by Bella Grant
“You got a dog?” Cherise picked up the puppy, who opened his blue eyes, and handed him over to Sterling. “You got me a dog?”
“I know it’s soon, but I also know you’re lonely.”
“What is he?”
“I don’t know. I got him at the shelter. They think shepherd or husky and border collie, or something.” The puppy had huge ears, which flopped over at the tops, making imperfect triangles. A round brown spot covered his left eye. Sterling inspected the dog, then tucked him into the crook of his arm.
“I’ve never had a male.”
“He was there with his brothers and sisters. I liked him the best of all the puppies.”
Sterling stroked the soft puppy fur. “How’d you pick him? What do you like best about him?”
Fear gripped her. “You don’t like him?”
“I’m just curious how you picked him and what I’m in for.”
“I liked him because he was feisty. He came running for me when his sisters hung back a little. He barked at me and was sassy.”
“He’s going to be a handful.”
“I think you can manage.”
Sterling held the little guy up so he could take a closer look at him. The puppy’s tummy was round and firm, his tail a little whip. His paws and ears too big for his little body.
“What’s his name?” Sterling asked.
“It’s up to you. They called him ‘Spot’ at the shelter, but I think we can do better than that.” Her use of the word “we” caught Sterling’s attention.
She plucked the sleepy puppy from his arms and set the little guy down on the bed she’d brought for him. She stood in front of Sterling and put her hands on his shoulders.
“Try me,” she said. “I think you should—”
“I split up with Jenna.”
Cherise wasn’t proud of the excitement and relief that blossomed in her chest.
“I was stupid to think I could half-ass something like a marriage.”
“Plenty of people do it all the time… But yeah, I question how rewarding you would have found it. I think it’s for the best.” Cherise wanted to add more but resisted the urge to say ugly things about Jenna.
“I’ve done an awful lot of thinking over the past few days,” Sterling said. “More than the past few days, actually.”
“Okay.” Here was where it all worked or it all fell apart. She knew she could handle either. She braced herself but also let herself feel excited.
“You’re right. I do want you. I do think we work together. But I’m terrified of letting you down. Of not being able to be present.”
“Just having this conversation with me is a huge step forward.”
“You’re right, absolutely.” He checked his watch, and her heart dropped a bit. “I want to take a shower and head back to the hospital. Come with me?”
“To the shower or the hospital?”
Sterling smiled but looked exhausted. “The hospital. And the shower. But I’m tired, babe. I just want to be close to you.”
She tucked the puppy into his crate and led Sterling to the bathroom upstairs in the apartment. She pulled off his t-shirt. “You smell terrible.”
“I know. You’re not the first person to tell me that. Two coach flights, and the first thing I did in Tanzania was a ten-mile run in ninety-degree heat. I thought I’d get to go back to my room and shower and sleep, but then you called. I felt really bad for the woman next to me on the flight home.”
In the pristine white bathroom, Cherise let him undress himself and busied getting the shower temperature just right. She led him to the big shower with the multiple heads. She’d fantasized about getting him in here since she’d first seen it. Somehow, this tenderness was better than the frantic sex she’d imagined them having here. Working his body with a thick, soapy lather, she washed the grime from him and rubbed his sore muscles. She shampooed his hair, and he stood still as she shaved his face, noticing a scar on his chin.
“I can’t go back over there yet,” he said, toweling himself dry in the bathroom. “Call Brad to bring me some clothes, please?”
She did as he asked, and within minutes, Brad appeared with a few selections.
Cherise dressed in a smart red dress, one she could comfortably sit in the hospital in. Sterling pulled on a dark pair of jeans, a clean t-shirt, and a black blazer. He looked much more himself after the shower.
“Has the dog been out?”
“Right before you got here.”
“I’ll have Brad see to him in a little bit.”
They said goodbye to the oblivious puppy and headed back to the hospital, this time taking one of Sterling’s limousines so they could relax in the back. “I’d forgotten how puppies sleep like the dead,” he said.
“How’s Ben?”
“Not good. Unconscious. There’s the stroke, and there’s the cancer. I’m going to lose him. I just hope he wakes up to say goodbye.”
“You’re not alone,” Cherise said. He gave her a look reminiscent of a wounded animal, one that didn’t quite trust what it heard. She reached across the seat and squeezed his hand.
“I picked an awful time to go running around the globe, huh?”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference. You told me he was unresponsive from the moment he came in to the hospital. When my grandmother died, it was the same thing. She wasn’t conscious, but we all got to say goodbye to her, and I truly felt she heard us.”
The limo pulled up at the back entrance of the hospital. Sterling walked her up to the private elevator, and they went up and up to a posh part of the hospital she’d never seen. The admissions nurse gave Sterling a look, obviously for showing up with another woman, but didn’t say anything.
“This way,” he said. “They didn’t believe I was me before. Thought I looked too scruffy.”
“You were pretty scruffy,” Cherise said. “You still need a haircut.” He led her to the room. “Do you want me to wait out here?”
“No, he likes you. Come in with me.”
Dr. McGuire met them at the door. “There’s been no change. I’m sorry.”
They sat with Ben into the night. Sterling fell asleep holding Cherise’s hand with his right and Ben’s with his left, his head a heavy weight on her shoulder.
She texted Brad Chadwell a few hours later to see how the puppy was doing. It had already won over all of Sterling’s staff, and they were crazy about the little thing, even though he’d peed on a $15,000 carpet and chewed a shoe.
Sometime in the night, Cherise realized she’d fallen asleep when machines started to beep frantically. Staff rushed in, turned on the lights, and told Cherise and Sterling they needed to step out. She didn’t know what was happening, but it wasn’t good.
Outside on the plush sofa, Sterling clung to her. He told stories about hiking and mountain climbing, all the adventures he and Ben had taken when he was a boy and younger man. “He’s slowed down so much, but we’ve still done something together every year. I can’t believe it’s gone. I mean, even nine months ago, we were in Carlsbad Caverns. It wasn’t the same—we just did the tourist stuff, stayed on all the walkways, but we were there, outside, experiencing nature together.”
It was ten o’clock in the morning when Dr. McGuire stepped out and sat with them. Cherise knew what this meant.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “He had a cardiac event after the stroke, and we couldn’t save him.”
“Thank you for trying,” Sterling said. “I always wanted him to get a DNR, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Would you like to say goodbye?”
Sterling nodded and gestured to Cherise that she should stay. He was gone about ten minutes before coming back, dry-eyed. She supposed a man could only cry so much. She thought about platitudes, how the cancer meant he was in great pain but now he was at peace. Ben was with Ambrosia. She chose to keep them to herself for now.
They didn’t speak on the limo ride back to the apartment building. He sagged into he
r on the elevator ride, and at the top, he told her, “I can’t imagine facing this without you. I’m sorry I took so long.”
It didn’t seem right to chide him with a snappy comeback, so she hugged him. Brad Chadwell waited with the puppy, and the little dog pranced over to greet them. Sterling’s face spread into a huge grin, and he scooped the dog up.
“What’s your name?” he asked it. It wagged its tail and squirmed in his arms. “How’d you pick him, again?”
“There was a litter at the shelter. Five of them. I went in and played with them, and I just kinda liked this one the best. He was crazy, kept running around and playing.” She had the bite marks from puppy teeth on her hands. “He chose me.”
Sterling flipped the puppy over, and it struggled to get free. “He’s gonna be a handful.”
“What is his name?”
“I want to say Ben, but it’s way too soon. I think he looks like a Leo.”
It certainly wasn’t a name Cherise would have come up with. Sterling played with him a bit, then got the dog—Leo—to settle down in his lap.
“Cher, would you like to watch Predator with me?”
She laughed, remembering the earlier conversation when she realized he was an actual human. “I’d love to.” The thought of work nagged at her. She had to work at four. “I can only stay for a few hours.”
Sterling picked up what she was putting down. “Call in sick. Better, call in dead.”
“I can’t.”
“For tonight, call in. We’re both wiped. I’ve missed you so much.”
She knew Jenn, her boss, would be a huge bitch, but she was exhausted. The apartment didn’t offer much privacy, but she headed upstairs to the loft to make the call. Her excuse of ‘my boyfriend’s father died last night and we were at the hospital’ didn’t hold as much water with low-end food service jobs.
“If you don’t find someone to cover your shift, I’m going to have to let you go,” Jenn said.
He did tell her to call in dead. She’d saved up some money and could afford to tell this woman to stick her low-paying job where the sun didn’t shine. “Then I think you’ll have to. I need to be with family and friends tonight.”
“I’m disappointed in you, Cherise.”
“Honestly? I’m disappointed in your corporate culture that doesn’t trust an employee to have actual human emotions and feelings.”
Cherise could virtually hear Jenn’s eyes rolling through the phone. “You can get your final check next Friday. Is there anything else?”
“No, ma’am.” Like any woman in her thirties, Jenn hated being called ma’am.
Cherise heard a little sound and noticed Leo had navigated the stairs and followed her up. He sat on the white carpet, a squat little lump. When she made eye contact with him, his tail tapped on the floor and his ears went back in a grin.
“You’re trouble, buddy.” She carried him back downstairs. “So I called in dead and am now unemployed.”
“Professional houseguest.”
“The career I’ve been training for all my life. I’m doing poorly because I got that apartment…”
“Practice, my dear. This means you have time for Predators one and two.”
“I suppose it does. Unless I fall asleep.”
“Which is totally okay. I’ll fill you in on whatever you miss.”
She’d seen them so many times she didn’t need him to, but she agreed. He pulled the movie up on the giant TV, and they settled in on the couch, a soft blanket draped over them. Predator started, depicting the lush green jungles of South America.
Sterling didn’t let it get far before he spoke. “So this is the least romantic time and place ever.” Cherise looked around the sleek white apartment and privately disagreed. As someone still not entirely used to this, the accommodations were pretty romantic.
He pulled a ring box out of his pocket. “Leo and I want to know if you will marry me. It’ll certainly solve your Starbucks problem.”
Cherise gaped at him. “Of course I will, but… Is that the ring you bought for Jenna?”
He laughed. “No. I mean, yes. But I never bought a ring for Jenna. Once I started looking at it, I realized it’s totally not her at all. It’s you. I never showed it to her, never even asked her.” He paused. “This is pretty fucked up, huh?”
“We’re pretty fucked up.”
He opened the box, and she looked at the ring. He was right, it was not a ring Jenna would have liked. The main stone was a sapphire, not a diamond. Wispy vines of precious metal—platinum or white gold, she couldn’t tell which, entwined toward lustrous marquise diamond buds in a nature-inspired trellis ring.
“It is for me,” she said. She loved it.
“It is for you.”
“Thank you. And yes.” She hadn’t envisioned this step, not so soon, but she loved him. She knew she did. And she’d put up with him for so long now, she knew his ins and outs, his quirks and his temper.
He slid it on her finger and kissed the top of her head. “You deserve something better. More romantic. Fanfare. A parade. At least my eating you out or something.”
She laughed at him. “I don’t want fanfare. This is perfect.” For the first time in she didn’t know how long, she didn’t actively want to screw him. Well, she did, and she sure hoped she would later, but right now, she loved being snuggled on the couch with the man. Loving him as a whole person. “I’ll take a rain check on the second part. Don’t worry, I’ll collect soon.”
Sterling leaned over and kissed her. It felt different. Not stolen, not sinful. It felt real, warm, and wonderful.
“I’m such an idiot for making this take so long. I wish Ben could have seen it.” Sterling paused, chewing on his words. “It’s not about the money, it’s the creative control piece. I’ve been planning for this for decades. I mean, I’m still on the board, so it’ll be fine, and I’ll have my say. I just don’t want to see his hard work run into the ground.”
“Ben told me a secret when we were in Dominica. And you’ll see it for yourself as soon as you look at his will. He told me not to tell you, but I think he wouldn’t mind right now.”
“Oh?” He didn’t look entirely surprised.
“He never changed his will. He never wanted anyone but you to have control of Bachmann Entertainment Group. He said you’re the only one he trusted, but he wanted you to find happiness.”
Sterling nodded. “I can see him doing something like that. Kinda like how I was always going to pay for your PhD.”
She gaped at him. “You were?”
“Cherise, you rock, and you’re brilliant. I want you to have every opportunity life affords you. I love you. I’ve loved you from the day I hired you, I just didn’t know it.”
“But you don’t love.”
He scoffed. “I’m fucking terrified to love. I’m terrified to open myself up to you.” On the TV, the characters discovered a skinned corpse, and Sterling laughed. He pointed at the TV. “Like that. That’s how I feel. I’m scared you’re going to leave, and then what will I be?”
“Strong. Rich. Handsome. And wiser for having loved and lost.”
“Wait, isn’t this where you say you’re never leaving?”
“I’m probably never leaving. I never want to leave. But if I did, you’d be okay. You and Leo.” He looked worried, and she leaned over and kissed him. “It’s gonna take an awful lot to get rid of me.”
“You did stay with that Ricky asshole long enough.”
“Hey now.” She swatted at him, and he caught her wrist. The tension ignited a fire deep in her. She locked her gaze on Sterling’s grey-blue eyes, and he grinned a wicked grin. They both knew how the movie turned out. She supposed they also both knew how it turned out when Sterling ripped her pants off, but it was much more exciting to explore.
*** THE END ***
BONUS NOVEL INCLUDED!
HEAL ME
(A Billionaire Bad Boy Romance)
By
Bella Grant
> Bill
I’d been sitting in this damn office for an hour. I thought therapists were supposed to be, you know, considerate of feelings and all that shit. Why had I been waiting so long, then, huh? I was so bored that I was reading a magazine article. Some dumb-fuck was talking about how his money got him everything he ever dreamed of, and Now you can, too! For just ninety-nine million dollars!
Saying you got everything you wanted in life was a load of shit. I would know, because I have money. Lots of it. I’ll let you in on a secret about wealth: when you have money, you’re gonna spend it just because you can. I’ve spent my fair share of days overseas, lounging in the nude with two hookers I had hired the night before. I’ve snorted cocaine off hookers, yes. I once traveled on a yacht, and I paid for it out-of-pocket just because I could. I’ve done so many things that are cliché, things normal people would only dream of, if they even knew those things existed. But. But. Let me tell you one thing I never got in life.
I’ve never had a woman who gave a shit about me. Not even my mother, though she was the one who finally convinced me to be here. Yeah, they like my money—and, hell, I’d even say that I’m easy on the eyes. I stand about five-foot-nine, not terribly short but certainly not tall. My hair is salt and pepper. My eyes, bright green, distract people from the gray in my hair. I like to think of myself as a ‘refined gentleman,’ which basically means I’m pretty old. Over forty-five.
That’s why you couldn’t stop him from grabbing you by the neck, I thought. Nonsense. He was a coward. Came at you from behind, Bill. What could you really do but give in? I thought to myself, accustomed to my crazy internal dialogue.
“Being robbed can impact ya more than ya think,” my mom had said. “I read it in this self-help book.” Her voice was rattling and weak. She was smoking too much again. “Ya gotta see someone, Billy,” she had urged.
I told myself that her begging voice had convinced me to seek help. But truly, I knew when to throw in the towel. During any business negotiations, the point at which I’d lost and they’d won was always clear to me. Sadly, as much as I fucking hated it, I had lost. That night had robbed me of more than just my money. It robbed me of a piece of my manhood that I couldn’t seem to grab back. Every damn business deal since then had been a crock of shit. I lost my cool because I lost my confidence.