He paused until the fresh round of cheers died down.
“I have another happy announcement, which I hope you will all join me in celebrating. To help me give you the good news, I present Miss Kaley Marshall.”
He held out his hand and I took it nervously, my cheeks flushing as every eye in the bar focused on me.
“You’ve all seen her face. She’s been plastered on billboards and in television ads for the last few months, brilliantly advertising our products. Some of you know that she has a personal interest in selling our wares, as her day job is in the Product Development department of our esteemed company.”
A smaller, scattered cheer went up from the twenty or so employees in my department. I smiled nervously.
“But as much as she has earned our congratulations, that isn’t why I am introducing you to her now. Miss Marshall…Kaley and I…” he took my hand and gazed fondly into my eyes with an enraptured smile. Calculated. “…have quietly become a couple over this past year. Now, we are expecting our first child, due in April. We welcome you, our AllGood family, to celebrate with us the beginning of the new Dane generation!”
A hush had fallen over the crowd as he spoke, and remained for a few seconds longer than I expected it to. When it finally broke, the applause was half-hearted, and almost sounded dubious.
To my great relief, the spotlight switched off as soon as Jonathan thanked the crowd, allowing me to step back from the edge of the balcony and try to dissolve into the semi-darkness of the club. Jonathan walked with me, playing up his part as doting lover until he was surrounded by his executives, all eager to lavish him with congratulations.
“Never pegged you as a gold digger,” a woman I recognized as being from my department sneered. “Guess it takes all kinds.” She looked me up and down incredulously, then dismissed me with her eyes. It cut deeper than it should have, but I was all right. She was a virtual stranger, after all.
But when Imogen approached with suspicion and disgust plastered all over her face, I began to quake.
“Really? You’ve been getting it on with…him? And you’re pregnant. God, Kaley, I knew you wanted kids, but I never expected you to stoop that low.”
“It wasn’t… I wasn’t…”
“You know what? Save it. I’ve been tearing my hair out for months trying to set you up with a guy, and you just took the easy way out. Good luck with your cold fish.” She spun on her heel and sauntered away, swinging her skinny hips haughtily.
The grains of truth in their accusations cut me to my core. The tears which had been threatening to appear all evening suddenly burst into existence, drowning me under waves of despair. In desperation, I pushed through miles of sneering, incredulous faces until I reached the stairs to the roof.
Without a moment of hesitation, I scrambled up, blinded by my tears.
Chapter 19
Jonathan
I extracted myself from the barrage of handshakes and back slaps the moment I saw Kaley tear through the crowd. The two women who had spoken to her directly were nowhere to be found, which worried me all the more.
People parted for me the way they always had, and I reached the stairs just as the door above slammed shut. An image of her climbing up on the edge of the terrace like some tragic heroine struck my brain, making my blood run cold. I was through the door before I even realized that I had taken another step, heart racing, adrenaline throbbing through my veins.
Then, I saw her. Not on the ledge, but near enough to it to hasten my feet, she was staring out over the city lights.
“You must be freezing,” I said, taking off my suit jacket.
I placed it over her shoulders, but didn’t touch her. The very air around her was prickly with her tension, and I didn’t want to risk making her snap.
I leaned against the ledge beside her to see her face. Tears glittered like starlight on her cheeks, and her full lips blew out with every sobbing breath, sending my heart plummeting into my stomach.
“Hey,” I murmured, tentatively tucking a curl behind her ear. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” she hissed, gritting her teeth. “Everything is wrong. I’m wrong, you’re wrong, this baby…oh, God.” She buried her face in her hands then, her shoulders shaking with the power of her sobs.
I wanted to hold her; I wanted to shake her; but, most of all, I wanted to hear what was really going on inside her pretty head. Everything was going according to plan—the plan she negotiated for and agreed to—but for the last few months, she had grown increasingly cold. I had chalked it up to the frantic production schedule, but now, I wasn’t so certain.
Her sobs gradually slowed, and she struck the tears from her face with hard, frustrated hands.
“We can’t go back on this now,” she said, her voice trembling. “I know what we agreed, and I know you won’t let your kid grow up in my hovel. God knows I don’t want a baby growing up in there either. If I could take it all back…”
She shook her head and sucked in a shuddering sigh.
“I was insane to let you talk me into this, insane to think that you would magically start feeling something when you’ve never had a spontaneous emotion in your whole gilded life. I don’t want this—not like this; I can’t bear it. Everyone downstairs is right. They saw right through us, and the rest of the world will, too. This baby’s a sham, and they’re going to grow up knowing that and feeling like a discarded piece of trash just because I couldn’t see past my own wanting.”
She was shaking, gripping the handrail until her knuckles turned white as she stabbed her verbal knife into my heart.
“You think I don’t feel anything?” It came out sounding angry, and I bit my tongue.
“Well, do you?” she demanded, whirling to face me with blazing eyes.
“All this time we’ve spent together, and the only thing you have ever been concerned about is your precious PR baby. Who even does that, Jonathan? Who the hell brings a whole new person into the world as a damn marketing campaign?”
She turned away again, slamming the heel of her hand against the wall. “And I was the idiot who went along with it. Nobody else would have—no sane person, anyway. So what does that make me?”
She turned away and softly answered herself. “The crazy damn fool in love with the ice prince.”
At her words, my wounded, dying heart leapt to life.
Impulsively grabbing her arm, I turned her to face me. Ignoring the disgust and despair I saw there, I cupped her head in my hands and crushed her mouth with a kiss, a kiss which held every emotion I had been fighting since the first morning I woke up with her lying in my arms.
She stiffened under my touch for a moment; then, her arms flew around me, fingers digging into my shoulder like claws. Our kiss deepened as she clung to me, trembling and still crying, breaking my heart even as she stitched it back together. Reluctantly, I withdrew from her mouth but kept my hands where they were so I could gaze into her eyes.
“You’re wrong,” I told her, my voice hoarse. “I’m no ice prince. I’m no prince at all; I’m a jackass. I have…” The word stuck in my throat, so I coated it carefully. “I have had feelings for you, strong feelings, for a very long time. I was fascinated by you the moment I met you, and I’ve only grown more attached since then. I think about you every day, Kaley. You’re always there, perched in my mind. Your laugh is the music that’s stuck in my head.”
Her eyes went soft and starry for a moment, but quickly turned to steel.
“You would say that,” she spat, pushing my hands away. “You would say anything right now to avoid a dramatic breakup. You need this to work, now, more than ever, or the PR stunt flops.”
“To hell with the PR stunt,” I exploded. “I had options, did you know that? There were other ways to recreate myself, more direct ways, less risky ways, but I chose this one. Do you want to know why?”
“Why?” she demanded.
“Because I think I love you, dammit!”
Her eyes fle
w wide as a ringing silence fell over the terrace. I was breathing hard, and she was barely breathing at all. I waited a beat, then two, but she didn’t respond. I had imagined her flying into my arms when I said those words, like a scene in a movie, but she simply stood and stared.
“I can’t believe you would do that,” she gasped, finally. “Using those words to manipulate me is cold, even for you. I’m going home.”
She turned away but I grabbed her hand, which she yanked out of my grasp furiously.
“Look,” I said, as calmly as I could. “I know how this looks. I do. Come home with me and let me explain. I swear I’ll tell you everything.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, and I could see that she was ready to bolt. I couldn’t let her run, not now. I reached out to her, and she snapped her hand away from me, turning on her heel to leave.
“Please,” I whispered.
She stopped in her tracks. Turning around slowly, she locked her eyes on my face.
“Say it again,” she said, drawing out each syllable with disbelief in her tone.
“I’ll tell you everything,” I swore.
“Not that part,” she said impatiently. “What did you say when I walked away?”
“Please,” I repeated. “Please come home with me.”
I sounded pitiful in my own ears, but I was beyond caring. I needed her with me. I needed her to see through my eyes, for just a moment, just long enough to change her perspective.
“Okay,” she said after a long moment. “I’ll come home with you.”
Relieved, I walked beside her to the stairs. My jacket on her shoulders was as close as I wanted to get to touching her for the moment; whatever it was that had made her say yes was as fragile as a soap bubble, and I knew when to stop pressing my luck.
She tucked close beside me and dropped her head as we moved through the crowd, and after a moment, I realized why. Nearly every woman we passed was scoffing in her direction, while the men were running their eyes over her appraisingly as if she were some trophy.
Belatedly, I understood the consequences of my actions as they pertained to Kaley. These consequences had never even occurred to me. I was socially untouchable, and the public was quick to indulge my various tastes as long as they weren’t too criminal. A man in my position was to be congratulated. A woman in hers was to be shamed.
It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but it was a fact of life that I had intellectually understood for a long time. I should have recognized this possibility before ever broaching the subject with her.
Kaley visibly relaxed as we stepped through the doors onto the street. She began walking toward the office, but I held her elbow and pointed across the street.
“James always picks me up from these things,” I explained as I guided her toward the waiting car. “Drunk driving is bad, and all that.”
I tried to offer a playful grin, but even if it had materialized in full, it wouldn’t have hit its target. She was looking straight ahead, fully focused on the car. I opened the door for her and received a barely-audible thanks, which was only slightly better than nothing at all.
As I closed her door and walked around to my own side, I felt her and the baby and every imagined future moment of bliss begin to slip through my fingers. This was going to be the negotiation of a lifetime. Everything was on the line, and there was no room for half-truths or manipulations. I was going to have to play it straight and still win.
If I hadn’t been so terrified, I might have been excited at the challenge.
Chapter 20
Kaley
As the shame began to wear off, so did my temper. Without it, I was left utterly drained. I nearly asked Jonathan’s driver to turn around and take me home, but there was something in the stiff, nervous way Jonathan held himself which made me hold my tongue.
He didn’t speak a word for the full half hour, and I did not have the strength or the will to break the silence on my own. James kept the center window firmly up, as if silently bowing out of the tension in the back seat. I had never been more relieved about arriving at a place as I was when we turned onto Jonathan’s long, winding driveway.
James opened both of our doors, then drove away onto the grounds. From my previous visits, I knew that the massive garage was about a quarter mile south of the main house, the first of many outbuildings. The house itself stretched so far to the left and right that I couldn’t see the edges in the dark. The concrete pillars at the top of the wide marble staircase were wrapped in browning vines.
Jonathan offered his arm for the climb up the stairs and I took it out of practicality; my balance hadn’t been the same lately, and I had a bad habit of missing steps and running into things.
I deliberately and aggressively ignored the way my pulse quickened when I touched him, determined to remain just angry enough to keep my defenses up.
Life had begun to feel like one incredibly long, drawn-out heartbreak, and I simply didn’t have the strength to take another one. Whatever Jonathan wanted to show me or tell me would fall on emotionless ears, to be considered rationally in the calculating part of my brain. That seemed to be Jonathan’s tactic, and it appeared to work for him.
In the foyer, he took his suit jacket off my shoulders and hung it on the extravagant, gold coat rack. I assumed his staff was off the clock by now, a suspicion confirmed by the tomb-like quiet which permeated the palatial house. Offering his arm once more, he led me up the wide curve of the main stairway to the second floor.
I had been there a dozen times in the first month we were together, and I knew this hall well; it led directly to his own bedroom. I gave him the benefit of the doubt for a moment, expecting him to turn off into one of the other many doorways, but he just continued on. When we had passed the last door before his own, I dug in my heels.
“Jonathan, I’m not just going to jump back into bed with you,” I told him, drawing on the last dregs of my temper. “Did you really think that was going to work?”
“No,” he said, casting me an almost haunted look. “Please trust me, Kaley.”
That word again. In all the time I had known him, I had only heard him say “please” four times, all of them in the last hour.
I followed him on that merit alone, and that faith paid off. When we reached his door, he turned away from it, opening the door directly across the hall from it instead. It was dark, but I let him lead me into it regardless.
Then, he switched on the light.
“Oh my goodness,” I breathed, gazing around the room. “This has got to be…this is…oh, this is the most magical nursery I’ve ever seen!” I stepped past him, taking it all in.
The centerpiece of the room was a luxurious circular crib topped with a gauzy canopy. A pair of soft, cushioned rocking chairs sat on either side, hinting at the extent of his co-parenting intentions. In one corner was a reading nook; it was made of a velvet, crescent-shaped seat with a ledge around the outside, and had a jungle tree-themed lamp drooping over the top with a curious monkey hanging down from it. The base and sides were built of bookcases which were already stocked with dozens of picture books.
The nook could easily hold two adults and a baby comfortably. I opened the double folding doors of the closet to reveal the most meticulously organized collection of baby supplies I had ever seen in my life, making a bubble of happiness rise up in my chest.
The other side of the room was exclusively for toys. A massive, colorful rug spread across the floor, decorated with letters, numbers, and animals. Bins and short stacks of shelves lined the three walls, full to bursting with all kinds of magnificent toys. Floor toys intended for very young babies were already arranged on the carpet, and stuffed animals crowded into little hammocks in two corners.
I was so enthralled by the nursery itself that I almost didn’t notice when Jonathan walked over to a toy bin.
“I made this when I was ten,” he said quietly.
I turned to look at him. He was holding a soft toy monkey with
accordion arms and legs who was wearing a baseball cap and a red felt heart on his chest. Jonathan rubbed his thumb over the heart a few times, then met my eyes.
“Every toy in here, I made myself. I spent all my time at the company after my mother died, learning the trade from the ground up and making a nuisance of myself. I don’t think anyone really minded, though,” he added quietly, looking down at the monkey again.
“Because, you see…they knew. They knew about my mother dying, but so did the public. Apparently, she was iconic to homemakers at the time, and there was widespread mourning after she passed. But they also knew the rest.”
Jonathan tossed the toy back in the bin and sat down in one of the rocking chairs, propping his chin in his hands. He looked suddenly small and lost, like a child in a strange place. It moved me. I sat across from him, silent but open, giving him space to continue.
“My father,” Jonathan began, but his voice broke.
He cleared his throat and shook his head, then rubbed a firm hand over his mouth.
“My father should never have had children. His…” Jonathan sighed heavily, as if forcing the story out from a deeply embedded lock box in his mind.
“His good nature was a front. He would turn it on for the cameras, for the customers, for anyone who needed to believe the lie in order to give him what he wanted. But he was cold to his core. Money was the only thing he cared about. He closed a business deal from a satellite phone during my mother’s funeral, if that gives you any idea.
“He didn’t know what the hell to do with me after my mom died. He managed my life from a distance, the same way he managed the company. Delegate, delegate, delegate. James would take me to school, Mrs. Collins would feed me and help me with my homework. As for the rest, it was up to me. I had to know my own schedule by heart, get myself up and ready every morning, tuck myself in at a reasonable hour every night. I wasn’t very good at it, at first.”
Baby, ASAP - A Billionaire Buys a Baby Romance (Babies for the Billionaire Book 3) Page 12
