There’s one of Rhys with a bunch of men on a mountainside. An old wedding photo of a young couple I would assume are his parents. Rhys looks a lot like his dad if that’s him. In the center, one is bigger than the rest and it’s of an older woman, surrounded by five young men, one of whom is Rhys. The men must be his brothers, because they are all looking inwards at their mother with such adoration, while she beams at the lens.
This is not the home of someone who has no regard for people’s feelings. The man who lives here is sentimental and family oriented.
Rhys comes back into the living area, shirtless and out of breath. “You’re still here,” he whispers in relief.
“Surprised?”
He nods and runs his fingers through his damp hair. “Very.”
“Well today is just full of surprises.” I can’t fight the hint of bitterness in my words and I can tell they cut through him by the look on his face.
“I thought for sure when I finally told you, you’d be done with me. That’s why it has taken me so long.”
“Don’t you think I deserved the truth? Instead I had to find out for myself,” I snap.
He hangs his head. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Do you know how humiliating it’s going to be to have to leave my job because I fucked the boss?”
His eyes fly up to mine. “Leave? But— you can’t leave. Liberty needs you.” Deep lines cut into his forehead. He reaches out a hand to test the water, but I pull out of his reach, instead turning to look at the pictures again for some distance.
“I don’t want you to leave Liberty. I’ll step back if I have to. Please just agree to stay.”
All the small details of what he’s asking of me run through my head. The thought of facing the people I work with once they know I’ve been fraternizing. John…God I can’t. The embarrassment of them knowing that I not only replaced Lisa in the company, but also in the boss’ bed. It’s so nasty. What if they think that’s how I got the job? What if?—
I lose myself in the what ifs and I only realize I’ve been silent for a while when Rhys breaks into my thoughts.
“That’s my mum,” he says fondly of the woman in the family portrait I was studying earlier. As I suspected. “She thinks you should go with me next time I visit. She says I’d better not fuck it up before she gets to meet you.”
I turn to face him, surprised by his nearness. “You told your mom about me?”
“Of course. Why does that surprise you?”
“Um, I don’t know? Maybe because you didn’t tell me a whole bunch of stuff you should have, so I guess I’m shocked to know you told your mom of all people.”
He steps closer. “Kitten, I know I should have—”
I hold up my hand, stopping him from getting too close. I don’t trust myself with him close to me. “Don’t,” I say firmly.
“My mum warned me this would happen. She said I needed to stop delaying the inevitable and tell you everything.”
“But instead you chose to ignore her and let me find out for myself?”
“No. I planned to tell you today. As soon as I got back.”
“So why didn’t you?”
Rhys looks away not able to meet my eyes.
I fold my arms across my chest waiting him out. Why should I make this easy on him?
“Because,” he sighs. “You looked so incredible when I saw you today. I needed to have you. I couldn’t wait. And if that was going to be our last time together, I couldn’t let it pass. I had to make it count.”
“Was it worth it?”
He reaches out again and this time, I don’t prevent him making contact. He strokes his fingers down my arm, but doesn’t attempt to deepen the connection. “Being with you will always be worth it. But if the price is losing you for good, then it’s too high.”
“How long, Rhys?”
“How long what?”
I raise my eyebrows, waiting, knowing he knows what I mean.
“How long have I known you were working for me?”
I nod, trying to remain firm, all the while wrapping my arms across my chest in an attempt to protect myself from the answer coming.
Rhys sighs. “I didn’t know when I met you in the airport. Or in the club that first night.” He runs his fingers through the damp strands, arranging them with effortless perfection. “I found out when I was putting together your welcome pack and saw the photo of you HR had put on your security pass.”
I watch as he relives the memory and am struck by the pained expression his face holds. “It is like a punch in the gut. Here I was, confident I was hiring someone we couldn’t live without, then I come to discover it’s someone I—” He cuts himself off and looks away.
“Someone you what, Rhys?” I demand, lacking patience.
Rhys turns back searching my eye, looking so unsure. “Someone I can’t live without,” he whispers.
I choke. “Wha—? But— You barely knew me then! We’d spoken twice.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t know, kitten. I knew when I saw you sitting down with your coffee and that pastry you destroyed that you were someone special. I just knew, okay? Don’t tell me you didn’t feel something similar, because I know you did. This thing between us hasn’t gotten off to the best start and I take responsibility for that, but it was there from the moment we met and you know damn well it’s true.”
I open my mouth to disagree, but I can’t. I press my lips together and remain silent, knowing in doing so that I’m effectively admitting as much, but to argue would be futile. I knew too. I didn’t go looking for it. Hell, I couldn’t even admit it to myself at first, but it was there all the same.
“Don’t give up on me,” he whispers.
I study him. The look of desperation he’s wearing almost has me caving in. His bare chest and defined muscles and all that ink I didn’t know I could love so much, offer a welcome distraction from the emotions he stirs in me, but then I realize I’m merely being sucked in another way. When my eyes fall on the word on his chest that was ultimately his undoing, I sigh in defeat. This is going to happen one way or another. I’m in too deep to just up and run, but I can’t think with him half naked. “I’m willing to talk,” I tell him. “But can you please put a shirt on?”
His lips part and a slow knowing grin appears on his face. “Of course. Now, that I know you aren’t leaving, I’ll get dressed properly. Just give me a quick second.” He steps back, still holding my gaze and then turns and heads back down the hallway.
I move further into the room, running my hand over a tartan blanket that’s folded over the back of the leather sofa. Everything about the room is comforting. I feel at ease enough to sit, despite the situation. I walk around the sofa and into the sitting area, deciding to sit where he can’t sit too close. Sinking into the large armchair, I pull a pillow into my lap instinctively. As if a wad of stuffing in a plaid cover could offer me any sort of real protection. It’s all I have to hold on to though, so I cling to it, cursing myself for the weakness.
Rhys reappears, this time wearing a hastily slung on shirt with his sweatpants, looking just as hurried as the last time. I take a small amount of satisfaction in the fact that he still wasn’t completely convinced I’d stick around. It’s mildly reassuring to think that he might be feeling as uncertain as I am.
Not hiding his relief, he comes around and sits gingerly right on the edge of the sofa, across from me.
“I really am sorry, if it means anything,” he begins tentatively.
I slowly close my eyes to try and gather my control. “You should have said something.”
He shakes his head. “No, I couldn’t. Not when I found out.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“Hear me out.” He cuts me off, his voice commanding my cooperation. “Let’s be honest, kitten, you’d have run a mile. The person I was headhunting, I knew had just sold her company, to her ex-husband no less, for less than market value after a protracted and from all accounts
bitter period of negotiation. You’d just made a fresh start, you weren’t about to get tangled up with your new boss. And I knew we needed you here.
“I went after you for your work ethic and your success story. I had no idea about the woman behind the steely business decisions, award winning performance and game changing financial skills. I didn’t know at the time how bad things were with Lisa, but I knew enough was enough. And with the plans we have for Liberty over the next few years, Lisa was going to be way out of her depth. I had to have you to help us get to where I know we are going to go. So hell no I couldn’t risk you hating me and walking away.”
“So that’s all I am, an awesome CFO?”
“Shit, no! I’m mucking this all up.” He stands and starts pacing. “You don’t really think that do you?”
“No.” I shrug. “But I wanted to hear you say it.”
“That’s evil, kitten.”
“I think you can handle it, Rhys.”
He drags his fingers through his hair and then comes to stand in front of me, bending to perch on the corner of the coffee table so that we are eye to eye. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I’m fighting a losing battle here and you’re toying with me.” He shakes his head disapprovingly, but the corner of his mouth curls in a hint of a smile.
I try to ignore the softening of his features. I liked it better when he looked wracked with guilt and sick with worry. It’s easier to stay firm when he’s that way.
“You know you are more than that to me. From the moment I first saw you, you were more than that. And when I found out who you really were, I felt like I’d already lost you. I couldn’t face meeting you on your first day, it was too raw. I didn’t want to destroy your first day at your new job and selfishly I wanted to delay killing all possibility of getting to know you better for just a little while. I knew the truth would come out, I was just putting the moment off a little. Then we kept running into each other outside work and I couldn’t fight the chances I was being given to steal time with you before it was over. Before I knew it, I was actively hiding from you at work to prolong my time with you.” He bites at his bottom lip and looks away guiltily. “I know it was wrong, but every time I swore I would come clean, I would see you again and each time was better than the last. I knew how you would react and I just couldn’t—”
“You don’t know how I would have reacted. You never gave me the chance.”
“Let me ask you this. Would you have gone out with me had I been there to welcome you to the company that morning and told you that I had only just found out myself, but I still wanted to see you?”
“No,” I answer immediately.
“Exactly.”
“But I still deserved to know.”
“Maybe.” He sighs. “But I felt like we both deserved to know what could happen between us, kitten. Are you sorry I gave us room to find out?”
I frown. “That isn’t a fair question.”
“Only because you don’t want to have to admit the true answer,” he counters softly, daring at last to reach out and touch me.
His fingers rest over my hand clasped tight around his pillow, but I don’t acknowledge the move. Instead I close my eyes to gather my thoughts, he’s right. I wouldn’t have given him the time of day and yet I’m not sorry I got to see how things could be with him. I avoid giving him an answer by changing directions. “What I don’t understand is, how did you know from the first time we met that you were so interested in me that you were willing to gamble my feelings?”
“I just did, kitten. I can’t explain it. From the first time we talked, all I could think was, she’s the one.”
The look on his face is so self-assured. He has absolute confidence in himself and how he feels. How am I such a fucking mess? “She’s the one?” I raise a brow.
“God, I want to hold you.” He sighs, then squares his shoulders resisting the need that might risk pushing me further away. I feel for him, but I’m still too rattled to take pity on him so I ignore his words.
“Yeah, the one,” he continues. “Mum would always tell us growing up, you’ll know when you meet the one and you’ll do anything to keep them. It won’t be in your control, you’ll just be along for the ride.”
I resist the urge to scoff. “Is that some type of crazy folklore your mom believes in?”
He blinks twice and then barks out the loudest laugh I’ve ever heard from him. “Mum is going to absolutely adore you.”
I frown. “It was a serious question.”
“I know and trust me, my brothers and I have been saying that for years. But she’s not crazy. Whatever it is, it’s real. I know that now because it’s happened.” He leans forward, gaining courage when I don’t leap up to get away from him, and when he reaches out to stroke the backs of his knuckles down my face, I don’t even flinch. “Give us a chance,” he pleads softly. “Please.”
I lean in to his touch before I can stop myself and then come to my senses. “It’s not that simple, Rhys.”
“Yes it is.”
“No. It’s not!” I growl. “You’re still my boss.” Then realization, no, obviously I’d already realized hits me. This is just actual acknowledgment of the awful facts, but they land heavily on my conscience all at once. “Oh God, I had sex with my boss on my desk.” I hide my face in my hands.
I hear something unexpected. Rhys chuckles. “Not just sex, kitten. Great sex.”
I look up at him and glare. “Really, Rhys? This is serious you know.”
“I think you’re overreacting just a wee bit.”
Anger flashes through me and I cut him a look that has had lesser men cowering for mercy. “Personally, I think you are under-reacting just a ‘wee bit’,” I mimic his accent in my retort.
“I just know what I want and I’m not afraid to go after it.”
I groan. “This is such a clusterfuck. It can’t happen.”
“Are you telling me we’re done?”
“I don’t know what else to say, Rhys.”
The look of horror that crosses his face surprises me. “I’ll pass all control to John, if I have to. Don’t end what we have, Charlotte. Please.”
“How can you say that? Don’t you care about your company at all?”
“Of course I do, but it isn’t important enough to stop me from living the life I want to live. Don’t you see? Working isn’t the same as living. Living is joy and sadness, fear and happiness. You can get those things from work, sure, but they don’t keep you warm at night.”
I watch him incredulously and blurt the first thought that comes into my head. “I don’t understand how you’re so sure of yourself while I am doubting every move I make.”
Rhys sits back a little, giving me space to breathe, but he takes hold of my hand and keeps it between his as he begins to open up to me. “I used to be solely focused on making money. It’s how I was raised. I came from money, but we were all taught that independence was everything. We have a strong family business, we could have all drifted into that and grown lazy, but Dad was adamant. Make it on your own first. There was no free ride in my family.”
“That’s commendable, I guess,” I say, feeling that while the lesson was positive, there was something cold about it.
“Not really,” Rhys laments. “My father taught all of us boys well when it came to business sense, but his unspoken rule was always money first, everything else second. There was no room for family on the top of his list of priorities. He missed every game, every concert, every sickness. He was proud of us, but the attachment was missing. All of our lives that’s how we lived, that was our example. We don’t talk about it, but it has affected us all in our own way. Hell, all of us are still unmarried.
“But mum...she’ll do anything for those she loves and trust me she loves us enough for the both of them. She gave up her life to raise us and was just waiting on the day my father would retire and they would finally start the life she always dreamed about. Traveling the world and taking time to be w
ith their family. Only that day never came. My father died alone in his office one night at work. We were all so used to him being at the office that we didn’t notice he never came home. His personal assistant found him the next morning.”
“Oh my God, Rhys,” I gasp. “That’s horrible.”
“We all promised our mum after that fiasco that we would never put work first. It was an easy promise to make, but a hard one to keep. When you’re young and growing successful, it’s like a drug.” He pauses and we exchange a look of knowing. We have both been in that place and I carry my own regrets from it. “I was so hungry. I let it consume me for a while.” He looks pained and full of remorse. “But I woke up when I saw what it was doing to mum.”
He swallows. “I took myself away from it all for a while. Travelled the far east, learned from the ways of life I was exposed to. It gave me a new perspective. I realized I’d gotten it all completely wrong. It was a liberation. It’s crazy I know, but I had been so tightly wound, trying to establish myself as a man to be taken seriously, that I lost sight of who I was. Just like Dad had. In letting it all go I found not only myself, but also power. Not power over others like he always craved. Power over myself. And kitten, once you have that, you can’t be anything but sure of yourself.
“Of course my company matters. I’ve worked damn hard to build it and I have plans to watch it grow. But it isn’t all I have in my life. I would be content as an observer if that’s what it takes to have you. What good is all the success and money I have if I have no one to share it with?”
“But you had Lisa,” I spit, unable to stop myself. It’s easier to cling on to the argument than admit his words have taken hold.
“I told you, we were never a couple and she knew that,” he replies calmly.
“Are you sure? She seemed to think you were headed down the aisle if you ask me.”
Rhys lets out a long sigh. “Her father had the idea in his head that she and I would end up married, but I never encouraged the notion. And Lisa…well who knows what’s going on in her head half the time.”
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