He would of course still visit, but things would be different for him there. Though he had a feeling that Becca would be more than willing to go visit with him, too. After all, she had family and friends to consider as well. And she was much better at considering other people than he was. He’d learned that the hard way, but he was working on it. He wasn’t going to run off without explanation again.
Ashton went to work the following morning, feeling much more prepared to conquer the day at hand. He should have known that it was just going to take him a little extra time to get used to things.
“Good morning, sir,” Alexa said to him, handing him a large to-go cup of coffee.
This time, Ash checked the little sticker on the side of the cup to see what kind of coffee it was. It was a standard latte.
“You were pulling a prank on me last time, weren’t you?” he asked her with a smile.
“It was the easiest way for me to get in a little bit of hazing, sir,” she said with a wink. “That’ll teach you not to leave for so long next time. I did the work of two people. By the way, who’s Becca Chapman?”
He smiled at her. “It’s a long story,” he said. “But I guess we’ll have time while we’re taking the elevator.”
Ashton told his assistant the whole story about his ex – now girlfriend again – and the big mistake he’d made all of those years ago. He knew that it wasn’t really his assistant’s business to know such personal things, but then again she was a personal assistant for a reason. He trusted that she’d be able to take the information given to her and use it to make Becca’s transition to the city as comfortable as possible.
Chapter Twelve
Texts from someone named Alexa started showing up on her phone. Becca could tell from the context that this person was Ashton’s personal assistant, and she seemed very determined to help her move into the city. Becca appreciated all the help she could get, though she was a little confused how a stranger in New York was supposed to help her in Colorado.
Through the magic of the internet, Alexa chartered a private jet and hired a limo service to make Becca’s trip to New York that much more relaxing and special. Becca didn’t know what she had done in order to deserve that, but then she realized that this was part of Ashton’s attempt to pamper her now that she was coming to live in the city and be near him. She would gladly take it.
There was only one thing left to consider before she moved away: Becca was sad to be leaving her friends behind. And they were definitely sad to be losing her, even though they knew that she was going to be very happy with Ashton.
“Have a wonderful time out there,” Teri said to her before giving her a hug. “Make sure he treats you well.”
“Keep in touch,” Erin told her. “I want to hear all about it. And be careful! There are a lot of crazy people in the world.”
Becca laughed a little and nodded at that. “True.”
“Be good,” Jaz said, giving her a hug. “If he hurts you again, let me know so I can come out there and kick his butt for you.”
She knew that her friends were protective of her. They had always been her safety net in times of crisis over the years. “I’m going to miss you all more than you’ll ever know,” she told them. “I promise to text and call you all the time. Trust me, you’ll be sick of hearing from me.”
A moving crew came to pack up everything in her small apartment and before she knew it, her driver arrived and she was off to the airport.
She had never flown in a private jet before and up until this point never imagined that she would. Between the hassle free boarding, the luxurious seats and white glove service from the small flight crew, she felt like and absolute queen for a few hours.
As soon as she landed at JFK, a limo driver met her and carried her luggage out to the waiting car. Becca felt like she was in some kind of a movie. A rich man was helping to pay for her to move out to the big city. She was going to be the fish out of water and that had never been the sort of story she’d starred in before. Gone were the familiar things. Now she was surrounded by bright lights and the big city, and so many new and interesting noises.
She wondered if she was going to find Ashton in her new apartment, ready to serenade her again. Instead, when she arrived at her midtown apartment, she simply found that it was smaller than she’d imagined. It was almost as small as a walk-in closet. She decided that she was going to have to make do for the time being.
“What matters is that I’m here,” she said to no one once she was alone in the place. “I’m probably not going to be spending that much time here anyway.”
She sat on the bed that was right smack-dab in the middle of the room, and then she realized that it was the kind of bed that came down from the wall. Eventually the novelty of that would wear off, but for now she thought it was amusing and quaint. She texted Ashton “Here” even though she knew that he already knew that. Alexa had probably informed him as soon as the plane’s wheels had touched down.
“Hi!” Ashton texted her back. “When do you want to get together? Do you want to rest up first? The pace shift can be pretty overwhelming at first, so give yourself as much time as you need.”
“I’m ready to go somewhere now,” she told him with a little laugh to herself. “My apartment is the size of a pantry and I don’t really want to be by myself all day.”
Becca didn’t mean to take up any of his precious time, but she didn’t really have any plans at the moment and she felt a bit disoriented to say the least. She was far too excited to take a nap, though. She wasn’t the type of person who could just sleep her troubles away. She envied the people who could do that.
“Okay, it’s a date!” Ashton texted her back a few minutes later. “I just have to finish up a few things here at the office and then I can pick you up. We can paint the town red!”
Becca didn’t know if she wanted to go that far, but she smiled at the thought of being able to do something with Ashton right away instead of having to wait a few days. She’d always assumed that his job kept him too busy to do much hanging out, but now she could see that he did have free time if he wanted it.
I don’t even know what investment billionaires do, she thought. They obviously invest in things, but other than that… There was a great deal that she was going to need to learn if their relationship was going to last.
She sat on the bed and carefully started to unpack her suitcase, stuffing all of her clothes into the bureau that magically fit in one corner of her one-room apartment. Becca made sure to text Ashton the address, just in case Alexa didn’t know it or hadn’t sent it along to him. Becca was proud of herself for procuring this tiny place by herself, even if the size of it made her feel even more squeamish about the big move she’d just committed to for real.
Her phone sounded and she saw that she had a text from Ashton. “Downstairs. :)”
Oh thank goodness, she thought. She grabbed her purse and left the apartment, careful to lock the door behind herself.
As soon as Ashton saw her, he approached her and hugged her tightly. “Look at you, the world traveler!” he said, slightly jokingly. She could sense that he was truly proud of her for making the trek all the way to New York just because he’d asked her to. He knew that it was what she wanted, but he’d been the one to light a fire under her.
“What sort of place did you have in mind for us to go?” she asked him curiously. “Anything’s got to be better than the tiny apartment I found myself in.”
He tilted his head at her a bit. “If you want, I can help you with that.”
Becca shook he head, waving that off. “I’ve accepted enough help from you. I think I should live the real bohemian lifestyle, at least for a bit. I always did imagine myself living in one of those stereotypical apartments, so it’s okay. Just… startling.”
She knew that at the first sign from her, Ashton would find her a better place. He might end insisting on paying the rent, because it was like nothing to him. But she didn’t want him to
think that she was some kind of charity case. She wanted to have a place of her own paid for with her own money, at least to start her off.
Ashton opened the door of the limo for her and then he got in beside her, telling the driver to take them to some silly-sounding place that she’d of course never heard of.
“I hope that was a restaurant, because I’m starving,” she said.
He laughed and nodded his head. “It’s a restaurant,” he replied. “In fact, it’s a really popular tourist type place. I’ve started paying more attention to those.”
Becca was pleasantly surprised when they were dropped off outside of a diner-type restaurant called Ellen’s Stardust Diner. The place was packed and the line was long, but a hostess let them through without any fuss. People know who he is, she thought, impressed.
It turned out that the place was made up of a wait staff who sang. The general vibe was karaoke, but it was also a dinner cabaret. Becca was mesmerized, particularly when her and Ashton’s waiter started singing a popular Disney song, complete with choreography. “Did we just stumble into a Broadway show or something?” she asked Ashton, wondering how on earth she’d never heard of this restaurant before.
“This is where the actors all go to cut their teeth,” he explained to her, yelling over the loud music so she could hear him.
Becca could see that this really had to be a magical city if people were busting their butts in order to live and work there. No one in the restaurant seemed downtrodden about the fact that they were singing in a diner instead of in the latest cast of Company. They all seemed to love what they did and love the city that they lived in.
“This is like propaganda,” she said to Ashton with a laugh, enjoying her tuna melt and fries that had magically appeared in front of her while her attention was elsewhere. “You don’t need to convince me to live here. I already moved.”
Ashton laughed. “It’s not meant to be propaganda, silly. I just thought you’d think it was cute and fun.”
Once they were done with dinner, they walked hand-in-hand along the streets of ‘Broadway’, which Becca now realized wasn’t just on one street. “Instead of playing tour guide all night, why don’t you take me somewhere that you would normally go?”
She was curious to see this social club that he’d told her about, and meet his friends, too. It was getting pretty late, but Ashton led her off somewhere anyway. They took his limo and then he was walking her up some stone steps to a stone door and a very stone-faced bouncer.
The bouncer let them inside, and then Ashton turned to face her right outside of a thick wood and glass door. “This is a club for men, so ignore the weird looks you might get,” he explained to her.
She hoped that this wasn’t the kind of gentlemen’s club that she’d heard about, but thankfully as they walked around the room she realized that it literally was just a club full of gentlemen. They were all dressed in suits. Some even were still wearing ties. And they were eating and drinking at tables together, enjoying fine wines and small plates of exotic looking food as well as your standard appetizer fare with an upscale twist.
Ashton led her over to a table where three such men sat, sharing a large seafood tower filled with shrimp, oysters, octopus and crab meat. “Becca, these are my friends. Tim, Doug, Craig, this is Becca, my girlfriend from back out west.”
The men all stood up and shook her hand. She blushed as she smiled at them. They were all handsome and polite, and they had that polished sort of look about them that Ashton had seemed to have when she first saw him fresh and new to her eyes after so many years. Billionaires really knew how to clean up well.
“We can’t stay too long tonight,” he informed his friends. “I’m showing her around so she can get accustomed to things in town. I’m sure you’ll be seeing much more of her.” He was beaming, almost gloating.
“Nice to meet you,” his friends said to her.
“Look forward to seeing you again,” one of them said. She thought she remembered that his name was Tim?
Becca smiled and nodded her head politely at them before Ashton whisked her away again. He really was taking her on a whirlwind tour of the town. “I know that things move quickly here, but don’t you think that we could slow down at some point?” she asked him, mostly jokingly but it was overwhelming to be seeing so much so soon.
“Sorry,” Ashton said, looking quite embarrassed now that she mentioned it. “I guess I got carried away. We can go more places tomorrow, if you want. You should probably sleep and get used to your new place.”
Becca was a little unsure that she was going to be able to sleep in her new apartment, but she knew that she was going to have to settle in at some point. They got into the limo and eventually made it back to her building. It was a lot taller than she remembered.
He turned and held her face in his hands and gave her a soft and gentle kiss. “Just remember, you can call me anytime you need to, okay?” he said before she got out of the limo. “Don’t go anywhere by yourself until you get your bearings.”
She nodded her head. She didn’t plan on going anywhere alone for a long time. She didn’t have a job yet, so there really wasn’t anywhere for her to run off to by herself anyway. “If I need anything, I’ll let you know.”
As soon as Becca was back up in her apartment, she changed into some pajamas and was asleep in no time.
The following morning, she woke up surprised when she found herself in a completely unfamiliar setting. She didn’t remember what had happened during the last night, but it dawned on her pretty quickly that this apartment was hers now. She’d defended it when Ashton remarked that he could help her find a better one, and now she felt like it was probably a better idea for her to move. She tried giving him a call, but his phone kept going to voicemail so she eventually tried Alexa instead.
“Hello Miss Chapman,” Ashton’s assistant said to her. “May I help you with something?”
Now that she was on the phone with her, Becca felt like she was just being a nuisance. “Oh, I was just wondering if you might be able to help me find better lodgings in town?” she asked awkwardly. “Ashton told me yesterday that you might be able to put me up in a better apartment.”
“I see,” Alexa said. “What sort of things are you looking for?”
Becca described the sort of place she was hoping for. A one-bedroom apartment with at least a small living room and a kitchenette. “I know that even a tiny version of this will be very expensive, but I can’t keep living in a box.”
“I understand,” Ashton’s assistant said, and she really did sound like she understood. “I’ll see what I can find for you. In the meantime, I’ll let Mr. Miller know that you’re awake and ready to tour more places.”
“Uh, no, that’s not nece—”
Alexa hung up before Becca could finish her polite refusal. She was surprised to know that he wasn’t working today. He’d set aside time just to show her around Manhattan? He sure knew how to make a girl feel important now.
She had to wonder if he was trying to overcompensate for something…
Since she could tell that the assistant was being serious, Becca got out of bed, put it back up against the wall, and went to take a shower in her sliver of a bathroom. The water was cold, but that helped to wake her up. Then she dressed in some casual jeans and a tank top. The city was hotter than she’d ever imagined. She wondered if it was because all of that concrete and glass kind of boxed the heat of summer inside.
Her phone announced the arrival of Ashton downstairs, so Becca went down to join him out front. He gave her a kiss and a big hug and she wondered if this was just going to be his greeting for her now. She thought that it was sweet, and much nicer than the awkward handshake he’d given her a while back.
“Where to today?” she asked him. “Please say we’re going somewhere with coffee.”
He chuckled. “There’s definitely coffee there, because I just had some.” She looked at him, confused, but he just silently helped her int
o the back seat of his Lincoln town car, not bothering to explain any more than that. The car drove them much further this time and Becca noticed that they were, in fact, leaving the city.
“Oh my gosh, are you taking me somewhere sketchy?” she asked. She was mostly joking, but there was at least a little bit of real fear there. He’d warned her not to go anywhere without him.
Then she shook that off. There was no way that Ashton Miller, the guy who serenaded her in public, could ever be a threat to her.
“Nooo,” he said with a laugh that was rather awkward. “I’m taking you to my house. I want you to check it out and see if you like it.” He grinned at her. She could tell right away that he was proud of his home. She would be proud of her house too if she could afford to live in the suburbs of New York.
Are the suburbs more expensive than the city? she wondered.
It wasn’t long before she realized that Ashton didn’t just live in the suburbs. He lived in Upstate New York. That was definitely where all of the rich folks lived, and where they rubbed elbows and such. She’d only heard of Albany and Utica before, but she kept seeing signs for Scarsdale as they approached his home.
The limo pulled into a long, curved driveway and Becca gazed up at a beautiful, yellow-colored stone mansion. There was a field off to the left of it, with fences around it to keep the cows and horses penned in. She couldn’t believe it and she whistled lightly through her teeth.
“You can take the boy out of Colorado…” she began.
“But you can’t take the Coloradoan out of the boy,” he finished with a grin. “Welcome to my ranch.”
He got out of the back seat of the limo and then held the door open for her to safely step out.
“I never imagined any houses this big in New York,” she said in amazement, staring up at the mansion. “And you own horses!”
Ashton chuckled. “It’s my own little piece of Meridian,” he said. “You didn’t really think that I left the West completely behind, did you?”
He led her into his home and she admired all of the rooms on the main floor. He had a massive living room complete with a grand piano, and a huge kitchen that his chef clearly used, not him. There was a dining room near the kitchen as well, so meals could easily be served.
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