Her eyes move up and down as she looks me over. “Blaine, I don’t want you to be anything you’re not. But I have to let you know that I need to be able to respect you if we’re to keep things like they are.”
“That’s another thing I want to change,” I say and watch her perfect eyebrows raise.
“What? Do you want to end this? You want to stop seeing me?” she asks, and I see the hurt in her green eyes and that makes me ache inside.
I pull her to me and hug her, leaning my chin on the top of her head. “No. Not at all. I want more. I want what we have out in the open, and I want you to move in with me. I need you. I need to have you around me. And I can’t go back to that hospital. I’ve had no idea how to ask you to do this. I also was afraid once you knew I’m not going to be making those big changes that you’d be the one who’d end things.”
Her hand touches my chest, pushing me back gently as she looks up at me. “Blaine, I think this is too sudden. You’re telling me you won’t be the man I grew to care for. You’re telling me you want to be that all-business-no-emotion man. I can tell you I won’t be able to keep my mouth shut about how you do things.”
“I can handle your mouth,” I tell her, then take it with a sweet kiss. She’s smiling when I end it and pull back to look at her. “And I’m not saying I don’t want your input. I’m just saying I most likely won’t act on any of it.”
The frown that fills her face has my heart pounding with worry that she won’t accept my offer. This is exactly what I was afraid would happen when I told her about me deciding my old ways are the best ways.
She has my heart right in the palm of her hand. I knew it would come to this. I knew if I let myself feel anything, I’d end up on the shit end of the stick. Now, here I stand, waiting for her to either give me what I want or take it all away from me.
The ball is in her court and I find her frown killing parts of me I didn’t even realize had been brought to life. She’s brought more out of me than I even knew. And, now, she may be about to kill all that she made.
“Blaine, I think moving in with you might actually be a good idea. I was thinking it was too sudden, but on second thought, it might be just what you need. You need to know everything isn’t all bad. I know you truly enjoyed spending time with Terry, Colby, little Adam, and Tammy. You let the one negative, Meagan’s father, take all the good away from your experience.”
“It was more than just him,” I say as I let her go and feel the hardness emerging inside of me again as I think about how unfair it is that those children have to suffer. There’s not one of them who deserves what they’re going through. Our God, if there is one, allows this kind of thing to happen. “I just know I was a lot happier when my mind was just on business. I do have room for you, though. I have lots of room for you.”
She reaches out for me and pulls me back to her. I wrap my arms around her and love the way she makes me feel. Now, if she could just leave the kids at that damn hospital out of things and out of my mind!
“I think I can accept that, for now,” she says, making me tense up again.
“For now?” I ask as I hold her back and give her a look that hopefully lets her know I’m not the kind of man who takes too well to being nagged. “You should know I hate to be nagged about anything.”
“Nagged?” she asks, with yet another frown on her pretty little face. It seems I’m making her do that a lot today, and I don’t like that at all.
“Sorry.” I pull her back in close and hold her tight. “I’ll just shut up now. Where would you like to go to dinner this evening?”
“It doesn’t matter to me. I have to work until eight to cover for the nurse who’s covering for me right now. It’s going to be kind of late to go anywhere nice. I’d have to change and that would take a little while. Plus, I want to get to sleep early. I’m pulling a double tomorrow.”
Just like that, I realize that, if she and I are going to get to spend much time together, I’ll need to go to the hospital at least some.
And just like that, I think this will never work out.
Chapter 4
DELANEY
Blaine has gone back and forth between being as tense as I’ve ever seen him to very relaxed and giving. It seems he’s dealing a bit with an inner struggle he’s not telling me everything about.
“I tell you what,” I say, as I sense he needs me more than he’s willing to tell me right now. “I’ll call the nurse who’s covering for me and work a deal out with her for the rest of today. I won’t be going back up there until tomorrow. I know you have something to do at four, but after you get done, I am all yours. Take me anywhere you want or just take me to your estate. I don’t care. The rest of the day and night is all about you, Blaine. Only you and me.”
His body relaxes again and he smiles at me. “I knew there was a reason why I found you to my liking. You can get with your landlord while I take the meeting at four. It should only take me an hour to take care of that, then I’ll be through for the day.”
“Get with my landlord? About?”
“Moving out. Letting the place go,” he says.
Then it hits me like a brick that he really wants a commitment from me. “That’s a great big step.”
Tension fills his body again, and this time, I can feel mine tense up too. “It is. I thought you understood. I want us to take this next logical step.”
“Yeah, I get it. But don’t you get that we don’t really know if this is going to work out and that I don’t want to have to start completely over? I’ll just keep my apartment. That way, if things don’t work out, I won’t be devastated.”
“It wouldn’t devastate you for this to end?” he asks as he lets me go and turns away from me. “It would mess me up pretty badly if I never got to see you again.”
“Wow! I didn’t say that,” I say as I throw my arms up in the air in exasperation. “I feel like I’m on a damn roller coaster with you today, Blaine. This is crazy. I mean seriously crazy. I think you need to see someone. A therapist or something. You have something going on inside of you that’s up and down and all over the place.”
He walks past me, leaving the bathroom and going toward his desk in a hurry. “I’m not crazy. Crazy people don’t do the things I’ve accomplished. I feel odd right now. Uneven. Out of kilter. All because of my pops. Death is hitting me hard right now. I don’t know what the fuck you expect from me. I’m grieving in my own way and fighting myself about things. You have no idea what’s going on inside my head. My heart. My soul!”
My God, I’ve completely forgotten about him and all he’s going through. I hurry to him as he sits in his high-backed, black, leather chair behind his large, oak desk.
“Baby, I am so sorry. I tell you what. I’m going to just stop all that now. I can give up my apartment. I get it now. You need to feel secure with me. I get it. I can do that for you. I’m so sorry I wasn’t thinking about all you’ve gone through.”
“No, keep the apartment if that’s what you want to do. I shouldn’t be bossing you around anyway. Do what you want to. Don’t let me do that to you. I’m sorry. I’m a mess and I’m not really in the right frame of mind to make any lasting decisions. I think I’ve proven that already.”
“Let’s take this one day at a time. I’ll bring the essentials to your place today. I’ll make sure I have everything I need to make the place a home for me too. And, one day at a time, we can take this wherever it’s going to go. And to start things off on the right foot, I’d like to let you know I’ve decided that it’s safe to say that I love you, Blaine Vanderbilt. I know it for certain because you are so deep in my heart that it actually hurts when I’ve hurt your feelings, even inadvertently.”
“I don’t see how you could,” he says as he looks at me through his thick lashes, his head is down.
“I can see you. I can feel you. I want to be with you and be here for you. So, how do you feel about me?” I ask as I take his chin and lift him to look at me.
I find his eyes a little glassy as he looks into mine. “I love you, Delaney. I’ve told you as much. Remember when I told you that I was falling in love with you?”
“I do, then nothing else was said. I certainly didn’t want you to say anything you didn’t really mean, especially something like that. Now, let me get my coat back on to cover up my slutty, little elf outfit and I’ll go to my place to pack up my things. How about I meet you at your estate after your meeting?” I ask, as he looks a lot better.
“I would like that very much.” He opens his desk drawer and fishes around, then comes back with a key in his hand. “This will get you in the front door.” He writes down something on a piece of paper and puts it in my hand. “This is the code to the gate and the one under that is the code to the alarm system. The staff is there to let you in, but I want you to have this anyway. I’ll let them know you’re coming.”
With the key in my hand, it starts to feel real. I’m going to move in with Blaine Vanderbilt. My family’s enemy, who isn’t going to be doing anything he told me he was. And, still, I’m moving in with him.
I have to ask myself, am I selling out my soul to the man who obviously isn’t about to change a thing about himself?
Then I look at his light-brown eyes as they twinkle and have to smile. My heart is with this man. Perhaps with my influence and time, he will make some better decisions with his business. Maybe he just needs a positive influence.
He pulls one more thing out of the desk drawer and I see it’s a small picture frame. Placing it on his clean desk, he turns it so I can see. “That’s mom.”
Strawberry-blonde hair and a smattering of freckles are outshined by a set of green eyes that sparkle like magic. “She has the same color eyes I do. But hers are much brighter.”
“Yours are equally as bright, in my opinion. You remind me of her. I think that’s why I took to you so easily. I think that’s part of the reason I gave you the chance I’ve never given anyone else.” I know his words are meant to comfort me, but they scare me a little.
I don’t want to be the man’s mother. But maybe he needs me to fill the void she left when she passed away when he was only five. I hope I have what it will take to make things work for us.
I don’t think things are going to be easy. But things that come easily are rarely worth much!
Chapter 5
BLAINE
The afternoon sun is peeking through the dark-brown curtains in Kate’s office and managing to hit me right in the left eye. As I ease over to avoid it, I catch Kate giving me that look again—the one that says she’s not a happy camper.
Picking up one of the dolls that resembles a Barbie doll, she shakes it a bit and the head falls right off. “See? Junk. And its brand new out of the packaging, which most likely cost more to produce than this piece of crap did. I bought thirty dollars’ worth of toys from the Bargain Bin here in Houston, and out of the fifteen toys I purchased, two are still viable. The rest were easily broken within minutes.”
“Children who get these toys are going to be very upset little individuals, Blaine,” Kent adds. “Now, I found us a manufacturer that will deliver all we want to all of the stores within this upcoming week. They have reasonable prices, and we can mark our prices merely pennies below our competitors. You will still be the lowest price on the market.”
I sit and look at the pile of debris on top of Kate’s desk that was once a pile of toys for a brief amount of time. The alarm on my cell phone goes off, telling me it’s time to end this meeting and get home to Delaney.
Her sweet face lights up my phone screen, as I set her picture to show with the alarm. Looking at her as I turn the alarm off, I get a solid voice coming from inside of my head. Do the right thing.
The right thing, it said once, and pretty loudly and commandingly. I look at the pile of junk again, then at the hopeful looks on my younger brother’s and sister’s faces, and it just comes out. “Do it.”
“Really?” Kate says as she jumps up from her chair and runs around, grabbing me and pulling me up to hug her. “Oh, Blaine! You’ll see—you’ll still make money and the kids won’t be heartbroken. I’ll get on the phone to let the managers know we want those old toys off the shelves. I’ve found a recycling program we can give them too so they won’t be completely wasted.”
“Plus, we can write all that off as a loss and save money on this year’s taxes,” Kent adds.
“I hadn’t even thought of that,” I tell him as I shake my head and wonder why I’ve never thought of that before. “We could do that with returns to our stores too. We can send the things to be recycled, say once a month or something like that, and write all that merchandise off.”
Kate’s smile is enormous as she says, “Then my original return policy can be accepted.”
With a nod, I agree, and she hugs me again. “Blaine, this is going to work! I’m so excited!”
Kent pats me on the back. “Let’s go get some drinks and celebrate this big change.”
“I can’t. I have something going on I need to attend to.” I pull my jacket off the back of the chair I was sitting in and turn to leave.
“What’s the thing you need to attend to?” Kate asks as she grabs my arm, stopping me.
Looking back at them, I say, “Delaney is moving in with me today.”
“What?” Kent says with a slack-jawed expression.
“Seriously?” Kate asks with a similar expression on her face. “Why didn’t you say anything about this before? This is exciting news, Blaine!”
“I just asked her a little while ago. She was in my office after that last meeting. I asked her then, and she agreed to do it. I think things will be better for us, with her living with me. I can’t go back to that hospital again.” I try to turn to leave, but my sister has yet to let my arm go.
“Whoa,” she says. “Why can’t you go back to that hospital?”
“It’s too upsetting. Too depressing,” I say and pull out of her grip.
“Think how the kids feel,” Kent says. “Think about them, not yourself, Blaine.”
“Yeah, they’re sick and hurting, and you were a ray of sunshine in their dismal days. And you just stopped going all of a sudden,” Kate says. “I thought you’d at least be going back around the week of Christmas, but it sounds like you won’t be.”
“I won’t. I can’t take all that suffering for no damn reason. It sets off bombs in my head that I’d rather leave dormant. It’s better this way. And the kids don’t care. How could they? They don’t even know me,” I say, then put my jacket on.
“I saw you with some of those kids, Blaine,” Kent says. “You did manage to make them your friends. You need to get over yourself and go back. Really, it’s just mean not to.”
“Mean?” I ask, as I’ve never thought of not going back as being mean to anyone.
“Yes,” Kate agrees. “It is mean. You made them think you cared about them, but then you just stopped going to see them. They have so damn little.”
A pain starts in my heart, and I have no idea why that is. Could they be right? Could I actually be hurting any of them? Do I really care if I am?
“I need to go. Delaney will be waiting,” I say and turn to leave.
“Think about what we’ve said,” Kate calls out after me.
“And give Delaney our love,” Kent adds.
I wave behind my head and nod as I leave her office. I have no idea why, but my brain is in a whirl as I try to wrap my head around things. I never meant to hurt anyone. Not ever.
Maybe I am selfish. Maybe I am being weak by letting my problems with humanity and the lack thereof in this world interfere in any good I can do for people. Maybe it’s time to stop being this way.
With my brother’s and sister’s help, I’ve managed to figure out how to transform my stores into something at least a little bit better than my original ideas. Maybe with Delaney’s help, I can manage to come up with a way to look past what my feelings are and think about the kids’ feel
ings instead.
As I walk into the reception area, I see Blanch getting ready to leave too. “You have any special plans for this Friday night?”
She looks at me with a smile. “No. But I hear you do.”
“Huh?” I ask, as I have no idea what she could’ve heard.
“Delaney told me about you two moving in together. She’s a very nice young woman, Blaine. Your mother would’ve loved her.” She takes my arm and joins me as we walk out of our offices toward the elevator.
“She talked to you?” I ask, surprised since she didn’t mention anything about that at all.
With a nod, she says, “She did. Blaine, I know you and how you are, so please don’t think I mean anything ugly by saying this. You need to put her first. You need to watch that streak of selfishness you have. Listen to the things she has to say. She seems like a compassionate and smart woman.”
“Feisty too,” I say with a laugh. “You don’t have to worry about Delaney. She knows how to hold her own. She’s not a woman I can walk all over, by any means. She is, quite frankly, perfect for me. She won’t hesitate to call me out when I’m being selfish. Instead of making me mad, it makes me think she’s adorable. I have no idea why that is, but it is that way.”
Blanch smiles again and pulls me in for a hug. “Blaine, I think you’ve met the one for you. I’m so happy.”
Maybe I have met the one!
Chapter 6
DELANEY
Placing my clothes in Blaine’s closet has given me just about the oddest feeling I’ve ever had. I’ve never lived with anyone before. I’ve lived alone since I left home five years ago.
As an only child with parents who both worked at their tire shop most of my life, I stayed alone a lot too. I have no idea how well I’ll take to having limited time alone.
“You look at home already,” Blaine says as he strides into his bedroom.
Stepping out of the massive walk-in closet, I find myself quickly taken into his strong arms, a kiss placed on top of my head, and a hand grabbing my ass, making me giggle. “I feel out of place.”
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