Sasha takes a spoonful of ice cream and nods. “The New York real estate market is a cesspool, and I will forever maintain that you were an absolute fool not to ask Chase to buy you this place as your favor,” she teases. “Are you ever going to tell me what you really asked for?”
Amber dips her spoon into the container. “A trip to Paris. You and me.”
She nearly drops the container. “Really?”
Amber shrugs. “Really. You’ve been wanting to go for so long, and it really pissed me off that Trey convinced you to ditch that plan in favor of going to Rome. When you told me about the Airbnb, I wanted to murder him. I figured a week in Parisian luxury would be our best revenge. We have the jet, a suite at The Four Seasons, a chauffeur, and Chase said he’d call and use his name to get us any hard-to-get reservations.”
“God, he really is in love with you.”
Amber laughs, trying to let herself really feel the truth of it, to not get scared off by things that might never happen. “I guess I’ll find out.”
Sasha grins and pulls her in for another hug.
“Thank you for being the best sister.”
She smiles. “Likewise.”
Chapter Nineteen
With Chase having been out the whole week before to go to Jason’s bachelor party and tend to pre-wedding details, and Amber having missed a couple of days for her Vegas trip, Monday is an absolute bear. The two of them are too busy to even pick up lunch, so Chase has some delivered. It comes from Amber’s favorite Italian place a few blocks over.
He didn’t tell her he was ordering, it just shows up at her desk all warm and cheesy and delicious, right when she was about to pass out from hunger.
He asked for her favorite: stuffed shells with marinara, a side salad with no onions, and the house dressing on the side. When she opens the lid and starts to dig in, Chase delivers a cold Perrier from the fridge in his office.
He twists off the top for her and places it in front of her.
She smiles at his thoughtfulness. “I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be getting your lunch and your drinks.”
“Nonsense. You take care of me and I take care of you. That’s how this has always worked, isn’t it?”
He’s right about that. Part of the reason why their working relationship has been such a successful one is because they treat each other like equals. He doesn’t consider himself too good to do anything, which makes Amber want to make his life easier. It’s the give and take that’s kept them on a smooth sailing path these past five years, and it’s one of the things that melts away some of Ambers worries about how a romantic relationship will work.
“Sure is,” she says.
He winks at her before he turns and walks back into his office.
Sasha had given Amber a lot to think about on Saturday night. She spent most of the day yesterday waffling back and forth, trying to figure out how to calm her stupid, overanalyzing, overthinking brain into submission and just let herself be. Even though she knows the road ahead isn’t going to be a particularly easy one, and even though she still feels that rush of panic in the pit of her stomach when she realizes she’s making herself vulnerable to Chase and trusting him to treat her heart with tenderness and care, she knows that Sasha is right.
Yesterday, she thought long and hard about the different possibilities before her. She could let go and dare to be happy, or she could continue on course, pushing him away. He’d wait for a while, but he’d eventually move on. The thought of him finding someone else and falling in love, getting married, having a family…it crushed her. It hurt worse than the imagined fallout from a potential infidelity.
She didn’t want to live her life with regrets, and she would regret not loving him the way that she wanted to, would regret not letting him love her in return.
So, she came into the office this morning with a new outlook, determined to break down the walls she’s set up to protect herself, and already it’s made her day better. She lets him flirt with her, and she flirts back. She accepts his kindness with a smile and a promise to herself that she’ll repay the favor. She thinks about a life full of this kind of happiness without a sense of doom and gloom hovering over her, darkening everything.
She feels like a new woman.
She just wishes that life would give her an opening where she could ask Chase if he wanted to go get a drink after work, maybe head somewhere they could be alone and talk.
But the day stretches on, and the demands of running a multibillion-dollar company come first. They keep their heads down and before Amber knows it, the sun has set, and everyone has gone home. Like so many nights before, she and Chase are the only ones left in the office.
Chase is still elbows-deep in the minutiae of the Pearson deal, so she carries her laptop into his office so she can go over his calendar with him while he works. He sits hunched in his chair, and she’s hunched in hers on the opposite side of his desk. He runs his fingers through his hair as he hits print on yet another proposal that he needs to bring home with him to look over tonight.
Amber takes pity on him and heads over to the printer. She knows how he is, she knows that he’s a messy reader, so she takes the papers and decides to staple them together for him. He puts them to the side as he flips through, and he’s wound up getting them out of order more than a few times. She also picks up a stack of papers next to the printer; might as well organize those for him too.
She staples as she sifts through the pages, tossing the duplicates into the recycle bin. When she hits the last page, she stops in her tracks. It’s definitely not a proposal. There’s a URL printed out along the bottom. The writing is in comic sans, which peaks her curiosity.
The large writing across the top reads:
Under that is a story from a guy who claims that he worked at the park and is in possession of the recipe. Amber thinks back to their trip to Connecticut, when she told him this was her favorite treat as a kid, how she was devastated when Wave World shut down, because it meant she couldn’t have them anymore.
She looks over at Chase, a man who took an offhanded remark that she made and went looking for a way to give that memory back to her. Tears spring in her eyes and she swallows down a lump in her throat, feeling like a fool for thinking this man could ever willingly hurt or disappoint her.
It takes a few seconds to compose herself. She gathers up the proposals into a little stack and deposits them next to Chase, but keeps the recipe page for herself. The last thing she needs is for that to get mixed up with more important papers that might find their way into someone else’s hands.
She gets back to work getting his calendar straight, asking him about a couple of meetings she wasn’t sure if he wanted to take. She goes through some of his personal mail, and when she gets to the bottom of the stack, she sees an opening for the opportunity she’s been waiting for all day.
“Romy Patel is getting married,” she says, waving her wedding invitation in the air. “She’s asking for donations in lieu of gifts.” He’s going to tell her to make a $2500 donation in her name, and he’s going to tell her to make sure she gets an acknowledgement that he can put in the card he gives the happy couple.
“Make a twenty-five hundred-dollar donation,” he says. “Make sure you get one of those card thingies.”
She smiles at how well she knows him. “Do you want a plus one?”
He sits back in his chair and his shoulders slump, like he’s too exhausted to have this fight again. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I told you. The only plus one I want is you, Amber.”
She shrugs nonchalantly. “What if it was me?”
That gets his attention. He drops his pen and his eyes widen, like he thinks maybe he’s hallucinating this conversation. “What?”
Amber grabs the Wave World recipe and walks over to him. Chase turns in his chair, following her movements. She places her hand on his shoulder, using it as leverage to swing her leg around so she can straddle his lap. She says a quiet thanks to her past self f
or wearing a loose-fitting skirt today, making this whole thing possible.
Chase’s breath catches, loud enough to hear. She looks in the bright eyes of this man she’s so in love with, and she seizes this moment with no fear, no worry, and no doubt. She won’t be crying on Sasha’s couch ten years from now wondering what might’ve been.
She’s going to find out.
He tentatively places his hands on her hips, looking like he can’t believe what’s happening. Like he’s afraid that if he moves the wrong way she’ll disappear.
“I’ve been an idiot,” she says, running her finger along the scruffy outline of his jaw.
His hands flex. “Impossible.”
She laughs, then fiddles with his tie. “You know me better than anyone else does. You love me more than anyone else ever could. When I told you that my feet were cold, the next day I came in and found a space heater under my desk. When I told you that late night Ubers made me nervous, you started sending your driver to take me home. When you order food for me, you always make sure there’s no onions in it. When I told you the most painful story of my life, you treated it with care. You knew what scared me about it even though I didn’t tell you, and you reassured me that I didn’t have to worry about those things without me having to ask.”
Tears start falling down her cheeks as she looks in his eyes. She holds up the recipe she found on the printer. “I told you about this treat I loved as a kid, and you found a recipe so that I could have it again.”
He lets out a soft laugh. “I was going to find someone who could make it for you,” he explains. “I wouldn’t want to attempt it and make you sick.”
She laughs, running her fingers along his tie. “You want to avoid giving me food poisoning, yet another wonderful thing about you.”
“Amber,” he whispers, his hand gliding through her hair and coming to rest on the back of her neck. “There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do for you. Even if it does involve finding something called a…” he pauses to look at the recipe. “Stabilizer blend.”
She nods. Yeah, she’s beginning to get the picture.
“I’m in love with you,” she tells him, not wanting to stop until she gets this out. “You make me happy, and I think that I can make you happy too.”
“You do make me happy, Amber.”
“So, we’re standing at the edge of a cliff, and you’re asking me to take your hand and jump.” She twines his fingers between his as she smiles through her tears. “Let’s do it. I only want to jump if I’m jumping with you.”
Amber thought she’d seen the most beautiful smile Chase had to give, but she was wrong. This one, after she’s told him that she’s in love with him and wants to be with him? This is the one. This is the smile. She wants to frame it and put it on her bedside to look at every day for the rest of her life. Only she doesn’t have to do that now…she has the real thing to look at, hopefully for the rest of her life.
“I’m in love with you too,” he says, tenderly caressing her cheek.
“I know you are. You show me every day.”
“I’ll keep showing you every day.”
She smiles, gently tugging on his tie to pull him in for a kiss. She can’t stand not having her lips on his for another second. “You better.”
They crash together in a heated kiss, one that’s intimate and full of all the love they’ve been holding back. There’s nothing to hide now, nothing to do but be happy and together. Chase’s hands roam across every inch of her body he can reach, and Amber fumbles with his tie, wanting to get him naked as soon as possible.
But then she remembers where they are. She pulls away reluctantly.
“I have one rule,” she says breathlessly. Her lipstick must be smeared all over her face if the way it’s smeared across Chase’s is any indication.
“What is it?” he asks, his hand giving her ass a little squeeze.
She playfully swats it away. “No sex in the office.”
She’s not sure she’s ever seen this level of disappointment on his face. “Really?”
“Really. I’m great at my job, and in order to keep being great at it I need to concentrate. I can’t be thinking about you fucking me against the desk while I’m in here trying to work.”
His brows shoot up. “You’ve thought about that?”
Her cheeks redden. “Yeah.”
“Me too. All the time. Especially when you wear that purple dress with the flowers on it.”
She files that thought away for later. “I don’t want my rational brain function to be taken over by horniness whenever I’m here. We have to keep that one thing out of the workplace.”
He considers that. She can’t believe that on Saturday she was scared to death of this and now they’re negotiating fornication locations. “What about my office at home?”
She shivers thinking about him swiping everything off of it in a fit of passion, wonders what the fine wood grain would feel like against her skin. “Okay,” she says, voice quaking. “No office sex,” she says, holding out her hand.
He looks down at their current situation, her legs wrapped around his as she sits on his lap.
“Starting now.” She stands up and Chase follows her with a groan, then pulls her in for another kiss. “How ‘bout you take me back to your place?”
She’s never seen him move so fast.
Chapter Twenty
“I’m surprised we managed to make it here without getting arrested for indecent exposure,” Amber says, teasing him as he presses her against the wall in his foyer. He’d gotten his hand beneath her bra in the elevator, carefully out of view of the surveillance camera mounted in the corner.
He tries his luck with her skirt now, inching it up her thigh, teasing himself with the view. His fingers go up, up, and only hit skin.
“You’re not wearing any panties?” he practically growls.
She gives him this love-drunk smile. “Surprise.”
Chase distracts her with searing kisses as he slides his hand between her legs. He wants to make love to her with that dress on, but the condoms are in the bedroom and he doesn’t have the patience to wait.
She’s already wet and aching for him. He slips one finger inside, then another as she bunches his shirt between her fingers, holding on for dear life. He bites at her stiff nipples through the bodice of her dress, and her head rolls back against the wall.
“Oh god,” she says, breathless as she grinds against the heel of his hand. He sucks the skin on her exposed neck, working her clit with his thumb, bringing her closer and closer to the edge. Her hips buck and her back arches as she comes with a breathless shout.
She grins at him in a post-orgasmic haze. “Maybe I’ll never wear panties again.”
He groans as he goes in for more kisses, picking her up and walking her toward the bedroom.
Chase wants to savor this evening. He wants to show her with his body how he feels in his heart.
He unzips her dress, revealing inch by inch of silky smooth skin. He touches and kisses anywhere he pleases, memorizing the soft warmth of her on his lips. She sighs when he licks her nipples, lets out this soft moan when he touches a spot on the back of her knee. He memorizes which touch results in which sound, making a map of her body he learns by heart.
He wants to be the best she’s ever had, and he’s an excellent student.
“C’mere,” she says, patiently waiting as he pays special attention to the dimples at the small of her back. “I wanna get my hands on you. You’re being greedy with all the touching.”
He laughs, planting a kiss on her lips. “By all means,” he replies. “Have your way with me.”
She loosens his tie and Chase’s throat gets tight at the intimacy of it. She smiles at him like she knows what he’s thinking. “We have years of this to look forward to,” she says, kissing his Adam’s apple. “You coming home from work, me undoing your tie like this. We can hang it on the doorknob like we’re two horny college kids who can’t get enough of each
other.” She slides it out from his collar and tosses it aside.
“That’s half right,” he teases.
She unbuttons his shirt and slides it off his shoulders. She kisses her way across his chest, grazes her teeth over his nipples, making him hiss. His cock is achingly hard, and she’s going agonizingly slow.
Like she senses his impatience, she unbuckles his pants, dropping to her knees. She pumps him with her fist a few times before taking him in her mouth. He groans, carding his fingers through her hair, trying his damndest not to thrust. Her mouth feels so good, all warm and wet while her tongue teases him. He can’t take his eyes off her pink lips against his skin as she takes him in deep, swallowing when he hits the back of her throat.
His knees nearly buckle from the pleasure, but he hangs on for as long as he can while she works him with her tongue. When he’s teetering on the edge, he gently pulls her away and lifts her to her feet for a kiss.
He picks her up and playfully tosses her on his bed. She lands with a soft, tinkling laugh, her breasts bouncing as her fire-red hair fans out across his white comforter.
He loves her so much. He couldn’t be more turned on by her if he tried.
“Whatcha thinking about?” she asks with a soft, adoring smile.
“You’ll make fun of me if I tell you,” he says, taking a couple of steps toward the bed, ready to crawl on top of her.
“Were you thinking about how much you love me?”
“Something like that,” he says.
She crooks her finger at him, beckoning him closer. It’s probably ten times sexier than she intends for it to be. “C’mere and show me, then.”
Chase doesn’t need to be told twice.
He grabs a condom from the night stand and rolls it on. When he lowers himself down on the mattress, Amber takes his hand and pulls him over to her. He gives her a tender kiss, pouring every ounce of love he has for her into it. She smiles when she pulls back and tenderly threads her fingers through his hair.
One Night With The Billionaire Too Page 14