But not today.
Macy sat back in her office chair, closing her eyes against the report on her screen, the bright lights and the office itself. She hadn’t yet come up with what she’d say to Ryder once it was late enough Australian time to ring him and plead her father’s case. She had to try, despite knowing it would make no difference. She knew his decision wasn’t about her father or his company. It was about her.
A crushing weight bore down on her from above, pressing her deeper into her chair, and she wrapped her arms tightly around her middle to stop herself breaking into a thousand pieces. Her life stretched out before her, colorless, stark, lifeless, knowing Ryder was out there in the world somewhere, living his life. He’d be occasionally in the papers, ensuring that the wound never healed. But even without the reminders, she’d never fully heal from this.
A loud, commanding knock sounded at her office door—she’d had it closed all day, an extra layer of protection from the world. She ignored it. Tina must be away from her desk, but she’d be back soon and deal with whoever was there.
The knocking came again, but she wasn’t speaking to anyone today. Tina had cancelled her appointments and was holding her calls, allowing Macy to focus on the final report of their project. She’d been wanting a full day to do this anyway.
The knocks came a third time, this time accompanied by a familiar, deep voice. “Macy.”
The sound of Ryder’s voice sparked through her like an electric charge, at once bringing her head up to attention…he was back…yet causing the ache in her chest to double as understanding dawned. He’d come to explain. Of course his code of honor would demand he tell her in person he wasn’t buying the company. That they no longer needed to marry. Knowing the truth was torture enough, but hearing him say the words? To have to reply coherently and wish him well in his life? Maybe even wish for him that he found the woman he could love, who could open his heart. She wouldn’t be able to stand that conversation. There was no choice but to wait him out.
“Macy, Tina said you were in there.”
She groaned, dropping her arms to her sides. She’d told her father that Ryder wasn’t a man to be swayed. That same determination meant that now he knew she was here, he wouldn’t leave until she answered. She slipped her feet into her shoes under the desk and dragged herself upright, trying to snap herself out of the shock; hoping Ryder wouldn’t notice how badly she was affected.
She opened the door a fraction, but didn’t dare look at him yet in case was overcome by the sudden urge to throw herself into his arms and beg him to take her back. If she kept nothing else, she’d maintain her self-respect.
She filled her lungs, held the air there a moment, then let it out in a controlled breath and met his eyes. “Ryder, I need to get this work done now. Could we talk tomorrow?”
He leant against the doorframe, bringing his face nearer, allowing his scent to envelop her. “I need to speak with you,” he said, voice low. “Open the door.”
Her skin quivered, reacting to his nearness, and his deep voice practically reverberated through every cell and molecule in her body. Unable to deny him much of anything when he spoke like that, yet knowing she invited more heartache, she opened the door and gestured for him to come in before closing it behind him.
She tried not to drink him in like a woman dying of thirst, but failed. His large frame was draped in a black overcoat which he tugged off and threw over the back of a chair. Then he turned and she was hit by the force of his presence—at once so familiar and yet different. His closely cropped hair begged her to touch, his full bottom lip called to her. But his beautiful eyes were shadowed and bloodshot. Everything inside her yearned to smooth the smudges beneath them with her fingers. Everything, except her sense of self-preservation.
He stepped closer but stopped, seeming uncertain. “Your face is pale.” He frowned, jaw tight. “You’re upset.”
Tears stung at her eyes but she refused to let him see. She swallowed and blinked away any traces of moisture. “I stubbed my toe,” she lied.
He raised an eyebrow, unconvinced.
She took a step back, away from the temptation of him. “I stubbed it hard.”
He looked down at her bare, non-mangled toes visible in her slingbacks. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said without a trace of irony.
Her breath hiccupped in her throat. She couldn’t do this—not now while everything inside her was still so raw. She swept an arm toward the door. “I really need to get this work done this afternoon. I’ll call you tomorrow—”
“Macy,” he interjected, his coffee-brown eyes locked on her, “there’s so much I need to tell you.”
Her shoulders drooped a fraction. He wasn’t leaving. If she could gain herself a couple of minutes to regroup, perhaps then she could handle hearing what he’d come to say.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked with a false smile as she waved a hand toward the wet bar.
He didn’t move. “I’d rather talk first.”
Macy nodded wearily and faced the inevitable. They were having this conversation now whether she was prepared or not. There was only one acceptable option remaining—heading this train off at the pass.
She straightened her spine, ready to face the most torturous discussion of her life. “I’ve had a call from my father. I know you don’t need his company anymore.”
Ryder didn’t flinch. “That depends on your definition of need.”
“Did you find another way to get enough stock to control your company?”
“No,” he said slowly, deliberately.
She dragged in a lungful of air. He needed the stock but had cancelled the sale. He didn’t want to marry her anymore. And he wanted to avoid that marriage enough to sacrifice the stock and possibly his aspirations of becoming chairman of the board. Even as the rejection struck her squarely in the solar plexus, she couldn’t blame him—what man would want a wife he couldn’t love, but who loved him? He’d obviously thought it through and recognized the risk of her clinging; of her holding on too tight and smothering him. And the worst of it was, she couldn’t guarantee the risk didn’t exist, much as she’d like to deny it.
She lifted her chin and offered him the escape he needed. “My father has another deal on the table.” Her voice broke, but she swallowed and continued. “He’ll sell to you without you marrying me. You can have the company, Ryder. The stock.”
With not even a flicker of interest in the offer, he took a step forward. “My priorities have changed.”
Stunned into stillness, she took several beats to reply. “What do you mean?”
He moved to the blue couch against the wall and held out a hand to her. “Come and sit with me.”
She eyed him warily—sitting down did not equal getting this over with as quickly as possible.
“Just hear me out, Macy. If you want me to go when I’m done, I’ll go.” His face was earnest, imploring, and she believed him. She’d give him this one last gift of her time and attention.
She moved to the couch and sat as far away as the three-seater would allow. If he was too close, she’d be tempted to crawl into his lap and stay there. She folded her arms under her breasts, as if that could offer some protection from temptation, from what he was about to say, from the entire situation.
“I’m listening,” she said in a rough whisper.
“Seth and I talked about this new claimant, J.T. Hartley, and how much of a threat he could be. I said there was a chance he really is a son of our father. The man kept a wife and a mistress for over thirty years—why wouldn’t he have a second mistress, as well?”
She pressed her fingers to her temple, suddenly light-headed. He wanted to talk about his family when she was dying inside? “Please, Ryder, can we talk about this tomorrow? I can see you’re tired from the trip—we can discuss it in the morning. I’ll call you—”
He cut her off, his expression urgent. “You need to hear this now, Macy.”
She shored up all th
e courage she could, and, ignoring her own pain to concentrate on the story he obviously needed to tell, she nodded. “Okay. So you think your father could have had a second mistress. Makes sense.”
He flashed her a tight smile, acknowledging her willingness to listen. “Seth disagreed. He honestly believes Warner loved his mother, Amanda Kentrell.”
“Then why didn’t he marry her?”
He shrugged. “Respect for my mother. Fear of a scandal. Wanting to keep access to my mother’s money as well as his own. Maybe my mother wouldn’t agree to a divorce. Whatever it was, Seth is certain that Warner wouldn’t have cheated on Amanda.”
Despite everything else going on, she found herself intrigued enough to delve further. “Wasn’t keeping a wife cheating on her?”
“My parents had separate lives, separate bedrooms for the few occasions when he came home. Seth’s version has some possibility of being true.”
She couldn’t help but think of Ryder as a boy, living in that sterile family. No wonder he had imperfect notions of the capacity of his own heart. She ached to hold him and explain, but she was far from the right person to do that.
So she did what she could—focused on what he was saying in the here and now. “If you give Seth the benefit of the doubt, are you now thinking J.T. Hartley isn’t a brother? That his claim will fail?”
“He’d be stupid to make a claim with nothing to back it up.” Ryder scrubbed a hand through his hair, leaving the short strands mussed. “If Seth’s right about Warner and Amanda, the old man could still have conceived another child after the marriage but before he met Amanda.”
The media and public would go crazy for a story about a new Bramson brother, between Ryder and Seth in age and staking his claim on the Bramson billions. “Will you share the inheritance with him?”
He leaned back in the couch and lifted one ankle to rest on the other knee, seeming even more tired than when he’d arrived. “We’re setting plans into place now for either eventuality. Seth is adamant that it takes more than DNA to deserve part of the company.”
“What about you?” she asked, more concerned than ever about the shadows under his eyes and the stress he was under.
“To be honest, I haven’t decided.” His fingers began tapping on the armrest and suddenly he seemed less tired and more…as if he was…nervous. “My mind was occupied with another consequence of Seth’s information.”
“Which is?” If it was enough to make Ryder nervous, then whatever it was, was bigger than anything he’d mentioned so far.
“If Seth’s account is reliable—” he paused, swallowed “—my father was capable of love. My view of my childhood has been recalibrated.”
There was something big here, she could feel it, but she wasn’t quite following. “In what way?”
“I thought my father was playing the field. Having two families, probably more. But it seems he had a woman he loved and two sons he cherished. They were his family. My mother and I were…an aberration.”
Pain for him lanced through her chest. It was an awful thing to discover, no matter his age.
She leaned in, reaching for his hand and entwining their fingers. “Ryder, I’m so sorry.”
He looked up at her, surprised. “I don’t need sympathy—this is a good thing. Amanda, Seth and Jesse were the family he should have had if he hadn’t married for money.” He turned in the couch to face her. “Do you understand what this means? He was capable of romantic love. My beliefs about myself and my genes were wrong. I’m not wired against loving one woman for life. I just need to marry the one I love, the way my father should have waited to find Amanda and married her.”
Her lungs stalled. The picture was beginning to come together—the call from her father, Ryder’s visit today…He’d wanted to marry her for the company, the stock, the way his father had married his mother. But he realized now he should wait to find the woman he loved. And she couldn’t blame him. He should have love.
She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and bit down on it, willing herself not to cry in front of him. “That’s why you cancelled the deal with my father?”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes searching hers as if asking for understanding.
Another jagged piece of her heart tore away, but she didn’t shrink back, she smiled. She’d let him go to find love and happiness. More than anything, she wanted Ryder to be happy. She unlaced their fingers and stood, needing to break the intimacy before she said something that revealed the depth of her pain and made him feel guilty for doing the right thing.
She headed for the wet bar and poured two glasses of water from a bottle in the small refrigerator. “I’m glad you spent time with Seth.”
He followed and accepted the glass she handed him. “Just a damn shame it didn’t happen before Jesse died.”
He leaned back on the bar, dominating her office with his size and presence. Macy gulped her water and turned to refill her glass, speaking over her shoulder. “Did you go to the funeral?”
“Yes.” He took a mouthful of water, then deposited his glass on the bar, his forehead puckered in a pained expression. “And burying a brother I hadn’t known made me look at myself. Take stock.”
“Understandable.” She nodded, gripping her glass tightly, trying to gain strength from it, from anything, to see her through this.
“I’ve put things in their proper perspective now.” He moved to stand in front of her. “There’s something I need more than money. More than the company.” He took her glass from her fingers, put it in the sink before he grasped her hands. “You.”
The world tilted and she gripped his hands tighter to avoid falling over. “Me?” Her voice was so high it squeaked. She took a deep breath, calming herself so she could speak. “I thought you cancelled the deal so you could find the woman you could love.”
“I’ve found her.” His eyes were earnest, a window directly to his heart, his soul. “And I didn’t want any question in your mind about my priorities, so I cancelled the sale. Macy, I love you.”
She swallowed hard. “You love me?”
“Hell, yes,” he said roughly. He pulled her to him and held her firmly, and she could feel his racing heart beneath his shirt. Then he clasped her shoulders and leaned back, looking deep into her eyes. “And this is beyond business. Beyond inheritances, beyond all else—just a man in love wanting to marry his woman.”
The tilting of the world, the overwhelming feeling stopped, and all she could see was his face, and hear one word repeating in her head. Her knees buckled but he grabbed her waist and held her firm. “Marry?” she whispered.
“I love you. I need you in my life. If I have to let go of the company to prove this is all about you and only you, I choose you.”
She blinked up at him, unable to do much more than listen to what he was saying and try to comprehend it.
“Tell me it’s not too late, Macy,” he said huskily. “If my leaving killed the precious love you had, I’ll never forgive myself, but I’ll understand.”
The uncertainty in his features, the need in his eyes brought everything back into focus and galvanized her. She laid a palm against his cheek. “Killed my love for you? Are you crazy?”
“All evidence so far would point to that, given that I was willing to leave the woman I love more than my own life.” He shook his head and let out a self-reproachful growl. Then he laid his own hand over hers as it still rested on his cheek. “Tell me you love me,” he said, his heart in his eyes.
A stillness came over her, a sense that the world was just as it should be, that this was right. “I love you.”
His lips parted as his gaze darted from her eyes to her mouth and back again. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure.” She wound her arms up, around his neck, reveling in the shudder of his body at the touch.
“Then you’ll marry me?” The rise and fall of his chest seemed to stall, as if he was holding his breath.
Macy looked deep into his eyes and felt a
tear escape to run down her cheek. This man she loved with every beat of her heart loved her back with the same intensity—it was all there for her to see in his face. He brushed her tear away with a thumb and she felt another escape her lashes. She kissed him lightly, but what started as a featherlike caress of lips quickly flared into something hungrier, more passionate.
When Ryder pulled back, they were both breathing heavily. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said with a raised eyebrow.
“I’ll marry you—” she let her hands drift across the broad expanse of his shoulders “—on one condition.”
“Name it,” he said, without hesitation.
Her hands flowed from his shoulders, down his arms until she found his hands. She linked their fingers, and smiled. “We don’t ever spend eight days apart again. That was intolerable.”
Ryder smiled back widely. “I can agree to that.”
He leaned in and kissed her, and she melted, knowing she’d found her home. No matter where they lived, Ryder was, and always would be her home.
Epilogue
One month later
Macy walked into her fiancé’s office, Ryder’s hand at the small of her back guiding her. She looked around, impressed by its size and view of Manhattan’s skyline at night. After she’d finished the Chocolate Diva project, she’d packed everything she owned and had it shipped to Ryder’s house. They’d kept to their vow and only spent a couple of nights apart at a time during the transition.
This was her first visit to his office, and she ran a finger along the shelf of a wooden bookcase. “Nice setup.”
“Ah,” he said with a smile in his voice, “but you haven’t seen the best part yet.”
She turned as she heard the lock on the door click. A shiver of anticipation ran down her spine. “The best part?”
He strode across the room to the large oak desk and thumped a hand on it. “The desk. Solid enough for two.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Mr. Bramson, are you flirting with an employee?”
At the Billionaire's Beck and Call? Page 15
