesitated, trying to keep the balance of give and take. Exhaling slowly through my nose, I nodded obligingly.

  “I’m listening,” I said in an attempt to be encouraging. I felt as if snake-like tendrils were constricting around my heart, unable to reason out the fear in her gaze.

  “When we were having a hard time conceiving, I was really upset. I’m sure you remember the day I lashed out at you for coming into my office, and…and you sent me home for the day. The thing is, I didn’t go home immediately,” she said, and I felt as if my heart would pound out of my chest.

  “Where… Where did you go?” I inquired somewhat hesitantly.

  Ashley inhaled shakily, obviously steeling herself. It looked as if she would like nothing more than to leap out of my car and walk the remaining distance home. She looked incredibly weary, and in spite of myself, I reached to take her hand.

  “Well, I was going to shut down my computer and go home like you suggested. I just felt so awful, like there was something wrong with me. I felt like I was running out of options, and then I received an email about a drug the company was putting through trials,” she continued, staring straight ahead. It was as if she were afraid to actually look at me.

  Fear was beginning to creep up my spine as well. Surely, she couldn’t have done the very thing I’d done behind her back. The idea would have been comical if the gravity of the situation weren’t weighing so heavily upon us, parked on the side of the road.

  “It was a fertility drug, wasn’t it? The little green capsules?” I prompted, and her eyes widened considerably as she turned to look at me.

  “How did you…” she began, trailing off into a choked out laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Jensen,” she said, seeming bewildered.

  “I can’t believe this. How could you have been so foolish to try a drug without asking me first? Did you not stop to consider possible side effects?” I demanded, trying to keep my anger at bay. She flinched, her expression growing defensive.

  “You took the very same drug! I’m not going to let you pile all of the blame on me, not when you made the same mistake!” Ashley hissed.

  I rolled my eyes, releasing her hand and drawing away from her. Truth be told, I wasn’t that angry about her taking the pill, though it had been reckless.

  More than anything, I was upset that she hadn’t come to me. The whole situation could have been avoided if we had just been honest with each other.

  “I’m not trying to place all the blame on you, but I’m not going to let you shrug off your share, either! Because we couldn’t act like mature adults, we now have four lives in our hands. Not the one child we had negotiated, four children! God, Ashley! It’s not even just their health. What if something happens to you during childbirth?”

  “Then you won’t have to deal with my stupid mistakes anymore, I suppose,” she said quietly. She shrank away, wrapping her arms protectively around herself.

  In that moment, it took all of my willpower not to scream at her. I couldn’t begin to fathom how she could think I felt so little for her. It wasn’t like I was using her for some nefarious purpose! We had come to an agreement, and we’d just happened to fall in love along the way.

  “If you think that’s how I would really feel, you’re more foolish than I ever could have guessed. I guess you just think so little of me, that I’m some monster who took advantage of your kindness. Do you think I’ve been untruthful about my feelings?” I said, trying to keep my voice level. I only partially succeeded.

  “You’re acting like our agreement is null since things aren’t going exactly as planned. I didn’t anticipate having quadruplets, either. This isn’t just some business deal you can walk away from,” she cried out, her voice hitching.

  “No, but at least I’m trying to come to a solution! How do you propose we deal with this whole thing? You didn’t seem prepared to give up your job, but you expect me to sacrifice everything I’ve worked so hard for?! That’s not fair, Ashley. You know how much GlobaPharm means to me, my father put his soul into that company,” I argued, receiving a bitter laugh in response.

  “If you’d considered your own feelings instead of obligations laid out by your father, we probably wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with,” she said snidely.

  My heart felt as if it had been ripped out, and all I could see was red for a moment. How dare she speak ill of the dead, of the man who had formed the person I was?

  Shifting into gear, I pulled back onto the road with a sour expression. I went a bit faster than was strictly necessary, mostly to spite her.

  Ashley seemed to regret what she’d said, staring at me with her lower lip tucked firmly between her teeth and her eyes glistening. It was of little consequence; no matter how much she regretted the words, she couldn’t take them back. She tried to stammer out a weak apology, but I held a hand up to silence her.

  “So you regret all of this,” I said coolly, keeping my gaze fixed on the road. She blanched, reaching out to me as she fervently shook her head.

  “No! No, Jensen, I don’t regret it. I don’t regret us. I just… I’m so lost. What are we supposed to do?” she implored tearfully.

  I hesitated for a moment, my jaw tensing as we made our way toward her apartment complex. I honestly didn’t have an answer for her, and I was sure she knew it just as well as I did. I simply tightened my grip on the steering wheel, turning into the parking lot. I refused to even cut the engine, trying to remain firm even as she wept.

  “Go inside and get some rest. We obviously can’t discuss this rationally right now, and I don’t want to say something I’ll regret,” I said, my voice strained.

  She reached out to me, catching me roughly by the jaw and forcing me to look at her. I couldn’t find it in me to even muster a fake smile, staring dully at the woman who seemed intent upon tearing my heart to shreds.

  “I love you, Jensen. I’ll never stop loving you. Please, we’ve both made mistakes, but you have to forgive me. If you don’t…I don’t know that I can go on,” she sobbed.

  “I need time to think, Ashley. I just need time,” I muttered.

  She nodded quietly, her breath hitching as she tried to swallow her sobs. She pushed the door open, clumsily getting out of my car. It looked as if she could scarcely support the extra weight as it stood, and I grimaced at the thought of her growing and growing until she came to full term.

  Lingering beside my car, it looked as if she wanted to continue pleading for forgiveness. However, I offered her a wan smile and gestured to her building.

  “I’m sorry,” she stammered.

  “Go get some rest, Ashley. You’re going to need it,” I said tiredly.

  She sniffled, but nodded and shuffled away from my car. In spite of my anger, I remained until she disappeared into the building.

  Once she could no longer see me, I dropped my head and forced back tears.

  I’d never felt so lost in my life.

  Chapter 20

  Ashley

  The shared lunches and secretive smiles came to an unceremonious end after my spat with Jensen. In their place were looks of desire that went unanswered, a bitter taste rising in the back of my throat every moment he avoided me. I wanted nothing more than to grab him and shake him, demand that he talk to me and work through this agonizing distance, but I was afraid that he had lost all semblance of love he felt for me.

  Certainly, it wasn’t love in his gaze on the rare occasion that I caught his eye. Jensen was worried, tired, and the fact that he had chosen to embark on a business trip in the midst of
our feud was a bitter pill to swallow. It seemed that he had made his choice, and that my feelings and our future children were secondary to his job. I knew that the man I loved carried a heavy sense of obligation, but I only wished that it extended toward myself.

  Perhaps I was being selfish. The fact of the matter was I knew that I had no means of tying him down unless he strictly wanted to be tied. Jensen Elliott was a powerful man, and when it came down to it, I was little more than his frumpy secretary. My good looks had faded with every pound I gained, my cheerful personality dimmed by the pain in my heart. As much as I wanted to approach him upfront and tell him how badly he was hurting me, I couldn’t imagine it would do much good.

  Jensen had wounded me more deeply than I ever could have expected, the festering marks fresh in my heart as he flitted past my office to depart on his trip. I wasn’t just bothered by his refusal to acknowledge me, though that certainly played a part. I couldn’t shake the idea that I had been unforgivably reckless. It was true that I had known very little about those cursed pills when I’d swiped them from that lab.

  At least Jensen had checked in with the lab technicians, had at least some confidence that the capsules were safe before he ingested them. Sure, it was foolish on both ends to use a drug that had yet to be approved for sale, but it was even more idiotic for neither of us to bring our brilliant idea up with each other. I refused to take all of the blame for the situation, as the genius CEO of the multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical company certainly could have thought to bring the suggestion to the table.

  Getting angry was doing me little good, and it wasn’t as if I could address Jensen that day, even if the mood struck me, as he was off to some city in France to discuss a new business deal with one of his many international partners. Still, as pointless as my fury was, I could do little but leer at my computer as I waited for the day to come to a close. An unbearable number of hours remained in the day, but I truly failed to see why I needed to hang around when my boss wasn’t even present.

  For that matter, I couldn’t understand why I remained, even when Jensen was in the office. It wasn’t as if he could look me in the eye. He refused to even speak to me, in spite of all that we’d been through together. Perhaps even because of it. I had been a fool to jeopardize my job for a fleeting infatuation, and I couldn’t shake the thought that we would both have been better off if I had just settled for a normal sperm donor.

  The thought of facing him when he returned from his trip left a rather unpleasant taste in my mouth. Would it be more awkwardness, a refusal to speak to me until the babies were born? At any rate, it didn’t seem as if he planned to talk to me even after I’d delivered his spawn.

  Tapping my nails on the surface of my desk, I narrowed my eyes at the influx of messages in my inbox. It would serve him right to lose me as both a lover and a secretary. While it seemed clear that he’d never felt as strongly for me as he suggested, I liked to think he felt some measure of affection of me. Clenching my jaw, I pushed away from my desk and stood up from my seat. My hands flexed at my sides, and I felt as if I would explode if I didn’t act.

  Paper and pen clutched in hand, I stormed across the top floor to Jensen’s office. It struck me that I had ample opportunity to wreck the room and leave it in a total mess for him to deal with. However, even if he was apathetic toward me, I still loved the gorgeous man. I settled in his office chair and stared blankly at the sheet of paper I’d brought.

  There was so much to say, but most of it would remain unsaid. If he couldn’t talk to me in the days since our falling out, I wasn’t going to bare my soul on a sheet of office stationery. I put the end of my pen between my teeth, gnawing anxiously on it as I tried to figure out what on earth to say. Would a simple goodbye suffice, or would I be better served by something with more vitriol? Deciding not to indulge that part of me, I jotted down a message declaring my resignation.

  Staring at the paper and my distinctive looping handwriting that was at odds with the formal nature of the note, I exhaled a sigh. I rose from Jensen’s chair, reminiscing on the years I’d worked at GlobaPharm. It would be difficult to find a new job on such short notice, especially considering my looming need for maternity leave. It was just that I could no longer bear the long stretches of silence when I so desperately wanted to make things right.

  Apparently, in Jensen’s mind, there didn’t seem to be a possibility of making things right. Though I wished I had more of a choice in the matter, I resolved to forget him as much as I was able. I walked back across the top floor to my office, boxing up a few personal items before deciding that they reminded me too much of the life and the man I intended to leave behind.

  Leaving the box on the floor of my office, I walked toward the elevator and hit the button for the ground floor. It wasn’t time for lunch and it wasn’t time for anyone to clock out, so I had the elevator all to myself. It did little to comfort the crippling loneliness I felt, but from then on out I planned to live with my loneliness. At least…until my children were born.

  The thought struck me that if I had no idea how to raise quadruplets with help, I would be even more lost on my own. It wasn’t my decision to make, though. I couldn’t force Jensen to be with me, even if he was the father of my children. I couldn’t force anyone to be with me. I had resolved at the start that I would be content as a single mother, and I sought to find that same confidence.

  When I reached ground level, I walked out without another moment’s pause. The time for hesitation had passed, and I had no choice but to move on with my life. Walking the distance to my parking spot—a reserved spot that Jensen had recently put in for ‘expectant mothers’—I fought back the tears that threatened to spill over. I had done enough crying over this situation.

  Squeezing into my car, I turned the ignition and felt a sharp pang in my heart as my favorite ballad, the song I’d mentally dubbed ‘our song,’ began to play from the radio. It seemed the higher powers were intent upon having a laugh at me that day. I turned down the radio, wiping away tears that I wanted nothing more than to banish.

  “Goodbye, Jensen,” I said quietly, the finality of it all forming a deep pit in my stomach. I stared at the building a moment longer, remembering the good times as well as the bad. I wondered what Jensen might think when he came back in three days and saw my resignation on his desk, but I could only assume he’d be thrilled. Less awkwardness in the office, and he could move on to his next secretary.

  Would she have the same chocolate brown curls that he claimed to love so dearly? Would she be willing to sacrifice everything to carry his child? I doubted it, but it wasn’t a thought I cared to entertain. I knew the man would move on easily, having his pick of any woman he wanted. Just the same, I wanted to pretend a little longer that he had actually loved me; that it hadn’t all been a farce.

  I pulled out of the parking lot with a nervous churning in my gut. Was I really doing this? It wasn’t too late to turn back, not yet. I could return to the top floor and shred the note I’d left for Jensen quite easily. It would be back to business as usual—avoidance, bitter stares and an empty heart.

  Deciding that I would rather perpetuate my misery at home, in bed, I turned the corner of the road. I drove until GlobaPharm was mostly out of sight, though I knew the towering peak of it would haunt me for some time.

  One of many regrets to toss on the pile.

  Chapter 21

  Ashley

  I couldn’t remember ever feeling so miserable. I spent the weekend curled up in bed, refusing to leave the soft comfort of my blankets unless it was to use the bathroom. I barely ate, couldn’t find it in me to push myself out of my funk. Bathing was entirely out of the question, and I nearly grew too weary to even move.

  The shrill ringing of my doorbell was what woke me Monday morning, and I deeply considered ignoring the call. I couldn’t imagine who would be checking in on me besides my mother, and even she had been tainted by Jensen’s touch. More specifically, his mother’s touch—
our mothers had hit it off instantly. I hadn’t heard from Mom since the spat with Jensen, and I almost hoped she’d seen the light and returned to me. It wasn’t that I had a particular grudge against Jensen’s mother; I just didn’t want to see anything to do with him.

  My mind racing, I forced myself out of bed to answer the doorbell. Knowing my luck, it was some door-to-door salesman, or someone trying to save my eternal soul.

  As I pulled open the door, I felt as if the wind had been knocked completely from my sails. My heart caught, skipped a beat, then began to pound in my chest as I took in the face of the man who had haunted my every waking thought. Though I had thought he was the last person I wanted to see, I realized how far from the truth that was. Jensen held yet another bouquet of flowers, and when he took me in, his expression turned all the more sorrowful.

  “Ashley… I’m so sorry,” he blurted out, and I quietly stepped aside to allow him into my apartment. It was all I could do to keep from launching myself at him, capturing him in a bruising embrace and refusing to ever release him. I only registered that he had apologized when he stepped inside and brushed a hand to my cheek. I swallowed a lump forming in my throat, telling myself that I would not cry. Under no circumstances would I allow myself to cry.

  “I’m sorry, too,” I choked out, cursing myself as tears began to spill down my cheeks. He tossed the bouquet aside, then, pulling me in close and resting his chin on top of my head.

  “I was so worried when I read your note, I came here as soon as I read it. Well, after picking up your flowers,” he trailed off, glancing at the discarded bouquet with a slight frown.

  “I don’t need flowers as long as I have you,” I said quietly, reaching up to touch his cheek. I could scarcely believe he was actually in my apartment, almost certain that I was suffering from some sort of strange fever dream.

  He rested his hand on top of mine, closing his eyes as he attempted to rein in his own emotions. There was so much I wanted to say, so much that weighed heavily on my heart. I knew he wouldn’t have come if he didn’t have something to say, however, so I remained silent and stared imploringly at his weary face.