Yes, Mr. Van Der Wells (Not Another Billionaire Romance)

by S. Ann Cole

  TWENTY-FOUR

  SOMEONE IS TRYING to pry my phone from my hand.

  No. No. Don’t take my phone. Noah hasn’t replied yet.

  Eyes snapping open, I jerk my hand back, fingers tightening around the phone.

  Noah. He’s standing by the bed with a blanket over his arm. Unbuttoned shirt hanging out of his pants, sleeves shoved up to his elbows, face uninviting.

  “I was trying to make you comfortable,” he explains. “Because this position you’re in looks…not comfortable.

  True, I’m still in a half-sitting position up against the headboard, feet drawn up to my chest, cheek pressed to my knees, phone lodged in my fist.

  “Oh,” I mumble, stretching out of the crooked position, opting not to divulge why I’m like this, with the phone, because I was waiting for his call or text.

  Before setting the phone down on the nightstand, I light up the screen to check the time. Almost midnight. I remember taking a shower in Noah’s bathroom after class, dwarfing myself in one of his T-shirts and climbing back onto his high bed to watch re-runs of Two and a Half Men. I remember Gloriel knocking on the door, poking her head in to tell me dinner was ready, and me insisting I wasn’t hungry. I remember hearing commotion downstairs, Sienna’s voice tangled with Gloriel’s and Kiera’s. I remember Muscles calling to check on me, and Kiera insisting she was sleeping over. I remember being annoyed with both her and Gloriel for acting as if I had a heart attack, when all I did was faint. Everyone faints. Even goats.

  I remember checking my phone about 68726200546881.8787 times for a call-back or text message from Noah.

  Now here he stands at a quarter to midnight, rumpled, that inimitable scent still clinging to him. “Why were you out so late?” And before he can answer, I remember. Sienna. “You slept with her, didn’t you? You slept with Sienna? She came here earlier. Did you two meet up?”

  Noah stares at me, the skin around his eyes tightening. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “No, I—”

  “I got news you collapsed after seeing an engagement ring your scumbag of an ex had delivered to my building, and you think I met up and had sex with my ex-wife?”

  “You own the building?” I suspected he owned it, but hadn’t known for sure.

  This makes his jaw pop. “Yes, I was with Sienna. I pounded her breathless. Just the way she likes it. Rough and limitless.” He throws the blanket to the bed, the thick material hitting me on the hip, and stalks off to his en suite bathroom.

  For a long time, I stare at the spot he’s been in, hot, stinging tears slowly blurring my vision. Until I hear the shower come on.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ Reckless Lotty murmurs, rolling her eyes at me.

  ‘No. He’s an asshole,’ Rational Lotty defends me. ‘All of them. The sharp suits and the rugged, biker-boot-wearing bad boys. They’re all assholes.’

  ‘And you’re a bucket of chicken!’ Reckless Lotty fires back.

  ‘Real mature, Reckless.’ Rational Lotty mumbles. ‘Real mature.’

  Blinking up at the ceiling so my tears don’t fall, I toss the blanket off me and clamber out of his stupid so-comfortable-you-don’t-want-to-get-out bed. Snatching up my belongings, I stomp out of his bedroom, down the stairs, through the dark, quiet house, and straight into my room.

  All day. All day I waited for him. Made a fool of myself admitting I missed him. Fell asleep with the goddamn phone in my hand like a pimply, brace-faced thirteen-year-old with a senseless crush. And then he shows up, face all grim and tight, acting like a world-class asshat! I change my mind. I don’t love him anymore. I hate him. I hate his stupid face and his stupid smell and his stupid love-making endurance and his stupid touch and his stupid kiss and his stupid everything.

  How can he not care about what happened today? How can he not ask me how I’m doing? How can he not reply to my freaking text? I suppose I should be glad he showed his true colors early on before I made the mistake of confessing how I feel about him.

  He might be Noah today, but the Nate in him will always be in love with Sienna Sullivan. I can hate her until I’m blue in the face, but it won’t change the fact that he gave her his heart first. And by the looks of things, he doesn’t intend on taking it back from her. Does he have anything at all left to give to me, then?

  My phone pings and I quickly snatch it up.

  Noah: Come back here. We’re sleeping in my bed tonight.

  Me: Go 2 hell!

  Noah: Been there. Not all it’s cracked up to be. Vastly overrated.

  Me: Well then, climb right back into Sienna’s greatly overused tomb she calls a vagina.

  Noah: After being inside you, I find that “tomb” immensely overrated, too. Come back to bed.

  Me: I’m already in bed.

  Noah: MY bed.

  Me: NO, Mr. Van Der Wells. I refuse 2 share my pillow with an insensitive jerkhole.

  Noah: Correction. *I’ll* be sharing MY pillow with an infuriatingly stubborn, pepper-tongued she-demon.

  Me: Keep at it & I’ll set ur useless dick on fire.

  Noah: Come back to bed, Lotty.

  Me: Go. To. Hell.

  A full sixty seconds passes without a reply. I get to my feet, suddenly aware of how deafeningly quiet the house is. He’s coming for me. I just know it.

  Taking preemptive action, I storm out of the room in fake rage, this way it will appear as if I’m the one who’s going for him.

  We meet halfway in the living room, stopping five feet apart. We stare.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were engaged to him?” he breaks the silence first, his tone straddling the line of the emotion I’m feigning. Let’s face it, I’ve been over my rage the second I read his text, his words flat-out confirming my vajayjay is better than Sienna’s.

  “Because I wasn’t engaged,” I grit out. “I only said yes because I know I didn’t have the option to say no.”

  “Yes means yes. You were engaged to that tool.”

  “Hey, don’t give me hell about a simple omission of truth! You’re the one who’s still wrapped around your ex-wife’s pinky finger.”

  The bastard actually laughs at this. “You’ve got it so wrong.” He takes two steps closer. “Lotty, I’ve been through with Sienna since that night you walked out of your cab, and I saw you and realized I found you.”

  “Liar!” I jab a finger through the air at him. “The same evening I moved in, you had sex with her. She slept over! What, do you have short-term memory or are you bipolar?”

  “I didn’t have sex with her. She was here that night along with Q. We were discussing business. She was jet-lagged, and she drank on top of it, so she fell asleep on us in the middle of the meeting. Q took her up to my room to let her rest. When we wrapped up and he left, I came to your room. I spent the rest of night in your bed, and you didn’t even know it. You were out like you haven’t slept in weeks. It’s like you were drugged.” He shakes his head at me. “That night I slept with you, Lotty. Not Sienna.”

  What a load of bull cracker! Does he really expect me to believe that? “Guess what?” I say, taking a step closer. “I don’t believe you.”

  An insouciant shrug. “You do or you don’t, you’re still sleeping with me tonight.”

  And I want to sleep with him. Of course, I do. Not just because his bed is so much more comfortable than mine, but because I miss him, and I feel safe with him, and I won’t think about Andrew.

  Eyes dropping to the floor, to our bare feet, I wrap my arms around myself. “You didn’t even call to ask how I was doing.”

  Another step in from him. “That’s because I couldn’t think straight enough to call or text, Lotty. So I let Muscles do it. Ask Kiera how many times I made Muscles call her to find out how you were doing.” He rubs a hand down his face. “More than the engagement ring delivery happened today, okay? My mood was shit long before I got the news about the ring.”

  My head sweeps up. “What? What happened?”

  Uncertainty s
hadows over his face for a moment, and he shakes his head. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Right now, I need some sleep, and in order for me to get that, I need you in my bed.”

  One eyebrow cocks up at him. “What, I’m your sleep-aid now?”

  Two additional steps from him completely seals the gap, and one big but tender palm cups the side of my face, the pad of his thumb passing over my bottom lip. “You’re paranoid and cynical of me only because you have no idea how deep under my skin you’ve wormed. Only because you have no idea how I feel for you.”

  “You never tell me.”

  “That’s because I’m a man of action, not of words.”

  “But you never show me, either.”

  “That’s because you won’t let me.”

  “What if I fell in love with you, and you fell in love with me?”

  “What of it?”

  “I don’t know. I…what if…”

  “It’s not a matter of if, Lotty.” A smile tugs at his lips. “Come to be bed with me?”

  My bosom lifts and plummets as I heave out a sigh. “Only because you asked this time. You were being bossy before, and you know I hate that.”

  He sweeps me up mid-way through my reply, as though it wouldn’t have mattered if I said yes or no. “Let me make it up to you?”

  “How? Your money can’t buy you out of this, hot shot.”

  Me in his arms, he heads for the stairs. “By making love to you. Slow, sweet, and long.”

  I let out a dramatic gasp. “You can do slow and sweet? This I’ve got to see.”

  “No,” he corrects, “this you will experience.”

  With that, he takes me to his room. Lays me down gently on his bed. Strips me. Kisses me. Teases me.

  And I part my legs for him, like I’ve wanted to do from day numero uno.

  A relentless knocking hauls me from the oh-so peaceful depths of slumber. I grumble incoherent things into the pillow, groggily pressing back into the protective man-heat behind me.

  “Bet that’s Mom,” the man-heat mumbles into my neck.

  The words aren’t completely out of his mouth when there’s another round of knocking accompanied by, “Charlotte, I know you’re in there!”

  Giggling, I turn over on my side, coming face to face with the man-heat. “You’re in trouble again, Mr. Van Der Wells.”

  One lazy eye pops open. “You’re the one in trouble. Last time, I told her, quite candidly, that she needs to get used to the idea. By the tone of her voice, I’m thinking you told her differently?”

  “I didn’t tell her anything,” I quickly refute. “She voiced her opinions and I just listened. I didn’t even nod. No way I’d make a promise I knew I couldn’t keep.”

  Man-heat’s second eye opens and a smiles forms. “A promise you couldn’t keep, huh? Are you saying you couldn’t have resisted me even of you tried?”

  My sleep-swollen eyes kiss the heavens. “Jeez, when did you become so annoyingly conceited?”

  “Ever since that first time you opened up for me and made me feel like a king.” His hand snakes over my hips and around to my bum, grabs, and then presses me closer, his Khal Drogo greeting my Daenerys with a breath-quickening flush.

  As our lips meet, we hear a key turning in the lock and both jerk apart, having only enough time to cover ourselves before Gloriel bursts through the door.

  Her bristling frame looms in the doorway, lips pressed tight. “Just what I thought.”

  Cheeks flushing red, I bite my lip and bury my face into Noah’s neck, shifting slightly so I’m peeking from Noah’s neck with half an eye.

  As his hand curls protectively around me, he addresses his mother. “Mom, I gave you spare keys for emergencies. Not for you to barge into rooms you’re locked out of on purpose.”

  Gloriel’s hands settles on her hips. “You were ignoring me. Your mother!”

  “I was sleeping.”

  Her scowl shifts to me. “Charlotte, why are you doing this? Why are you wasting your life? Even with the hell you’re going through right now, you still think it’s sage to jump into things with another—much older—man instead of focusing on who you are and where you are going in life? You’re so young. Give yourself some time.”

  Noah’s entire body goes rigid, and his arm falls from around me as he sits up. “Mom, get out.”

  “She’s nineteen, Nate.”

  “She turns twenty tomorrow, in fact. And how many times do I have to tell you? Noah. My name is Noah.”

  This time I go rigid. Reaching for my phone from the nightstand, I check the date. Friday, 21 April. A day before my birthday.

  “I gave birth to you, goddammit! I named you Nate! Nate Van Der Wells. Don’t you dare force me to call you anything else. I won’t do it.” Her eyes come back to me, this time softened. “Charlotte, sweetheart, why didn’t you tell me your birthday was coming up?”

  Because I didn’t remember? Holy wow. This isn’t happening. I’m nineteen—well, twenty now—and it’s my birthday tomorrow and I didn’t remember? Doesn’t that happen to like old, senile people? I mean, how did I not remember my freaking birthday?!

  After my prolonged silence, Gloriel waiting expectantly, Noah turns to me, his eyes warm and understanding. “You didn’t remember, did you?”

  I just blink at him, and a tear sneaks out. Too shocked to form words.

  Gloriel throws her hands up. “See? This is what I’m talking about. Nineteen and she didn’t even remember her own birthday. She has too much going on. Nate. She needs breathing space. She need to distance herself from—”

  “Give us some privacy, Mom.” He lets out an impatient sigh. “Please.”

  Gloriel glances from me to him, hesitant. Her concern for me is endearing. If only my mother had shown even a modicum of that concern for me when I used go home with black-eyes and busted lips…

  Eventually, she, without another word, turns and leaves, closing the door behind her.

  Noah’s gaze locks on mine, hand to the side of my face, thumb wiping the trace of my lone tear. “Hey…”

  “Do you think something is wrong with me? Do you think I’m, like, sick or something? I…how is it possible that I didn’t…do you…” Words become impossible as tears spring and spill, my heart drumming, panicking.

  “Hey. Lotty.” Noah pulls me closer, both hands coming up to cup my face, keeping it in place. He’s not being gentle. It sobers me. I blink at him. “Snap out of it. Nothing is wrong with you. You just got out of an abusive relationship, your mother died and you’ve yet to grieve her, you’re writing college papers, cleaning and cooking for me, training to protect yourself, all the while worrying when your degenerate ex is gonna strike. Dealing with all that, forgetting your birthday is understandable. It doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.

  Chewing on his words like a morphine capsule, I nod, focusing on my breathing, cajoling my heart to calm down. “You think…you think Gloriel is right? You think maybe I need…space to breathe?”

  Noah’s jaw works back and forth as he studies me, his thumb tapping against my cheekbone, unconsciously it appears. “Do you think you need space?”

  “I…” I shake my head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t think I know what’s good for me right now. I’m just doing things.”

  I see the hurt before he masks it. Noah is serious about me. He wants things with me. Long-term things. And here I am telling him “I’m just doing things.”

  He leans in, presses his lips to mine, tastes me, parts, rests his forehead to mine, heaving out a sigh that reeks of defeat before drawing back from me and scrubbing his hands down his face. “If you need space, I’ll give it to you. But not until your ex is dealt with, all right? Once he’s no longer a threat, I’ll deposit a bonus into your account, and you can leave. Go wherever you want…d-do whatever you want.” He squeezes his eyes shut, as if those two lines were the hardest he’s ever verbalized.

  I only nod; afraid
some other thoughtless crap will tumble out and inadvertently hurt him further.

  Eyes shifting past me to the bedside clock, he mumbles, “Guess our morning run is shot. I have to get to work and you have to pack, so…”

  He hops out of bed and heads off to the bathroom bare-butted.

  Pack? What does he mean? Is he kicking me out? He just said he’ll wait until Andrew is no longer a threat, so why do I have to pack now?

  “Hey,” I call, sitting up straight, “what do you mean I have to pack?”

  His beautiful dark head with arresting green eyes pops around the bathroom door. “Oh, I didn’t tell you? We’re traveling this evening. So, pack for the weekend.” The head disappears before I can get another question out.

  Traveling? Where?

  Leaping out of bed, barely contained excitement has me skipping to the bathroom. Back to me, he’s tweaking the complicated switches for the rain shower to get the perfect temperature.

  “Travel where?” I ask.

  He turns to me, sees me nude and quickly turns away.

  Whoa. What the hell was that all about? We had long, passionate sex last night and suddenly he can’t look at me naked?

  “Ah, San Francisco.”

  That’s where my brother, Graham, and Dad’s first wife, Sarah, lives. “San Francisco? Why?”

  “Because it’s your birthday. We’re celebrating all weekend.”

  “Just you and me?”

  “And Kiera and Q and Muscles. Also extra bodyguards, just as a precaution.”

  A grin overtakes my face and I begin moving to him, through the steam that’s swiftly filling the room, fogging the mirrors, and circle my arms around his middle. “Can I give you an early thank you? I haven’t traveled in years.”

  At my touch, he jerks and twists away from me, backing up and holding a hand out to keep me at arm’s length. “Lotty, stop.”

  “What?” I stop. Frown. “Why?”

  One hand rakes back through his hair. “Why? I don’t know, maybe because you just admitted that I’m just a phase? That you ‘don’t know what you’re doing, you’re just doing things.’ In essence, you don’t know what you’re doing with me. I don’t want to be some phase to you, Lotty. I want to be your rock, your solid, your constant. The one who makes it all better each time you slip, fear, or hurt. I want to be your goddamn hero.”