by A. C. Arthur
He hadn’t even signed the note which was even more telling to Hailey.
She showered and dressed and refused to shed one tear. She’d told him she was in love with him. They’d made love all night, or at least she’d thought it had been making love. But in the light of day she had to face the fact that nothing had changed. Jerald was still the CFO of a nationally successful company, and as such he was pulling all sorts of strings to help her. Hailey should be grateful, she knew. But none of this was what she wanted from him. He could keep his job and his insurance and tuition reimbursement because in the end all she’d wanted was him.
It was clear that he did not want the same thing.
So Hailey knew what she needed to do. She packed her bags and she left the Beverly Wilshire heading straight to the airport and back home where she knew exactly who she was and what she wanted out of life. That was where she did whatever she needed to do to help herself and the thought of being at another rich man’s beck and call for the sake of financial security, was a distant memory.
By noon that day she was saying goodbye to L.A. and to Jerald Carrington, forever.
Chapter 13
Four Weeks Later
Jerald walked into the Celia’s an American and Mexican themed restaurant.
He felt a little out of place and definitely over dressed in his three piece suit and Prada tie-ups that produced a clunking sound as he walked across the wood planked floor to the booth where the hostess had seated him.
This had been a long time coming, he thought as he sat not looking at the menu that had been placed in front of him. Four weeks to be exact.
A month ago he’d gone to the Beverly Wilshire straight from work after having learned that Hailey had not come into the office as he’d told her to. The Mendoza deal had been lost but Jackson had moved on to their next acquisition so he’d been in meetings all day. He’d thought of her just as he had every day since meeting her, but he hadn’t been able to call her. Imagine his surprise when he arrived at the hotel to find out that she’d checked out. He’d immediately called her, only to receive her voice mail.
That had been the case for the next two days also, until the third day when he called and learned that the number had been disconnected.
She’d left him.
No woman had ever left Jerald before.
“It’s time to change your way of thinking, Jerald,” his mother had said at the end of week two when he’d been at his parents’ house for brunch.
“What?” He hadn’t been listening to her or any of the chatter going on at the table.
The only reason he’d gone to the brunch at all was because he’d missed the one last week, not wanting to do anything but go to work and back home. He couldn’t even watch the one video he had left of her.
Lydia reached in front of her son. She moved his glass from the right side of his plate to the left. Then she used a fork to take all of the red grapes out of her bowl of fruit salad and placed them in Jerald’s bowl.
“What are you doing?” he asked, immediately pushing the bowl from in front of him.
Lydia pushed it back.
“It’s time for a change. Move your glass to the other side, eat the grapes that you think look like little eyes. Take a chance, Jerald. That’s what you do when you’ve found the one for you,” she told him.
He hadn’t wanted to hear her words then and she’d had plenty to say for the next half hour. Celise and Tara had even chimed in with their thoughts on the Hailey situation, all of them coming to the conclusion that he should definitely go after her. That decision—although he had eventually realized it was the right one—had taken days and days to come.
Until the morning he woke up and opened the top drawer of his dresser. He kept all of his underwear there, neatly folded, boxers on one side and undershirts on the other. In between them was a coral colored bikini top.
It was the one Hailey had worn in Turks and Caicos.
She’d left it in the room that night and he’d kept it. He’d folded it and put it at the bottom of his drawer. This morning it was right on top, bright and cheery as the sunny day. And Jerald knew. It was fate, just like she’d said the last night they were together.
He loved that color on her and almost smiled as he looked up from the booth where he was sitting at the restaurant to see her wearing a shirt that very same color, jeans and a black apron around her waist.
She was looking down at the pad in her hand as she approached his table. When she stopped and looked up she had a smile on her face as she said, “Good Evening welcome to…” her words trailed off the moment she saw him.
“Hello, Hailey,” he said.
“What are you doing in Virginia?” was her next question.
“I came to see you,” he replied.
“Why?”
“Because I missed you.”
She shook her head as if dismissing his words. “Would you like to place an order?”
“Yes,” he said. “I want you.”
She frowned at him. “I’m not on the menu.”
“No,” Jerald continued. “But you’ve been on my mind more than any other person, business deal or thought I’ve ever had.”
“You should probably get a new hobby,” she snapped. “Change things around and maybe let someone tape you having sex.”
Jerald completely understood her hostility. In fact, he’d expected it. Her grandmother had told him she’d been in a surly mood since she’d returned. Jerald liked Katherine Jefferson. He’d gone to her house looking for Hailey first and she was the one that told him her granddaughter was working here. After she’d scolded him for breaking Hailey’s heart. She was a vital and exuberant woman, a contrast to the sickly elderly person he’d expected when Hailey had told him about her. And she reminded him a lot of his mother, which is why he’d promised her that he would correct his mistakes and he would make Hailey happy. Finally.
“Can you have a seat so we can talk?” he asked motioning towards the bench across from him.
“I’m working, Jerald. You can’t just come in here and start making demands on my time. I need this job,” she told him vehemently.
“And I need you,” he continued.
Hailey shook her head. “It’s not that simple, Jerald.”
“It is.”
“You don’t just get what you want because of who you are and how much money you have. I’m not for sale and I won’t be at your beck and call just because you offered me a job and tuition reimbursement.”
She was trying to keep her voice down and trying to tell him to get lost. Jerald wasn’t going to pay attention to either.
He stood from the bench, taking the pad from her hand and dropping it onto the table. He kept that hand in his even though she’d tried to pull away from him and then he’d gone down on one knee. There was dirt on this floor, Jerald knew that but he didn’t care. People had turned around and were now staring at them and he didn’t care.
“I offered you a job, health insurance and college tuition,” he began speaking as he looked up at her. “And I expected you to accept it all because it was what you said you needed. I wanted to give you everything you needed because I thought that would make you stay with me. I was wrong.”
“Jerald,” she hissed and pulled on her hand again.
He kept his grip on her and continued, “I told you that what Mendoza had offered you wasn’t enough. It has taken me four miserable weeks to realize that my offer to you wasn’t enough either. I thought I had my life all figured out and I was going according to that plan. I didn’t need or want anything else until you came along. And then Hailey, I don’t know when it happened or how it happened, all I know is that the minute I had to sit and consider that I might never have you in my life again, I realized that life wasn’t worth a damn.”
She was shaking her head, tears welling in her eyes. She’d stopped trying to pull away from him and that had given Jerald hope.
“You asked me what I’m doing
in Virginia and I’m here to tell you anything,” he said with a shake of his head and his heart in his throat. “I’ll give you anything, Hailey. Anything and everything that you need if I can just have you in my life. And before you respond, let me…” he fumbled a bit as he reached into his suit pocket to pull out the black box he’d put there. He didn’t want to let her other hand go so he used his mouth to help him open the box so that he could turn it around and present the 15-carat oval shaped diamond ring to her.
“I’m making you a better offer,” he continued. “This time I’m offering you my heart. Forever. Please say yes. Please.”
She’d lifted a hand to her lips as around them the other customers of the restaurant stared in awe, a couple of them beginning to chant softly, “Please say yes.”
Shaking her head as the first tears fell she actually chuckled. “You’re going to throw away those pants when you get home aren’t you?”
Jerald looked down at the dusty wood floor, then back up at her. “No. If you say yes you’ll marry me, I’m going to keep this entire outfit. I’m sure the girls will get a kick out of knowing that it’s what I wore when I proposed to you.”
“The girls?” she asked.
“I’ve petitioned for guardianship of Rhia and Malaya. We found out they were actually born here and U.S. citizens. I didn’t want them to grow up in foster care.”
“But you don’t have children. You live a solitary life,” she said.
It was his turn to shake his head. “I want to live a life with you. A new and changed life that includes the girls and a new house and room for your grandmother. She wants a hot tub too, she told me before I left her house today.” Katherine had told him the hot tub was something she and her husband had wanted all their lives. Since the results of her biopsy had come back and she definitely had mesothelioma, having that hot tub would be a blessing before she departed this life.
Hailey smiled at the mention of her grandmother.
“How long are you going to let me stay on this floor groveling, Hailey? I love you more than life itself but I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to ignore the dirt and germs down here.”
“But you look so sweet down there,” she said with a tilt of her head. “I know, I’ll come down there with you.”
She was bending to her knees before Jerald could stop her. “Put it on me so I can see if it fits,” she said when they were both kneeling.
Jerald smiled then, removing the ring and slipping it onto her finger. Applause sounded and Jerald immediately went in for a kiss.
“I hope you don’t regret this,” she said, when she’d pulled back from the kiss, resting her forehead against his.
“There are no regrets, Hailey, not as long as I have you.”
Other Books by A.C. Arthur
www.acarthur.net
Contemporary Romance
The Donovans
Love Me Like No Other
A Cinderella Affair
Full House Seduction
Defying Desire
Touch of Fate
Holiday Hearts
Desire a Donovan
Surrender to a Donovan
Pleasured by a Donovan
Heart of a Donovan
Embraced by a Donovan
Wrapped in a Donovan (coming Winter 2015)
In the Arms of a Donovan (coming 2016)
Falling For A Donovan (coming 2016)
Destiny of a Donovan (coming 2017)
The Donovan Friends
Guarding His Body
Summer Heat
Winter Kisses
A Christmas Wish (part of the Under The Mistletoe Anthology)
Always My Valentine
Erotic Romance
The Carrington Chronicles
Wanting You (Parts One & Two)
Needing You
Having You
Mystery
The Rumors Series
Rumors
Revealed – Coming Soon
Sexy Paranormal
The Shadow Shifters
Temptation Rising
Shifter’s Claim
Seduction’s Shift
Hunger’s Mate
Passion’s Prey
Primal Heat
Wolf Mates
2-in-1 Book Title: Claimed By The Mate, Vol. I (September 15, 2015) The Alpha’s Woman, by A.C. Arthur
An Artistry Publishing Book
HAVING you, Copyright © 2015 by A.C. Arthur
First Edition: 2015
www.acarthur.net
All rights reserved. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, locations, events and incidents (in either a contemporary and/or historical setting) are products of the author’s imagination and are being used in an imaginative manner as a part of this work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, settings or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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