I shrugged. “So to distract me, Mom would take me past this little ice cream cart that was tucked away down one of the casino ‘streets’, because this place was modeled to look like it could have been a seaside retreat on the East Coast or something. Anyway, I always used to get vanilla ice cream with sprinkles. And now, I guess it just kind of takes me back to that, every time.”
I was blushing, I realized. Why was I telling him all of this? Adam probably didn’t care at all. I should have just let him laugh and forgotten about it.
But Adam was looking at me with a considering look on his face. He shook his head and turned away. “I get that,” he said, and I could hear a rough note in his voice. He cleared his throat awkwardly but didn’t say anything more as he accepted his own chocolate praline ice cream from the woman behind the counter. He paid for both our ice creams and lead me over to a table in the corner.
“It must have been tough, when your parents split up,” he said quietly. Then, “Not that we have to talk about that, if you don’t want to.”
I shrugged and grinned at him. “I’m over it,” I assured him, even though there was a part of me that knew I was never really going to ‘get over’ it. “I mean, if Mom and Dad hadn’t split up and Dad hadn’t been trying to prove that he was the best dad ever afterwards, we probably never would have come up here for those holidays,” I added. “And look where that’s gotten me.”
Adam snorted. “Yeah, look where that’s gotten you,” he said, sounding amused. “Don’t you miss Las Vegas at all? I would have thought that by now, you would have been sick of the cold.”
I shrugged. “Like I said, I needed this change,” I said. “And besides, there’s something magical about a white Christmas. We never get that in Vegas.”
“I guess not,” Adam mused. “But the grass is always greener, right?”
“Are you trying to make me want to leave?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Adam looked taken aback. He stared down at his ice cream, digging his spoon into it a couple times without lifting any of it to his mouth. “No,” he said, and I could hear the honesty in his voice. He looked up at me, cocking his head to the side. “I like having you around. You’re good at the whole business thing, and you, I don’t know, seem to fit in well.”
He looked embarrassed at having said it, and I couldn’t help feeling pleased. I had a feeling that was as close as I was going to get to hearing him admit that he would miss me if I left. I felt a warm flush go through me. Maybe, despite the fact that he had phrased this as just a friends thing, this really was a date? Or at least something more than what he had said.
And even though logically I knew that I shouldn’t get involved with him, I was still thinking about that dream that I’d had. Where was the harm, really, in two consenting adults spending some time together? I wasn’t suggesting that we have sex in the hot tubs or change our work relationship in any way. But that didn’t mean that we couldn’t share a little warmth on these cold winter nights, did it?
The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that I wanted to see where this could go. Not in a relationship sense, maybe, but I didn’t want this night to be over just yet.
We finished up our ice cream, or at least as much of it as we could, and true to his word, Adam drove me back to the resort. “Did you want to come in and see my condo?” I asked Adam shyly. “I’ve got a bottle of wine that I keep meaning to break out. Ian gave it to me to celebrate my buying this place.”
Adam stared at me for a moment and then looked away. “I can’t,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, but there’s somewhere that I have to go.”
“Okay,” I said, trying not to sound too disappointed. It had been a long shot anyway. I could tell that Adam was still closed off, still keeping his secrets. I might feel like I had gotten closer to him in the time that we had spent together, but that didn’t mean he was interested in anything more with me. He probably was just trying to be friendly.
Hell, Ian might even have asked him to look out for me. That wouldn’t surprise me one bit.
I pushed away my disappointment as we got out of the car. “Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at work,” I told him. I grinned, trying to lighten the mood. “I promise I’ll try not to avoid you tomorrow.”
Adam laughed, but there was still something hollow in the sound. “Avoid me if you have to. I know you’re busy. I am too, at this time of year.” He gave me a quick hug and then headed over to his truck. I sighed and headed towards the condos, wondering just what the hell I thought that I was doing.
It was like suddenly, logic had caught back up to me. I shouldn’t have even asked for anything more, and I was almost glad that Adam had declined. Who knew where the night might have ended up if he had come inside to share a bottle of wine with me.
Sure, I might have finally cracked through the layers of mystery surrounding him, but it might have ruined everything that I was trying to build here. I felt embarrassed that I had even said anything to him.
As I walked towards the condos, I was surprised to see Kayla walking towards the parking lot. She paused when she saw me, her eyes flicking speculatively towards Adam’s truck which was still pulling out of the lot. She raised an eyebrow at me and gave a low whistle.
I rolled my eyes. “What are you still doing here?” I asked her.
“Forgot my phone charger behind the desk and had to come back for it or else I wouldn’t have an alarm tomorrow morning,” Kayla explained, but I could tell she was still waiting for me to explain what I was doing with Adam.
“Oh, come on,” I sighed. “I have a bottle of wine, don’t leave me to drink it on my own.”
Kayla laughed and followed me inside. I went to the wine cabinet, hesitating as I reached for the bottle of wine that Ian had given me. But for some reason, I felt like saving that one, even though I would have shared it with Adam if he had been the one to come inside with me.
I pushed that thought out of my head and grabbed a different bottle, uncorking it easily and pulling down two glasses while Kayla made herself comfortable on the couch. “So, you and Adam?” she asked, before I could even sit down.
“It’s not like that,” I said, shaking my head. “He just wanted to take me out to dinner to celebrate me having a good first couple of weeks, or something. And he wanted to show me the area. I think my brother probably asked him to look out for me.”
“I don’t know, dinner with him sure sounds like a date,” Kayla said doubtfully. “He even hugged you. I can’t remember the last time I saw him so much as shake hands with someone. That’s big, coming from him.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “Oh yeah, a hug through five layers of clothing, that sure is something,” I said sarcastically. Was it sad that I wanted to believe her, that I wanted to think that it really did mean something more, coming from him?
Kayla shrugged. “I’m just saying,” she said.
“He probably has a girlfriend anyway,” I said. “I asked him tonight why he was still single, and he totally refused to answer the question.”
Kayla laughed. “Did you legitimately ask him that? And expect him to answer you?”
“I guess it was a pretty rude thing to say,” I sighed.
“He’s too cold to have a girlfriend,” Kayla said decisively. “I mean, he’s friendly enough with everyone at work, but you can always tell that he’d much rather be up to his elbows in motor grease, monkeying around up in the wheelhouse of a lift, than hanging out chatting with anyone.”
I frowned, thinking about that. It was true that Adam seemed much more comfortable when he was hard at work rather than chatting with anyone. But the Adam that I had seen that day when I had worked with him, and the Adam that I had seen tonight, especially, made me wonder about that. At first, I had thought that he was just as cold as Kayla said.
But now, I wasn’t sure. There were definitely walls there, a hesitancy to him. I didn’t think that he was deliberately trying to hurt people, though. If anything,
I was sure that he was trying to make sure that he, himself, didn’t get hurt.
And that, honestly, was something that he and I had in common. I had those sorts of defensive mechanisms too, especially when it came to guys.
“Either way, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Kayla continued. “Just be careful.”
“I will,” I promised her, even though I was wondering if I had already broken that promise. Adam and I hadn’t even done anything yet, but I knew that if we never went to dinner again, it was going to hurt me. And it wasn’t just that I wanted to be friends with him, either. If I needed a friend, there was Kayla.
But there was something more that I wanted with Adam. I couldn’t quite dare to admit it to myself even, not just yet, but it was there, lurking in the background, and would be for every interaction that I had with him from here on out.
Still, I knew that Kayla was right to caution me to be careful. She wasn’t just looking out for my broken heart, if he wasn’t interested in me as well. But there was something more, below the surface, with Adam. Something that he was hiding. And I had to assume that if he was hiding it, it was probably something that he knew I wouldn’t like.
Even if not, how could I get involved with someone who didn’t want to communicate honestly with me? Someone who was clearly so wrapped up in themselves that they didn’t care how those mysteries and silences affected me?
Kayla was right. I’d be better off staying away from Adam.
But as before, it was like all the logic in the world couldn’t make me stop wishing that he were there with me. That he had been the one to agree to come in and have a glass of wine with me.
I forced a smile onto my face, though, and turned the conversation to something else.
19
Adam
I frowned when I finished up making breakfast on Wednesday morning and Ethan still hadn’t come out of his room. I dithered for a little longer, putting together a packed lunch for the boy to take to school as well. But still, he didn’t appear. Had he overslept? Usually, he was up long before I was. And although it was kind of nice to be able to get everything done in the kitchen without him getting underfoot, but all the same, I was starting to get a little worried.
I knocked on his door and peeked into his room. “Hey buddy, you awake?” I asked.
“Daddy?” Ethan asked, his voice sounding tired. “I don’t feel good.”
I felt my blood run cold. It had always stressed me out when my son got sick. Especially when he was a baby, I had just always felt so damned helpless watching him. There was only so much that I could do to ease whatever sickness he had, and most of it was about letting him rest. It tugged at my heart every time.
But things had been especially worse ever since Beth got sick.
Logically, I knew that whatever Ethan had now was nothing like what Beth had had. Logically, I knew that he probably just picked something up at school. He would rest for a day or two, maybe take some antibiotics, and then he’d be running around just like normal. It was totally natural for a kid his age to get a cold every once in a while. Especially with the cold and snowy weather that we’d been having that year.
Just because I knew that logically, though, it didn’t mean that my head was ready to accept it. I swallowed hard, trying not to panic as I came over to Ethan’s bedside. I didn’t want to freak him out, but I needed to figure out what was wrong with him. I tried not to be too overbearing in the process.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him, sitting on the edge of his bed and automatically reaching out to place a hand against his forehead. He definitely felt warm. But I waited to hear what he had to say before I went for the thermometer.
“My head hurts,” Ethan said, pouting. “And my tummy feels yucky. Like there’s worms in it.”
I tried not to grin at that description. “Sounds like you might be sick,” I said. “You stay put here while I got get the thermometer, all right?”
“Uh huh,” Ethan said, sounding like there was nowhere else in the world that he would rather be.
I hurried into my bathroom and dug the thermometer out of the medicine cabinet. Sure enough, he was running a temperature. Nothing too high, nothing to be too worried about, but I was already worried, unable to help it.
And when I glanced at my watch, I knew that I needed to get to work. If I wanted to get everything done that day, I wasn’t going to be able to hang out here much longer. I knew, too, that Dad would be more than willing to watch Ethan for the day while I went to work.
But I was still thinking about Beth. About all those hours that I had missed with her because I went off to work expecting that she was going to get better. About how…
But this situation was nothing like that, I reminded myself. Ethan just had a fever, and not even a very high fever at that. He needed rest and fluids. He was going to be fine.
“Do I have to go to school today?” Ethan whined.
“No, buddy,” I said, still trying to calm myself down. To think things through. I wouldn’t take him to the doctor, not unless things got worse. I knew that there was no reason to, and I knew that the doctor wasn’t going to tell me anything that I didn’t know already. But I still couldn’t bring myself to leave Ethan with Dad and go off to work.
“Why don’t you go back to sleep for a little while?” I suggested to Ethan.
“Okay,” he sighed, snuggling into the blankets. I tucked him in, trying not to think about how small he was, about how easy it would be for me to lose him.
No, I wasn’t going to think about that. He was just a little sick. That was all.
I headed out into the living room and went to get the sick kit. The little bell to put on the bedside table, the jolly little glass with its bright balloons. It was a stab in the heart to see each of those things. This wasn’t the set-up that we had used with Beth when she was sick and bedridden. No, she’d had her own bell and her own glass and her own everything. But this was a sick kit that she had put together for Ethan during the first cold that he’d had when he was old enough to be out of a crib.
Every piece of it had her touch all over it, and I suddenly found myself aching with the wish that she were still there. It was, of course, an ache that never really went away, but two years after her death, I wasn’t a slave to the feeling like I had originally been. Now, though, the lack of her by my side hit me hard.
If Beth were still there, she would get me off to work. She would promise to watch our darling son for the day. She would be there, steady as a rock, patiently reminding me that everything was going to be okay.
For a moment, I closed my eyes, overcome again with the loss. But the moment I closed my eyes, the image of her changed and shifted, until somehow it was Bailey that I could imagine there by my side, helping me out, unflappable and kind as ever.
I shook my head to clear it and brought the sick kit into Ethan’s room. “All you have to do is ring and I’ll be here,” I said, when his sleepy eyes found me. He nodded his understanding but didn’t say anything.
I smoothed a hand over his forehead and left again, careful not to close the door behind me so that I would hear him if he did end up ringing the bell. Then, I went into the living room and gave the front desk a call.
I supposed that I could have called Bailey directly. That maybe I should have called her directly. After all, she was my boss. But I still hadn’t told her about Ethan, and I knew that she, unlike Kayla, would likely ask questions that I wasn’t prepared to answer. I didn’t want to have to lie to her.
“Hey Kayla,” I said, when the other woman picked up the phone, “I just wanted to let you know that I’m not going to make it in today. But I’ll be there tomorrow instead of taking my day off as usual. There shouldn’t be anything on my plate at the moment that’s too pressing anyway. I got most of the big projects done before the holiday rush started.”
“No problem,” Kayla said. “I’ll pass it on. Hope everything’s okay?”
“It’s fi
ne,” I said shortly. Most of the people at the mountain knew about Ethan, having seen him up there before. But I didn’t want to tell Kayla that the reason I couldn’t be there that day was him. I didn’t want her passing that message on to Bailey.
Belatedly, I wondered if I should have just mentioned car trouble or something like that. Too late now, anyway. We hung up, and I had to fight to resist the urge to go in and check on Ethan again. If I checked on him every ten minutes for the whole day, he would never have a chance to get the rest that he needed.
Instead, I headed into the kitchen. I had already made breakfast, but I wasn’t hungry now, still too worried about Ethan to have any sort of appetite. I put the food in containers and into the fridge, trying to let the routine of it all soothe my nerves.
I was startled when there was a knock at the door. Frowning, I went to answer it, wondering if it was someone from the resort come to see what was going on. But who would do that? And anyway, it hadn’t been long enough since I had gotten off the phone with Kayla. No one could have gotten over there that quickly.
I pulled open the door and was surprised to see Dad there. “What’s up?” I asked him.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “I was going to ask you the same question,” he said. “Today isn’t your day off. I saw your truck still parked in the driveway and wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
“Yeah, Ethan’s just not feeling well,” I admitted.
Dad frowned. “Don’t you have work today, though?” he asked.
“I called in,” I told him.
Dad’s frown deepened, and I could see slight disappointment in the way that he looked at me. “You should have called me,” he said. “This is the busiest time of the year; I’m sure they could use you.”
“I got most of the major works projects done before the holiday season hit,” I protested. “It’s really not a problem. I’ll make up the extra hours tomorrow. Assuming that Ethan is better then.” If not, well, the mountain could do without me for a couple days at a time. Sure, it was the busy season. But a lot of the problems we might have would be routine things like blown lightbulbs and plugged jets in the hot tubs. Those were things that Bailey was capable of handling now. That was the whole point of her spending a day shadowing me, wasn’t it?
One Shot At Love: A Billionaire Single Father Romance Page 11