The Billionaire's Lockdown Baby Page 12
Someone who acted like they didn’t care about her at all, when she so obviously cared about them.
And that someone was me. It was me who had slept with her and then told her that it didn’t have to change anything between us. That we could just go back to our old relationship like nothing had happened. It was me who had forced her to go immediately back to work, when I was probably the last person in the entire world she wanted to be around or even think about, by bringing her on this trip without giving her a single choice in the matter.
I’d been too convinced that we had to come on this trip, too convinced that we had to take care of this in person—and that I’d needed Aubrey by my side, to make sure it all went according to plan—to listen to her when she said that she thought the trip could wait.
God. She’d told me straight out that she didn’t want to come. And I’d just blown right through that statement and continued planning, like she’d agreed to it. Like her opinion hadn’t mattered to me.
It was me who had shared that wonderful, intimate week with her, and then gone right back to work when the world—or at least the island of Saipan—opened up again. I hadn’t even stopped for long enough to ask her if she was okay, or what she thought of the week we’d just spent together.
I’d simply told her what we were doing and when we were doing it.
I’d dragged her to another hotel, where we had separate suites. And I’d dragged her here even though we were only ten minutes from that lovely little villa. I’d taken her away from the place where we’d started actually getting to know each other… and I’d done it for no good reason.
I had asked Janice to take care of the reservations rather than turning to Aubrey, even though she was literally in the next room. And though I’d done that because I hadn’t wanted to bother her, now that I was looking at it through her eyes, I saw that it was the height of thoughtlessness.
It made it look like I’d stopped trusting her. Or like I’d already stopped respecting her.
And that meant it was me who had started treating her differently as soon as things changed between us. Me who hadn’t said anything when she then became distant and acted like she didn’t want to be around me. Me who had acted way out of line the moment she said she needed to talk to me.
And in the time I had been caught up in all these churning thoughts, Aubrey had left the room and gone back into hers. And I hadn’t even noticed. Hadn’t even stopped her. God, what was wrong with me?
I dropped back into the chair and let my head drop into my hands, crushed at how absolutely, terrifically stupid I’d been for the last two weeks. Because for a guy who ran a multi-billion-dollar company, I sure had missed a lot of things.
Like the fact that she’d been trying to say something that first night, when I kissed her. Trying to tell me something—which I hadn’t even bothered to ask about. Like the fact that she’d looked so crushed when she left my kitchen that morning that I’d immediately wanted to go after her and make it better… except that I hadn’t known how to.
Honestly, I hadn’t even tried. I’d watched her go, hating every second of it. And then I’d gone right back to work.
And now it all started to drop into place. Her reaction when she found out that I wanted to come to this island. Her reaction when we’d then been trapped here. The look on her face halfway through the week in the villa, when I’d had too much to drink and had leaned forward to kiss her, unable to stop myself from at least showing her how I felt. The way she’d slept that night, wrapped up with me as if I was the safety blanket she’d been searching for her entire life. How happy she’d been that week—even when we’d run into something on which we didn’t agree.
Even when she was trying to teach me how to surf, and had looked as though she was actually at her wit’s end.
The way we’d fit together like two peas finally living in the same pod.
The comment about Janice in the hallway. Her sudden distance when we’d moved into different suites. Her rush to get back to Hawaii.
Oh God. The new job. She was taking it because of me. Because she’d had feelings for me and had acted on them… and instead of accepting them or reciprocating, I’d straight out told her that sleeping together didn’t mean anything.
I drew one hand back and slapped myself in the forehead. Because my God, was I stupid. The girl of my dreams had been throwing herself at me, and I’d been so wrapped up in trying to make her think that sleeping together wasn’t a big deal that I’d actually made her think I didn’t care about her.
I’d worked so hard at it that she had no freaking clue that I was actually in love with her. And to be honest, I didn’t think I’d even known that. Not until it looked like I was going to lose her.
I jumped to my feet and went for the nearest notebook, my brain finally kicking back into gear and ideas starting to flood through my head. The moment I got a pen in my hand, I started jotting down the ideas. I’d always thought better when I was writing. Seeing it all down on paper, in front of me, made it more real. And the act of writing made me think better. It made the ideas flow.
And right now, I needed ideas. I needed them like crazy. Because there was no way I was letting Aubrey Simons out of my life. Now that I knew how she felt about me, and how I felt about her, and the fact that we were having a baby together, I had only one goal: keep her. Prove to her how much I needed her.
Find a way to tell her I loved her. And make her believe it. Make her believe it strongly enough that she would agree to stay with me.
Chapter 28
Damon
I woke up the next morning before the sun even rose—mostly because I’d set four alarms on my phone and then asked Janice to call me at a specific time to make sure I was up. It was the kind of thing I would normally have asked Aubrey for, but obviously I couldn’t ask her for that right now.
I wasn’t even sure she was talking to me, honestly.
The moment the phone rang, I sat straight up in bed and punched the button to answer the call. “What? What’s happening? Do I need to call someone?” I gasped, the words coming out only slightly garbled with the fact that it was five in the morning.
“That would be difficult, considering you’re already on the phone with someone, sir,” a voice answered.
A monotonous, very annoyed voice. A voice that had called me ‘sir,’ which almost no one did—partially because I hated it.
Janice.
“Janice,” I gasped. “God. Is everything okay?”
A slight pause, and then a very wry, “Yes, if you consider getting up at five your time to be okay. Which, I have to say, you shouldn’t.”
Oh. Right. I’d asked her to call me. The thought came back with all the grace of a sledgehammer right to the head, and I shook myself with the memory.
“Sorry. Right. Sorry. I don’t usually wake up this early. I’m not sure my brain is working.”
She laughed an extremely dry laugh—Janice was very good at her job, but definitely didn’t have the personal charm that Aubrey did—and then told me she had business to take care of and signed off without a goodbye.
I just stared at the phone, my brain trying to catch up with what had just happened while my entire being started screaming about how unfair it was that it had happened at all.
Yes, it was absolutely necessary. Because I needed to get to the governor’s mansion for my meeting with Mahoyu, but I had to do something more important first. I had, after all, been an insensitive fool, and I’d come really, really close to costing myself the woman of a lifetime. Something that I had only realized yesterday—and the thing that had kept me awake long into the night, which was making this early rising situation even more painful.
But it turned out that the middle of the night is a dark, quiet time, and it’s actually pretty good for planning. I’d come to some very important conclusions while I was doing that midnight thinking.
And I thought I’d come up with a solution. I thought I had something in
my hands that would help me fix everything.
The thing was, of course, that I didn’t have any time to waste. If I was going to do this, I had to do it quickly. Because once we had our mutual meeting with the governor, we’d be heading back to Hawaii. I could delay us for a day at the most, and even that was stretching it, because I knew Aubrey was going to be in a hurry. And was I really going to be able to come up with a good reason to stay on the island when we were barely talking to each other?
I mean, it wasn’t like I could say we were staying to enjoy the scenery for another week, or anything like that. “Gee, Aub, don’t you want to stay and hang out on the beach for a while longer, with the guy you can barely stand?”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to work.
So once we were at the governor’s mansion, the clock was going to start running on my game time. My meeting with Mahoyu was at nine. That gave me—I glanced again at my phone—a little under four hours to bring my plan together and convince Aubrey that I knew that I had not only been an amazingly big jerk, but was also serious about making it right.
I had to convince her that I was serious about being in her life permanently. And that I wanted to do a whole lot more than just be in her life as a casual acquaintance or even a boss.
I didn’t know if I could do it. I didn’t know if I’d already done too much damage. But I’d spent my entire career living by the motto “Never say die,” and today was no different. If there was a way, I was going to find it. If there was even the tiniest crack in her armor, I was going to wedge myself right in there.
I jumped out of bed, knowing that I didn’t have a moment to lose, and hustled to get ready for the day. Maybe one of the most important days of my life so far.
* * *
I dove into the makings of what was going to be a truly epic breakfast, my mind working through what I wanted to say to Aubrey.
I’d had room service deliver all of this stuff last night after she went to bed—and after I’d come up with the plan at 1:03 in the morning—so she would have no idea it was coming. I was hoping to get it all done before she woke up, so that I could serve her breakfast in bed and make it really romantic, but looking around now, and then glancing at the clock, I wasn’t sure whether I was going to pull it off. I had eggs, bacon, sausage, muffins, and waffles to cook, plus fruit to slice…
Yeah, the chances of me getting all of this done before she woke up were looking pretty slim.
I cut the muffins off the list, figuring that they’d take longer than anything else anyhow, and further, that they were repetitive when we were already having waffles. I mean, how many carbs did we really need? I also put sausage in the to-be-decided column, because between sausage and bacon, I was going to choose bacon every single time.
I also wasn’t feeding an army. I was feeding one very important lady. And it was more important that I have breakfast ready when I needed it than it was to offer her two different types of meat or bread.
With that in mind, I got started with the cooking and got back to thinking about what I was going to say. Because breakfast was nice, but it wasn’t the most important aspect. The words… those were what would work in my favor or not. Those would either save me or send me right down the drain. And I’d never been the best at thinking on my feet when the pressure was on. I did better going in with a script. So for this, the most important conversation I was ever going to have with anyone?
For this, I definitely wanted a script.
It was a good thing I had at least an hour’s worth of cooking to do. That should give me plenty of time to figure out something a bit smarter to say than, “We can just go back to normal.”
“Idiot,” I hissed at myself.
Yes, I’d thought I was doing the right thing. I’d thought—in fact, I’d been convinced—that I was making her feel better and telling her that I wasn’t going to let what had happened ruin what we had. The problem was, I hadn’t been thinking. Because if I had, I would have seen that what had happened was going to do the opposite of ruin what we had.
Instead, it should have taken it to the next level. I’d just been too stupid and blind to see that at the time.
But it still could. If I could salvage this.
* * *
I somehow managed to get the breakfast done—and pretty well, too, if I did say so myself—within an hour, and that meant I was able to take it to Aubrey more than two hours before we had to leave for Mahoyu’s office.
So excited and nervous that I was actually shaking, I loaded a tray full of enough food to feed the army that I’d said I wasn’t feeding, then headed for the door to the hallway that connected our rooms.
I was finished playing the insensitive jerk. Finished assuming that Aubrey would forgive me for anything. That was the kind of behavior that had gotten me into this mess in the first place, and I was through with it.
I got to the door, pulled a terrific balancing act that had me not only opening the door but also getting through it while holding the tray with only one hand, and made quickly for the second door that led out of this sort of breezeway and into Aubrey’s room.
God, I hoped she was up, I realized suddenly. If she wasn’t, this was all going to be a big waste of time. But some quick calculations in my head told me that she’d almost certainly be awake, and probably showered. The girl might get to the office late, but she was a surfer, and therefore a ridiculously early riser. And we’d been here long enough that she was on Saipan time, now, and had been getting up before the sun when we were still at that cottage on the beach.
She was probably already working on pitches for our meeting with Mahoyu. Probably already far more prepared than I was.
I knocked quietly on the door that led to her room, my nerves getting the better of me for a moment, and when there wasn’t a reply, I knocked a bit harder. Then I leaned toward the door, frowning and trying to listen.
Technically, I knew I wouldn’t the able to hear anything through it—this hotel was way too nice to have walls and doors thin enough to hear through. But when you’re so desperate to hear what’s going on in the next room that you could almost bite right through your own tongue with it, you try anyway.
I was just putting my ear up against the door when it opened, and the sudden space next to my head almost sent me tumbling forward, right into Aubrey herself. With a tray full of food and drink.
“Listening at keyholes now, are we?” she said, raising one eyebrow and looking me up and down. “I have to admit, Damon Parker, I never thought you were the type. Don’t you get enough action on your own time?”
There was a joke in it, and I could hear that she was making fun of me. Waiting for me to respond with a smart-aleck answer. But I couldn’t seem to get my tongue to work.
The thing was, she was too beautiful. Absolutely breathtaking. I’d caught her in the middle of drying her hair, and she hadn’t yet done her makeup. So her hair was still wavy and natural, her face freshly scrubbed and her freckles standing out against her skin, her brown eyes sparking up at me in what would have been laughter if we were still on good terms.
She looked more beautiful than I’d ever seen her. And I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
And in that moment, everything I’d thought up when I was cooking flew directly out of my head and was lost to history. Instead of taking breakfast in and going through my carefully rehearsed speech, I dropped right to my knees in front of her, holding the tray up like it was some sort of offering.
“Aubrey, I am so, so sorry,” I said softly. “I had no idea you had feelings for me. I had no idea that that night meant anything more to you than a mistake. I thought you’d woken up hating yourself for it, and that you’d be embarrassed and horrified. I thought you’d want me to forget that it had happened. God, I thought you’d be thanking me for not making a big deal of it!”
I shook my head at my own bone-headedness. “I was wrong, Aub, and I’m so sorry. All I want is to make you happy. If that’s not with me, then
anywhere you want to go. Anything you need, I’ll do it. If you’re moving, I’ll pay for the move. I’ll help you get your apartment set up. I’ve always cared for you. You’re the most important person in the world to me. You’re the only person who really knows me. You’re… you’re the only person I really know. The only person I really want to know.
“I don’t want to lose you, Aubrey. And I’d like to give you another offer. Not a job offer this time. A life offer. A request. Stay with me, Aubrey. Be with me. Will you have me? Can you forgive me enough to give me a chance to be the man you want me to be?”
I stopped stumbling through the speech at that point and took a deep, heaving breath—and then waited while she stared at me, her mouth open, her brown eyes brimming with tears.
Chapter 29
Aubrey
I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been completely caught off guard by something someone has said or done. I’m just too much of a planner for that, and I don’t generally put myself into situations where I don’t already know the outcome. Marketing and publicity are like that. Your job is to know exactly what your client wants, and exactly how to get it for them. So your job is literally to be prepared for any eventuality, and to know how to get around any hurdles so that you still accomplish the goal, even if everything goes sideways on you.
And as Damon’s assistant, I’d had to learn that so well that I could have done it in my sleep. Because with that man, things were almost always going sideways. Not always because of him—but often because of things he’d said or done.
So I was used to being prepared for any possible outcome. I was used to having a whole arsenal of tools and weapons in my belt, just in case.