More Than Love You

by Shayla Black

  “Out with it, Weston,” he insists. “Is your personal life too much to keep up with your job responsibilities? Because we should talk about that. The executives in my sports division aren’t happy with all your splashy news lately. You had a reputation as a man whore early in your career. I decided to offer you this job at this pay because you’d seemed to clean your act up in recent seasons. But since your antics with Mercedes Fleet came to light, I’ve had a very nervous board of directors. Say something that will help me put them at ease.”

  I could. Normally, I’d love to. Right now, I can’t say anything at all.

  Clenching my fists, it’s all I can do not to pound them on the table in frustration. Since I have to keep my shit together, I turn to look at Harlow. She’s been holding back, letting me run things unless I needed her.

  Now, more than ever, I do.

  She squeezes my knee again, then turns her most charming smile on Chickman. “Other than being worn out after an eventful weekend, Noah is fine. We’d planned to take at least this week for a honeymoon, so the fact that he’s having dinner with you tonight instead of keeping his promise to his new wife ought to tell you he’s very serious about your offer. But he wants to give it its due consideration. It’s a long-term commitment. The fact that he wants a few weeks without a media spectacle distracting him so that he can be entirely sure is not something that should make anyone nervous. Your board of directors should be relieved he’s being so serious and cautious. If he says yes, they can be completely certain he means it.”

  God, she’s wonderful. Perfect. She both scolded and reassured Chickman in the same speech. No wonder I love her so much.

  “Furthermore, if I thought for one moment that Ms. Fleet’s claims were true, I would not have married Noah. Maybe you saw the YouTube video of my last attempt at marriage? If you did, you know I won’t accept my fiancé knocking up some other woman. Ms. Fleet is an attention seeker, and you’re giving her far too much validity by even listening to her claims. You’re a smart man. Haven’t you ever dealt with someone trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame by climbing on your back and riding your coattails for all they’re worth?”

  When he flushes a guilty red, I drag in a deep breath. Score, Harlow! The woman should have been a trial attorney. This performance tells me that if we ever get into a gnarly fight, I’m likely to lose.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Weston,” Cliff cuts in, jaw clenched. He’s annoyed that Harlow is doing his job for him right now—and doing it better. “But I’ve got it from here.”

  I glare at my longtime agent. Where the fuck does he get the idea that Harlow doesn’t have a voice at this table? That she can’t speak for me if I want her to, if I can’t do it myself?

  Harlow shrugs. “I just thought it was important to share what Noah and I have discussed and—”

  “Sure,” he says dismissively, then turns to Chickman. “Like Noah explained to me, the wife is a great asset and a perfect front. Smart, lovely, educated. This marriage will keep the Mercedes Fleets of the world from being taken too seriously in the future, and Noah will use his utmost discretion with other women. Right, buddy?” He claps me on the shoulder. “She was a smart business move. Good choice.”

  I drag in growling breaths of fury. Cliff is way out of line, making Harlow sound like a prop instead of the woman I’m going to love madly for the rest of my life. I’ve known Cliff for a decade. He doesn’t love anything except a smoking deal and he’d say anything to get one done. I can’t point that out now, but Harlow is smart. She’ll get it.

  Still, I feel compelled to stop his shitty behavior.

  “What the hell?” I manage to blurt out. More words are behind those, piling up in my throat, dammed by anxiety and anger.

  “I’m just relaying what we discussed, Noah,” Cliff assures. “You promised me she’d be good for your image, and now I’m in total agreement. I’m sure Mr. Chickman is as well.”

  “Absolutely.” The network executive winks my way.

  “Well, since my work here is done and you boys don’t need me to conduct business, I’ll leave you to it.” Harlow smiles graciously and rises to her feet.

  I grab her by the hand, swallow, force out one syllable. “Sit.”

  “Don’t be silly. You get business done. Mr. Chickman has flown all the way to Maui from New York to talk to you. I’m sure he has a network to run and can’t be gone any longer than usual. I’ll take a taxi back to the house.”

  “Harlow…”

  “I’m fine.”

  She’s not fine. Not remotely. I see it on her face. She handled Cliff’s snub and insult with grace, but her smile is as artificial as Chickman’s toupee. My agent is a hustler. She couldn’t possibly take his BS about her being an asset to cover up my affairs seriously.

  “I’ll go with you.” I stand.

  “Don’t be silly.” She shakes her head.

  “My red-eye leaves in three hours,” the network executive states baldly. “We discuss this now or I’ll have to rescind the offer.”

  “See?” Harlow says with a sparkling smile as she grabs her purse. “Lovely to see you, gentlemen. Good evening.”

  I stand and take hold of her arm. Nothing on her face conveys that she’s upset or pissed off, but I sense something deeply wrong. “Baby?”

  “Do what you need to. You’ve got this. I understand. Don’t worry.” A brittle wave later, she slips out of my grasp and exits.

  I’m left staring after her, dread rolling through my gut. What, exactly, does she understand?

  I’m not sure. In fact, I’m worried as hell. That woman wouldn’t have left my side when she knows I’m having verbal trouble unless something had gone horribly, terribly wrong.

  “Noah, buddy…” Cliff stands and urges me back to my chair. “Mr. Chickman’s time is limited, and the little woman will be waiting for you back home. Why don’t you sit down so we can get everything ironed out?”

  With a frown, I do. I don’t have a choice if I want to cover the sport I love come this fall. But as soon as I get home, I’ll talk everything out with Harlow. That will be enough. Right?

  Sixty-five minutes later, I dash inside the front door, glad business is done for the night. I rushed dinner along and managed to give Chickman a promise that I’d make a splashy announcement in a few days with my exciting news. Let him interpret that however he wants.

  “Harlow?” I shout from the entryway.

  No answer.

  Foreboding rolls through me as I glance around the dimly lit house. The pictures of little Jamie she stuck to the refrigerator the other day are gone. So are the random hair ties she usually leaves lying on the coffee table so she can get her hair out of her eyes for serious gaming.

  Shit.

  I try not to panic. She’s often tidy. She sometimes declutters randomly. Maybe she came home from the restaurant and decided to pick up a little.

  “Harlow?”

  Still nothing.

  Dread knotting my gut, I run upstairs and barge into the bedroom she used to sleep in alone. When I fling open the closet door, it’s completely empty. No sexy red dress. No hanging row of short-shorts and sexy tanks. No pile of shoes at the bottom screaming in loud colors and gleaming with bling.

  Oh, fuck me.

  When I dash to my room, the few garments she’d moved into my personal space are all gone, too. Her toiletries are missing from the bathroom. Her scent still lingers…but the woman herself is utterly gone.

  This cannot be the end of us.

  With shaking hands, I pluck my phone from my pocket and call her. Her voice mail greeting plays right away, telling me to leave a message. I squeeze the device as shock rolls over me. She won’t even talk to me, hear my side of…whatever’s gone wrong? No, she’s simply picked up and left. I’m still not sure why. Yes, Cliff was a prick and painted our marriage as a business transaction, but doesn’t she see that he just wanted to get the deal done and was willing to say pretty much anything to both make it happe
n and be the bigwig?

  Maybe not.

  “Baby, where are you? What’s going on? You’re upset and I want to talk this out. I want to fix it. I want—”

  “You can’t,” Harlow says suddenly, stepping from the shadows to lean against the doorframe.

  She’s changed out of her killer red dress and now wears a T-shirt that says BE BRAVE. BE BOLD. BE YOU. A Harlow with a message on her chest is a Harlow with something on her mind.

  I pocket my phone and approach her. “What do you mean, I can’t? Are you saying I can’t fix it? Baby, Cliff is an asshole and—”

  “I know. But I understand everything now.” She sighs and sways into the room.

  “What does that mean? You don’t understand anything if you think I used you to make this deal happen. Newsflash: it was already on the table before you walked into my life.

  “But you needed me to improve your image after Mercedes Fleet started alleging you’re the hottest lay outside of porn and that you two are having a love child.”

  That might be true but… “I didn’t use you.”

  “Maybe not. Probably not.” She presses her lips together in regret. “But the whole drive here and the time I spent packing up, I couldn’t stop wondering if I was just a smokescreen to you. A way to get ahead in business. I tried to talk myself out of it. You’re not my father and all that. But what I ultimately realized is that I’m not ready to trust anyone that completely, least of all myself. So…Maxon came by and took all my things. Griff is on his way to pick me up. I’ll return the money you paid me for speech services, and you don’t owe me anything more when we divorce. Don’t worry. I won’t rock your boat and start proceedings until our anniversary. You’ll be great in the broadcasting booth, I’m sure. I believe in you.”

  I’m crushed and so fucking confused. “No. No, baby… I believe in you.” I grab her shoulders. “Don’t leave. I love you. I—”

  “And I can’t guarantee I’ll ever be whole for you, so it’s better if I let you go now. Before I hurt you any more.”

  “What does that mean? You are whole. You’re everything I need. We’ve been doing great until tonight and I don’t understand.”

  Harlow sits on the side of the bed and closes her eyes. “I owe you an explanation. I didn’t tell you everything about my miscarriage.” She lets out a rough breath. “When I went away to college, my dad got me a part-time job with a man named Jeremy Ronald. He had a small company with a unique computer technology my father wanted to launch big and exploit. I didn’t know when I walked in the door that talks had been stalled for months. Or that I was butter meant to grease the wheels so they’d start to turn again. My father just told me to work for the man and ‘be nice.’”

  “He pimped you out?” I know that’s what she means and I’m instantly horrified. She was barely more than a child.

  “See, you understood that much quicker than I did. I started that job with all intentions of being the best assistant he could imagine and giving him my all. I just didn’t know he didn’t mean behind a computer, but on my back.” She frowns, not quite looking at me. “I was young, and he was handsome, charismatic. When he made a pass at me, I was dumb enough to be flattered. He wasn’t married, and so what if he was older than me?”

  “How old?” I snap. It’s all I can do to hold on to my temper. Because I know where this story is going and I want to kill this man I’ve never met.

  “Thirty. I was eighteen. He seemed so worldly and funny…” An acidic, self-deprecating twist of her lips wrings out my heart. “And I couldn’t believe that a man like that thought I was beautiful and interesting. The love of his life, he said. Yeah, I was that stupid.”

  “Never stupid. You were naive, baby. Trusting.”

  She finally looks at me, and I see something so vulnerable on her face it hurts me. For the first time, I see the most fragile parts of Harlow. And I see how close she is to breaking apart.

  “I was a virgin,” she whispers.

  Oh, fuck. “Baby, I’m so sorry. You deserved better than to have your father sell out your innocence for a business deal.”

  “It’s actually worse than that. Before I left for college, he insisted I go on the pill.” She swallows. “I took them faithfully and I was so shocked when, a few months into my affair with Jeremy, I realized I was pregnant. I told my mother first. She didn’t say a word, just handed the phone to my father, who congratulated me. I still didn’t get it, even then. Not for years, in fact. But I’ll get back to that.

  “After we hung up, my father called Jeremy, full of plastic outrage and demanding to know if my boss intended to ‘do the right thing.’ Jeremy was furious. The second I arrived at work, he ordered me into his office, called me a manipulative whore for trying to trap him, and fired me. I left in tears. And I never saw him again.” She drags in a breath as if she needs the courage to continue. “I quit school and transferred to a campus closer to home. I’d barely walked in the door when my father started in on me. Apparently, I was a stupid bitch because I couldn’t even manage to make Jeremy fall in lust with my pussy long enough to get the deal done. Two days later, I miscarried.”

  Fury roils and bubbles inside me. I should never have let that bastard leave our wedding reception alive.

  But right now, Harlow needs me more than I need to right her wrongs.

  “Listen to me. Your father took advantage of you. He’s a sociopathic bastard who doesn’t deserve a daughter as wonderful as you. You’re funny and beautiful and so smart.”

  “Not smart enough. I let him manipulate me twice. Simon was his idea. I’d already decided not to go through with the wedding. I was only staying around long enough to let the video play so all of our guests would know exactly why I was running back down the aisle. As my father and I lined up at the back of the ballroom, he said he’d talked to Simon about my desire for a baby and that I should ignore my fiancé and stay off the pill. After all, the placebos he’d gotten me in college had very nearly done the trick. They would have if I’d just been a little better in the sack.”

  Shock pings through me. Who does that to their own daughter? The kind of man who sees her as nothing more than a bargaining chip in a quest to pad his bank account. Rage grips my throat, squeezes my chest. Death is too good for that man.

  Then I realize what she’s saying to me. “You were never a business deal to me. Ever.”

  She shrugs. “You’re probably telling me the truth, and I may very well wake up one day and regret this. But I’m not ready for unconditional trust. I don’t know when I will be. At least I leave understanding so much more about what love really means and with a baby finally on the way. I’m so much better for having known you. You’ll have moved on before I’m whole enough to think about love again. I hope you find the woman who’s worthy of you, Noah Weston. You deserve the best.”

  With an apology on her face, Harlow turns to go. My heart crashes against my ribs as I grab her wrists and tug her against me. “I have the best, damn it. I have the most amazing wife in the world. Don’t go. Please.”

  As I seize her mouth in a crushing kiss, I feel the wetness on her cheeks. Harlow is breaking both our hearts because she’s so afraid to believe in love, so afraid she’ll wind up used and alone.

  I clutch her, push my way into her mouth, and kiss her like I’m never letting go. She’s everything to touch, to taste. When I dig my fingers into her hair, I do it with a silent plea to stay and believe in herself. To believe in our love.

  Her body shudders as she kisses me in return and clings to me for a terrible, wonderful second. Then she steps back with a shake of her head and teary eyes that confess leaving me is destroying her.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I love you.”

  She tears the ring off her finger and lays it on my nightstand before whirling around to disappear, feet thudding as she runs down the stairs.

  I chase after her. “Harlow!”

  The front door slams. By the time I yank it open again
and follow her into the dark night, I’m too late. Griff is driving her away with a grimace and a wave of apology.

  I’m left in the driveway as I watch the taillights disappear, worrying I made the biggest mistake of my life by staying at that dinner tonight and wondering if I’ll ever hold my wife again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The last forty-eight hours have been an absolute daze. Harlow is gone. I keep turning around and expecting to see her glued to her video game or dancing as she preps a meal in the kitchen or scanning some textbook for clues about how to help my speech-anxiety screw-ups. But I find her gone every time, and the realization that she left flattens me all over again. The bed feels fucking empty. I’ve taken to sleeping on one of the sofas downstairs because I can’t be in the space where I once made love to Harlow without needing her again.

  I’ve called. I’ve apologized. I’ve explained. But my wife isn’t blaming me. She’s blaming herself. How do I fix that?

  Maxon came by my place yesterday to have a drink and a chat. He doesn’t know what happened or where Harlow’s head is, but he knows she’s torn up. Griff called this morning to gently troll for information. I didn’t tell either of them much. This is something my wife and I have to work out together.

  With every hour that drags by, I wonder if that’s possible.

  “I don’t want to pry,” Griff said in all sincerity when he rang. “But I’ve never heard my sister cry herself to sleep. She won’t say what happened, just that you two didn’t fight and it’s not your fault.”

  My options to help Harlow process are limited. I refuse to do something lame, like send her flowers. She might appreciate them for two seconds, but they won’t heal what hurts her. I’m not entirely sure what will, except maybe time, but that’s unacceptable. I don’t want to spend another moment without her. Maxon and Griff both seem to have overcome somewhat rocky upbringings with those selfish pieces of shit who raised them. Maybe…Harlow needs to talk to people who share her common experience, who have walked through the fire and come out whole in spite of it.