by Holly Rayner
“Okay?” he asked, eyes wide, a tentative smile pulling at his lips.
I nodded. “Yes, I’ll stay with you again.”
Julien picked me up before I even knew what was happening. He lifted me in the air, shouting and spinning around in a circle before setting me back down in front of him, his hips pressed against mine.
“Let’s go to the beach,” he said, beaming. “I have a private stretch of land with a great little beach house. It will be just the two of us.”
My knee-jerk reaction was to say no, I couldn’t go to the beach. I might have made it to Monaco, Julien might have saved me when I fell from his yacht, but I was still afraid of the ocean. My face must have revealed these feelings, because Julien’s smile faltered.
“Or, we can do something else,” he said. “I know it’s probably the last place you want to be.”
I shook my head. “I want to go to the beach with you, Julien. With you by my side, I think I’ll be okay.”
He smiled, grabbed my hand, and pulled me out of the room.
Chapter 19
Julien
We were halfway to the beach, with a picnic basket and a stack of blankets sitting in the backseat, when Ashlynn jolted next to me.
“You quit the race,” she said, staring straight out the windshield. “You forfeited the final heat of the FP100.”
“I did.”
“Oh my gosh,” she said, shaking her head as though trying to dispel a bad dream. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to realize that.”
“Well, we had more important things to iron out,” I said with a shrug as if it didn’t matter at all.
“The race was so important to you, though! It’s the whole reason I’m here in the first place. I can’t believe how much you gave up to come after me. It’s a big deal.”
I reached across the car and squeezed her hand. “You are a bigger deal. Besides, it will kill Alain if he wins without me racing. Everyone will speculate that he only won because yours truly wasn’t racing against him. In a way, that will be almost better than winning.”
“Wow, I’m learning new things about you already,” she said.
“Like what?”
“You are vindictive. Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
I laughed. “I don’t have a bad side.”
“But really, Julien.” She turned to me and ran a hand down my arm, her fingers tugging on the fabric of my shirt. “I’m sorry you had to quit the race. I shouldn’t have freaked out. If I hadn’t—”
“If you hadn’t,” I said, interrupting her, “there is no telling where we would be or what would have happened. But as it is, we are together and happy. I wouldn’t change that for the world.”
When we made it to the beach, the sun was just beginning to set behind the horizon, painting the water in streaks of orange and yellow. The sand was blue in the twilight, and off to the right, the city glowed with street lights and nightlife turning on for the evening.
“It’s beautiful,” Ashlynn said, her toes buried in the sand.
She looked out over the water and then tilted her head back, neck stretched out. Her hair tumbled back over her shoulder blades in loose waves. It had been pulled back into a low twist for the performance, but she’d taken it out in the car. She was still wearing the gown she’d performed in—a golden satin that flowed across her body and pooled around her feet like honey.
“You think so?” I asked, surprised.
She nodded. “I spent so much time being afraid of the water that I never stopped to notice how beautiful it could be.”
We spread a few blankets out in the sand and opened the basket. I used my pocket knife to cut off slices of cheese, which Ashlynn arranged on crackers, and then set out a bowl of fruit with a creamy dip.
“I think this is the best meal I’ve had in Monaco,” Ashlynn said, swirling a strawberry in the dip before biting off the end, pink juice dripping down her chin.
“What about all of your room service breakfasts at the hotel? Or the restaurant in the cliffside I took you to your first night here? Or the restaurant two nights ago where you stole all of the appetizers?”
Ashlynn seemed to think about it, her lips twisting to one side of her face, and then she shook her head. “No, this is still the best.”
“Well, remind me of that next time we go out. Picnic dinners are much cheaper than restaurants,” I teased.
Ashlynn picked up her plastic glass of wine and took a sip before turning to me. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course,” I said. “You can ask me anything.”
“How much money do you have?”
I coughed slightly on my own sip of wine.
“I don’t mean to be rude, and I know it isn’t polite to ask people about their income,” she said, the words tumbling out of her nervously. “Obviously, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. It’s really none of my business.”
“You want a ballpark figure?” I asked.
She shrugged, and then after thinking about it for a moment, nodded.
“Well, between the hotels, the yacht business, and sponsorships and winnings from racing, I do pretty well for myself,” I said, trying to figure out how to delicately deliver this information.
“Well, I’d managed to gather that much on my own,” she said with a laugh. “The yacht kind of gave it away.”
I smiled nervously. “Ballpark figure…there are nine zeroes after the number.”
Her brow furrowed adorably. “Does that include cents? You know, period and then two more zeroes?”
I shook my head and her eyes widened. She looked out across the water, studying the surf. I could tell by the thin line of her mouth that she was concentrating hard, and I wished humans had thought bubbles, so I could know what she was thinking.
“Nine?” she asked after a few minutes.
I laughed. “Yes, nine. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, totally fine.” She waved me away and nodded emphatically. “This is completely normal. I'm great.”
“We are still the same people we were two minutes ago.”
I was trying to stay calm, but I was also panicking that this moment would change things between us. I’d seen the way Ashlynn had reacted to being paid $200,000 for the performance. I knew that was a huge amount of money to her. Hearing my net worth was probably earth-shattering.
“I don’t want this number to change things between us,” I said softly.
Ashlynn lifted herself up on her knees and crawled towards me, kneeling in front of me. She grabbed my hands and looked into my eyes. There was a line of gold around her pupils before it transitioned into green.
“Of course this doesn’t change anything between us, Julien. I’m just trying to absorb that you are the richest person I’ve ever met. As soon as I’m done absorbing, it will be absorbed, and we can move on with our lives.”
“Our lives?” I asked, eyebrow raised.
She shook her head and smiled. “You are impossible. I was about to get on a flight back home only a few hours ago. And I just found you you’re a billionaire. Yet still, here you are, trying to trick me into making a big commitment.”
I grabbed her arms and pulled her towards me, rolling us both down onto the blanket so we were on our sides looking at one another.
“I’m not trying to trick you. Just trying to work out how you feel.”
“I told you how I feel,” she said. “I like you. A lot. More than seems possible for the amount of time we’ve known one another.”
I reached out and tucked some stray stands of hair behind her ear. “I knew you were special the first time I ever saw you.”
“People always say that, but I never believe it,” she said. “I thought you were incredibly handsome the first time we met, but I didn’t have any idea that I’d ever even see you again, let alone end up laying on the beach next to you in Monaco.”
“Well, perhaps that just means I like you more than you like me,” I teased
. “Because I knew right away. The spotlight on the stage turned on, and when you stepped into it, I felt like the world stopped spinning. I won’t say it was love at first sight, because I know you would probably make fun of me, but it was something awfully similar. You took my breath away.”
She wrinkled her nose, but I could also see the amusement in her eyes. She was flattered, even if she didn’t entirely believe me.
“I don’t believe in love at first sight.”
“Have you been in love before?” I asked.
When explaining why she was freaking out back at the hotel, she’d mentioned being divorced. That had been a new piece of information. I’d never suspected for a second that she had been married. And now, I found myself fascinated with the idea of who that man could be. What kind of man could have won her heart?
She looked up at me, self-conscious, and nodded. “Once. At least, I think.”
“With your ex-husband?” I asked.
“I was going to tell you about him,” she said, talking quickly. “But there just never seemed to be a good time.”
I lifted myself up on my elbow and reached out to run a hand across her cheekbone. “You don’t owe me an explanation. Everyone has a past. Lord knows I do. If you don’t judge me for mine, I won’t judge you for yours.”
A weight seemed to lift from her shoulders as I spoke. She sighed and nodded, and I pulled her into my chest, tucking her head beneath my chin. We stayed that way for a few minutes, the only sounds our breathing and the rush of the ocean against the shore.
Then, she began to speak.
“Jonathan and I got along really well. We didn’t fight, and we had a lot of the same values. Life with him was easy and it made sense, so I convinced myself it was love. When things started getting bad, I thought it would just be a rough patch. But then, we started to fight, and I realized more and more that I didn’t care about making up with him. I didn’t mind when we weren’t talking to one another. In fact, it was kind of nice to have the time to myself. I think that was when I realized that, even if I had loved him before, I didn’t anymore. So, I asked for a divorce.”
“That’s brave,” I said, kissing her hair. “Being willing to shake up your entire life like that. A lot of people aren’t as brave, and they stay in relationships they hate, trying desperately to make them work.”
“Have you ever done that?” she asked.
I shook my head. “As you may have heard, I was a bit of a player.”
“You told me to forget all of those rumors,” she said. “So, consider them forgotten. Explain your story to me like I’ve never heard it before. Tell me your version.”
She looked so sincere. Her eyes were wide and curious, her mouth pinched into a tiny smile. And I knew, in that moment, I loved her. It had been true for a while, but in that second, seeing her look up at me that way, all my doubts vanished.
The sun was nearly below the horizon, now. Shadows cut across the beach and our skin, plunging us into a hazy kind of darkness, but I could still see the outline of Ashlynn next to me. Could still make out the red of her lips and the green of her eyes in the last vestiges of sunlight.
“My parents were a very happy couple. Almost too happy. Even as a young kid, I knew I’d be beyond lucky to find a love like they had. But that didn’t stop me from looking. I wanted to settle down with someone and build a life together. In some ways, I think I loved harder because I wanted my relationships to be like my parents’. I fell too easily, convinced myself that any flaws were quirks or obstacles, but never deal-breakers. Eventually, though, I’d realize how wrong things were. It usually didn’t take long. Just long enough for the relationship to become comfortable. For the woman to begin depending on me, counting on me to be there. And then, I’d split.”
I lowered my head. I still felt bad about the way some of my relationships had ended. In the same way I fell in love quickly, I fell out of love quickly. It would be a single conversation telling them it was over, and that was that. A clean break felt like the easiest way to go.
“Don’t get me wrong, I was also a bit of a playboy,” I said with a chuckle. “Especially in my twenties. I had an up-and-coming racing career, plus a few businesses that were taking off. It made me quite a hit with the female population of Monte Carlo, and I may have taken full advantage of that.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Ashlynn teased with a shrug.
“But that lifestyle soured quickly,” I admitted. “The parties and the women were only fun for a short amount of time, and then they became monotonous. I hated starting over with a new relationship every other weekend, but most of the women I met during that time weren’t interested in anything long-term. Everything felt surface-level, and after a while, I wanted depth. But by then, no one believed me. My reputation had been set, and no matter what I’ve done to correct things, it still follows me around like a raincloud over my head.”
“I’m sorry I believed it,” Ashlynn whispered, twining her fingers around mine. “It wasn’t fair of me to judge you without giving you a chance to explain.”
I shook my head. “Don’t apologize. It wasn’t fair of me to bring you into my world without telling you the whole truth. We’d only known one another for a few days. I would have believed the lies, too, if our situations had been reversed.”
“Still,” she said, scooching closer to me. “You had only been kind to me. I let someone else’s opinion of you cloud my own judgment.”
She smelled warm and sweet, and the feeling of her skin sliding against mine sent my heart racing. I swallowed back the nerves bubbling up inside of me.
“I want you to know something, Ashlynn.”
She looked up at me, her face expectant, a small smile on her plump lips. I blinked, hoping to capture the moment in my mind in case things didn’t go the way I hoped. I wanted to remember her just like this.
“I wanted a serious relationship before I even met you. I’d wanted it for a long time, but it didn’t seem possible for me. As I said, I’d dated a lot of women. And never did I feel like I could commit to them long-term. I never felt about them the way I’d always imagined I’d feel about the woman I loved. Until you.”
Ashlynn took a sharp inhale and bit her bottom lip, her eyes going wide. I continued.
“But then, I met you. I liked you from the first moment I saw you, and my feelings have only increased with every moment since then. I know we still need to get to know one another properly, but I know enough about you right now to say that I have found a woman I could see spending forever with, and that woman is you.”
Ashlynn blinked back tears and let out her breath before throwing herself at me. I rolled onto my back and she leaned forward and kissed my chin and my jawline and my cheeks.
“Does this mean you feel the same way?” I asked with a laugh.
She pulled back, a wide smile spread across her face. “Of course, I feel the same way. There’s no denying it—I love you, Julien.”
I’d waited so long to hear a woman say those words to me. And Ashlynn made them sound better than I ever could have imagined. I reached out and stroked my thumb along the line of her cheekbone, brushing away a happy tear as I went. And then, I pulled her down onto me.
We kissed like we were drowning and the other was our oxygen. We kissed like it was the last thing we’d ever do.
The sun had fully set, and with the city behind the cliffs, the beach was almost pitch-black. The only light came from the distant stars and the reflection of the moon off the water. Unable to use our eyes, we explored each other with our hands, tracing the landscape of one another like we wanted to memorize it.
The wind off the water was chilly, but we wrapped more tightly around one another, insulating ourselves from reality. We made love on the blankets in the sand until we were too exhausted to move. The beach house was only a hundred yards down the beach, but we slept on the sand, Ashlynn tucked into my body like she was made for that exact purpose.
Chapter 20
&nbs
p; Ashlynn
The gentle push-and-pull noises of the ocean woke me up. For a second, I thought I was back in my Vegas apartment, hearing traffic pass the window. So, what a relief it was to open my eyes and realize I was sleeping on a beach in Monaco, being held close by the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen.
I twisted around so I was facing Julien. His eyelids fluttered, but just as quickly, he slipped back into a restful sleep. He’d more than earned it. The night before had been incredible. Without the sun to track the time, it was impossible to know how long we’d spent exploring one another, tasting each other, enjoying each other. But suffice to say, it was a long time.
We had exhausted ourselves in conversation. There were only so many ways to confess your love. So, we’d decided to show one another.
Love. Just the thought of it sent a shiver of contentment through my body. I loved this man. Deeply, truly loved him.
I ran my eyes down the straight slope of his nose, the broad span of his cheekbones, the square cut of his jaw. He was mathematically, artistically perfect. It seemed impossible that someone so handsome could also have such a good heart. But he did. He had the best heart.
I knew I was jumping into things with Julien. If I was being practical, I would have held off on telling him how I felt. I would have spent weeks, maybe even months, studying him, testing him, getting to know him. But I felt like I did know him. In all the ways that counted, at least.
Did I know his favorite food? No. Or what side of the bed he preferred? No. But I knew that he was a born leader and a kind boss. He liked to see a project through from start to finish, and he wouldn’t rest until everything was done right. He wasn’t impulsive about everything, but when he made up his mind about something, that was it—he wanted it. Our relationship was proof of that.
I knew Julien in all the ways that were important, and all of the little things would come with time. It would make the time we spent together that much more special. Every day would be a day spent trying to fall deeper in love with one another. And I couldn’t think of a better adventure than that.
