I Married a Billionaire: The Prodigal Son (Contemporary Romance)

by Marchande, Melanie

  The way he said it sent chills through me.

  “We’re going to do this so it’s comfortable for you,” he said. “As much as I want to just manhandle you and throw you down on the bed and take you harder than you ever imagined.” He smiled. “In consideration of circumstances, I won’t.”

  I groaned in frustration as he started to unbutton his shirt. Was it in my imagination, or was he going slower than he strictly needed to?

  “Just think,” he said, finally letting the shirt slip from his shoulders. “After all this time, when we can finally do it again…”

  I just whimpered, pouting at him. He was definitely doing something. He took the time to fold up his shirt carefully and lay it down in the dresser. For some reason, I felt another hot flush of embarrassment creep over me at the thought that he’d noticed how much I liked to watch him undress.

  “I’m not breakable, you know,” I said. He was already straining under his jeans but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to take them off.

  “I know,” he said. “But I’m going to be careful, all the same.”

  I kept eyeing him and licking my lips and I was utterly humiliated at my inability to stop.

  “Just think,” he said, with a smile, coming over close so that his bulge was exactly at my eye level. “After all this time, once we’re finally able to do anything we want again…”

  “Uh huh,” I breathed. I wasn’t really listening to him anymore.

  “Hey.” He snapped his fingers. “I’m up here.”

  He was trying to make a stern face but he couldn’t fight the smile.

  “You’re very distracting,” I said, looking up at him. “Certain parts of you in particular.”

  “I could say the same about you,” he said, running his fingers, very lightly, through my hair. “But you don’t seem to know it, and I prefer you that way.”

  I licked my lips again. Stupid reflex.

  “Go on,” he said, nudging his hips slightly towards me. That mischievous smile just wouldn’t stop playing across his lips. “I can tell you’re dying to.”

  We didn’t do this often, I assumed because he preferred other things. But until this moment, with my mouth watering in front of him, I hadn’t realized how much I wanted it.

  Still, it was ridiculous for him to frame this as a favor that he was doing for me. Wasn’t it?

  I popped the button on his jeans, and the zipper started to creep down of its own accord. I helped it along.

  When I enveloped him in my mouth his eyes fell shut and his mouth open, just a little, just enough to remind me what it was I liked about this. The heady heat, the musk, the power. In the spite of the games we played, in this moment, I owned him.

  He pulled away after too short a time, stepping out of his jeans and his underwear to lie down on the bed and gesture me over. I stepped out of my panties and straddled him obediently, letting out a satisfied sigh as he slowly filled me up. I rode him, but not like I had in the car - it was slow and sweet. He moved under me, gently, his hands grasping mine and interlacing our fingers, pushing back towards me so I had something to leverage myself against. Even with the obvious swell of my belly on such a clear display, I forgot to be self-conscious.

  It felt like forever, slowly undulating together and basking in the feeling. It wasn’t the game I’d missed, I realized. It was just a part of this - this indefinable thing we had together, something that had been so carefully curated and cultivated even when we didn’t realize we were doing it. It was something more than just the two of us individually; together, we were something new.

  I grasped his hands tightly. Years ago, when I had first stumbled my way into Plum Tech, when the other big companies were sneering at the startup that was living on a dream and a prayer, I never could have imagined I’d end up here. When I’d walked in that first day in my skirt that didn’t fit right and my heels that flipped when I walked, to the point where I almost lost one on a trip back from the copier, I’d never guessed that Daniel Thorne himself was watching me quietly from somewhere. Going completely unnoticed, sipping his coffee by the water cooler, seeing me - seeing something nobody else recognized. Least of all, me.

  He’d seen through the barriers I put up, the way I’d tried to shield myself from “men like him,” or the man I thought he was. He’d seen someone trustworthy, someone he could have imagined himself being with in another life, when we weren’t both too skittish to consider the possibility of love.

  It was a good thing, too.

  The thought of being without him was too painful to bear. Even as it flitted briefly through my mind now, as the pleasure and tension coiled between us, I felt like I wanted to cry.

  But then, his lips parted, and he said my name.

  I forgot everything but the way he felt.

  When it came crashing over me, I cried out, throwing my head back towards the ceiling. We curled up together afterwards, in the middle of our gigantic bed, and for a moment, I was convinced that absolutely everything was going to be okay.

  Fourteen

  “This feels wrong,” I said, for the umpteenth time.

  Daniel, at least, had the good grace to ignore me.

  Box by box, we were watching the entire remaining contents of the Starra Gallery get packed into a truck. Most of it was headed to storage. I’d insisted on coming down to “help” but I quickly realized that not only was no one going to allow a pregnant woman to do so much as lift a pencil, but the whole thing was making me incredibly sad.

  Daniel had the day free, and decided to come with me as well. I was pretty sure it was just him being overprotective, but he had some ridiculous justification about “getting it into the paper” so I just rolled my eyes and went along with it.

  Oddly enough, a few photographers did stop by. I wasn’t sure what drew them in, but they talked to me and Daniel and Curtis about the gallery and what it had meant to us. I was still having wild thoughts of forcing Curtis to take our money and buy a new place, or secretly buying one for him. In spite of what he said, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was just putting on a brave face.

  “So,” I said to him at one point, coming over to lean against the concrete wall and watch some of the last boxes go in. “What do you think?”

  “I think we had a good run,” he said, without hesitating. “I think this is something I can look back on, and feel good about.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “Did you end up finding a new job?”

  He nodded, sipping his coffee. “At one of the galleries downtown. I’ll be working behind the scenes, mostly. Won’t see the artists much. So it’ll be a bit of an adjustment.”

  “I’ll say. So you were serious about not wanting to own another gallery?”

  I doubted he was going to be honest with me, if he hadn’t for all this time, but I figured it was worth a shot.

  “Well,” he said. “I don’t know if I meant it then. But now?” He took another sip of his coffee, his eyes following another one of the boxes. “For all the fond memories I have of this place, it still has a shadow hanging over it.” He smiled, a little sadly. “Every day I kept this place open after Jill died, it was like her ghost was following me around. Creepy, but…I had to do it, you know? Because otherwise it would be like letting her slip away forever.”

  I couldn’t imagine, and so I said nothing.

  “All this time,” he went on. “Every year I looked at the books and realized there was no way I could keep on doing this, but decided to find a way to do it anyway…it was something I did out of desperation without really understanding why. I knew I needed this place to stay open. I just didn’t realize that I was clinging to it because it was all I really had left of her.”

  They were padlocking the truck. Curtis turned to go inside the gallery and look around one last time.

  Daniel and I stood by as he pushed the door open.

  “You two can look around, if you like,” he said.

  It was eerie.
The cedar smell was stronger than ever, and almost nothing remained that had given the Starra its character. I hardly felt like I was in the same place.

  Curtis had already taken all the personal effects from his office, so this was just one final pass to make sure nothing had been inadvertently forgotten.

  “Does he have any idea who he’s going to lease it out to next?” I wanted to know.

  “A Pilates studio,” said Curtis. “Apparently he thinks it’ll be more of an ‘anchor.’”

  As strange as it was to think about, I could actually see it - take down a few non-load-bearing walls here, slap a coat of paint there…

  I looked at Curtis. Despite my fears, he wasn’t slumping around the room like Charlie Brown without his football. He actually looked…happy.

  As if on cue, as he made his way around the perimeter of the room, he started whistling.

  “All right,” he said, finally. “I think we’re done here.”

  As we filtered outside and he turned to lock up behind us, I stopped and turned around, knowing I ought to say something, but unsure of what it was.

  “Thank you both for coming down,” he said, before I could think of anything. “It means the world to me.”

  And just like that, I realized he was going to be just fine.

  ***

  “You don’t think it’s ridiculous? Look at this tie. It’s too fat.”

  Walter was scowling at himself in the full-length store mirror.

  “That’s actually the perfect width of tie for that cut of suit,” said the floor clerk, who was beginning to look like a trapped animal.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Let’s get that one.”

  We were planning on taking him to one of the city’s nicer restaurants to meet with Lindsey, but the sartorial side of things was proving to be more stressful than we’d anticipated. He insisted that he didn’t have anything nice enough, which was true. But when Daniel offered to buy him something, he waffled on every single suit he tried on. I’d gone with him today to try and force a decision, if I possibly could.

  In the end, I was able to convince him to take it, but apparently only on the unspoken condition that he’d grumble about it all the way back to the apartment. We were all going to leave from here for the restaurant, since Walter’s hotel shuttle didn’t go far enough and it just seemed easier this way.

  “I don’t understand the way men are expected to dress these days,” Walter said, when Daniel walked down the stairs in his suit.

  “Thank you,” said Daniel. “You look nice, too.”

  “I didn’t say it was bad,” Walter snapped. “I said I just don’t understand it.”

  Ever since his address at Columbia, there had been a tentative truce. Directly afterwards, I actually saw the two of them hug, and as happy as I was about the whole thing, I kept my distance for the rest of the night so that they could talk. I answered mundane questions about my pregnancy until I felt like my brain was going to leak out of my ears, and then finally, we went back home.

  I didn’t talk to Daniel about exactly what happened, or what kinds of things they might have discussed. The important thing was that they were once again willing to give each other a chance, more or less.

  “You sure want to wear that tie?” said Walter. “It looks cheap.”

  “No, it doesn’t. You wouldn’t know the difference between a cheap tie and and expensive tie if it was used to strangle you.”

  More or less.

  We were very early to the restaurant. Walter was clearly venting his nerves by being rude to everyone, so I tried to keep him distracted while we got to our table and sat down. Daniel asked the host to keep an eye out for Lindsey and send her in our direction. Her husband Ray couldn’t get away from work, and she told me confidentially that it was better this way.

  “Ray hides it well, but he hates dad’s guts,” she’d said, casually. “I think if we got a couple glasses of wine in them, there’s a decent chance a full-on fight would break out.”

  “As amazing as that sounds,” I’d told her, “you probably made the best decision.”

  The server came by for our drink orders. Daniel and I got water, and Walter ordered a dry martini.

  “Unless we’re not drinking,” he said, looking around the table.

  “Well, I’m not,” I said.

  “Obviously,” said Walter.

  “You can have anything you like, dad,” said Daniel, impatiently. To the server: “that’ll be all, thank you.”

  “Sorry,” said Walter. “I don’t know what the etiquette is in these situations.”

  I looked at Daniel. “You can order a drink, you know,” I said. “It’s not going to bother me.”

  He shrugged. “I’d just as soon keep a clear head.”

  “I don’t think a fight’s going to break out,” said Walter.

  “I’m glad you’re so confident,” Daniel replied. “Remember the last Thanksgiving we all had together?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Walter, firmly. “And neither do you.”

  I watched the door anxiously, fiddling with the corner of my menu. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to order, but I couldn’t possibly concentrate on the menu while I was waiting for…I didn’t know what, exactly.

  When she finally walked through the door, I held my breath. She looked absolutely stunning, and her face was set into a completely unreadable mask. The host escorted her over to our table.

  “Hello, Lindsey,” Walter said, setting down his drink.

  “Hello,” she replied, coolly.

  “I hope you and Ray have been doing well.”

  She cleared her throat, delicately. “Very well, thank you,” she said.

  This was a side of Lindsey I’d never seen. She never so much as bit her tongue around anyone, but with Walter, obviously, she had to.

  We all ordered, eventually. I pointed to something on the menu at random, while the others made slightly more thoughtful choices. Walter started quizzing Lindsey about her life, and after the third or fourth question I could sense her irritation growing. I wondered if he knew what thin ice he was on. I wondered if he simply didn’t care.

  “So, still no kids?” Walter said, finally. I winced.

  Lindsey’s eyes turned to flint.

  “No,” she said, very quietly. “I can’t have kids. I found out not too long after you went on your…” she took a sip of her drink. “…cruise.”

  “I’m sure that your brother told you how much I regret some of the things I’ve done,” said Walter. “I hope you can find a way to forgive me, someday.”

  “I’m not holding a grudge,” said Lindsey, in a way that very much made me not believe her.

  “I’ve been thinking about coming back for so long,” he said. “But every time, I thought…why? What’s the point? They’ll hate me. So I pushed the idea away for as long as I could. But now that I’m here, I realize I should have owned up to my mistake a lot sooner. I could have…” Walter took a deep breath. “I could have been there for you when you found out. About the kids. I could have seen Daniel’s wedding. I could have done a lot of things differently, if only I’d been ready to admit that I fucked up.”

  He was clenching his fork tightly in his hand. I could see that Lindsey’s lip was quivering, but I wasn’t sure that anyone else noticed.

  “Madeline said something to me,” he went on, his voice very low. “She said it wasn’t too late - but that someday soon, it might be. She warned me that I was about to lose you two forever, and until she said it, I didn’t realize how true it was.”

  A tear made its way down Lindsey’s face. She dabbed at it with a napkin.

  “This might not have been the best venue,” she said, smiling bravely at Daniel.

  “My apologies,” he replied. “You were always welcome to make another suggestion.”

  “Dad,” she said, looking at Walter and letting out a long sigh. “We would have forgiven you, no matter what. We always would have found a way. B
ut you waited so long. It’s a lot to wrap my head around. I’m still not really sure if this is reality. I might wake up any minute now from the longest, strangest dream I’ve ever had.”

  “I promise, it’s not,” said Walter.

  “That’s exactly what someone in a dream would say.” Lindsey was smiling.

  Under the table, I grabbed Daniel’s hand and squeezed it tightly.

  “Don’t think you’re off the hook,” Lindsey said, gesturing at Walter with her fork. “Later on, I’m going to yell at you. Probably lots of screaming and cursing and weeping. I’m going to demand answers to questions that have none, and bring up things you’d forgotten you even did or said. That’s not a threat, it’s just reality. It’s all going to be part of the adjustment process for me. But for right now, I’m happy to just have dinner with you. I’m happy to know that you’re alive, and see your face again. That’s all things I never though I’d have, but none of it changes the fact that if you’d never left in the first place, we wouldn’t be going through this at all.”

  “I know,” said Walter. “I don’t have an excuse for what I did.” He reflected on this for a moment. “Well. No good excuses.”

  “Don’t bother with any bad ones,” said Lindsey, smiling. “I won’t put up with any bullshit from you.”

  “You never did,” said Walter.

  The rest of our meal was exactly was surreal as I would have expected it to be. I still don’t remember what I ate, or the actual content of most of the conversations. What I do remember is the sparkle slowly coming back into Lindsey’s eyes, as she sat there and talked with her father for the first time in so very long. I remember the look in Walter’s eyes as he talked to his son and daughter, betraying a sense of pride that he might never be able to put into words.

  But most of all, I remember the feeling of relief and happiness that slowly crept through my veins as I sat there. Gathered around the flickering candles, we were as much a family as we were ever going to be. And yes, later, there might be yelling. And more in the future. That was just the nature of things.

  In the end, though, everything from the past would heal. It would never be forgotten, but the memories would grow less sharp. Less painful.