James took two hard steps and Henry gasped; there was a rustle of cloth. “Because I’m the one that found her crying in the goddamn snow after she overheard you with whoever left those behind. That’s why! You son of a bitch.” Another rustle and a slight stumble.
“She overheard me? Oh God!”
Anna started to shake, her cheeks hot and her heart pounding. She should have been in there fighting her own battle, but the sight of those panties had set James off and she knew now that he couldn’t love her as well as he did and not say something. Meanwhile, Henry seemed mostly focused on having been caught.
“Yeah, she did, and it broke her goddamn heart, and if I hadn’t have found her out in the snow in hysterics when I did she would have frozen to death.” James’s breath came harshly as Henry swore under his breath. “So yeah, I’m the one that carried her back in, and I’m the one that looked after her, and now I’m the one in your goddamned face asking you why. Why the hell did you break that girl who loved you like that? What the hell gives you the right?”
Henry was quiet for a few moments. Then he said softly, “I didn’t want to break her, but I couldn’t get attached either.”
“Why would you not want to get attached to someone like that?”
Henry sighed. It wasn’t even noon yet but she heard the unmistakable sound of him pouring himself a drink from the wet bar. Her eyes widened. Henry, what is going on?
“You know, I tell everyone I had a bad breakup and that’s why I don’t date. Truth is, I did have a bad breakup, and it was for the same reason that I stopped dating seriously. And the reason’s...pretty compelling. I mean, Anna’s a great kid. I was really tempted to make an exception, especially when I realized how much she likes me.”
Liked, she thought resentfully, but just kept quietly listening.
“But the more she likes me, the more reason I shouldn’t be stringing her along by getting serious with her.”
“...what?” James sounded very skeptical. “That sounds like you're doing the opposite of what's good for you.”
“Yeah, I guess it would.” Henry sighed, and she heard him go over to the window and draw the shades aside. “Truth is, I’ve been fighting cancer for a long time now, James.”
Anna froze inside as she heard James suck air. Tears brimmed in her eyes as her view of reality shifted on its foundations.
“...Jesus.” James sounded breathless. “I had no idea.”
“That was kind of the point.” Henry paused. “I set up the foundation and gave guys like you work because I wanted to at least go out having accomplished something I was proud of with all this cash. But the whole time I did it, it was in part because I knew I was living on borrowed time. Oh, I have the best doctors, and I kept healthy the whole time pretty much, but…” he chuckled humorlessly. “One day you just know you’re going to get that one doctor’s phone call, and that’s kinda that.”
“Then you’re….?”
“Yeah, that was what the phone call with my doc was about. The son of a bitch practically left it on my answering machine. These New York doctors. They have the bedside manner of coroners.” The hollow cheer in Henry’s voice tore at Anna’s heart, and the tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Jesus, Boss. How long?”
“Long enough that I can wrap up getting you the help I promised, with your son. And make sure you’re not on the hook for the snowcat thing. The bonus I promised for your last job is going to take a few days to process fully. Don’t worry about that, I handled it today--”
“That’s all very goddamn nice, but for fuck’s sake…” James trailed off, voice weakening.
Henry went on, talking rapidly. “I’m passing the restoration company on into good hands. The best hands. She’s very trustworthy. I’m sure you’ll like her. And don’t worry about your job or anything.” He almost sounded like he was apologizing for admitting he was dying. “I just have some more paperwork to get done, and some stuff I’ll have to have Anna notarize….”
He trailed off slowly, and hitched in a shivering breath. “I really made a mess of poor Anna, didn’t I?”
“Yeah.” James sounded much more subdued now.
“Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?”
“I can’t say. You’ll have to ask her.”
Henry let out a sad little laugh. “I was pushing her away to keep from hurting her worse by dying on her a few months down the line. I went and slept with somebody else to clear my head, so I could make myself do it...and instead….”
“Yeah.” James sighed, and said quietly, “I don’t mind putting her pieces back together. I just had to know why.”
“You gonna take care of her after this?” Henry’s tone was a mixture of jealous and relieved.
“If she’ll have me.” James’s voice was soft and Anna felt a flush of warmth down to her toes. Her fingers brushed over the bracelet on her wrist, and she smiled softly.
“Good. I...shouldn’t have touched her, I know that. You’re the one that looks after things.”
“Yeah, and you’re the one that could actually provide for her.” James’s tone was pointed. “Besides, until you broke her heart, she thought you hung the moon.”
“That’s why you held off, then.”
“Yeah.” A pause. “Think I’d like two fingers of that stuff myself.”
Henry poured and they sat in silence. Anna walked away from the door, arms around herself, and went back to her room to cry.
Chapter 5: Their Best Friend
Henry called her on her cellphone and suggested they take a walk since it was still light out and the snow had stopped falling for a while. The plow and some road workers had cleared the main street and its sidewalks, and she walked carefully down the icy slate with Henry beside her, not talking for a while.
They reached the bridge over the broad, frozen Esopus and Henry stopped to lean on it, looking around. No one in earshot, just the river ice drifted with snow and the occasional skirl of an icy breeze.
“James...told me how badly I screwed up with you,” he said quietly, glancing briefly into her eyes.
“Yeah, I um...guess he did. I kind of wanted to hash it out directly, but--”
“But he’s in love with you, and wants to be your hero. Does a pretty good job of it most of the time, though I’m kinda glad he decided not to hit me.” Henry smirked and rubbed his chin.
“I think I talked him out of it.”
He stood quietly for a few moments. “You know, I never meant for any of this to happen. I’ve been feeling better lately, ironically, and I really like you. I guess I just let things get away from me. If the situation was different….”
She swallowed, tears in her eyes. “I get it,” she murmured. “I just...I do wish the situation was better.” For all of them, but especially for him, the man she had adored from afar who would soon be gone. Yes, she had gotten her heart shattered by his thoughtlessness, but he had just gotten a death sentence from his doctor. How did anyone take that without doing something crazy?
What he had done wasn’t right, but she could forgive him. She had a limited amount of time in which to do so, and she was willing to do that.
“You...still willing to help me handle all this damned paper, now that you know what it’s all about?” he asked, trying to sound casually businesslike and failing.
Anna nodded. “I’ll make sure you get as much done as humanly possible. I know James must have said the same.”
“He did.” He smiled sadly. “Couldn’t ask for better friends than you two, but God, I screwed everything up with both of you anyway.”
“If you couldn’t admit that it would be much more of a problem now.” She wiped her face.
“I get it.” He looked at her, and smiled softly, holding out a hand. “So...can we still be friends, then?”
She took his hand and squeezed it gently. “Until the end,” she replied softly, and knew as she said so that she meant it quite literally.
She returned t
o the bed and breakfast an hour later. She and Henry stopped off at the bar and talked about random friendly things over a bit more hard liquor than usual. Then they had parted company, he going off to his room to sort out personal matters, and she going to tap at James’s door.
“Come in,” he muttered, almost too low to be heard. She pushed the door open and walked in, seeing him sitting there with one lamp on, brooding quietly with his shoes off and his eyes dull.
She shut the door and locked it, went to him, and sat down on the couch next to him. He sat still a moment, and then slipped an arm around her and pulled her against his side. He turned his head and kissed the top of her head, but he still didn’t say anything.
She slid her hand up and down his chest through his shirt and looked into his face. He glanced at her briefly, and sighed.
“I don’t know what to say about this,” he admitted. “This isn't right.”
“No, none of it is. I almost wish this happened because Henry is an ass with women instead of because he’s….” She trailed off, unable to say it.
“Dying. Because he's fucking dying,” he said for her, voice choked with anguish and frustration.
She turned and hugged him tightly, and he buried his face in her hair and squeezed her back just a touch too hard. She didn’t mind. She could understand.
“Ah, God…” He lifted his head, voice shaking a little. “He said he’s been fighting this for years. And he didn’t tell anyone.”
“No. I never even guessed. He always seemed so healthy and optimistic. I just…” She felt tears on her cheeks but didn’t sob, just wept quietly as she spoke in a shaky voice. “I don’t know where I would be in the world without him. And he’s going to be gone soon.”
“I feel just the same.” He sucked air. “And...Toby. How do we tell him?” Toby was a grown man, but he had the heart of an innocent kid. Thanks to the brain damage, he also had trouble processing difficult subjects like death. He would do more than need hugs and cry quietly. Henry had just paid for their house renovations. He would probably fall apart completely for a while. He had his mother to help shore him up, but….
“No...no...look.” She turned to him, finding a little ember of strength inside of herself to share with him, and rekindle his own. “We help Henry settle everything and get his current projects done. We help him however he needs, we help Toby, and we figure out things like who Monty’s going to live with.”
His face fell into its usual tough, businesslike lines, even as the sadness lurked in his eyes. “I’ll take Monty, he’s a good dog. He’ll love the woods. I get my son back, well, he loves dogs. They’ll be buddies.” He smiled faintly and she nodded, reminding herself to talk to Henry about it.
James went on. “I can’t expect the boys to do outdoor work in the winter, but if Henry gives me the money to pay them ahead of time, I can get all six projects handled come late spring. There’s one that needs some interior work that we can do if the damn blizzards let up. And then there’s the farmhouse.” He thought aloud, voice a soft rasp as he focused on things he could do, instead of the impossible task of saving Henry from an enemy neither of them could fight.
“I can get most of the paperwork he needs done before New Years,” she spoke slowly, following his lead. “I guess I’d better be there when Henry breaks the news to Toby.”
“Yeah, me too.” He stroked a hand up and down her back, and gazed at her quietly for a moment. Then his eyes hooded, half sensual and half shy. “Tell you the truth. Don’t think I could get through this too well if I didn’t have you.”
She smiled softly. Henry’s betrayal had become almost trivia in light of everything that had gone on since. She had adored him; they had made love once; he had broken fidelity right away because he felt he could not afford to love her while he was on his way out. And she could point out the flaws in that, but she could understand it too. If James wasn’t here, she would be dealing with it all alone, without the quiet joy he brought her to keep her heart intact. “I feel the same way.”
He kissed her tenderly but with heat behind it, and she lay back on the couch as his hands started to slide over her. Outside, the snow feathered thickly against the window again, and the wind started to skirl in the eaves. Soon he had her out of her clothes, nothing left on her but the bracelet he had carved, and covered her with kisses before shedding his own clothes and settling over her. They made love as the storm strengthened outside, and for a while, the cold and tragedy could not reach them.
THE END
Out of Time
Billionaire Christmas Story
Book Three
Violet Walker
Billionaire Christmas Story: Out of Time
Chapter 1: A Christmas Without Miracles
Anna woke slowly, her whole body warm despite the snow clinging to the window a few feet from her. She stared out at the frozen Phoenicia morning, and reality started drifting back to her. But reality would bring a lot of pain with it. She sighed and turned her back to the window, nestling under the comforters and against the chest of the man next to her.
James let out a grunt and rolled toward her a little, sliding a massive arm around her and pulling her closer. His eyes were still closed. She watched the dappled light from the window creep over his strong features and short, pale blond hair. His broad, heavily muscled shape was nude under the comforters and gave off heat like a furnace. Feeling him against her made her think of other things she could be doing to scare ugly reality off for a while. She hadn’t tried waking him up with sex yet, for example….
Then she caught a glimpse of the clock beyond him, its digits glowing 7:30 in the semi-dark. Henry, her employer and best friend, had asked her to meet him in his suite upstairs at eight. “Dammit,” she grumbled under her breath as she slipped out of James’s arms and got up.
“Mnnnn?” One of his pale blue eyes opened slightly.
“It’s okay,” she said quickly in a soothing tone. “Henry, upstairs, paperwork.”
“Nnf.” He rolled over, yawning hugely, and then dozed off again. She looked back at him longingly. He was so adorable, and the work ahead was so...grim, but she would go and she would help Henry with it because procrastinating would do him a huge disservice. He literally did not have any time to spare.
Anna was a small, curvy woman of twenty-three, with pale skin, gray-green eyes and gently pretty features. She pulled a burgundy wool skirt on over her slip, topped the camisole with a fuzzy pine-green sweater, and stepped into her shoes. Not an occasion for much makeup or perfume. The whole thing didn’t seem quite real to her still as she combed out her wavy mahogany-brown hair and then pinned it up, but the facts still stood.
She and her billionaire boss, Henry Reid, had come up to the Catskills a few days ago to look at his latest renovation project, a modernized Colonial-era farmhouse. A blizzard had hit, trapping them for days, and they had ended up making love. She had crushed on Henry since meeting him and ended up smitten, believing that they were in love. But after James, Henry’s foreman, had rescued them both in a stolen snowcat and brought them here to the tiny village of Phoenicia, Henry started acting strange. He had pushed her away clumsily, breaking her heart in the process, and leaving James, who had loved her from afar, to pick up the pieces. When James demanded an explanation, Henry admitted that he was dying of cancer and could not be in a relationship because he felt it would be unfair to Anna.
Now she and James were together, and that was the only bright spot in the whole affair. Henry was dying, they were still trapped in Phoenicia, and the local parks department was investigating the theft of not one, but six snowcats--someone had stolen the other five out of the same yard James had “borrowed” his from.
She thought of Henry upstairs and hurried. She loved him still, though her love was tested and tempered by knowing that he had decided they could not be together even for the time he had left. That didn’t make sense to her, but since he was going through this ordeal, she had to respect his wis
hes.
As she walked to the door, she looked back at James, sleeping peacefully in a patch of winter sunlight. She felt such enormous wistfulness as she gazed at him that tears came to her eyes. If she could stop time a while, she would. For all of them.
Instead, she went off to work.
She had been Henry’s assistant for under a year, but she had done her best to be indispensable. At first, she’d wanted to stabilize her job as much as possible, but then, it came from a place of pure love and loyalty. At the time, she had thought that he did all the Catskills building restorations, gave the locals jobs and funded local food banks out of the kindness of his heart. In truth, he had been trying as hard as he could to make a positive mark on the world before the cancer he had fought for years caught up with him. Two days ago, he had discovered that his illness had become fatal, that he would start to waste away soon. So now, snowed in in a strange town and living out of a bed and breakfast, she was on the job whenever Henry needed her.
BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE: The Unforgettable Billionaires: The Complete Collection Boxed Set 1-12 (Young Adult Rich Alpha Male Billionaire Romance) (Alpha Bad Boy Billionaire Romance) Page 16