Chelsea sniffled and shrugged. It couldn’t make matters worse, could it?
“We faked it,” Jeanie admitted. “Long story short, our entire relationship was built on a lie.”
Blinking, Chelsea tried to think of an appropriate response.
“You’re looking shocked, but that’s just because the media played it off like it was the biggest romance ever. We can thank Lowe, Cam’s lawyer, for that. He’s brilliant when it comes to spin. They saw a billionaire who fell in love with an ordinary woman—”
“You’re hardly ordinary,” Chelsea pointed out. “I mean, you’re gorgeous. You’re now the chair of a few foundations…you’ve accomplished a lot to be considered ordinary.”
Jeanie snickered. “Yeah, like I said, that’s all great press. But the reality was that we were complete strangers until Camden proposed a deal to me. Fake being his fiancée, because his actual fiancée was off boinking someone in Cannes, and he would give me an insane amount of money.”
Chelsea snorted, tried to cover it with a cough, and ended up choking herself. Once she regained her composure—while Jeanie laughed at her and pounded her back—she managed to say, “Yeah, that had to suck. Getting paid a ton to fake being in love with one of the handsomest men in America. How did you manage it?”
Jeanie’s eyes continued to twinkle. “Yeah, well, as you likely know, from working so closely with Aiden, handsome, rich, and powerful men are frequently frustrating, infuriating, and otherwise a bear to live with.”
Chelsea couldn’t refute that one.
“Anyway, somewhere along the way, the lie wasn’t a lie anymore. I’m not sure when, or why even, but that’s what happened. Needless to say, it wasn’t an easy road, but it was ours, and I wouldn’t give up a single bump along the way.”
Camden entered the room right then, looking a bit harried. “I hired the dude, gave the girl my autograph and a selfie, and I’m back. Are you talking about me?”
“Not every conversation is about you,” his wife answered.
“But you were talking about me, weren’t you?” His whiplash smile and fast talk always amused Chelsea, but his wife seemed to keep up with him just fine. On most of her previous experiences with Camden, Chelsea hadn’t gotten to see how the two interacted as Jeanie wasn’t there or left so that they could talk business.
On this occasion? Seeing the way neither could keep their eyes off the other? It was pretty easy to see that this couple hadn’t fallen out of love…
But Jeanie’s story painted another picture. If they were pretending the whole time, how would either know if the other was being honest? If it was all a show?
It made Chelsea’s head hurt to try to dig through all the convoluted threads that particular web would create, which suddenly made her relationship—or what could’ve been a relationship, maybe—seem a lot less confusing.
“Yes, we were talking about you,” Jeanie admitted. “I left out all the messy bits.”
He bent to kiss her head. “The messy bits are where life happens.”
“True,” Jeanie agreed. “Anyway, my point in all this, Chelsea, was that whatever happened between you and Aiden—it is fixable. Most things are, really. The question you have to ask yourself is…whether or not it is worth the work. If it is, great. Go fix it. If it isn’t, call me.” Jeanie pulled a creamy white card out of her clutch. “Here’s my card. I will hire you myself and make both the boys jealous.”
“No fair,” said her husband. “I should’ve called dibs.”
Chapter Seventeen
Aiden
So far, the first visitation seemed to be going pretty well. Which was good, because otherwise the fact that Hematite had shredded the side of his couch would kind of not be worth it at all.
Not that he’d admit that he liked the wretched-looking cat. Even if he let him sleep on the bed. And even if his purr was part of what had been getting him through the long, sleepless nights of overthinking things.
“Do you want to go to a movie later?” he asked his daughter while passing her the drink she’d asked for. “I know, it has nothing to do with rocks, but there is a new movie that just came out, and it looks like it would be hilarious.”
“I can’t believe you’re letting me keep the cat,” the little girl said for the hundredth time. “I thought for sure that was a scam to win me over.”
He scowled at her. “I don’t have to win you over. You’re my kid. You’re just going to have to learn to love me.”
“Whatever, Dad.” Waverley rolled her eyes. “If you did want to win me over, Mom won’t let me get my ears pierced. Letting me get that done would be major points in your favor.”
“I don’t think she’d be happy if I returned you with holes. So far, we haven’t fought over anything. Do you want to be the cause of our first fight?” He was joking, but Waverley’s face fell, looking terribly sad all of the sudden.
“Speaking of me starting fights, can we talk about Chelsea yet?”
“Nope,” he said simply, turning away from her to put the orange juice back in the refrigerator. “What did you think of the movie idea?”
“You can’t just pretend she never existed, you know. Probably that would be bad for my emotional growth or something. Like, I know a girl in my class who is in counseling…”
When the kid left the sentence hanging, he glanced over his shoulder at her. “Why does a kid your age even know that is a thing?”
Waverley shrugged. “Just throwing it out there, Dad.”
“I’m starting to feel like you’re just calling me that to butter me up,” he admitted.
“Is it working?” Her smile was so like his own, he had to give her the points on that one.
“Okay, Chelsea and I had an argument. It wasn’t your fault. Now she’s looking for a job elsewhere. If I can stop her from finding work elsewhere, she’ll probably be back from her leave soon.” He hoped. Part of him was hoping the contract would be enough to bring her back, even though the fact that they’d had intimate relations could be used as a loophole to get out of it.
Not that he was sure what he’d do once she came back, but with each passing day, he was sure he’d made a mistake. He wanted her to come back to him.
Maybe needed wouldn’t be too strong of a word to use. He really missed her.
“Wait, your idea of how to romance Chelsea is to just stop her from working for someone else? That’s all you got? Wow, lame.” Waverley shook her head, looking disappointed in him.
He sputtered for a second before taking a seat across the bar from his daughter. “For one, I’m not trying to romance Chelsea. She’s my assistant.”
“Your hot assistant,” said the kid with a waggle of her eyebrows.
“She is—this conversation is so inappropriate. I’m calling your mother.” He picked up his phone, but the child smacked a hand down on his to block him from lifting the device off the countertop.
“Look, Dad, if I’m not allowed to call her every time you annoy me, you can’t do it, either.”
He stared at her. “Fair point.”
“Now, about you and Chelsea, sitting in a tree…K-I-S-S-I—”
“Stop that,” he snapped. “We were not kissing. You never once saw—”
“I’m ten, Dad. Not a baby. Do you need help in how to date? Because I may be just a kid, but even I know hoping they come back to work isn’t the most romantic thing a guy can do for a girl. Especially if you made her mad. Did you make her mad?” Waverley’s expression said she thought he must have. “Just what I heard in the woods would’ve made me mad.”
“Probably,” he admitted. “I make a lot of people mad. It is kind of my thing.”
She snorted, but she didn’t disagree. He squinted at her until she giggled.
“I’m not taking dating advice from a ten-year-old,” he advised her.
“Fine.” She jumped off the barstool at the breakfast island and turned her little back on him. “Clearly, you know what you’re doing and don’t need any help from me,
Waverley Kelley, romance doctor extraordinaire.”
“Wait. You used my last name.” He blinked at her, shocked.
“Uh, yeah. You’re my dad. Anyway, no dating advice needed. Heard ya, loud and clear.”
“Maybe I could use a little advice,” he admitted.
Waverley grinned and grabbed a laptop. “First off, you need to watch no less than five romantic comedies and see how the heroes do it. If you want to be a hero, you have to learn how to be a hero.”
He opened his mouth to disagree but then thought about it. Although he’d never before wanted to be a hero before, maybe that was what Chelsea deserved.
He thought about all the late nights she’d worked and the little things she did to make them bearable. He remembered her laugh. He remembered her asking him if he pitied her.
She was worth so much more than he was, really, yet she thought he might pity her.
“Good call, kiddo,” he said.
They settled down for a movie day in—all romantic comedies—he even took some notes. Which was a good plan, as she wasn’t satisfied with him watching the movies. Her finger hovered over the remote the entire time.
“Are you paying attention?” she asked at the first pause. “The name of this movie was You’ve Got Skype, and right now, the hero is at a point where he must do something. He knows something that the heroine doesn’t, and it is make-or-break relationship stuff.”
“Got that,” Aiden said. “Picked up on it when he said, word for word, that she didn’t know.”
“Good,” Waverley said, one hand on her hip as she stared him down. “Now, if you were in his position, what would you do?”
“I’d turn the video on my end of the call and reveal myself as the hero,” he said.
“Wrong!” she practically shouted.
“Well, that would resolve their issues. If they’d just been using video from the first call, this whole thing would’ve been resolved, don’t you think?” He tapped his tablet, one eyebrow up, waiting for her to see the logic in his explanation.
“Dad, heroes don’t do things like that. Again, grand gestures. Heroes have to prove themselves to the women they love.” She looked exasperated with him.
“Seems sexist,” he pointed out.
“Well, sometimes it is the other way around. Hang on, we’ll watch One Date with her Dermatologist next. In that one, she has to fix things because she was living a lie.” She minimized the screen to show him it was on the playlist.
“Can’t I just take her to a ball game, put I’m sorry, Chelsea up on the screen, and wait for the kiss cam to focus on us?” he asked.
“Does Chelsea like sports?” his daughter asked. She seemed to be considering the idea seriously, so he perked up.
“No, but—”
“That won’t work, then. In all the movies, the gesture fits the woman. If she was into sports, okay, but… What does Chelsea like?”
He considered the question for a moment. “Coffee with no sugar, because she’s on a diet. Rocks. Leaving dinner parties the minute we can escape. Reading.” He shrugged. “Me.”
“Well, does she like you right now?” Waverley sat back down next to him, putting one hand on his knee.
“I don’t know,” he said. He hoped so.
“We’re going to assume she does, then, until you learn otherwise. What does she like to read?” Waverley asked.
“Romance novels.”
With a giggle, Waverley clicked play on the movie. “We may have to watch more than five of these, then.”
…
Aiden
She wasn’t answering his texts. Based on his lessons in becoming a hero, he needed her to talk to him before he could do anything further, but the woman was staunchly ignoring his attempts to contact her.
When he began the campaign to win back Chelsea, he thought the hard part was going to be getting Waverley to agree to his game plan. It seemed his daughter was very opinionated, and just about everything he thought of hit her nope radar. But he’d finally managed to come up with an idea he could actually pull off, and it got the kid’s thumbs up.
Staring at his phone, he realized the entire plan was going to go to shit if he couldn’t get her to agree to meet with him. He sent her a final text, this one likely more revealing than any he’d tried up to that point. “Chelsea, I just want to talk to you. Give me two minutes on the phone, please.”
He cupped the phone in both hands and lay down on his bed, waiting to see if she’d finally respond.
When it rang, he dropped the phone on his face. Collecting himself, and cursing at the pain, he finally managed to answer the damn thing. “Hello?” he practically growled.
“You still sound like you’re in a bad mood.”
He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed just the sound of her voice until he heard it again. Blinking fast, he said, “I’m not. I want to see you.”
“I don’t think that would be wise…” Her voice drifted off, and he wondered where she was. What she was doing. If she missed him, too.
“Do this for me, and I’ll stop interfering with your job hunt. I’ll formally release you from the contract. Hell, I’ll call James Enterprises and give you a reference.”
She snorted, and he wasn’t sure if it was because she didn’t believe him or if there was some other punch line in his phrasing. “Fine. When and where?”
Chapter Eighteen
Chelsea
It wasn’t her first time visiting the museum, but it was the first time she’d visited when the stairs weren’t littered with a crowd of people either entering, exiting, or loitering. A sign on the sidewalk proclaimed the museum closed for a special event, and she briefly thought she’d made a mistake.
Before she could double check the message from Aiden, she caught sight of a familiar little redhead. “Waverley?” she called out.
The vibrant young girl practically hurtled herself at Chelsea. “I’m so glad to see you. I’ve missed you!”
She smelled sweet, like childhood and energy, if she could bottle those scents. Hugging her little body close, Chelsea blinked back tears. “I’ve missed you, too,” she admitted, surprised to realize how true the words were.
“I get to be your tour guide! Let’s start in the fossils and stuff, okay?” Waverley didn’t slow down, snagging Chelsea’s arm and tugging her to follow whether Chelsea wanted to or not.
“The sign says the museum is closed,” Chelsea pointed out.
“Not for us. Come on.” The little girl moved fast, so Chelsea jogged to keep up. Barreling through the front doors, the child nodded to a security guard who doffed his hat at her. “Hi, Gary!” she bubbled.
The guard’s face cracked into a smile. “Hello, Waverley. Remember, don’t touch—”
“The displays. Got it.” With a glance back at Chelsea, Waverley explained, “You were right. People do like it when you use their names.”
She’d forgotten even telling the child that but recalled she’d done so in the museum in the Grand Canyon. That she remembered warmed Chelsea further. Exchanging an amused smile with the guard, Chelsea followed Waverley as she led her toward the prehistoric section of the museum. From mammoths to cavemen, the glass revealed the people of the past posed in various activities.
Blinking back unwanted tears for a second time, Chelsea got annoyed with herself, but she couldn’t stop the emotions. It seemed doubtful to her that prehistoric women had met men as frustrating and blockheaded as men of their day and age. Then again, perhaps her problems were timeless, based on an artist’s rendition of one cavewoman’s frustrated expression.
But then one of the cavemen moved. Chelsea shrieked, automatically tucking Waverley behind her. It took her a second, but then she realized it was him.
Aiden.
“What on earth are you doing?” she asked him.
“Me caveman. You pretty.”
She blinked at him. “Please tell me you don’t expect me to take anything you have to say seriously right
now.”
He wore what was little more than a scrap of leather, which—as pathetic as it made her feel—he did manage to pull off. His strong legs, his thick shoulders…
The flaw in the whole thing was that she never for a second doubted that they both agreed he was hot. Like, his attractiveness was never in question, not at any point in all the time she’d known him. What was in question was her sanity in thinking a man like him was actually interested in beginning a relationship with her. He stepped toward her, and she stepped back and away from him. “I thought you were going to entertain a genuine conversation about my contractual obligation to your company and me escaping those clauses which allow you to stop me from working elsewhere. If the best you have is a leather toga, we have nothing to talk about.”
With those brave—and mostly heartfelt—words, she spun on her heel and led Waverley away. “I told him you wouldn’t be into cavemen,” Waverley admitted.
“You knew about this plan? Of course you knew. Do me a favor? Tell me what is next so I can avoid it.”
“How do you know there is a ‘next?’” Waverley asked innocently. She blinked up at Chelsea with hazel eyes just like her father’s, right down to their expression.
“I was the one who said you could keep the cat,” Chelsea reminded her.
The child sighed. “Probably we should take the elevator, then.”
Chelsea didn’t know what to think. Maybe he was scared she was going to sue him for harassment? There was no other logical explanation for his display or his texts. You’re the voice in my head, he’d texted.
She cried at that one, though, to be honest, since he was basically saying what she’d felt for a long time. Via the earpiece, his voice had been with her just about all day, every day, for years. When they’d touched on the trip, he’d made her feel so damn special…
But that was stupid. He’d proposed to Margo. He was working on establishing a relationship with his child. She was nothing more than an employee—a former employee, if she had her way.
“So, when last we met, he’d proposed to your mother. May I ask when they’re planning the wedding?” Chelsea asked. She wasn’t able to look at Waverley when she asked, but she couldn’t resist asking. Especially since it seemed he was trying to entertain the idea of an affair—was that what this was?—with her while planning a wedding to another woman, and he’d involved his child in the fiasco…
The Irish Prince (The Billionaire Dynasties) Page 13