by J. L. Berg
She hung the bikini back on the rack and took a few steps closer. Wrapping her arm around my shoulder, she ushered me toward some chairs in the corner of the store. Luckily, no abandoned husbands or boyfriends were left in the store today, so the spot was all ours.
“What do you mean?” she asked as we took our seats.
“I just worry sometimes, after everything that has happened—the heart surgery and his guilt over not being there—that he feels this overwhelming need to make up for it. I don’t ever want to be a burden to him, Grace.” Feeling like I was confessing a horrible sin, my hands nervously wrung together.
Jude was the most amazing person I’d ever met. Admitting that I thought he could somehow be acting out of guilt rather than a place of love felt like the worst kind of crime imaginable.
“Lailah, I know the two of you have been through more in two years than most couples experience in a lifetime, but please believe me when I say, these grand gestures that you consider so monumental are nothing compared to the love that man has for you. When he called me last week and asked if we wouldn’t mind flying out for the weekend, there was nothing but excitement in his voice. I remember the old Jude. He was so filled with remorse that there was no room for anything else. This isn’t him. Let him love you the way you deserve to be loved.”
I let her words settle between us, feeling them sink in and solidify. It was exactly what I’d needed to hear. The confirmation pushed away any lingering doubts.
I’d spent the first twenty-two years of my life believing my life would be spent within the walls of a hospital room, only to find an entire world just waiting outside its doors. Jude had made that possible. He’d made me possible, and I’d never felt more confident in myself.
But that little girl, the one who never got to experience the thrills of learning to ride a bike or jumping into a pile of leaves, often wondered if those around me noticed the subtle differences between me and the rest of the world. Did they pity me? Did they feel the need to make right the wrongs my damaged heart had taken from me? It was something I’d wondered and struggled with since the scars across my chest had closed up and healed, and life had moved on around them. As time had gone by, these feelings would ebb and flow like crashing waves on the ocean.
And I’d always come back to this one simple conclusion. My family, Grace, Jude—they all loved me for me, and that was all that mattered.
“You’re right. I’m being silly—once again.”
“It’s not silly, Lailah. You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t worry about others. It’s just who you are and one of the many reasons I am proud to call you my friend.”
I couldn’t help but smirk. “Well, now, you’re just buttering me up.” I laughed.
“I am. Can we continue shopping? Or at least pretend to? Zander is about to go AWOL with the lack of movement.”
“Of course, but on one condition.”
“Anything.”
“Can I hold him for a bit?”
She smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“WHERE THE HELL is he?” I roared, slamming my hand hard against my desk.
My secretary, Stephanie, cowered in the corner, unfamiliar with my strange behavior, which instantly stilled me.
“Forgive me, Stephanie.” I cringed, holding my hands out in a silent plea for mercy.
She nodded and took a paltry step forward. I loosened the tie around my neck in a desperate attempt to allow the free flow of oxygen to my lungs again. Although standing in a room so large that it could dwarf many New York apartments, I felt like I was suffocating.
Is this how Lailah felt all those times when she couldn’t breathe because her heart wouldn’t allow it?
I gripped my chest and realized that it wasn’t my heart that wasn’t working. It was my brain. I needed to calm myself and take a deep breath.
Just like my father before me, I wandered to the large windows overlooking the city below and began to count. By the time I reached ten, the blood in my veins began to slow as my breathing returned to normal.
“Find him, please,” I said.
Stephanie still stood near the doorway, probably too scared to leave without orders.
“Quickly,” I added.
She scurried away as I stood stoic, looking at the street below.
I’d practically grown up in this office. From the time I was a young child, I’d been raised to take over the family business. My father had been a hard man to love. So driven to succeed, sometimes, all he had seen was a way to move ahead rather than noticing the sons he’d left behind.
He’d loved us in his own way. I knew giving everything he had to this company was how he’d shown us the depths of his heart. Standing here and looking out at the same view his own eyes had settled on year after year, I understood that, now more than ever—unlike him—I couldn’t let it consume me.
I wouldn’t.
There was too much at stake.
I hadn’t come this far to fall back into the pits of hell again, and Lailah deserved more than a barely there corporate hotshot who took her for granted.
And that was why I needed some goddamn help.
I began taking another deep breath through my nose.
Stephanie’s voice rang through on the speakerphone, “Mr. Cavanaugh, I have him on line one, sir.”
Walking toward my desk, I pushed the button to respond, “Thank you. I’ll take it from here.”
I heard her release the call, and I was introduced to silence.
Taking a seat, I waited until he had the balls to say something.
Finally, a long-drawn-out sigh could be heard on the other end. “Are you giving me the silent treatment, little brother? I thought we’d grown out of that.”
“I thought we’d grown out of a lot of things, Roman,” I responded.
“Oh, come on. It’s the fucking weekend. Don’t you have better things to do than call me up at the ass-crack of dawn to rip me a new one?”
The laughter in his voice sent me to an entirely new level of pissed off.
“First of all, it’s nearly past noon, jackass. Secondly, this isn’t just any weekend. We happen to have one of the most important meetings of our lives today. Foreign investors have flown in from Japan. Does any of this ring a bell?”
“Right,” he said lazily. “I thought you and the board had a handle on that?”
Female laughter sounded in the background.
“You are on the board.”
“Good point. And what time is this meeting?”
I looked at the platinum watch adorning my wrist. “In less than two hours.”
“Well then, I guess I’d better get in the shower. You owe me, Jude.”
I heard a high-pitched yelp before the line went dead.
I shook my head in disgust, wondering how my brother had managed to sink further into the cesspool of his own lack of mortality since I’d returned home.
When he’d brought Lailah to me, seeming genuinely concerned for my well-being, I’d thought that maybe he was on a path of redemption. But as soon as I had started to get my own life back on track, his had begun to spiral.
I’d tried to speak to him about it, get through that snarky tough exterior to figure out the reason for his sudden turn, but he wouldn’t let me in. He wouldn’t let anyone in. I was honestly starting to wonder if there even was a reason or if that brief glimpse of the man I had seen, who could be so much more, had been nothing more than an elaborate act.
After all, he’d gotten what he’d wanted. I’d taken my place in the company and pulled it back from the brink of collapse, and now, he was free.
He was free to be the nonexistent asshole I remembered.
My phone rang, and as I looked down at the number showing up on the caller ID, I instantly felt the anger Roman had caused dissipate.
“Hey, Angel,” I said with a smile as I cradled the phone in my hand.
“Hi,” she answered cheerfully. “Just thought I’d check in and se
e how your day was going. I know you have that big meeting this afternoon.”
Shaking my head, I let out a puff of air as my fingers came to the bridge of my nose.
“Did I get it wrong?” she asked, suddenly alarmed.
“No, no. You always remember everything perfectly.”
Unlike others, I thought to myself.
“Oh, okay good. So, are you ready?” she asked, excitement ringing through the tone of her voice.
“Yes, actually. I spent the morning going over everything, and in a minute, I’ll be heading over to the boardroom to do some last-minute strategizing with . . . mostly everyone, but I think we’ve got it.”
“Roman isn’t there, is he?” she asked, the exuberance now gone.
“No,” I simply answered.
“That . . . well, he’s just not a nice man.”
My mouth twitched as I tried not to laugh, instantly warmed by her. She was so meek, yet when needed, she could be as fierce as a lion.
Even now, my lioness still couldn’t bring herself to say a bad word about anyone.
“Yes, he is, but he’s my brother, and unfortunately, that means I have to put up with him.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to kick him the next time I see him.”
A chuckle escaped my lips as I imagined her scrawny frame kicking my imposing large brother.
“You do that.”
“Go knock it out of the park, Jude,” she said warmly.
“I will. See you tonight?”
“Okay. I’ll save you some dessert.”
“No, you won’t.” I laughed.
“I’ll try.”
“Deal.”
“I love you,” she said.
“And I love you,” I replied before hanging up.
My eyes fell to the picture I kept on my desk. It had been taken at the wedding of Lailah’s mother a couple years back, just before I’d surprised her with our trip to Ireland. The water was behind the two of us, and there was nothing but future and possibility in our eyes.
It was how I wanted us to look forever.
“That wasn’t so bad?” Roman touted.
We hopped into the back of the chauffeured black sedan that had been hired for the evening. Another car had been instructed to take our dinner guests back to their hotel, so they could rest for their return flight to Tokyo.
“Thanks to me,” I muttered as I loosened the knot of my tie. My hand moved down to unbutton the top two buttons of my shirt.
“Not only thanks to you. Who wined and dined their Japanese asses off tonight? That would be me. I showed them a good time—something you sure seem to be lacking these days. Rough waters at home? Honeymoon phase over before the honeymoon can even start?”
His goading did nothing. I simply turned and smiled. “Things are excellent between Lailah and me—in fact, never better. And to think, I owe all this overwhelming happiness to my generous, selfless brother, Roman. Oh, wait . . .”
He deadpanned, no longer in the mood for joking. Instead, he lunged for a bottle of water in the cooler under the seat from the small bar area that had been set up by the car service.
Good, he needed to dry out.
“There was nothing selfless about what I did. You were moping around here like a wounded puppy, Jude. Someone needed to do something to get your ass back into gear, so I did the easiest thing possible. I gave you what you wanted. I just figured it would mellow you out a bit.”
“I am mellow,” I argued. “With everyone else.”
“Ah, so the truth comes out.”
His gaze narrowed, and our eyes locked. When I looked at Roman, sometimes, it felt like my future self was staring back at me. We had so many physical traits in common, yet our personalities clashed like oil and vinegar.
“I just wish you would take something, anything, in life seriously.”
He patted my back, and his head motioned toward our building as the car pulled up. “Now, that’s what we have you for,” he said.
“Are you coming up?” I asked, opening the car door to hop out.
He shook his head, smiling. “This car is paid up until morning. Might as well use it to my advantage.”
“I’m sure you will.”
I shut the car door, leaving Roman to his vices for the evening, and I focused on everything waiting for me upstairs—a home, a fiancée, and a future.
Lailah was my beacon. No matter how bleak life might get, how rough the waters might seem, I knew she’d always be there to safely guide me back home.
I quickly made my way through the entrance, taking the elevator to the thirtieth floor. This apartment had been my home since I left Santa Monica. When I used to walk through the front door, I’d seen nothing but a prison, a place keeping me from where I wanted to be—with Lailah.
But I’d made a decision. I’d paid a price.
Wanting to save Lailah and pay for the transplant she’d so desperately needed, I’d known I would have to return to the life I’d left behind. I still remember the way my hand had shaken as I wrote my good-bye to her, wishing I could tell her everything I had bottled up in my heart, but I’d known if I did, she would never have gone through with the surgery.
In the painful months that had followed, I’d discovered what it was to lose myself all over again.
I never wanted to feel that again.
Lailah was my everything, and I’d continue to move mountains to make her happy every day of her life.
Exiting the elevator, I made my way down the long hallway toward our door. Turning the handle, I found the apartment aglow with candlelight.
“Lailah?” I called out, my eyes darting around the expansive living room and kitchen.
“In here. Come find me,” she hollered back, her voice coming from the bedroom.
I’d thought I would be returning to a houseful of guests, assuming Grace and Zander would spend the evening with us. Candlelight and a summon to the bedroom were a welcome surprise.
My hand hovered over the tops of the candles, sending the flames into a frenzied dance. The ghostly shadows moved across the walls as I stalked down the hallway. Pushing the door open, I slowly stepped inside the room and found Lailah lounging in a sofa chair by the bed, in nothing more than a light-blue satin bra and matching panties.
“Is that new?” I asked, attempting to keep the pitch of my voice from reaching the next octave.
She smirked and slowly crossed her legs, one foot over the other. “Do you like it?”
“Very much.”
“One of the many things I picked up on my shopping adventure with Grace today.”
I nodded, walking forward and dropping my suit jacket on the floor. “Remind me to tell Grace how fond I am of her.”
“I will.” She laughed.
Stepping closer until I was hovering over her, I asked, “Will we be seeing her and Zander tonight?” I bent forward, tracing my fingers over the delicate skin of her shoulder.
“No,” she answered softly. “She thought we could use a night to explore my new . . . wardrobe. We’re meeting them for brunch in the morning.”
“Good.”
I offered my hand to her and watched as she rose from the chair to stand before me. With beautiful platinum-blonde hair and baby-blue eyes, she was almost ethereal-looking. Since leaving the hospital with her new heart, she’d gained some much-needed weight, giving her feminine curves and strength. Not a single ounce of frailty seemed to exist in her now.
She was my fierce survivor.
“You are the most beautiful woman on the planet, Lailah Buchanan.”
“Soon-to-be Lailah Cavanaugh,” she corrected.
I pulled her into my arms. Her bare skin sent fire zinging through my fingertips with every touch.
“How many days?”
“Forty-three,” she replied.
“Why did we decide to get married right before Christmas?” I asked, dipping my head toward the crook of her neck.
A low moan escaped her lips as I ki
ssed a path down to her breasts.
“Because I love snow and the color red. Plus it’s in between semesters.”
“You’re entirely too practical,” I whispered before placing a single kiss on the light-pink scar running down her chest from her many surgeries.
“That’s why you love me.” She laughed.
Reaching my hand behind her back, I made quick work of the closure on her bra. I slid the straps slowly down her arms, and the bra fell to the floor.
“I love you, Lailah, for many reasons. Let me show you one right now,” I purred in her ear.
“Yes.”
I carried her to the bed and made good on my promise for the rest of the night.
I LOVED BRUNCH.
Two meals seamlessly blended together meant I could eat whatever I wanted, and I didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to do it.
It was one of the best ideas ever—besides introducing chocolate to breakfast foods. Whoever had devised that genius idea deserved a Nobel Peace Prize.
As I happily stuffed another bite of chocolate-chip pancakes into my mouth, I turned to see Zander closely watching me from his high chair. His bright blue eyes followed the movements of my fork as it moved to my plate to scoop up another piece of pancake. A tiny pink tongue darted out and made a wide sweep across his top lip.
“You’re cute,” I said, “but these are mine, buddy.”
He blew raspberries in response and banged his chubby fist down on the plastic tray, sending little round Cheerios flying in every direction.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t do that,” I commented as I picked sticky cereal out of my hair.
He giggled, which sent the three adults at the table into a fit of laughter.
“He showed you,” Grace said, covering a dainty snort with her napkin.
“So selfish,” Jude interjected, shaking his head. “Unwilling to share food with a helpless poor child. Who am I marrying?”
He grinned mischievously as I glared up at him, carefully plotting my revenge.
With cunning stealth, I raised my hand, still full of half-nibbled Cheerios, and quickly dumped them on top of his head. Some instantly fell back to the table, but others made a new home within the tendrils of his sandy-blond locks.
