by Kat Cantrell
He’d let Sabrina go, perhaps because he’d always been braced for it. But nothing felt settled with her. It didn’t feel over. On hold, if anything.
Xavier leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the desk. While Val had somehow transitioned into a suit-wearing executive while he wasn’t looking, Xavier wore a simple T-shirt and jeans. Frankly, it might be the first time in recent memory that Val could recall his brother being clad in something other than capitalism.
“The idea of wading through contracts makes me weep with joy,” Xavier said so calmly that Val had to laugh.
“I’m guessing that wasn’t actually a joke, which means today is my lucky day.” Pushing the binder across the desk, Val waved at it. “Be my guest. Tell me what I need to know.”
Together, they poured over the contract. At 7:00 p.m., Val ordered delivery from a Chinese restaurant around the corner, and they ate kung pao chicken while slashing and burning through the non-beneficial clauses the legal team in Botswana had snuck into the verbiage. It was the first meal he’d eaten with his brother since their mother had forced them to the table together at Christmas.
Val much preferred this one.
And maybe that meant it was time to clear the air about something that had been scraping at his consciousness. “You didn’t really have anything serious with Sabrina, right?”
Xavier glanced up, his expression open, a testament to the fragile bonds they were weaving here.
“I heard you were dating her. It’s fine. I struck out with her and you didn’t. I was over it a long time ago.”
Oddly, that made Val feel a lot better than if Xavier had said he hated the idea. Somewhere along the way, besting Xavier had faded as a goal. If he did manage to find a way to resume his relationship with her, it would be because he still loved her.
The brothers slid back into the contract easily. It was nice.
When they’d reached a suitable place to stop in the document, he clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Call me once you get some passable applicants for Marjorie’s position. I’ll swing by and interview them with you, if you want.”
It was a gamble. Xavier could reject that idea out of hand and insist on doing things his own way, which was perfectly within his rights. But, instead, relief spread through his gaze. “That would be great.”
Val’s brother left LeBlanc after a few parting instructions on how to deliver the revised contract to the company’s liaison in the Botswanan government office, citing a probable one-to two-month turnaround on the response. Disappointed that he had to wait to see if things shook out as they’d hoped, Val sat in his chair, at a loss as to his next move when this corporation moved at the speed of a glacier.
An empty house greeted him, which shouldn’t have been such a shock, considering that it had always been that way from the moment he’d moved in. But lately, it had been filled with Sabrina, and he missed her keenly all at once.
In the short time since he’d become aware of her pregnancy, he’d imagined his own child following Val’s mother’s footsteps around the property. Sure, he could and would share custody, but that wasn’t the same. It was too entrenched a vision to erase, and sadness crowded into his chest all over again. That dream would never be a reality now, not with the categorical rejection Sabrina had dished out over something as trivial as a woman making a pass at him.
Except it wasn’t trivial to Sabrina. That had been her point all along—a man who cared about her would have been extra cautious about potential triggers and, instead of honoring that about her, he’d blown it off as no big deal when she called him on it. Like an idiot. Then to top it all off, she’d readily accepted that it was her issue. And that was that. Val had kissed their relationship goodbye without a fight because being passed over due to his inherent flaws was par for the course.
The silence of his big empty house condemned him further. Val’s father was dead, and thus he couldn’t confront the old man about the legacy of crap he’d left in his son’s head. If he could, what would he say?
What he should say was Thanks. A good old-fashioned, sincere thank-you. Val had formed his own place at LBC and, having seen the other side through his own eyes, he’d have hated feeling like he had to follow his father into LeBlanc. Why was he still holding on to that hurt?
Ironic—that was the one thing he’d kept a tight grip on.
There in the dark, he let it go. And vowed to find a way to get back everything else he’d failed to hold close.
* * *
Sabrina pried her eyes open and went over her résumé again. If third time was the charm, what was number 403? The round of insanity?
Her résumé still felt thin. She didn’t have enough experience for the director job, even for a small office-supply company like Penultimate. The headhunter she was working with had convinced Sabrina she should submit her résumé, that her experience as the CEO of her own company went a long way. She had to take this shot, since it would give her the experience needed for a higher level executive job. Walking away from Val two weeks ago had destroyed her, and only reaching toward something else, something positive, would build her up again.
If she was better off alone, then she’d have to raise this baby by herself too, and things like health insurance were expensive for self-employed people. Of course Val would pay child support, but this was all new and she had no idea how to provide for a child other than to ensure all her ducks were in a row. Finally, Sabrina was making smart decisions.
Which didn’t explain at all why she answered her phone when Val’s name popped up on the screen. She should hang up. Pretend she’d lost her phone. Throw it in the freezer. Something. Anything other than say hello.
“Sabrina. Don’t hang up.”
Too late. His voice bled through her like a soothing balm over all the places inside that had been scraped raw. Instantly. Two weeks of hell, and all it took to make it vanish was four words from the man she’d been unable to forget.
“I wasn’t sure you’d answer,” he said in the long pause.
“I shouldn’t have,” she muttered. But she shouldn’t have done a lot of things and, much like her entire history with Val, she couldn’t take this back either. “It’s almost midnight. I could have been asleep.”
“Yeah, about that. I’m standing on your front porch. I, um, saw you sitting at your desk through the curtains, or I wouldn’t have called.”
Val was here? She rocketed to the door and flung it open, completely ashamed of how the sight of him punched her in the gut in the very best way. Oh God, had she missed him. The days apart melted away.
But not the hurt and anger.
“What do you want?” she said into the phone that she still held to her ear like an imbecile. Lowering it to her side, she stared at the slightly disheveled man on her doorstep.
His hair hung over one eye, giving him a rakish, one-eyed pirate look that slayed her. With his suit jacket discarded somewhere and his shirt sleeves rolled to mid-forearm, she’d be hard-pressed to call him anything other than devastatingly handsome.
She shouldn’t be calling him anything.
“I want you,” he said simply and, in continuation of the craziness, he knelt on one knee, his hand outstretched.
That’s when she saw the enormous diamond set in platinum clutched between his fingers. Her hand flew to her mouth, but it didn’t stanch the squeak that leaked out anyway.
“I did it all wrong last time,” he explained. “So I’m starting over. Sabrina, first and foremost, I love you. I don’t know how it happened or when, but it’s almost like it was always there from the first moment. I love the way you eat snow cones, the way you analyze the crap out of every last thing I say, even the way you announce that I’ve screwed up. And I screwed up. A lot. You had every right to be upset about Jada because I didn’t get it. But now I do. I’ve spent the past weeks figuring out how to be in l
ove with someone who needs me to take extra care with something so fragile and precious as trust.”
“That’s an engagement ring,” she said inanely because her brain was still on the fact that Valentino LeBlanc was on one knee asking her again to marry him. Wasn’t he? “So you’ve figured it all out?”
He nodded, his gaze turning tender. “My life...it was pretty hollow before you came along, and I never realized it until you were gone. If you can forgive me for getting it all wrong so far, I’d like to spend a very long time getting it right. Marry me. Let me prove I can be monogamous, now that I’ve found the only woman I want to be with forever.”
That pretty much covered all of her questions. But wasn’t an answer at all. “You have a talent for pretty words, I’ll give you that, Val.”
“They’re heartfelt.” He rubbed a thumb over the diamond, drawing her reluctant eye to the fire contained within it. “I went to Botswana. Like you suggested. It was glorious. The president of Botswana appreciated the personal visit so much he granted us the exploration contract right then and there with no revisions.”
“Us?” It was a revelation to hear him speak in such inclusive terms about a company he’d only begun to helm and would give up again eventually.
“Xavier went with me. We’re working together. It’s the best of both worlds, the combined power of the LeBlanc brothers.”
He was talking about his brother. Xavier was the we. Sabrina’s knees almost gave out. “You traveled with Xavier? On purpose?”
He hated his brother. Or at least he disliked him strongly. Every time Xavier’s name had come up, she felt like she’d been dropped on eggshells and then told to walk without cracking one.
“It was time to grow up.” Val shrugged, a difficult task indeed with a diamond that had to weigh umpteen pounds still gripped in his fingers. “I let my emotions rule me and excuse it by calling myself passionate. I’m learning a lot by taking a step back and paying attention to others instead of my own agenda. That’s the only way I could have realized how deeply I hurt you by sabotaging our relationship. And I’ve done a lot of soul-searching about that. Jada was my subconscious way of ensuring that you didn’t get too close. I’m sorry, sweetheart. That will never happen again.”
The quiet humbleness in his voice hooked something inside and wouldn’t let go. She shouldn’t keep listening to this. It was making her doubt everything, especially what she knew to be true: that she and Val didn’t belong together. They didn’t work. They shouldn’t work.
All at once, she was so tired of shoulds.
Sinking to the ground, she knelt before him. “Your arm must be tired of holding up that ring.”
He smiled. “Then let me put it on you.”
In true Val fashion, he didn’t wait for her to hold out her hand but caught it up in his and slipped the ring on her third finger. It had enormous weight and not just the physical kind. The stone was gorgeous, full of fire and ice.
“I mined that myself,” he told her quietly. “With the help of some very nice miners who are probably still laughing at me to this day.”
Curling her fingers around it, she held it close to her heart. “I’ll never take it off.”
“See that you don’t. There’s not another one like it in the world. I had our names lasered onto the diamond’s girdle when it was being cut.”
Awe and disbelief went to war in her heart. Staring at the diamond, she tried to see the names, but that was silly. Surely they were too small. But she’d always know they were there. “That’s a huge step. What if I’d said no?”
“I wasn’t going to give up. Ever.”
Her eyes filled with tears. Dear God, where had Val been all her life? She didn’t have any words for how he’d healed her heart with that one bit of confidence. That was the only way she could admit her own failings. After all, she’d hurt him too, by refusing to have conversations they should have had much earlier but hadn’t because she’d been too afraid of the answers she’d get.
“I have my own problems. I shouldn’t be wearing this ring right now. Are you sure you want to put up with a woman who is constantly looking over your shoulder, constantly braced for signs of deceit? I don’t know that I’ll ever completely lose that.”
Oh, but she wanted to. She wanted to believe that it could be different this time. What if that was the only thing it took to make it so?
“I hope you don’t. Put me to the test over and over. My eyes are fixed on you and you only. I want to show you that I can pass your trust detector for the rest of my life.”
There must’ve been something fundamentally wrong with her because all she could say was Yes.
Yes to Val, yes to forever, yes to him passing all her tests with flying colors. Instead of only feeling safe and secure in a relationship, Val was giving her the opportunity to be brave. Passionate. To feel. And she wasn’t giving that up for anything.
That’s when he pulled her into his arms and, as they knelt on the porch of her house, he kissed her, murmuring I love you in between. She said it back with all of her heart.
Epilogue
Sabrina moved into Val’s house, and it finally became the home he’d always envisioned. Funny how he’d thought the ghosts of his mother’s childhood had created a homey feeling already, but the pale shadows of the past could not begin to compare with the future that Val had fought for—and won.
The current Mrs. LeBlanc became fast friends with the future Mrs. LeBlanc, and his fiancée spent an enormous amount of time with his mother putting the nursery together. He’d have thought the wedding plans would dominate both women, but they scarcely gave him a nod when he brought it up. What, was he the only one around here who cared about the I dos?
A few weeks later, he got Sabrina into a white dress and gifted his bride with heirloom earrings from the LeBlanc vault. She wore both when she married Val in front of the fireplace at the palatial LeBlanc estate, with only close friends and family in attendance. He wasn’t the slightest bit ashamed to be the first one to shed a tear as he recited his vows, though Sabrina gave him a run for his money now that her pregnancy hormones had turned her into an emotional faucet. She sobbed through her vows defiantly, letting Val and everyone else see exactly how she felt about him.
Val loved that almost as much as he loved her. What better way to keep his wife’s frosty attitude at bay than to make sure she stayed pregnant for the next twenty years or so? He’d be thrilled with nineteen more kids. Sabrina laughed and told him to let her get through the first child before he started making plans to knock her up again.
A few promising résumés had trickled in and, three days after Val and Sabrina returned from a honeymoon in Fiji, he and Xavier started the process of interviewing a replacement for Marjorie. It turned out that she’d quit not because of his brother’s dictatorial style but due to her mother’s failing health. Bad timing, which she profusely apologized to Val for at least four times when he finally got her on the phone.
Val and Xavier talked nearly every day, bouncing ideas off each other and working through issues together. Sabrina was still a part of his team, but she’d taken the job with Penultimate and, more often than not, she was asking Val for advice on how to handle a distribution snafu or what qualities he’d value most in an HR manager. Every answer helped him solidify his own strategy with LeBlanc.
Neither brother had quite met their inheritance goals, but they still had three more months to get it in the bag. Val had a whole new perspective on the will and, frankly, each night as he lay in bed listening to Sabrina breathe, he felt like he’d already won.
How could money possibly compare with having the love of his life by his side forever? It didn’t. Couldn’t. Val wasn’t his father’s favorite and, finally, he was at peace with it. Love was the real inheritance lesson.
* * * * *
Don’t miss the next SWITCHING PLACES novel
,
Xavier’s story,
coming September 2018!
If you liked this story of family and passion,
pick up these other novels from
USA TODAY bestselling author Kat Cantrell!
MARRIAGE WITH BENEFITS
THE BABY DEAL
PREGNANT BY MORNING
TRIPLETS UNDER THE TREE
FROM EX TO ETERNITY
FROM FAKE TO FOREVER
Available now from Harlequin Desire!
***
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Keep reading for an excerpt from ONE NIGHT TO FOREVER by Joss Wood.
One Night to Forever
by Joss Wood
One
Lachlyn Latimore walked into the hallway of what was perhaps the most famous brownstone in Manhattan, possibly the world. Known to New Yorkers as The Den, it was five stories of weathered brick, owned and lived in by multiple generations of the Ballantyne family.
The family she was apparently linked to by DNA.
Lachlyn politely thanked Linc Ballantyne when he took her vintage coat and draped it over the back of a chaise longue chair to the right of the wood and stained glass front door. Lachlyn hoped that he didn’t notice the coat’s frayed pocket or missing button.
Lachlyn folded her arms across her plain white long-sleeved top and resisted the urge to wipe her damp hands on her black skinny jeans. As the newly discovered, illegitimate daughter of Connor Ballantyne, who’d been jeweler to the world’s richest and most powerful people and a Manhattan legend, she had a right to feel intimidated. Connor might have passed years ago but his children were as influential and celebrated as their late father.
Lachlyn darted a glance at the portrait of Connor situated on the wall directly opposite the grand staircase. She’d inherited Connor’s blue eyes, bright blond hair, that straight, fine nose. She had her mom’s tiny build and wide, full mouth but the rest of her was, dammit, pure Ballantyne.