by Paige North
I struggle to remain calm as everything catches up with me again. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. It depends.”
“On what?”
“You told me you don’t want to know the details.”
He clearly doesn’t want this wishy-washiness from me either, but what else can I do? Force the details on him when he just emphasized that he won’t tolerate that?
Once again, I feel backed into a corner, this time by Owen’s rules. But my sister is at stake here, and anger and frustration take hold of me, making me do something I wouldn’t normally do.
“If you want me to save time,” I say, “would you consider letting me use your private jet so I can leave right away?”
My boldness astounds even me. His gaze is the only thing that reveals how taken off guard he is. Otherwise he’s the same, granite-cool Dr. Owen Gregory.
After another fraught moment, he sighs impatiently. “Whatever you need, Juliet. I’ll make arrangements.”
Part of me nearly runs to him to throw myself into his arms, but I can tell he doesn’t like any of this at all. This is messy. This is fucking up his carefully planned existence. But as he turns away from me to ascend the stairs, I think I see a flash of concern in his eyes.
Then it’s taken over by something like self-disgust.
I don’t have time to wonder if I’m wrong about any of that.
With my heart plowing through me, I let Owen go up the stairs alone, then track down Nat. After I fill her in on all the details about the court hearing, she rushes to me, hugging me.
I allow myself to lean my head on her shoulder, closing my eyes and remembering how Mom used to hold me.
Before I can make a total fool out of myself by bursting into sobs, I tell her I’ll see her soon, and I can only hope that’s true as I take the elevator to my room. I pack the most conservative, classy clothing I have so that I’ll make a good impression on the court, then hurry downstairs.
There’s a town car already waiting for me outside with one of Owen’s drivers at my service. And then we’re off to his jet.
As the Gold Coast’s leafy, high-class streets pass by my window, I shrink into my seat. There’s nothing I can do about the hearing tomorrow, so all the emotions I just shoved aside about Owen start to attack me now.
I’ve never felt so alone. My god, this man I’m spending every single night with doesn’t even want to know what’s happening to me. We’ve been so physically intimate, but at the end of the day, Owen only cares about himself, his needs, and his own pleasure. Sure he loaned me his jet, but it’s only because he wants me back for more sex as soon as I can manage it.
Now more than ever, I’m sure that I’m not a real person to him. He proved today that he doesn’t ever want to be even mildly inconvenienced by my real life and my very real problems.
My chest hurts, and I grasp the silk material of my dress over my heart, but it doesn’t do any good. I hurt so badly. Everything hurts, even though Owen has always been up front about how he wants this arrangement to go.
Unfortunately, my stupid heart never got the memo. Now more than ever, I can’t avoid admitting that I have feelings for him beyond just physical lust.
God, I wish I didn’t.
As I sit down at the table facing the judge the next morning, I smooth out my tasteful dark gray suit that I brought from my closet back at the mansion. Back at my unassuming hotel, I fixed my hair into a low bun so I look older, and I barely put on any makeup. I want to look responsible, mature, and modest, but as the wan lights in the room pierce me like a spotlight, I feel like an inexperienced kid who’s only doing her best.
The court officials enter the room, and I sit up in my chair, smiling at them with a confidence I don’t feel.
My lawyer isn’t here yet, and things are about to start.
Subtly, I open my purse and access my phone, glancing at the time. Nine o’clock on the dot.
Where is he?
I feel sweat emerging under my arms and prickling my forehead. My pulse jitters even before Mr. and Mrs. Terry, Jasmine’s foster parents, enter the room with their attorney and sit across from me.
They won’t look at me. I know they’re nice people, but what they’re doing feels like a betrayal. They know how much I love my little sister, know what we went through with the hurricane and the loss of our parents, and how traumatized we all were and how much we need one another.
Why are they doing this?
I want to ask them, but then the judge comes in, and my throat seizes up. Panic shakes me. All I have to do is calm down and wait for my lawyer to get here.
“Are we ready to begin?” the judge asks.
I clear my throat. “Your honor, my attorney isn’t here yet. May I call him?”
The judge is a man with a ruddy face, reminding me of an apple that’s been baked too long. He glances at his watch. “Miss Hope, I’ve got a full day.”
“If I could just call him, see where he is…”
The judge is staring at me, and just as I think he’s going to ask how I can handle four younger siblings if I can’t even choose the right lawyer, the door to the room opens.
I cross my fingers that it’s my attorney, but it isn’t.
It’s the last person I expected to see here, much less the last one I thought gave a crap about my personal issues.
Owen fixes his gaze on me as he heads toward the seats in back of my table. I gape at him and the team of lawyers flanking him.
My lawyer rushes in just behind and leans down to speak to me. “This is crazy, but apparently someone is willing to throw a lot of money behind your case now. Do you want me to step aside as counsel and let this team take over your case?”
What the…?
“I don’t know,” I reply.
My lawyer sighs. “Look, normally I wouldn’t suggest it. But he’s brought the best attorneys in the goddamn country here with him. I’d be negligent if I told you to keep me on in this situation.”
“Okay,” I say, my heart racing now for a million different reasons. “Okay, let’s do it.”
As Owen’s lead attorney and my old attorney approach the judge to explain the change in counsel, Owen stops by me to whisper in my ear.
“You’ve now got the best representation in the country—maybe even the world.”
I look into his gaze, and what I see there moves me. It’s as if he’s here because he wouldn’t be anywhere else, because he’d rather be protecting me.
Chapter 16
To say that I’m relieved by the way Owen just sauntered in here with reinforcements would be an understatement.
He’s strong, determined, capable, and he’s got the money and power to bring the best lawyers in the world to my little hearing.
My champion.
What nobody else knows is how difficult it must have been for him to deal with something as messy as my court case. But he showed up for me like this. And it means everything to me.
His lawyers—my lawyers now—have obviously talked to my former counsel before they swooped in here and took charge. My sister’s foster parents make a case that tugs at my heartstrings, saying that they truly love Jasmine and that they only want what’s best for her, but their case is like a bomb that my attorneys dismantle one piece at a time.
In the end, my team manages to get the judge to agree that it’s too soon to break up my family; he tells me that if I can pay off the bank for our house’s loan and show that I have the means to take care of my four younger siblings, he won’t allow anyone to begin any adoption process.
As I suck in a joyous breath, I look over my shoulder at Owen, who’s sitting behind me, backing me up. He gives me a slight, encouraging smile that doesn’t even come close to really showing how huge this victory is.
The Terrys slink out of the room with only a sorrowful look at me. They’ll sure as hell be back if I don’t live up to the promises I’ve made to the court.
But I will, thanks to the major sum of money
I’m earning from Owen.
I thank the lawyers profusely. I’m crying and I don’t even try to hide my relief.
When it’s all over, Owen escorts me out, and I’m so overwhelmed by how he unexpectedly saved the day that I don’t think mere words can express how I’m feeling. It’s not until he ushers me into his waiting limo that I sense how much of a turning point this is in our relationship.
This is everything.
The driver puts up the partition between him and us, and the limo takes off. Owen silently sits beside me. My hero. The amazing guy who just came through in a clutch.
My tongue has been tied, but I finally overcome it. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you.”
“Ignoring your situation wasn’t an option.”
“Nat told you everything?”
I hear a ragged sigh emanate from him, and he only nods.
“Did she approach you or… Or did you ask her about why I left?”
“I asked her.”
He’s tense after admitting it, but then he looks at me, and it’s as if something has thawed in him. His dark gaze is liquid and open instead of stony and dismissive.
He murmurs, “You seemed inconsolable when you left yesterday, and as much as I wanted to keep your problems at a distance, I couldn’t. I don’t like to see you sad. It…”
I think he’s about to say something like It doesn’t benefit our arrangement. But he doesn’t.
“I’ve got it,” I say, because he doesn’t have to elaborate. He’s already pushed himself much farther out of his comfort zone than I ever thought possible. I can’t ask for more.
But he stuns me by adding, “In case you were wondering, I didn’t see your Highest Bidder application before our arrangement began. I wasn’t aware of the reason you decided to auction off your virginity.” He swallows and clears his throat, then looks away for a long moment. When he looks back at me, his eyes aren’t completely dry. “I treated you very poorly considering what you’ve been through.”
“I don’t need to be treated differently from anyone else. Yes, I’ve been through a lot. But I’m surviving.” I try to smile at him.
He faces me fully, his imposing body blocking the view from the window. “You need to ask me for anything you require from now on, Juliet.”
“Even if it’s uncomfortable for you?”
He doesn’t acknowledge that it is uncomfortable. Instead he only says, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nod, my eyes burning with oncoming tears. My throat is creaky, so I don’t speak.
He means that he wants to take care of me. Maybe it makes him feel good about himself, as if I’m one of his patients who needs to be saved from everything harmful in this world. But maybe there’s something else going on here, and all my fantasies about a true connection between us are coming true…
I have to know if I’m right, so I swallow hard, then take a risk.
He wants to know what I need, and what I need is for him to see the full damage that the hurricane did to me. I need to bare everything to him, even the wreckage, because there’ll only be more misunderstandings to come if I stay quiet.
“Can you tell me where you’re taking me, Owen?” I ask.
“To your hotel so you can pick up your things. Then we’re going to mine.”
A burst of stimulation tumbles through me at the thought of being together again so soon.
“Can I show you something on the way?” I ask.
He clenches his jaw, then looks deeply into my eyes. I see even more of a thawing in them—black ice melting just a little bit for me.
I melt inside, too.
Then he nods, and I smile at him, on the edge of grateful, adoring tears for my rescuer, my knight in dark armor.
We’re standing in front of my family’s modest track home in a neighborhood that’s slowly piecing itself back to the American dream it was before the storm hit. The palm and oak trees that were uprooted during the hurricane have been cleaned up, but the deeper devastation that the flooding left behind is only partway erased.
My house—the one I grew up in, the only home my siblings and I have ever known—looks like an abandoned plaything, toyed with by nature’s wrath. Because we had no insurance at the time of the storm, the windows are still boarded up to hide the missing glass, and shingles are missing from the roof.
And that’s just the outside.
As Owen stalks around the sad yard, I follow him. He’s gone dark again, more serious than I’ve ever seen him.
“After the storm,” I say, “my friends came over to help me clear the property the best we could. I keep assuring my neighbors that I’ll get things back in order, and they’ve been patient. But there’s only so long that will last, and I can’t blame them.”
He traces his large hand over a hole in the side of the house where the storm gut punched the stucco.
“Inside,” I say, “there’s water damage from some flooding. The money you’re paying me will make all the difference.”
He comes to stand in front of the single window that miraculously wasn’t shattered. I’ve closed the shutters so no one can see inside.
Tears tug at my throat. “That was my parents’ room.”
My voice wobbles, and I will myself not to cry, dammit. Owen has stuck with me so far, tolerating this whim of mine to visit my neighborhood, to reveal every bit of myself to him. I’m not going to embarrass him with any hysterics.
When he turns to me, his expression is decisive. He’s such a stabilizing influence now that I’m back here at the site of my tragedies that I sob once, then hold it back. I pretend it was a laugh and try to smile.
But why would I be laughing right now?
I drop my act and let my face show my grief. “We planned to meet my parents at a motel far out of the storm’s path, but…”
I can’t hold my sadness in. Even months afterward, the pain is too fresh, and I sink down to a small hill of dirt where my brothers used to drive their toy trucks up and down, pretending it was a backyard construction site.
I weep as if Mom and Dad died yesterday, as if I’m in that motel room with the kids, waiting frantically for my parents to call and to tell us they’re almost there. I cry like I did that night when the authorities finally did call.
I don’t expect Owen to sit down on the dirt with me. It would mess up his spotless suit.
But he does.
Just feeling his reassuring presence next to me is enough, and when he strokes the hair back from my face, I give my heart over to him completely.
My god, maybe I’m just projecting my need for a hero onto him, but that’s what he’s been today, through and through.
I find the strength to go on. “Mom and Dad were helping a few senior citizens in a group home across town evacuate before coming to meet us. They were on their way back when a flashflood hit the road and took them with it. Meanwhile, we waited in that motel room. Waited and waited…”
Owen cups the side of my face and wordlessly brings me to rest against his shoulder. I cry harder against him, getting my tears and the mucous from my nose on his suit. But he doesn’t seem to notice.
“It wasn’t until a few days later that…” I take in a shuddering breath. “That they found their bodies, drowned.”
Owen holds me, rocking me like a child whose heart is breaking all over again. I keep crying, letting all the months of despair finally spill out of me. I’ve been everyone’s rock—my brothers’, my sisters’, even my own. But now I have Owen.
Someone to lean on.
Someone strong enough to hold me up until I can get back on my feet again.
But for now I wrap my arms around his waist and cling to him until exhaustion takes me over. Sadness has wrung me out, and as my sobs subside, then eventually die, Owen keeps stroking my hair.
When I finally finish, I wipe my face with my hand, then use the sleeve of my suit.
“Hey,” Owen says quietly, handing me a handkerchief.
Of course he has one, and as I wipe my face, the clean, crisp linen smells just as comforting as he does.
When I’m done, I’m keenly aware that my eyes are still puffy, and there’s no cleaning that up. I look away from Owen, almost regretting that I brought him here to see the complete disaster that he’s invited into his everything-in-its-proper-place life.
But then he eases his finger under my chin and turns my face so that I’m looking into his eyes.
What I see staggers me—it truly is painfully rough for him to sit here and allow himself to wallow in my turmoil, but my god, he cares for me.
It’s as if he’s making a valiant, desperate attempt to be normal for at least a little while, and it’s for my sake.
Once again, I’m turning to liquid for him, every bone that’s been holding me together melting. Every cell bubbling. Every beat of my pulse simmering during this naked, exposed moment.
Then he stands and holds out his hand for me to take it.
It feels as if his gesture is about more than just helping me to my feet here in my abandoned backyard, and as I take his hand, I know he realizes that, too.
After a fraught moment, he pulls me up. He keeps a hold of me, rubbing his thumbs over mine.
There are still no words.
All I can do is surge into him with an all-consuming embrace, eternally grateful for him.
Willing to give him anything he needs from now on.
Chapter 17
Owen takes me for a quick, quiet lunch at an out-of-the-way restaurant on the beach, then we go to my hotel to pick up my duffel bag and check out. After that, we head toward the hotel he’s staying at in South Beach.
His room is a penthouse, and it has a wraparound terrace that overlooks the glittering nighttime ocean. It has a deck that surrounds a private infinity pool, two master bedrooms that also have views of the Atlantic, and a marble bathroom with a rainfall shower and a deep standalone tub.
Everything is white, pure, and sedate, and I’m almost afraid of tracking dirt everywhere.
As I dump my bag near a floor-to-ceiling window to admire the view of the dimly lit pool, Owen comes up behind me. I can feel the heat of him, and I shiver.