by Jess Dee
Ben drew his shoulders back and, like Melissa had done a thousand times before, stepped into professional mode. He could not, would not let her see how put out he was. He’d proof her document like she asked. But if she thought for one minute he wasn’t going to fight for her, wasn’t going to win her back and make her love him like he loved her, she had another thing coming.
He wasn’t going down without a fight. He’d fought for Sienna and lost. But then he’d been arrogant enough to think he hadn’t stood a chance of losing. He wasn’t that arrogant anymore.
He knew he stood every chance of losing Melissa. Probably already had. Will was a decent bloke, a real decent bloke. One of the best. But damn it, Ben loved her. Loved her! Against all odds he’d fallen in love with another woman. He wasn’t about to let her walk off with the other man. Not this time. No matter how decent that man was.
Just as soon as she left his office, he would put his mind to it and come up with a foolproof plan. A plan Melissa would not be able to resist. A plan that would have Melissa back in his arms and back in his life for good. And this time, he would not challenge another man for her affections. He wouldn’t be so fucking stupid. This time he would keep it between the two of them. Just him and Melissa.
He held out his hand. “Not at all. Bring it over.” Hah. See? Mel wasn’t the only consummate professional in this office. He could act like one as well.
Although he couldn’t help but wonder what Melissa would do if, instead of taking the document, he took her hand, hauled her in close and held her until she melted into him, became part of him.
Probably slap the crap out of him.
Ben expected several pages. Their contracts were never less than fifteen pages. But Melissa handed him just one. He looked at it in surprise. Then brought it close and began to read.
Two minutes later he read the entire thing again, and then once more to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.
“Are there any mistakes? Spelling errors? Addresses in the wrong place?” Melissa asked.
Ben shook his head. The letter was perfect. But that was irrelevant. “What the hell is this?”
“Exactly what it looks like. A letter of resignation.”
“But…but it’s signed by you. Written by you.”
“Well, yes. Of course it is. It would be ridiculous if you wrote and signed my letter of resignation.”
“You’re leaving Preston Elks?” Impossible. Implausible.
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because I no longer wish to work here.”
Full-blown panic slapped him across the face. Because of him? Because of what he’d done to her? Was he responsible for her complete change of mind?
“But you haven’t made partner yet.” Christ, if his challenge had interfered with her accomplishing something she’d worked towards her entire adult life, he would never forgive himself.
She nodded. “I know. Funny how that turned out. A month ago it was all I wanted, all I lived for. Now it holds no interest for me.”
He jumped to his feet. “Mel, if this is about me, about what I did to you with Will, I’m sorry. So goddamned sorry. I never should have done it, never should have put you in a position to choose, never should have set up the challenge. It was a dumb-arsed, selfish thing to do, and I regret the day I ever involved you in my fucked-up psychological problems.” His throat was raw. Talking hurt. “Just please, please, don’t quit because of me. Don’t ruin your life and everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve because I’m an idiot.”
Mel listened with a raised eyebrow. “Well, I agree with one thing. You are an idiot. You should never have seen sex with me, you and Will as a challenge you had to win. Never have been such an idiot as to think I might even want to choose.” She shrugged. “But even so, that challenge has nothing to do with my reasons for quitting.”
“It doesn’t?” Her answer confused him. It didn’t let him off the hook, not by a long shot, but it did give him some measure of relief that she wasn’t leaving because of their ménage. “Then why are you going?”
“Because you were right. It’s ridiculous to live a life I hate. Ridiculous to work my arse off to earn a promotion I want only to prove to myself I can get it.”
Ben rubbed a finger and thumb over his forehead, massaging the dull pain that had started a slow throb there. “I’m not going to lie. You’re confusing the hell out me. You’re quitting because you don’t want to work here any longer?”
“I am. I hate investment banking. Have for a long time. But I’m only just learning that I don’t have to remain in a job I hate just to prove I can succeed in it and reach the top. In fact, I no longer care if I succeed. It’s not important anymore. It’s not what I want.”
“So your die-hard ambition to make partner? What, it’s just…gone?” He snapped his fingers. “Like that?”
She gave a humph. “Funny, huh? But yep, there you have it. It’s gone.”
He stared at her in disbelief, unsure whether to celebrate with her or march her straight to the closest doctor’s office out of fear she’d developed a serious mental illness.
“You’re not messing around?” He held up the letter. “You honestly intend to give this to Preston?”
“Just as soon as I’ve popped it into this envelope.”
Maybe he was the one hallucinating and this wasn’t real. “And once you’ve handed it over? Then what? What do you plan on doing with your life?”
Melissa put a finger to her mouth, stared dreamily at the ceiling and smiled. “I don’t have the faintest idea.”
“You don’t have another position lined up?”
“Nope.”
“A meeting with a headhunter, perhaps?”
She shook her head.
“You have no idea, no plans?”
There it was. The dreamy expression again. “Not a single one.”
Okay, now Ben was starting to worry. Big time. This was not Melissa. Not at all. This was a stranger standing before him. Granted, a happy, excited stranger, but a stranger nevertheless. The Melissa he knew would never give up her job in favor of…nothing.
“I don’t get it. What happened?” He shoved a hand through his hair, perplexed. “Three days ago you were determined to stay here and make partner. Determined to work towards your long-term goal. Today you’re resigning. What changed?”
“I did. I realized that what once was important no longer is. I’ve started to see myself in a whole new light. Yes, I may once have been a failure, but I’m not anymore. I haven’t been for a long time. But the thing is, remaining in a job I detest, living a life I don’t want to live is in itself a failing. I’m failing me. I’m failing to make myself happy, and I can’t do that anymore. I won’t.”
He gaped at her, astounded. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious.”
“This is what you want? You’re sure?”
“Never been more sure in my life.” She looked it. Looked resolute. But more than that, she looked happy, carefree and dreamy-eyed. She looked exactly the way he’d always wanted her to look: content within herself.
“What will you do, Mel? If you’re not working here, where will you work?”
She grinned. “I have no idea. None. And I love that. Love that I don’t have any direction in my life. Love that for once I can just settle back and appreciate life instead of letting it pass me by while I work.” Melissa took a great big breath of air, inhaling as if for the first time ever she could appreciate its life-giving properties. “You know, I have you to thank for all of this. If you hadn’t pushed me, hadn’t made me open my eyes, I’d never have seen what I was doing to myself. I’d never have taken the time out to appreciate all life has to offer and I’d never have fallen in love. So yes, while you may be a complete arsehole for challenging Will for my affections, I forgive you. Because in the end it all worked out for the best.”
Before Ben had a chance to process her words, before he could make sense of them,
Melissa marched over and kissed him on the cheek. A chaste, friendly kiss. “Thank you, Ben. For everything.”
And then she was gone.
Ben had maybe a half a minute before comprehension slammed into him, leaving him winded.
What the fuck?
She’d fallen in love? And she had him to thank for it? He’d opened her eyes?
No way. No freaking way in hell was she walking away. Not now. Not ever.
If he’d opened her eyes to a different, happier way of life, if he’d helped her fall in love, then there was no way he was letting her go.
And it was too fucking bad if she’d fallen in love with Will. She was his. Ben’s. They belonged together. They were explosive together. He would not lose her to another man. Couldn’t lose her to another man. So help him God, if he had to get down on his knees and beg, he would. He’d do whatever it took to make Melissa see they were meant for each other.
With Sienna he’d formulated a long, involved plan in an effort to win her back, and then he’d been forced to change the plan to suit the circumstances that had greeted him on the island. He had no plan with Melissa. Had no time to prepare one. No time to look at his options and pick the best path of attack. He just knew that whatever happened from this moment on he could not lose her. He loved her too damned much to live without her.
Ben sprinted through his door, raced down the corridor and took a right, heading straight for Preston’s office. The exact place Melissa was headed, letter in hand.
He reached her a step away from Preston’s receptionist, wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, and without a word of explanation to anyone, hauled her up and carried her into the corridor.
Melissa’s yelp of surprise had people sticking their heads out of their doors all the way down the passage.
Ben didn’t give a damn.
He set Melissa on her feet, flipped her around to face him and backed her against the wall, trapping her with his body, giving her no space to escape.
“Are you out of your mind?” he fumed. “What the hell are you thinking?”
Surprisingly, Melissa didn’t try to escape. She didn’t squirm or wriggle her way out of the prison he’d made by placing an arm on the wall on either side of her head. She didn’t even ask him to release her and let her walk off with some dignity.
“I’m thinking I’m about to start living my life, and I can’t wait. Although…” she looked first at his one arm and then at his other, “…it’s pretty difficult to start anything from this position.”
“So you’re leaving? Just walking away without a backward glance?”
“Of course not. I’ll give the company at least a month’s notice. I’ll stay longer if they need help training someone to take over my position. I might be excited about my new life, but I’m not going to shirk my responsibilities.”
“From me,” Ben growled. “I mean, you’re just walking away from me without a backward glance?”
She scowled at him. “Hardly, Cowley. You have me trapped here. I can’t go anywhere.”
“You don’t fucking get it, do you, Sparks?” Out of sheer frustration, Ben thwacked the wall with his hand. Hard. So hard his palm stung. “I love you. I am so goddamned, madly in love with you, I can’t see straight.” Ben’s voice resonated through the offices, echoed in his own ears. “You’re the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I imagine before I fall asleep. I dream about you. Every single night. I live to see you, at the office, at home, anywhere. I just need to see your face. Hold your body. Touch your skin. I need you, Mel. More than I need air. You can’t walk away from me. You can’t love someone else.”
He gulped in a breath and almost choked on the emotion clogging his throat, so when he spoke again his voice was scratchy, and much, much softer. “I screwed up. I made you choose. And I’m sorry. So desperately, pathetically sorry for that. But I can’t let you go. I can’t let him have you, because you’re mine. You were made for me, like I was made for you. We’re two peas in a pod, sweetness. We’re the same, you and I. We’re meant to be together.”
Melissa gaped at him, her mouth open, her hazel eyes enormous.
“Don’t leave me, Mel.” Now his voice was a rough whisper. The sheer intensity of his emotions sapped the strength to speak any louder. “Please, don’t leave me because I so callously confused you with someone from my past. So stupidly got you mixed up in my head. I know who you are. I know you. And God help me, I love you more than I thought it was possible to love anyone ever again. Please, just don’t leave. Don’t choose Will, even if I put you into a position to do just that.” He ran out of breath. Ran out of steam. “Please, don’t walk away from me.”
For long, long, long seconds, silence permeated the corridor, interspersed only by Ben’s harsh breathing. The people who had popped their faces out of their doors now stood in suspended silence, listening, waiting. Even Melissa seemed frozen. She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
Ben’s energy deserted him. His eyes closed in defeat, and his arms dropped to his sides. He couldn’t keep her here, couldn’t trap her in a relationship she didn’t want. What kind of an idiot was he, thinking he could?
“I’m quitting my job, Cowley,” Melissa said, forcing Ben to open his eyes and look at her. “That’s all. I’m leaving work. Changing my lifestyle. I’m not walking away from you. I’m not choosing someone else. That choice was never an option for me. It was one you made up inside that thick head of yours.” She clunked him on his forehead with her knuckles as if to prove her point. “I love you too. I’m stupidly in love with you. Wholly and completely in love with you. It just took me a while to realize it.”
It was Ben’s turn to gape. Ben’s turn to stare at her with enormous eyes, while his heart sat in his throat.
“Oh, come on. You didn’t honestly think that after everything you and I have been through together, I could up and fall in love with another man, did you?”
“I didn’t think at all, Mel. That was my whole problem. I just acted on instinct, assuming you’d respond the same way Sienna did.”
Melissa bristled. She snarled and got in Ben’s face, speaking in a voice so low and so gruff, there was no way anyone else could hear her. “Okay, now you listen up, and you listen good. I’m not her. I’m not Sienna. I don’t look like her, I don’t think like her, and I am tired of hearing you refer to her all the time. If you and I are going to work, if we’re going to stand a chance, you have to give her up. You have to forget about Sienna, because I refuse to spend the rest of my life competing with her for your affections.”
Ben shook his head and gave a helpless laugh. “Sweetness, I gave her up the first time I held you in my arms. Whatever I once felt for her slipped into the past. What I never let go of were the mistakes I made with her. They haunted me, enough that I made the same mistakes with you. The difference is, I’m not letting those mistakes go unacknowledged. I’m not letting them ruin us. I can’t give you up. I can live without Sienna. I can’t live without you.”
“Oh, Cowley.” Melissa sighed. “The only mistake you made was thinking I might be dumb enough to want to choose someone else. Everything else you did, you did to make me happy. I understand that. And I forgive you. Just swear that you’ll never, ever put me in that position again.”
“I swear that from now on I’ll only ever put you in a position you want to be in, Mel. But you’ll never have the chance to choose again, because I don’t believe I can ever share you again. Not with anyone.”
“I’m okay with that,” Mel whispered.
“You are?”
She nodded. “I am.”
And then she smiled. The very smile that lit up his office. Now it lit up his life. He smiled back, and his heart filled with an intense joy the likes of which he hadn’t felt for a very long time. No, correction, the likes of which he’d never felt before.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” a voice called down the passage. “Just kiss her already.”
“Yeah.” Another voice. “Stop buggering around and do it.”
A chorus of “Kiss her!” followed that.
Ben grinned at her. “What do you say, sweetness? You wanna kiss me in front of the entire staff of Preston Elks?”
Melissa grinned right back at him. “There is nothing I’d like more.”
And right there, in the corridor of Preston Elks, they kissed. On the mouth, with tongue, for everyone to see.
About the Author
Apart from her family and friends, Jess Dee loves two things: romance and food. Is it any wonder she specializes in dee-liciously sexy romance? Jess loves hearing from readers. You can email her at [email protected] or find her at www.jessdee.com.
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