The One I Love to Hate

by Amanda Weaver

  Dan’s eyes narrowed as he examined her, with that infuriating, ever-present smile. Dan would probably grin ear-to-ear when he finally faced the Grim Reaper. Just one more person to charm, right?

  Then he chuckled softly and shook his head. “That’s where he got it from. You know, it’s all your fault.”

  What? What the hell was he accusing her of? She was the victim of his dirtbag employee, not the other way around. “Excuse me?”

  “All that passion is contagious. Should have made him major in communications. Or business. A good, solid MBA.” He sighed. “Too late now, I suppose.”

  Now she was officially lost. He was obviously talking about Alex, but nothing he said made any sense. “I’m not sure I understand you.”

  “Are you looking for my son?” he asked abruptly.

  “Um...” This felt like she’d stumbled into a knife fight and just discovered her switchblade was really a comb. But she wasn’t about to back down. He was probably about to give her some speech about how a little nobody like her was never going to be good enough for his princeling son, and she might as well go back to Brooklyn and forget all about him. Well, if he tried that, he was in for a fight, because she didn’t scare that easily. “Yes,” she finally said, willing her voice not to shake with nerves. “Yes, I am.”

  Dan took a deep breath, as if he was about to launch his first strike. “He’s outside on the balcony.”

  What?

  “What?” she said out loud, so caught off guard that she couldn’t quite comprehend what he’d said.

  Dan stepped forward, swept an arm around her shoulders, and firmly turned her 180 degrees. Pointing over her shoulder, he indicated a door in the wall of glass. It opened onto a small balcony overlooking the city. Her heart gave a wild leap of joy when she recognized the familiar shape of Alex’s broad shoulders and the artful tussle of his hair, silhouetted against the distant lights of the Jersey shore. “Balcony,” Dan said near her ear.

  When she turned back to look at him, he was already backing away through the crowd as his employees cast him surreptitious, awestruck glances. “But I don’t...”

  “Enjoy the party, Jessica. Try to get Alex to enjoy it, too, will you? Is Mariel here yet? I should say hello.”

  She shook her head in bafflement. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her.”

  Dan pointed to the door behind her. “Balcony.”

  Then he was gone, leaving Jessica alone with her utter confusion. What the hell had that been about? But she didn’t have time to parse out Dan’s eccentricities. Alex was out there alone, and she was going to win him back if she had to grovel on her knees.

  A cold breeze whipped her bare shoulders as she stepped outside, but giant standing heaters were stationed in the corners of the balcony, creating a pocket of tolerable air. It didn’t matter. She’d stand outside in a snowstorm if that’s what it took.

  “Alex.”

  His shoulders jerked with surprise as he turned his head and registered her presence. “Jess...”

  “Hi.”

  His eyes skated down her. “You look beautiful.”

  It was the same dress she’d worn to the Newsmaker banquet. She only had the one. But when he looked at her that way—like she was the hottest woman in the room—it didn’t matter that it was recycled or twenty years old. He made her feel perfect. “Thanks. Can I talk to you?”

  Taking his hands out of his pockets, he took a step closer to her. “Jess, I should—”

  “No.” She put a hand out to stop him. “Please. Just let me say this, okay?”

  He shut his mouth and watched her. Okay, time to give the most passionate speech of her life, but not to defend workers’ rights or freedom of the press. She had to convince the most important person in her life to let her love him. Maybe she should have planned this out. Jotted some notes on a Post-It, at least. But it was too late for that, so she plunged in with what she knew was true.

  Stepping closer to him, she pressed her palms against his chest and looked up into his face, her gaze locking with his. “I love you, Alex. It was horrible of me to say you were abandoning your principles just for doing what you feel is right, even if I disagree. You’re determined to fulfill your obligation to your father, and I respect that. I know I can get carried away over things I feel are important, but none of them are as important as you are. I don’t want to be principled—I don’t want to be right—if it means doing it without you. It wasn’t about your job, it was about you...the best parts of you. I don’t want you to lose those, but walking away from you isn’t the answer.

  “So I’m staying to fight for you. It doesn’t matter if you try to send me away, because I’m still going to love you. Go to Brazil and run a TV station, if you feel that’s what you have to do. I’ll be waiting here when you come back, loving you, reminding you of who you are. Or I’ll let you spend your money on plane tickets and limousines, as long as they take me to where you are. Because that’s the only place I want to be. Right beside you.”

  As she spoke, his eyebrows furrowed, a little vertical crease forming between them, as his gaze flicked back and forth across hers. When she’d run out of steam, and said what she needed to say, she stared back in silence, holding her breath and her heart in her hands, waiting for him to reply.

  When he did, it wasn’t with words. His hands came up to hold her face, gripping her hard as his mouth descended on hers, hungry and demanding. She opened her mouth to him, her little squeak of surprise softening into a moan of pleasure as his tongue swept in and found hers.

  His hand left her face, his arm banding around her waist and hauling her up to her toes and into his chest. Unbalanced, she fell into him, gripping his hard shoulders.

  What was this kiss? An acceptance of her apology or a last goodbye before he walked away for good? She slid her hands into his hair, gripping hard to hold him to her. If she could hold him in this kiss forever, he couldn’t ever leave her.

  When he tried to end it, she chased after him, recapturing his mouth, pushing his body back into the railing. Alex moaned, the sound vibrating down her throat and straight down to her thighs. Swinging her body around like she weighed nothing, he pushed her back into the railing, his large frame caging her in, overwhelming her, as he devoured her mouth. Heat licked up her body, and she gripped him—his shoulders, his waist, his hips, holding him tight against her.

  He pulled back, holding her still when she would have dragged him back again.

  “I’m not going to Brazil,” he murmured. His hair blew across his forehead in a disordered mess in the cold breeze off the Hudson as he examined her from under heavy lids.

  “What?” People kept saying things to her tonight that made her lose her place in space and time. All she wanted to do was kiss Alex some more and he was talking about South America.

  “I’m not going to Brazil or anywhere else. I’m staying here in New York.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s okay, too. What I said still holds true. It’s your life. I was wrong to tell you how you should live it.”

  He chuckled, a low, throaty sound she felt against her mouth and in her belly, as his body shifted against hers. God, she wanted to be alone and naked with him. “Somebody had to say it or I might have spent the rest of my life fucking it up.”

  Finally, the realization that he was trying to tell her something important pierced her haze of lust. “What are you saying, Alex?”

  “I quit.”

  “Quit what? Just tell me what happened.”

  Idly, he traced the neckline of her dress, making her break out in goose bumps. “I quit Drake Media. I told my dad I just couldn’t do it. I’m taking over Chase’s position at ClickNews and I’m going to see what I can make of it.”

  His news was like a small atomic bomb going off in her brain, leaving her too stunned to even react. “What...how...”

 
“Before you get too insufferably smug, it wasn’t all you. Chase said some stuff to me that really hit home, too.”

  “Chase? Why would you ever listen to him?”

  “Because he was right. About that one thing, anyway. Eventually I was going to crack. That wasn’t fair to me or my father.”

  “But... Is...” She opened her mouth, then closed it again, processing the enormity of what Alex was telling her. “And he’s okay with this?” Because she couldn’t imagine Dan Drake ever letting his precious son just walk away from the empire he built for him.

  “It took some convincing, but I did it. I’m out. Drake Media will have to be somebody else’s baby, because I’m going to have my hands full turning ClickNews around. And...” He leaned into her again—his thighs brushing hers, his chest against her breasts—and he lifted his hands to cup her face. “I hope I’m going to be busy making my girlfriend very happy.”

  Abruptly, her eyes stung with tears and her throat began to ache. It was...oh, God, was there a word for this explosive release of emotions when you thought you lost everything but then you got it all and more?

  “Are you crying?”

  “Shut up,” she muttered around the tightness in her throat. “It’s just the breeze off the river.”

  He chuckled, smoothing the windblown strands of hair away from her face. “Admit it. You’re happy.”

  “I’m happy,” she whispered. “So happy I could cry. But not for me. It’s not about me getting what I wanted. I’m happy for you. Because you got what you always wanted.”

  “Jess, right now, I have everything I’ve ever wanted,” he said, smiling down into her face. “And never dreamed I could have.”

  He kissed her again, and this time, neither one of them made any attempt to stop for a very long time.

  Chapter Forty

  This morning, Alex had been preparing to get on with heading up Drake Media for the rest of his miserable life, and doing it without Jess. Now, twelve hours later, Drake Media was going to be someone else’s problem, some eager executive who would love it the way he never could. And the thing he’d wanted most—ClickNews’s ragtag journalism department—was now in his hands, ready to be molded into the vision he’d cherished for so long.

  And as midnight on this long day crept closer, Jess was back in his arms for good, her lips warm under his, tasting salty from her tears of happiness. When the New Year began, he would have Jess at his side and, for the first time in his life, he would be facing a future that didn’t fill him with dread.

  “You’re shaking,” he whispered against her cheek. “Are you cold?”

  His hands roved down her slender neck, over her bare shoulders, and around to the exposed expanse of her back. This dress made him hungry.

  “Not cold,” she insisted, as another tremor shook her. The heating lamps staved off the worst of the winter cold out here, but the breeze off the river was relentless. Every time it gusted, Jess’s skin broke out in goose bumps. He wanted to smooth his hands over that tender flesh, to warm her back up, and then maybe follow behind with his tongue.

  Suddenly, the door behind him opened. “Ooops! Mr. Drake! Sorry. I didn’t see you out here. I just popped out for a smoke.”

  He turned to look at the woman, whom he recognized from Marketing, but couldn’t name.

  His head finally cleared enough to allow embarrassment to creep in. His hand had been on Jess’s breast until just a second ago, and the other hand was still firmly planted on her ass. The hem of her dress had ridden up, exposing her upper thighs. Okay, it hadn’t ridden up. He’d pushed it up.

  “Sorry,” he told the woman as he discreetly tugged her hem back down. “Got a little carried away. And Mr. Drake is my father. I’m just Alex.”

  Stepping back, he ran his hands through his hair as Jess slid the strap of her dress back up on her shoulder. He’d done that, too.

  “No problem, Alex.” The woman smirked.

  He turned back to Jess. “You ready to get out of here?” Please say yes, he pleaded with his eyes.

  “Yes.” When she looked up at him, the dark hunger there nearly sent him to his knees. They’d be lucky to get all the way back to his apartment before they had each other’s clothes off.

  “We’ll leave you the balcony,” he said to the woman, ushering Jess past him. “Enjoy your night.”

  Back inside, the space was filled with laughter and voices competing with the DJ’s thumping dance beat.

  “I’m going to check out the famous bathroom before we leave,” Jess said. “Meet you by the front door?”

  “Give me your coat check ticket and I’ll get your stuff.” He kissed her slowly, full of heat and promise. “What I’m gonna do to you tonight...” he growled into her ear.

  She moaned and clutched briefly at his lapels. “Stop it. I can barely walk as it is.”

  Chuckling, he released her and watched Jess retreat to the ladies’ room on unsteady legs. He wasn’t feeling too in control himself. Happiness and lust and love...it was a heady mix. He nearly walked by the coat check, because the door was closed, the mirrored panels on its face blending in with the mirrored walls. Why was it closed?

  When he opened the door, he discovered why. It was dark inside, and in his distraction, he only registered bodies entwined, fingers tangled in dark hair, bare skin...

  “Ah! Sorry. So sorry.”

  He was backing up, closing the door again, when a familiar chuckle made him roll his eyes.

  “Honestly, Dad,” he muttered. “I’m taking Jess home and I need our coats. Can you just take it somewhere else for a minute?”

  The voice he heard next froze him in his tracks. It was low and lethal, a whisper of steel. “Not. One. Word.”

  Mariel Kemper.

  Mariel fucking Kemper was making out with his father in the coat check.

  He pushed the door open again. The low amber light spilled in, illuminating first his father, casually rebuttoning his shirt, then Mariel, tugging down the hem of her dress. She straightened, tossing her mussed hair out of her flushed face, looking exactly like she’d just been going at it in a closet. “Not a word from you, either,” she growled as she swept past Alex, regal as a queen.

  Alex held his hands up in defense. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  She spun around to face his father. “And you.”

  Dan sauntered toward her, looking smugly pleased with himself. “Yes, Mariel?”

  She wrapped two fingers around the edge of his lapel and tugged him forward. “You owe me. Tonight you’re going to buy me several very expensive cocktails.”

  He grinned down at her. “It’s an open bar.”

  “Well, I’ll have to come up with something else, then. I’ll think creatively.”

  “I have no doubt you will.” He held his arm out to her, as courtly as a lord. Mariel’s expression softened ever so slightly, and the corner of her mouth twitched with a smile she fought to suppress.

  When Alex looked back to his father, he was stunned at the expression on his face. Dan looked almost...infatuated. Mariel Kemper had intrigued his father, and women simply never did that. Well, he hoped Dan knew what he was doing, because if there was one woman on earth who could eat him alive, and not the other way around, it was this one.

  They were halfway down the hall when Dan paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Everything okay, son?”

  Alex smiled and nodded. “Yeah, Dad. Everything is great. Thanks for tonight.”

  Mariel’s eyes darted between them before landing on Alex. “You mean you’re the one who invited my staff?”

  Dan chuckled. “Let’s just say my son and I were both motivated to get you and your staff here.”

  Alex was still smiling when Jess found him a moment later. “What’s so funny?”

  “I caught my dad with a woman in the coat check.�
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  She rolled her eyes. “Could he be a bigger cliché? I bet she was one of his secretaries, right?”

  “Ah...actually, it was Mariel.”

  Jess’s eyes flew wide. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “Nope. And from the looks of things, it was progressing fairly rapidly.”

  “Eww! Oh, I have to stop her!” She shot past him, headed for the coat room. Snagging her arm, he swung her around again.

  “Hold up. They’re not there anymore.”

  “But I have to find her! She’s not thinking clearly—”

  “Oh, she’s probably not thinking much at all, but I suspect she doesn’t want to. Jess.” He gripped her by the shoulders. “She’s an adult. So is my father. They’ll make their own choices.”

  “But he’s so... Dan.”

  “I don’t know...” Alex said, remembering that brand-new expression on his father’s face. “This might sound crazy, but I think she’s different.”

  “Of course she’s different!”

  “No, I mean different for him.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  “You’ll just have to wait and see, because I’m pretty sure Mariel doesn’t want saving tonight, not by you or anyone else.”

  Just then, Lina exploded out of the crowd and into the empty hall. She had a champagne flute in each hand and a plastic glittery tiara perched precariously on her glossy dark hair. “There you are!”

  She threw her arms around Jess, splashing champagne on all three of them, and kissed Jess noisily on the cheek.

  “Hey, Lina, you seem to be having a good time.”

  “So much fun. I’ve been dancing. Did you know Hassan can dance? The boy has moves. Can’t wait to find out about the other kind. You know, the sexy-sexy kind—”

  “We were just leaving, Lina.” Alex made a futile attempt to peel Lina’s arms off her.