My New Year Fling: A Sexy Christmas Billionaire Romance (Love Comes Later Book 2)

by Serenity Woods

  “Katoa!” Ben’s eyes nearly fall out of his head. “But that’s the biggest computer technology firm in New Zealand.”

  I shrug modestly.

  Lara’s jaw has dropped again. “Oh my God, Max is going to be absolutely green! He loves Dark Robot. We both do. You really invented it?”

  “I did.”

  “How did you two meet?” Ben asks me.

  For the first time, I’m tongue-tied. We’ve hardly dated in the traditional sense, and I can’t even explain to myself what our relationship is, let alone Jess’s daughter.

  Jess just smiles. “We actually haven’t known each other that long—we met on the beach, where you came to see me, Lara. Rich was staying in the bach next to mine.”

  They both look surprised. “Really?” Lara says. “So you’ve only known each other a few weeks.”

  “Yes, although it feels like a lot longer.” Jess reaches out for my hand, and I curl my fingers around hers. “It must seem strange to you two,” she says, “when you’ve been together for so long.”

  “You look very happy,” Lara says softly. “I’m pleased you’ve found someone.”

  Jess’s gaze meets mine. Is it me, or is the sun exceptionally bright today? I feel as if everything is sparkling and full of hope. I’ve never felt this before, this sense of excitement with a woman, this desire to hang onto her and not let her go.

  It occurs to me that I’m in love.

  It shocks me a little. Before I met Jess, I thought I loved Teddi, but I never felt like this. My feelings for Teddi were so tangled up with what happened with Will that no matter how much I tried to see them, they were tarnished, like an old mirror. The mirror I’m looking in now is highly polished and almost blinds me. I can see our reflection clearly, Jess and me, and our smiles are dazzling. I know that love doesn’t come with a guarantee, and what we have is still raw and unrefined. We’ve a long way to go yet. But the way ahead is clear, and I’m excited to start out on that journey.

  We all talk for a bit longer, and then Lara and Ben decide it’s time they started heading back. I shake hands with them both, and Lara approaches Jess and shyly asks for a hug. She lifts her arms around Jess’s neck, and the two of them hug for a long, long time. Ben looks emotional, and tears prick my eyes.

  “I’m so glad you came to the beach that day,” Jess whispers.

  “Me too.” Lara buries her face in her mother’s neck. “Can I see you again?”

  “Of course. Whenever you want.”

  “I’ll ring you.” Lara pulls back, sniffing. She picks up Jess’s painting and studies it for a moment. “I’ll show it to Max. And I’ll tell him about Dark Robot.” She throws me a wry grin. “I think it might convince him to come and see you.”

  The two of them leave, waving until they’re out of the gate.

  We watch them go, then return to the deck, holding hands. Jess sinks into a chair, and I sit beside her.

  “That went well, don’t you think?” I ask her.

  “Better than I could have hoped.” She looks at me, and her eyes are glistening. “Thank you for everything. For being here with me. For encouraging me. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “You would have. You’re far braver than you give yourself credit for.”

  She looks away, to the sheep on the hills. “Maybe. I would have thought at thirty-five that we should have everything figured out, and we should know ourselves inside out, you know? But I’m still discovering things about myself. Still learning.”

  “I think we learn all our lives. And we change—we want different things when we’re in our thirties to what we want in our twenties.” I tip my head from side to side. “Or maybe we don’t. Everyone wants to be happy, don’t they? Everyone wants someone special, someone of their own. Someone to love.”

  Jess’s eyes meet mine, and we study each other for a long while.

  “It’s far too early for that,” she says.

  “I know.” I smile.

  Her cheeks flush. “You don’t know everything about me yet. I’m untidy. And I hate ironing.”

  “So do I.”

  “I’m grumpy in the morning until I have my coffee. I bite my nails when I get nervous. I get car sick sometimes. I—”

  I lean forward, slip my hand into her hair, and pull her toward me. Then I kiss her until she sighs and stops resisting, at which point I raise my head.

  “I look forward to being irritated by all those things,” I tell her, and I kiss her nose. I’m crazy about this girl. And something tells me that’s not going away anytime soon.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jess

  For the next couple of days, I feel as if I’m on a raft on a summer sea. The waves aren’t high or overwhelming, but they swoop me up on their peaks and then I sink into the troughs, out of control, unable to do anything but lie on the raft and let the sun and rain wash over me.

  From previous experience, I know that my emotions will settle, and there’s no point in trying to analyze them or force them into boxes. Like rivers, they’ll find their way to the sea, and I just have to wait.

  When Lara left, my first thought was that I’d rather be on my own, because I feel a need to retreat into my shell and withdraw while I inspect these new feelings. I don’t want to keep talking about them, or having to expose my raw nerve endings.

  As the days go by, though, I come to realize how much this man understands me. He talks when I want to talk, and when I don’t, he retrieves a book or gets his laptop and does some work while I gaze out of the window at the clouds or pick up my pencils and start sketching.

  He also encourages me out of the house, which is something I probably wouldn’t have done unless it was strictly necessary. He drives me out to Puketi Forest, and we spend an hour walking through the huge kauri trees and watching the fantails jumping around the branches. He takes me into Kerikeri to the quiet cafe in the tiny mall, with red bricks under our feet and bougainvillea threading through the latticework above our heads and filling the place with red petals, where we drink lattes and eat healthy chicken salads and then indulge in their special mint truffles. We go to Rainbow Falls and watch the water cascading down and the mad teenagers jumping off the edge, and when the sun comes out we gasp at the rainbow that arches across the falls.

  Rich lets me be me—good and bad. When I want to talk, he listens, and he gives me his honest opinion on what I say, as if I’m a wild horse on the hills, and he’s steering me gently back to the stable.

  I fight my emotion, and then one day the clouds gather, bunching and furling above our heads. The heavens open, pouring rain down across the land. It thunders on the tin roof and the plastic table and the wooden deck, and without asking, Rich grabs my sketchpad and sits me in a chair by the window, and says, “Paint it.”

  He knows the sound of the rain is filling my vision. Wordlessly, I take a pencil and begin sketching him where he’s sitting opposite me, framed by the beautiful garden. I sketch quickly, capturing shape rather than detail. Then I take my paints and work fast, filling the paper with the colors in my vision—the pinging of the rain on the tin producing small round dark-blue lights, the bang of it on the plastic table giving larger, light-blue bubbles, and the splats on the wooden deck producing orangey-brown ovals. When the wind swoops the rain against the glass, it makes me see tiny golden triangles. Emotion wells within me as the storm breaks, and I find that I’m crying as I finish the painting, overwhelmed as, for the first time, I let everything wash over me—Rich’s return, meeting Lara, the joy, the fear, the doubt, the hope that everything is going to be okay.

  I put down the brushes, and Rich comes over and takes my hand. He leads me to the bedroom and sits on the bed leaning back against the pillows, and I curl up next to him, finding comfort in the warmth of his arms as I calm.

  “Sorry,” I tell him once the tears have stopped flowing.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart. It was only a matter of time.” He kisses the top of my head.
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  “I don’t know what happened.”

  “The dam burst, that’s all. Do you feel better now?”

  I nod. I feel lighter, and it seems easier to breathe.

  Rich strokes my hair. “I’m glad.”

  I lift up onto an elbow to look at him. “What have I done to deserve you? I don’t understand why you’re here, with me. You should be with some rich bimbo who has her hair coiffured and who knows which fork to use at dinner.”

  He chuckles and holds my chin while he kisses me. “For a start, I don’t exactly mix in polite society. Most of my life is spent in a dark room with thirty or so guys staring at computer screens. And I’m attracted to you because you’re completely different to anyone else I’ve ever met. You know when Indiana Jones is looking for the Holy Grail? When there’s a whole table of glittering cups made of gold and set with precious stones, and then his gaze falls on the wooden one, and he realizes that’s the most precious of all?”

  A lump appears in my throat, but I try to make a joke of it. “You’re saying I’m plain, wooden, and simple?”

  “No, I’m being nerdy, but maybe that doesn’t translate to the general public. Let me put it this way. You’re like a daisy in a room full of diamonds.”

  “Are you trying to make me cry again?”

  “I want you to understand how I see you. You’re the most honest, truthful person I’ve met. I don’t mean telling the truth necessarily, I mean you’re true to yourself. Like King Lear, you know? Everything’s been stripped away, and there’s just you, and you’re not afraid to look in the mirror and see yourself in that raw, vulnerable state. You look yourself right in the eye and accept everything, every flaw—not that there are many—every mistake, everything that’s not perfect. Do you know what a rare gift that is?”

  Tears are rolling down my cheeks again. “Rich…”

  “I’m trying to say I love you.” He kisses me.

  My head spins. I’m conscious of the soft press of his lips on mine, the smell of his aftershave, the sound of the rain, now pattering lightly on the window.

  He lifts his head, and I look into his dark brown eyes.

  “You don’t have to—” he starts.

  “I love you too,” I say immediately. “But it’s too early.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m worried about you having money. I don’t know how I’m going to handle that. I wouldn’t expect you to spend anything on me.”

  “Not even if I wanted to?”

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  “It’s just money, Jess. It’s not love or compassion or gratitude, which are much greater gifts. Our society is one which relies on goods in exchange for coin, and it’s an extremely unbalanced system. Do you think the three of us at Katoa haven’t had long conversations about feeling guilty because we’ve become millionaires on the back of a computer game? We haven’t cured cancer. We’re not nurses or doctors—we haven’t stopped wars or saved the world. I wrote a bunch of code and people liked it. It’s not fair that I’m rich and there are ordinary people out there working hard every day of their lives and barely scraping by. So we do what we can. We all give to charity. We also help out a lot with the local universities and schools, paying for IT training and giving kids more opportunities to work with good computers, because that’s the way the world’s going, and they’re more likely to get jobs with those skills.”

  “I’m not saying you don’t deserve your money.” I don’t want him to think that because it’s not true. “As you said, I’m honest with myself and I’m embarrassed and ashamed that a small part of me is excited by the fact that you’re rich. I don’t like that about myself, and I’d hate it if you ever wondered deep down if I was with you for your money.”

  He rests his head on a hand and with the fingers of the other, he picks up strands of my hair and pulls them through his fingers. “As I told you, I come from a relatively poor background. My family’s big, and there was never much spare cash floating around. Christmas was about being with your folks and spending time with people who lived away, about going fishing and catching Christmas dinner, and partying and dancing. Gifts were few and far between. So yeah, it’s been good to have money. I’ve never lost that thrill of being able to go in a shop—any shop—and being able to buy what I want without thinking about it, or having to go check my bank balance first.”

  “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

  “It’s fucking amazing, and of course I don’t blame you for being excited at the thought. But you’re practically made of glass, Jess. Do you think I can’t see every little thought passing behind your eyes? Talk about wear your heart on your sleeve. If we date for a while, and then what we feel for each other starts to wane—which it won’t, by the way, I’m being hypothetical here—do you really think you’d be able to pretend you still loved me because you couldn’t give up the money?”

  “No,” I say, and smile.

  He lifts my hand and presses it to his lips. “I want to talk about where we go from here. Are you happy to talk about that?”

  I feel a swell of hope, and nod.

  “Obviously, it’s tricky, because you live here and I live near Auckland. But there’s an aerodrome on the North Shore—it’s called Dairy Flat Airfield. And I have a plane.”

  My eyebrows rise. “You have a plane?”

  “Yeah. Don’t look like that. It’s not a jumbo jet, it’s only a Cessna, but I have my pilot’s license.”

  “Did you fly up here?”

  “Yeah. So what I’m saying is that I want you to come and stay with me for a while. I want us to find out whether we think we can make a go of this, and we’ll only know if we spend some serious time together. But I don’t want you to panic. If at any time you feel the need to come here and have some time on your own, or you want to visit Lara, of course that’s fine and I’ll fly you straight back. What do you think?”

  I think that the idea of living with Rich sounds like heaven on earth, but I know I have to be practical. “It sounds lovely, but I really should get a job, and if I do, I can’t keep dashing off every five minutes.”

  “Well, this is part of the plan. Bear with me. If you’re serious about trying to sell your paintings, I think you need some time to create a portfolio. The husband of one of Teddi’s friends owns an art gallery, and I’m sure she’ll be able to put in a good word for you. How about we give it a month? Come and stay with me until February, and see what you can come up with in that time? I live right on the sea—you’ll have some marvelous views to paint.”

  I stare at him, unable to believe he’s offered something so fantastic, and so difficult to accept.

  My pride—such as it is—makes me feel as if I should turn him down. I have some savings, but I can’t imagine he’s going to let me pay rent, or go halves when we go to the supermarket. He’s basically saying I’ll be a kept woman, and that’s an odd thing to take in this day and age, especially when I’ve been fiercely independent for so many years. I’ll be beholden to him, and how’s that going to sit with my issue about being afraid that I’ll stay with him for his money?

  Even as the thought goes through my head, though, I know it’s a ridiculous one. Rich is right—if things cooled between us, there’s no way I’d continued to stay just because he’s wealthy. I’m not that kind of girl.

  What he’s saying is that he wants to get to know me better, and he wants to help me make something of myself, something special, that I haven’t had the chance to do up until now. I’ve done well on my own, but it’s been so hard, like climbing up a mountain, and it feels as if I’ve finally reached the summit.

  It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, and I’d be stupid to say no.

  So I don’t.

  “Yes,” I say, “I’ll come with you,” and I’m rewarded with the most beautiful, brilliant smile from this man who’s just told me he loves me. He loves me! Emotion surges throu
gh me, and I want to laugh and cry at the same time.

  He puts his arms around me and rolls so I’m on top, and we exchange a long, lingering kiss as he slides his hands over me.

  “You’ll never understand how happy you’ve made me,” he whispers.

  “How happy I’ve made you?” That seems so funny that I start to giggle, and that turns into uncontrollable laughter. His look turns wry, and he rolls again so I’m beneath him, then smothers my giggles with a kiss.

  I sigh, listening to the rain on the window as he takes his time to kiss me until I’m limp and aching for him, and then I let him make love to me, fascinated by the way the light through the rain is reflected on his naked body as he moves inside me.

  We need time. To learn about each other, to understand each other, to find out about our hopes and dreams, to discover our beliefs and our principles. We need to make sure we’re matched practically—that the world believes we’re meant to be together too.

  But as he kisses me, strokes me, and takes me to the dizzy heights of pleasure, I already know that I never want to let this man go.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Rich

  For a while, I’m in a daze that Jess has accepted my offer.

  I know that other, cynical men would say that no woman could turn down an offer like that, but then they don’t know Jess. I fully expected her to say she couldn’t possibly live with me when we’ve known each other for such little time, and especially because she’s so proud about accepting money, so her open and happy acceptance gave me a glow that still hasn’t dimmed two days later.

  The time has passed quickly, with Jess planning what she wants to bring with her and packing, and telling her friends and family that she’s going away for a few weeks. One evening, we have dinner with her brother and his wife. I’d already met Caleb, of course—I couldn’t stay in the guy’s sleepout without introducing myself—but this is the first time I’ve spent a decent amount of time with him, with anyone close to Jess, in fact. He’s not unlike Jess—frank, open, funny, a few years younger, but with the same dark-blonde hair. It becomes clear to me throughout the evening that he cares for her very much, a care that’s born, I think, out of guilt.