Just as it would be wrong to write off Pippa’s reckless escape from motherhood for the weekend. Yes, she was an overwhelmed mom, but she was also a parent with resources. She could hire help. There were a hundred better options than leaving her children unattended on an aircraft. Pippa’s excuse about watching through a window was bogus. How could she have helped them from so far away if something had gone wrong?
Alexa’s fists dug into the windowsill, helplessness sweeping over her. There was nothing she could do. These weren’t her children. This wasn’t her family. She had to trust Seth to handle the situation with his ex-wife.
Spinning back to the office, she studied the space Seth had created for himself. It was a mass of contradictions, just like the man himself. High-end leather furniture filled the room, a sofa, a wing recliner and office chair, along with thick mahogany shelves and a desk.
She also saw a ratty fishing hat resting on top of a stack of books. The messy desktop was filled with folders and even a couple of honest to God plastic photo cubes—not exactly what she’d expected in a billionaire’s space. It was tough for her to resist the desire to order the spill of files across the credenza.
Forcing her eyes upward, she studied the walls packed with framed charts and maps, weathered paper with routes inked on them. In the middle of the wall, he’d displayed a print of buffalo on the plains tagged Land of Tatanka.
The land looked austere and lonely to her. Like the man, a man who’d been strangely aloof all day. Her fingers traced along the bottom of the frame. Even as he embraced the skies and adventure here, there was still a part of him that remembered his stark North Dakota farm boy roots.
The opening door pulled her attention off the artwork and back to the man striding into the room. His face was hard. His arms empty and loose by his sides.
She rested her hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly. “Are you okay?”
“I will be.” He nodded curtly, stepping away.
Only a few minutes earlier he’d kissed her and now he was distant, cold. Had it been an act? She didn’t think so. But if he didn’t want her here, if he needed space, she could find her own way home. She started toward the door leading out of his office and into the building.
“Alexa,” he called out. “Hold on. We have some unfinished business.”
Business? Not what she was hoping to hear. “What would that be?”
He walked to the massive desk and pulled a file off the corner. “I made a promise when you agreed to help me. Before I spoke to Pippa this morning, I put in some calls, arranged for you and your partner to interview with four potential clients who commute into the Charleston area, both at the regional airport and here at my private airstrip.” He passed her the folder. “Top of the list, Senator Matthew Landis.”
She took the file from his hand, everything she could have hoped for when she’d first stepped onto his plane, cleaning bucket in hand. And now? She couldn’t shake the sense he was shuffling her off, giving her walking papers. While, yes, that’s what they’d agreed upon, she couldn’t help worrying that he was fulfilling the deal to the letter so they could be done, here and now.
Her grip tightened on the file until the edges bent. “Thank you, that’s great. I appreciate it.”
“You still have to seal the deal when you meet them, but I had my assistant compile some notes I made that I believe will help you beef up your proposal.” He sat on the edge of the desk, picked up a photo cube and tossed it from hand to hand. “I also included some ways I think you may be missing out on expansion opportunities.”
He hadn’t left money on the dresser, by God, but somehow the transaction still felt cheap given the bigger prize they could have had together.
“I don’t know how to thank you.” She clasped the folder to her chest and wondered why this victory felt hollow. Just a few days ago she would have turned cartwheels over the information in that folder. “No. Thank you. It was our agreement from the start, and I keep my word.” Toss, toss, the cube sailed from hand to hand. “And while I am genuinely sorry I can’t pass over my fleet to A-1, I have requested that your company be called first for any subcontracting work from this point on.”
His words carried such finality she didn’t know whether to be hurt or mad. “That’s it then. Our business is concluded.”
“That was my intention.” He pitched the cube side to side, images of Owen and Olivia tumbling to rest against a paperweight.
Okay, she was mad, damn it. They’d slept together. He’d kissed her in plain view of his ex-wife. She deserved better than this.
She slapped the file down on his messy desk and yanked the cube from midair. “Is this a brush-off?”
He did a double take and took his photos back from her. “What the hell makes you think that?”
“Your ice cold shoulder all day, for starters.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“I’m clearing away business because from this point on, if we see each other, it’s for personal reasons only.” He clasped her shoulders, skimming his touch down until she stepped into his embrace. “No more agendas. Holding nothing back.”
She looked up at him. “Then you’re saying you want to spend more time together?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. You’ve cleared your calendar until tomorrow, and it’s not even lunchtime yet. So let’s spend the day together, no kids, no agendas, no bargains.” He brushed her hair back with a bold, broad palm. “I can’t claim to know where this is headed, and there are a thousand reasons why this is the wrong time. But I can’t just let you walk away without trying.”
Being with this guy was like riding an emotional yo-yo. One minute he was intense, then moody, then happy, then sensual. And she was totally intrigued by all of him. “Okay then. Ask me out to lunch.”
A sigh of relief shuddered through him, his arms twitching tighter around her waist. “Where would you like to go? Anywhere in the country for lunch. Hell, we could even go out of the States for supper if you can lay hands on your passport.”
“Let’s keep it stateside this time.” This time? She shivered with possibility. “As for the place? You pick. You’re the one with the airplanes.”
With those words, reality settled over her with anticipation and more than a little apprehension. She’d committed. This wasn’t about the babies or her business any longer. This was about the two of them.
She’d explored the complex layers of this man, and now she needed to be completely open to him as well. They had one last night away from the real world to decide where to go next.
One last night for her to see how he handled knowing everything about her, even the insecure, vulnerable parts that were too much like those she’d seen in his ex-wife.
Seth parked the rental car outside the restaurant, waiting for Alexa’s verdict on the place he’d chosen.
He could have taken her to Le Cirque in New York City or City Zen in D.C. He could have even gone the distance for Savoy’s in Vegas. But thinking back over the things she’d shared about her past, he realized she wasn’t impressed with glitz or pretension. They’d just left a king’s island, for Pete’s sake. Besides, she’d grown up with luxurious trappings and, if anything, seemed to disdain them now.
The North Dakota farm boy inside him applauded her.
So he’d fueled up one Cessna 185 floatplane and taken off for his favorite “hole-in-the-wall” eating establishment on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. A seaside clapboard bar, with great beer, burgers and fresh catch from the Atlantic.
A full-out smile spread across her face. “Perfect. The openness, the view… I love it.”
Some of the cold weight he’d been carrying in his chest since saying goodbye to his kids eased. He sprinted around the front of the 1975 Chevy Caprice convertible—special ordered, thanks to his assistant’s speedy persistence. He opened the door for Alexa. She swept out, her striped sundress swirling around her knees as she climbed the plank steps up to the patio dini
ng area. The Seat Yourself sign hammered to a wooden column was weatherworn but legible.
He guided her to a table for two closest to the rocky shoreline as a waitress strolled over.
“Good to see you, Mr. Jansen. I’ll get your Buffalo blue-water tuna bites and two house brews.”
“Great, thanks, Carol Ann.” Seth passed the napkin-rolled silverware across the table. Alexa fidgeted with the salt and pepper shakers until he asked, “Something wrong? Would you like to go somewhere else after all?”
She looked up quickly. “The place is great. Really. It’s just… Well… I like to order my own food.”
“Of course. I apologize. You’re right, that was presumptuous of me.” He leaned back in his chair. “Let me get Carol Ann back over and we can add whatever you would like.”
“No need. Truly. It’s just for future reference. And I actually do like the sound of what you chose, so it’s probably silly that I said anything at all.” She smiled sheepishly. “You may have noticed I have some…control issues.”
“You appreciate order in your world. Plenty to admire about that.” God knows, his world could stand a little more order and reason these days. The unresolved mess with Pippa still knocked around in his head. “That’s a great asset in your job—”
He stopped short as the waitress brought their plates of Buffalo tuna bites, mugs of beer and glasses of water.
Alexa tore the paper off her straw and stirred her lemon wedge in her water. “Control’s my way of kicking back at my childhood.”
“In what way?” He passed an appetizer plate to her.
“When I was growing up there wasn’t a lot I could control without bringing down the wrath of Mom.” She speared the fish onto her plate. “She may have depended on those nannies to free up her spa days and time on the slopes but her expectations were clear.”
“And those were?”
“Great grades, of course, with all the right leadership positions to get into an Ivy League school. And in my ‘spare time’ she expected a popular, pretty daughter. Perfectly groomed, with the perfect boyfriend.” She stabbed a bite and brought it to her mouth. “Standard stuff.”
“Doesn’t sound standard or funny to me.” Out of nowhere, an image flashed through his mind of Pippa sitting in the front seat of the car with her mother, both women wearing matching sweater sets and pearls with their trim khakis.
“You’re right. That kind of hypercontrol almost inevitably leads to some kind of rebellion in teens. Passive aggressive was my style in those days. The problem started off small and got worse. I controlled what I ate, when I ate, how much I ate.” She chewed slowly.
A chill shot through him as he recalled her ordering the blocks for his kids. Her careful lining up of her silverware. Little things he’d written off as sweet peculiarities of a woman who liked the proverbial ducks in a row.
Now, his mind started down a dark path and he hoped to God she would take them on a detour soon. He didn’t know what to say or do, so he simply covered her other hand with his and stayed quiet.
“Then I learned I could make Mom happy by joining the swim team. And what do you know? That gave me another outlet for burning calories. I felt good, a real rush of success.” She tossed aside her fork. “Until one day when I peeled away my warm-up suit and I saw the looks of horror on the faces of the people around me…”
Squeezing her hand softly, he wished like hell he could have done something for her then. Wishing he could do something more now than just listen.
“I’m lucky to be alive actually. That day at swim practice, right after I saw the looks on their faces, I tried to race back to the locker room, but my body gave out… I pretty much just crumpled to the ground.” She looked down at her hands fidgeting with the silverware. “My heart stopped.”
He clasped her hand across the table, needing to feel the steady, strong beat of her heart throbbing in her wrist. There were no words he could offer up right now. But then he’d always been better at listening than talking anyway.
“Thank goodness the coach was good at CPR,” she half joked, but her laugh quickly lost its fizz. “That’s when my parents—and I—had to face up to the fact that I had a serious eating disorder.”
She pulled away from him and rubbed her bare arms in spite of the noonday sun beating overhead. “I spent my senior year in a special high school—aka hospital—for recovering bulimics and anorexics.” She brushed her windswept hair back with a shaky hand. “I was the latter, by the way. I weighed eighty-nine pounds when they admitted me.”
This was more—worse—than he’d expected and what he’d expected had been gut-twisting enough. He thought of his own children, of Olivia, and he wanted to wrap her up in cotton while he read every parenting book out there in hopes that he could spare his kids this kind of pain. “I’m so damn sorry you had to go through that.”
“Me, too. I’m healthy now, completely over it, other than some stretch marks from the seesawing weight loss and gain.”
“Was that why you preferred to keep the lights off?”
“When we were making love? Yes.” She nodded, rolling her eyes. “It’s not so much vanity as I wasn’t ready to tell you this. I fully realize those lines on my skin are a small price to pay to be alive.” She reached for her beer, tasted the brew once, and again, before placing the mug on the red-checkered cloth. “My stint in the special high school cost me a real prom, sleepovers with ice cream sundaes and dates spent parking with a boyfriend. But it also screwed up Mom’s Ivy League aspirations for me. So I won control of something for a while, I guess.”
“What happened after you graduated?”
“Dad bought my way into a college, and I married the man of their choice.” She patted her chest. “A-1 Cleaning is the first independent thing I’ve done on my own, for me.”
Admiration for her grew, and he’d already been feeling a hefty dose where she was concerned. But she’d broken away from every support system she had in place—such as they were—to forge her own path. Turning her back on her family had to be tough, no matter how strained the relationship. He could also see she’d grown away from the world Pippa still seemed to be suffocating in.
He hadn’t been expecting this kind of revelation from her today. But he knew he’d better come up with the right response, to offer the affirmation she should have gotten from those closest to her.
“What other things would you like to do? Anything… I will make it happen.”
She leaned back in her chair, her eyes going whimsical. “That’s a nice thought. But the things I regret? I need to accept I can’t have them and be at peace with that.”
“Things such as?”
“I can’t go back and change my teenage years. I need to accept that and move forward.”
The sadness in her voice as she talked about her lost past sucker punched him with the need to do something for her. To give her back those parts of her life her parents had stolen by trying to live out their own dreams through their kid. He couldn’t change the past.
But he could give her one of those high school experiences she’d been denied.
Nine
Alexa shook her hair free as they drove along the seaside road with the convertible top down. She adored his unexpected choices, from the car to the restaurant. The red 1975 Chevy Caprice ate up the miles down the deserted shore of the Outer Banks. She’d marveled at how lucky they were to get such a classic car, but then learned Seth’s assistant had taken care of the arrangements.
How easy it was to forget he was a billionaire sometimes, with all the power and perks that came with such affluence.
The afternoon sun blazed overhead, glinting on the rippling tide. Sea oats and driftwood dotted the sandy beach along with bare picket fences permanently leaning from the force of the wind. Kind of like her. Leaning and weathered by life, but not broken, still standing.
She studied the brooding man beside her. Seth drove on, quietly focused on the two-lane road winding ahead o
f them. What had he thought of her revelations at lunch? He’d said all the right things, but she could see his brain was churning her words around, sifting through them. She couldn’t help but feel skittish over how he would treat her now. Would he back away? Or worse yet, act differently?
Tough to tell when he’d been in such an unpredictable mood since talking with Pippa. That made Alexa wonder if she should have waited to dish out her own baggage? But she couldn’t escape the sense of urgency pushing her, insisting they had only a narrow slice of time. That once they returned to Charleston permanently, this opportunity to fully know him would disappear.
She hooked her elbow on the open window, her own face staring back at her in the side mirror. “Seth? Where are we going? I thought the airport was the other way.”
“It is. I wanted to make the most of the day before we leave.” He pointed ahead toward a red brick lighthouse in the distance. “We’re headed there, on that bluff.”
The ancient beacon towered in the distance. She could envision taking the kids there for a picnic, like the one they’d shared at the fort in St. Augustine. “It’s gorgeous here. I love our South Carolinian low country home, but this is special, too, different. I can’t believe I’ve never been here before.”
Her parents had always opted for more “exotic” vacations.
“I thought you would appreciate it. You seem to have an eye for the unique, an appreciation for entertainment off the beaten path.”
“I'm not sure I follow what you mean.”
“Like when we had the picnic at the old fort. You saw it with an artist’s eye rather than looking for an up-to-date, pristine park. Must be the art history major in you. This place and this car are certainly pieces of history. Did I read you right on that?”
“You did, very much so.” The fact that he knew her this well already, had put so much thought into what she thought, made her heart swell. The twisting road led higher over the town, taking them farther away and into a more isolated area.
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