You’re mad at him. So act like it.
Jessie conjured her bitchiest face and pressed the number. Byron answered immediately.
“Jessie?”
“Batman?”
She’d infused the word with plenty of sarcasm, which he couldn’t have missed, but his response was an easy laugh that warmed her. She ignored it.
“I just got two calls offering rounds of funding for MomJobs.”
“Congratulations.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m calling to ask if you know where this sudden interest in MomJobs came from.”
“I’m at an investors’ conference right now, and I’ve mentioned your app to some friends, so that might be the connection.”
He said this casually, but Jessie’s heart jumped in her chest. Where was this conference, where apps would be a topic of conversation? Somewhere nearby? There was the rumble of traffic in the background and the slam of a car door.
Stay on topic.
“You didn’t call in favors from friends to get me these investment offers, did you?”
Byron let out a bark of laughter. “I don’t know what kind of friends you have, but mine don’t do me million-dollar favors, no matter how close we are.”
Her face heated up. He was right—that idea was ridiculous.
“I guess you need to make better friends,” she said, but she couldn’t hold back her laugh.
“That’s not even close to what I need.” There was a pause. “Jessie, when I mentioned your app at the luncheon yesterday, a lot of the people at the table knew about it and were impressed. You and your sister did that, not me.”
She closed her eyes, letting this sink in. Yes, Byron had opened a door for her, but it only helped because she and Jillian had worked their asses off to make this company amazing. That felt a lot better.
Byron’s sigh came through the phone. “Is there any chance we can discuss this in person?”
Oh, God, she wanted that so badly right now. She pictured that easy smile he’d given her on his deck while looking out into the ocean, his big body warming her. Total honesty? She still was thinking about him all the time, and seeing him would probably make it worse. Especially since he hadn’t even mentioned her letter yet.
“Did you solve the problems that I outlined for you?”
The line was silent for a moment. “What are you talking about?”
Wait—what? How could he not know what she was talking about? “You didn’t get my letter?”
“No,” he said slowly. “Where did you send it?”
“I left it in the middle of your table.”
“I see.” More silence. “I haven’t been to my house since I walked away from you.”
That was impossible. “But you told me you go there at least once a month.”
“Jessie, I—” He paused. “The truth is that I’m not ready to go back. I’m not over you, and after having you there, I thought it would be worse.”
“Oh.” So much for all her theories.
“Would you mind summarizing the letter for me? The suspense is killing me.”
Jessie rubbed her forehead. She had written the letter with no intention of compromising, but right now, she wasn’t sure about that part anymore.
“I, um, basically listed a bunch of problems we’d have,” she said. “And said I didn’t want to talk unless you were ready to compromise on them.”
She wasn’t sure what reaction she had expected, but laughter wasn’t it. Byron’s chuckle was deep, and when he spoke again, his voice was so full of humor and affection that she thought her heart was going to burst in her chest. “Please, share these problems with me.”
Oh, hell, she might as well be honest. “First, I love living in San Francisco, and I’m not willing to give up my apartment since I’ll never be able to afford one this nice in the current market.”
“Fine. Next?”
Fine...meaning yes? But he lived in New York and had a house on Hawaii. How was this fine? Still, she moved on.
“Second, my app company means everything to me, and I might have written that I didn’t want you to interfere with my work in any way.”
“Sorry about that one,” he said quickly. “What else?”
“I also might have lectured you a little for the lapse in judgment when you left me alone in your house.” She thought she heard a snort of laughter, so she pushed on. “You barely know me. I could have a criminal record.”
“Do you?”
“No,” she snapped, “but I considered leaving with that beautiful, hand-carved desk in your office. Unfortunately, it was too heavy to carry out.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. I really like that desk.”
He definitely was laughing now, and she really shouldn’t be smiling. He wasn’t taking her seriously. So she focused on one obstacle that she couldn’t see around, no matter how hard she tried. And it worked—the urge to smile was gone. She forced herself to say it.
“I also wrote that I need to fully keep my independence. Money, apartment, everything. I don’t need someone to take care of me, and I don’t want it, either.” Her voice wavered a little at the word want. She didn’t want that, so why was it so hard to say this?
“Jessie, I want to take care of you. It’s true. But that doesn’t have anything to do with money or your apartment. I just want to be the person who makes you feel better than anyone else does. I just want to see if I can be that for you. Because you’re that person for me.”
She stilled, his words sizzling in her mind. And it sounded like something she wanted very, very much.
The line was silent for a while. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the cable car bell ding twice. Was it coming from out her window or through the phone? Jessie’s heart sped up. Was it possible that he was in San Francisco?
“Anything else?”
She frowned. “Well, there’s a bunch of other stuff in the letter about me being a control freak and how I had no intention of changing. And the fact that I get mad when I get hurt, which doesn’t make any sense at all but I can’t do anything about it because that’s how I am. And there’s one part that’s a little mushy about my parents’ terrible relationship. Then it ends with my real phone number and instructions to call me if you want to argue about it.” When Jessie was done letting it all spill out, she blew out a breath. “Overall, it’s a little bitchy, and while all of it is the truth, I may or may not regret the uncompromising tone.”
“Oh, fuck, Jessie,” he said, and for one, cold moment, she thought she had gone too far. But then she heard that familiar, easy laugh, and her heart was full again. “I missed you.”
It felt so good to hear those words that she put aside all her fears and told him the truth.
“Fine,” she said, trying to keep some attitude in her voice. “I suppose we can argue this in person.”
“Good. Because my driver just pulled up in front of your place.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BYRON WALKED UP the stairs to the front door of the large Victorian-style house. The house, the windows, the railing and the details over the front porch were painted in various shades of blue. Anywhere else, it might have looked a little gaudy, but here, in the middle of this crazy city, it fit in perfectly. This was Byron’s second visit to San Francisco since he’d left Jessie in Hawaii, and staying away from her the first time had almost killed him. But there had been a lot that had to change before they could make things work between them, and he knew she had a thing about empty promises, so he figured that the best way to her heart was through actions.
The house was near the top of a steep hill, in the middle of one of San Francisco’s famous neighborhoods. From her front doorstep, she had an amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge, but right now, he wasn’t interested in that view. He was about to see Jessie again, and everything else in
the world came in second.
The enormous house was split into flats, each with its own buzzer. Byron found hers and rang it, then clasped his hands behind his back, the way he had that night in front of her cabin at the Kalani. Everything inside him cried, Please her, please her. This time, he was fully aware that the urge wasn’t purely sexual, though of course there was a healthy dose of that. But it was so much more, too.
The door opened, and she was there, in front of him. She was wearing a wonderfully tight T-shirt and leggings, and her white hair was twisted up into a bun. A hint of pink colored her cheeks, and her mouth parted a little as she took him in.
“Whoa,” she said as her gaze dipped down.
Byron wrinkled his brow and looked down, too, just to make sure his dick wasn’t publicly announcing just how happy he was to see her. Nope.
“Your suit. You look very...” She waved her hand in the air.
“In love with you?” He smiled a little. “Yes, that’s exactly right.”
He probably shouldn’t have revealed that so soon, but it was the truth, and, well, why the hell else would he be here?
Jessie stared at him for a moment, then took a running leap at him. He caught her and swung her around, holding her against him, burying his face in her hair. She smelled so good, just the way he remembered. She was pressed up against him, and it felt so right.
“Can I come in?” he whispered.
She laughed and wiggled against his growing erection. “Yes, please.”
“You know how I feel about arguing with you,” he groaned.
Jessie unhooked her legs from around him and slid down his body until she was standing in front of him, facing him. She looked like she was trying to bite back a smile. “We still have a lot to talk about.”
“I know.”
“So don’t look at me like you’re ready for the bedroom,” she said with a hint of irritation. Which, of course, only made him harder.
He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the ground. Goddamn, it was so good to see her, but he had to try to focus on that one sentence she’d spoken, which everything about their future depended on: I don’t need someone to take care of me, and I don’t want it, either. He was so tempted to solve this in the most satisfying way, to remind her of just how much she loved when he devoted everything to satisfying her, over and over. Because the sex was never the problem. Jessie needed to want him outside the bedroom, too, and that was a much bigger deal for her. Which meant he had to tread very, very carefully.
So he cupped her cheek with his hand and looked into her eyes and said, “Let’s talk.”
She led him by the hand up a dark, wooden staircase with an ornate banister, one flight, then a second. The top floor was split into two apartments, and Jessie had the one that faced the street. She opened her door and tugged on his hand, and they walked in together.
“This is it,” she said, gesturing to the open living room in front of them. “The bedroom is tiny, and so is the kitchen, but this room makes it all worth it.”
Light flooded through the enormous windows that gave her the most spectacular view of the San Francisco Bay. On the left was the Golden Gate Bridge, and on the right was Alcatraz. Straight ahead, on the other side of the bay, were steep hills, green and mostly treeless.
“This view is incredible,” he said.
“Can you see why I can’t give this up?” Her voice was a little shaky, almost like she was pleading for him to understand. But he did understand.
She headed for a blue sofa against the wall and sat down, crossing her arms. Her protective shell was back up, but he didn’t blame her. They were about to discuss the things that made her most vulnerable. So he sat in the middle of the couch and lifted her legs over his. They had sat this way before, naked on her bed at the Kalani and then again on the deck of house. Byron hoped she was thinking about those moments, too.
“You ready for my list?” he asked.
Her eyes widened. “Of conditions.”
He shook his head, pressing his lips together to keep from smiling. “It’s a list of things I’ve been doing over the last couple of months since I saw you.”
Her shoulders came down, and she leaned back against the arm of the couch.
“First of all, I didn’t take the CEO position,” he said quietly. “I didn’t tell my stepfather ahead of time. He had threatened to use his influence in the board to push me out before, and I didn’t want to take that risk. So instead of accepting the position, I convinced the rest of the board that the current COO, Minli Chen, would be perfect for the position.”
Jessie looked genuinely worried. “Was your stepfather angry?”
“Very. And so was my mother.” He swallowed. His stepfather and mother probably wouldn’t talk to him for a long time. He had known this might happen, but it still threatened to throw him into that deep pit of loneliness he had spent too much of his life trying to run from. But now he had something to run toward, too. There was someone out there in the world who had made that loneliness dissolve for one magical week while she was at the Kalani.
Jessie uncrossed her arms and reached for his hand.
“I’m so sorry about your family, Byron,” she said, threading her fingers with his. Some of the tightness in his chest eased. With Jessie’s hand in his as he talked about the future, he knew he had made the right decision. If declaring that he didn’t want to follow his stepfather’s path was enough for his mother to cut off communication with him, then his mother was the one who needed to rethink her priorities, not him.
“I knew it was coming, but it’s still hard,” he said quietly. “But I did manage to convince the board that I should be able to buy my house on Hawaii outright, so it has no ties to Hayden Properties. I took an enormous financial hit, but it’s mine.”
“Oh, Byron,” she whispered. She dropped his hand and reached for him, and he lifted her onto his lap. He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. It felt so good to hold her, to have her body against his.
“Did your stepfather push you out of the company?”
“I expected him to try, so I stepped down from the CFO position.”
The corners of her mouth turned up. “Are you unemployed? Because I tend to like that in a man.”
Byron laughed. “Not quite. The board made me a new offer. I’m going to be heading up a new venture arm of the business. Instead of just buying up existing properties, we’re going to build them.”
He tried to gauge her reaction, but she had that guarded look again. Byron rubbed his thumb up and down her side and continued.
“The Kalani started as a personal project, but it’s been very successful. So the board gave the go-ahead for developing another high-end, sustainable resort in Hawaii. I convinced them that running it from New York was a bad idea. It needs to be truly a local venture. Which means I’ll be living full-time in Hawaii.”
Her eyes widened. “You pulled it off. You got everything you wanted.”
But her voice broke a little as she said it.
“Not everything,” he said softly.
She stilled. “My apartment and my company are here in San Francisco.”
“And I wouldn’t ask you to give either of those up,” he said, kissing her neck. “I’ll still be traveling a fair amount, and you need your own space. So I thought maybe...we could live together part-time.”
Jessie was silent.
“You’d keep this apartment, but we can set up an office so you can work from my house, too. And I’ll schedule my travel for when you’re in San Francisco,” he said. “I know it’s untraditional, but so are we. We don’t have to make our life look like other people’s.”
He saw her lip trembling, and he pulled her against him.
Finally, she turned and kissed him. “You’ve been working on meeting my conditions all along, without k
nowing about the list?”
“These things are important to me, too,” he said. “I know you don’t need anything. That you can function perfectly well in this world without me. But are you absolutely sure that you don’t want me?”
It was so hard to speak those words, but this was his question, raw, honest, stripped down to leave him bare. He kept his eyes on hers. As he watched the flash of surprise and vulnerability in them, the tremble of her bottom lip, Byron knew it wasn’t a mistake to lay himself out for her, to give her space to be vulnerable for him, too.
“But we barely know each other.”
“You know that’s not true, not really,” he said, brushing his lips against hers.
“Am I crazy to want to give this a try?”
“Definitely,” he whispered. “But I like you like that.”
Jessie blinked a few times, her eyes welling with the hint of tears. “I do want you, God, I want you so badly,” she whispered. Then she laughed. “That’s probably the hardest sentence I’ve ever spoken.”
Byron couldn’t hold back his laugh. “It’ll get easier with practice.”
“Of course you’d say that.” Her eyes flashed with irritation, and then she laughed. “Did I just ruin the most romantic moment of my life?”
“Not even a little bit.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Six months later...
“TWO MORE MINUTES,” called Jessie, her eyes on one of the screens on her desk. They had released some updates for MomJobs, which came with their inevitable bugs. Her new developer had sorted them all successfully, as far as she could see, and she was just sending back her approval before the fixes went live.
She finished the last sentence of her email, read it one more time and hit Send. Then she swiveled around in her office chair.
Byron stood in the doorway, wearing only board shorts and flip-flops. His chest was bare, his carved muscles and tattoos on perfect display. He had that look he sometimes got when she caught him looking at her, when she didn’t think he was watching. It wasn’t quite a smile but something more. It felt like a deeper kind of happiness.
Pure Attraction Page 15