I was already reaching for the door handle when I felt a strong hand on my hip, turning me toward him. I found myself standing only a foot or so away from Ian. My breath caught in my throat as I looked up at him, and I was keenly aware of the heat that radiated across my body, starting with the spot where his hand still held firmly to my hip.
“Why do you let him treat you like that?”
“My boss?” I shrugged. “What choice do I have? I’m not like you. I don’t have a big company and people I can order around. I need this job, and I need the money. Besides, he’s not usually that bad.”
That was sort of a lie. He was usually that bad, it’s just that I was usually better at ignoring him. But I wasn’t about to explain to Ian that I had been trying to get out of cleaning his suite so I could avoid seeing him.
“I really have to go,” I said when Ian didn’t answer and didn’t take his hand away from me. I would have loved to stay there all day, kissing Ian and making love to him. But those days were gone. That had been another Ruby, in another lifetime.
Or had it?
To my surprise, Ian leaned his face in close, so that he was only inches away from me. I thought for sure he was going to kiss me, and I could feel my heart pounding like crazy in my chest. My mind screamed at me to turn and run, but my heart begged me to stay.
In the end, my mind won. As Ian leaned in further, I wrenched away from him, ran out the door, and ran down to the service elevator.
I turned around, expecting Ian to be chasing after me. But he wasn’t. He was standing just outside the door of his suite, watching me go.
“I’ll see you tonight, Ruby,” he said, and then turned to walk into the suite again. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to breathe. How had my life turned so completely upside down so quickly?
I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling things were only going to get crazier.
Chapter Six
* IAN *
The beach house that matched the address Ruby had given me was small, but it looked nice from the outside. It was located on a street that had several small beach houses all in a row, with their back windows facing toward the ocean. I pulled into the tiny driveway and sat for a few moments, trying to gather my thoughts.
This was it. I was going to officially meet my daughter. It still sounded strange to even think the words “my daughter.” It was stranger still to think that she’d been on this earth for four years, walking around, growing and learning, and I had never even known she was here.
I should be mad at Ruby about that, but somehow I wasn’t. I was too overjoyed at discovering that I was a father to waste time being angry. Besides, I understood why she’d done what she did. That didn’t mean it had been the right choice, but it did mean that she hadn’t done this maliciously. She hadn’t been trying to hurt me. She’d been trying to protect Chloe. How could I fault her for that?
I looked over at the gift bag on the seat next to me. It had several books in it that I’d had shipped over to my suite on express delivery. I’d gone back into the library and found the pile of books that Ruby had left on the table without checking out, and I’d written down every title. They were mostly books about horses and ponies, which gave me one small clue into my daughter’s personality. If she was going through a horse phase, then I was going to spoil her with a bunch of books on horses.
I also bought her a copy of the dragon and cupcakes story book she’d mentioned. That book hadn’t been in the pile at the library, but when I called the bookstore in Miami to place an order, all I’d had to do was tell them I was looking for a children’s picture book on dragons and cupcakes. The clerk had laughed and said he knew exactly which one I was talking about. Apparently it was all the rage among the nation’s preschoolers. I knew nothing about preschoolers.
But I was about to get a crash course.
I’d also bought, on a whim, a little stuffed cat from the resort’s gift shop. The cat had rainbow colored fur and wide eyes, and it fit perfectly in the remaining space in the gift bag. I picked up the bag, which was quite heavy from all the books, then picked up my camera which was also sitting in the backseat, and went to knock on the front door. It had been a while since I’d indulged in a little photography. I had a nice camera and lenses, and used to be quite a talented hobby photographer, if I did say so myself. But the pictures I’d taken of Ruby on the island had been the last pictures I’d taken with this camera. I’d lost my desire to take photographs after that, and I hadn’t really expected to use this camera on this trip.
I’d brought it along anyway, just in case, and now I was so glad that I had. I couldn’t think of anything or anyone I’d rather photograph than my own daughter. I wasn’t sure how many pictures I would take tonight. I didn’t want to freak Chloe out, after all. But I wanted to have the option to take a few shots, if the moment was right.
The moment right now was right for me to get out of this car and go knock on the door. My heart pounded with nervous excitement as I walked up to the door. But before I could even knock or ring the doorbell, the door swung wide open, and I found myself staring down at my mini-me. She stared at me in that steady, unnerving way only young kids can, and then crossed her arms. She was wearing a rainbow print dress and her hair was pulled up into a neat ponytail. I’d never seen anyone so adorable, and I wished I could whip out my camera and take a picture of her right then, to capture the moment I officially met her. But that might be sort of strange, so instead I smiled at her and started to say hello. She beat me to talking, however.
“Are you the pizza man?” she asked, without any other sort of greeting. I had to hold back a chuckle. She was nice and direct, just like me. I always wanted to get to the point of a conversation right away, and apparently she did too.
“I’m not the pizza man. I’m…” I realized that I hadn’t thought at all about what she would call me. I couldn’t tell her to call me dad, since I’d already promised Ruby to wait on that discussion. But telling a four-year-old to call me Ian felt a little strange. Finally, I decided on a slight compromise between formal and informal. “I’m Mr. Ian. I don’t have pizza. But I’m going to call the pizza man to ask him to bring some over. Does that sound good?”
“Hooray! I love pizza, Mr. Ian!”
With reckless abandon, Chloe threw her arms around me. I felt my heart catching in my throat. My first hug from my little girl. Okay, so she was only hugging me because I was promising pizza, but I wasn’t going to worry about that detail. For the brief moment that her chubby little arms were around me, I felt like I was in heaven.
“Mr. Ian, huh?” Ruby came into the entryway then, and my heart caught in my throat for an entirely different reason. Gone was her ugly, shapeless maid outfit from the resort. She’d been beautiful even in that monstrosity, but now, she was downright breathtaking. She had on a bright yellow sundress that was fitted at the top and flared out at the bottom. The skirt of the dress stopped a few inches above her knee, giving me a nice view of her legs, which were just as long and shapely as I remembered. Her skin was tanned everywhere. The spaghetti straps of the dress seemed to glow bright yellow against the golden tan of her shoulders, which matched the glow on her face. I was instantly jealous. My skin was a bit pale from spending too much time inside my office building back in New York City. I needed to make time to get out on the beach.
I felt a stirring in my cock, and I had to take a few deep breaths to steady myself. Thinking of the beach made me think of lying on a beach blanket with Ruby, with nothing coming between us except skin. But now wasn’t the time for these thoughts. I wasn’t sure if there ever would be a time. I still wanted Ruby badly, but she kept pushing me away. I would have kissed her back at the resort, if she hadn’t gone running out of my suite like I was going to electrocute her if I touched her or something.
I realized I was staring at her now. How could I not, with her hair falling loose from its messy bun in perfect tendrils around her face, and her blue eyes sparkling in the sunli
ght that streamed in through the kitchen window. She met my gaze with those eyes, and her cheeks turned slightly pink. She was so lovely, and much more relaxed than she’d been earlier today.
Maybe there was still a chance for us. I’d be exploring those feelings later. For now, I would focus on Chloe.
“I brought you this,” I said, turning to hold the gift bag out to Chloe. Her eyes widened.
“For me? Is it my birthday?”
Ruby laughed. “No, sweets. It’s not your birthday. Ian just wanted to do something nice for you.”
“Can I open it?”
Ruby nodded. “Go ahead.”
Chloe took the bag, which she could barely hold since it was so heavy with books. She set it down on the ground in front of her and wasted no time in starting to pull out what was inside. She squealed when she saw the cat, and hugged it close. Ruby looked over at me and raised an eyebrow.
“That’s the ugliest stuffed cat I’ve ever seen,” she said in a voice low enough that Chloe didn’t hear her.
I had to agree that, looking at the cat now, it did look a bit ugly. Away from the bright lights of the resort gift shop, the rainbow colors looked a little muddied. But Chloe seemed to love it, and that was all that mattered.
Chloe also loved the books. She pulled them out reverently, one-by-one, until she finally got to the dragons and cupcakes book and squealed once again.
“Is this mine, Mama? To keep?”
“It’s yours,” Ruby said before turning to me and raising an eyebrow. “You really shouldn’t have done all of this.”
“Why not? I have four years of spoiling to make up for.”
Ruby frowned as she watched Chloe skip off to the couch with a book in each hand and her new stuffed cat held snugly between her arm and body. “I can’t buy her things. She’s going to start comparing what you get her to what I get her.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.” I reached over to grab Ruby’s hand. To my surprise and relief she didn’t pull away. She looked back at me instead, and then looked down at the ground.
“We have a lot to work out.” She didn’t meet my eyes when she spoke.
“Yes, we do. But first, pizza. Where’s a good place to order from?”
Ruby smiled and went into the kitchen to grab a magnet from a pizza joint off the fridge. “Chloe and I both like their pepperoni. It’s really good. So is the supreme, but Chloe won’t eat that. Too much ‘green stuff’ on it, as she says.”
I grinned and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. “I’ll order one pepperoni and one supreme, so the grownups at least have the option to eat the ‘green stuff.’”
“Okay. Let me get you some cash to cover our half.”
“No way. This is my treat.”
Ruby hesitated. I could tell she was torn. I knew she must be struggling financially. It couldn’t be easy to provide for herself and Ruby on a maid’s salary. But she also had a lot of pride and didn’t want to accept help from me.
Well, too bad. She was going to have to learn to accept it. There was no way I was going to let her continue to struggle. Not when I had the entire world at my fingertips.
“Listen, Ruby. I know you’ve been doing this all on your own for four years, and that’s admirable. You’ve worked really hard, and you’ve done a good job. But things are going to change now. I know there are a lot of details to work out, but I want to be in Chloe’s life, and one way I’m going to do that is to help provide for her. It’s only fair. Not only that, but I want to be in your life.”
“My life? But…we don’t have much in common anymore. It’s been years, and you’ve gone off and started your business, and I’m…well I’m busy with work too…”
She trailed off and I shook my head at her. “We have Chloe in common. And besides that, the whole reason I originally came back to this island was for you. I don’t know how all of this is going to work out, but it is. For now, just let me buy the damn pizza, okay?”
Ruby bit her lip, which I’d noticed she’d been doing a lot today. She was nervous, and I wanted to put her mind at ease. I glanced back at the couch to make sure that Chloe was fully occupied with one of her new books, and then I leaned in close to whisper in Ruby’s ear. “Besides, you can’t wear a dress like the one you’re wearing and try to tell me that you don’t want me too. That dress is practically screaming at me to notice you.”
I nibbled at Ruby’s ear, then pulled back to grin at her before heading to sit at the tiny kitchen table and start dialing the number of the pizza chain.
I was happy to see that Ruby’s face had turned as bright red as the pepperonis that would be on the pizza we were ordering.
I still had an effect on her. I just hoped that effect would be a good one.
Chapter Seven
* IAN *
A few hours later, Ruby, Chloe and I had consumed an embarrassingly large amount of the two extra-large pizzas I had ordered. Ruby and I were also on our second bottle of wine. I hadn’t thought to bring wine, so I’d run down to a general store not far from Ruby’s house and grabbed a few bottles. I was glad I had. The slight buzz I had was making a perfect night feel even more enjoyable.
Chloe had fallen asleep on the couch, her arm around her new stuffed kitty and her head falling onto the dragons and cupcakes book when she could no longer keep her eyes open. Ruby had already made her put pajamas on, and she had protested violently. But it was a good thing, because now Chloe was so out of it that trying to put pajamas on her would have been like trying to dress a sack of flour with long arms and legs.
“I should carry her to bed,” Ruby said, standing up with a sigh. “Every night I try to get her to fall asleep in her own room, but somehow every night she ends up falling asleep on the couch and I have to carry her out. At least my arm muscles are getting strong.”
I stood as well. “Let me carry her. Please.”
Ruby hesitated for a second, but then nodded. “If you want to.”
I knew Ruby worried a lot about how Chloe would react to me. And even though Ruby hadn’t said it, I knew she was worried that I was going to leave and break Chloe’s heart. I couldn’t blame Ruby too much for that. After all, I’d left and broken Ruby’s heart before.
But this time, things would be different. This time, I wasn’t going anywhere unless Ruby and Chloe came with me. I hadn’t said this to Ruby yet, and I had no clue how the details were going to work out, but I was determined. I’d missed four years of Chloe’s life. I wasn’t missing anymore. And I’d missed five years of loving Ruby, and I wasn’t making that mistake again. I wasn’t going to sit in my New York City office like an idiot, pining away for a girl I’d stupidly left behind. Either Ruby was coming with me to New York, or I was staying here with her. She just didn’t know it yet.
I picked up Chloe, who sighed in her sleep but otherwise didn’t stir, and I followed Ruby down the hallway to Chloe’s room. The room was small, with barely enough space for a twin bed and a small dresser. But it was decorated colorfully, with pictures of rainbows and unicorns that Chloe had proudly drawn and hung on the wall.
“Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess,” Ruby said as she hurried to turn off the lamp that was casting a soft glow across the room. I could tell she was embarrassed by the small size of the room and the lack of fancy furniture. She’d been apologizing for her house all evening, but I honestly didn’t think it was that bad. It was small, yes. And the furniture definitely wasn’t the sort of thing you’d hand down through generations as an heirloom. But everything was clean and in good condition, and there were touches of hominess everywhere. Ruby had done a good job of decorating and making the small house feel cozy. And Chloe’s pictures hung all over the wall of her bedroom had a similar effect.
The place felt like home.
I looked down at my daughter’s angelic face and smiled. I could hardly believe how much love surged through me when I looked at her. I could hardly wait to tell her who I was, and to hear her call me daddy for the first ti
me.
For now, I settled for leaning over and gently kissing her forehead as she slept. I tiptoed out of the room, feeling like the luckiest man alive.
I’d ended up taking several pictures with my camera tonight, but the picture that would stick with me the most, even though it was only in my mind and not on an actual camera, was the mental image of Chloe lying peacefully asleep in the midst of her self-made world of rainbows and unicorns, the slightest of smiles turning up the corners of her lips.
Oh, to be young and innocent.
I followed Ruby back out to the living room, where she stood nervously in the middle of the small open space in front of the couch.
“So, uh, thanks for coming. I guess we’ll have to plan another time for you to see Chloe again. How long are you on the island for?”
“For as long as it takes.”
Her eyes widened a bit. “What do you mean?”
“As long as it takes for me to convince you that I should be a permanent part of this family.” I took a step forward and put my lips on Ruby’s. I didn’t give her a chance to think about running away or backing up this time. Maybe she was going to pull away in a second and yell at me, telling me to leave. But at least she would have felt my kiss, and would know that I was serious. I wanted her.
I wanted her before I knew about Chloe. I had wanted her before Chloe even existed. I had never stopped wanting her, and I realized now that I never was going to stop.
I should never have left.
Her lips were like fire, burning me up in the best possible way. She held back a little for a moment, but only a moment. Then she was melting into my kiss. I pushed my tongue past her lips and I let it dance with her tongue, relishing the way she tasted. My hands came up to the side of her face as my kiss became more and more urgent.
Trusting Him: A Billionaire Beach Island Romance (Billionaires of Driftwood Island Book 5) Page 4