Protecting His Assets (20 page)

Chapter Fifteen

T
he next few weeks were difficult. Her father came home, and he was sick. Very sick. April barely had time to think about Nolan, although every so often she’d wake up in the middle of the night, her sex pulsing and wet from dreaming about him. The nights were all she let herself have, though. The rest of her time was devoted to her father’s recovery.

One morning four weeks and three days after his last treatment, she took him for his first follow-up exam. The doctor smiled and told them both that although it was early and her dad would still need to come back in three months and then six months for regular tests, it was his opinion that the radiation had been successful, and he was cancer-free. On the way out, April had excused herself to go and cry in the clinic’s restroom.

That was the moment she realized that she hadn’t actually
heard
what her father had said to her that day in his hospital room, and she hadn’t been listening to Nolan when he asked her to help him break down the walls between them.

He’d been offering her something special, and she’d tossed it back at him as if it wasn’t the very thing she needed in her life.

But after spending these hard weeks with her father, confronting the fear that had plagued her for as long as she could remember, she knew without a doubt that taking chances didn’t always have to end in loss and pain.

She’d been so wrong. Horribly wrong.

It
wasn’t
better to choose loneliness. Loneliness was just another word for emptiness, and she didn’t want her life to be empty. She wanted it full of laughter, tears, and passion. If that meant taking some pain and heartbreak along with it, well then, her father had raised her to be strong.

When they got home later that day, Dad was exhausted. He was feeling better every day but still had little stamina and a day like that had taken it all. She helped him settle in on the couch with a blanket. “I think I’ll make some soup,” she said brightly, turning toward the kitchen.

“April wait,” he called.

She went back to his side with a frown. “What is it? Are you uncomfortable?”

“I’m fine.” He glanced up and out the front window, looking oddly nervous.

It dawned on her that he was expecting company. She tried to keep a straight face. “So…how’s Dory?”

He grinned sheepishly. “Uh, actually, she’s coming over with dinner to celebrate my optimistic news.”

“Dinner, huh?” She crossed her arms. “Dad, when was the last time you were on a date?”

“With a woman?”

She quirked a brow. “Are we having a different conversation here than I thought?”

He chuckled. “About fifteen years ago.”

Her eyes widened. “You haven’t even had a
date
since…Mom?”

“Your mother was all I needed for a long time.” He hesitated. “I don’t want to say that that’s changed—”

“You don’t have to explain or apologize, Dad,” she said gently. He looked abashed, but excited, too. It made him seem more like himself, and she was glad for anything that could keep him looking forward to the future. “You deserve happiness, too.”

She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about
her
future, about…Nolan. Her father was being blessed with a second chance at life…at love. Why shouldn’t they both get one?

She cleared her throat. “I think I’m going to get out of your hair for a while, then.” She waved a finger, teasing. “Don’t do too much celebrating. It’s good that you’re feeling better, but you’ve got a ways to go. I don’t want to hear about any wild acrobatics.”

He waved his hand. “Yeah, yeah. I’m still your father. Have some respect.” He winked. “Besides, she’s a nurse. I bet she’s an expert at mouth to mouth.”

April made a face and laughed. “Ew, okay, that’s my cue.”

She grabbed her purse from the living room table just as the doorbell rang. She opened it and smiled at the lovely woman on the front stoop dressed in crisp denim and a soft, green silk blouse. “Hi Dory, nice to see you again. You look wonderful,” she said, stepping back to let the woman in, then closing the door. “Although the hospital scrubs have a kind of flair you just can’t get anywhere else.”

“Especially those lovely printed ones they wear in Pediatrics with the puppies and cartoons on them. I keep telling the administration that we should put on a fashion show for the patients.” She laughed, a tinkling sound that made April even happier for her father.

April grabbed her jacket, and Dory’s smile faded. “I didn’t mean to run you out of your home,” she said. “Why don’t you have dinner with us?” She lifted the grocery bag in her hand. “I’ve brought plenty for everyone.”

“No, but thanks for the offer. You guys have fun. I think I’ll take this opportunity to… There’s someone I have to see, before it’s too late.” Hopefully it wasn’t
already
too late.

She started to leave, but stopped short and looked back at her father, who hadn’t gotten up from the couch.

Dory touched her arm. “He’ll be fine,” she said softly.

April nodded. “You know, I think you’re right.”

She opened the door, only to stop short as she almost walked into the fist raised to knock—at eye-level with her forehead.

“Nolan!” Her heart leaped.

As often as he’d been in her dreams these last weeks, she would have thought it’d be easier to come face to face with him. But her heart started pounding so loud she could hear it, and her breathing hollowed out. His arm still hung between them. She tipped her head to look around it and caught her breath.

He seemed bigger than she remembered, smoother, and more intense. Something else about him had changed, and it was subtle but immediately noticeable. It was in the tight set of his shoulders and the focused look he leveled on her, so different from the laid-back playboy she’d been sent to protect what felt like eons ago.

Serious. Steve Nolan was standing on her porch, completely and utterly serious.

The front door quietly clicked closed behind her, and she realized that the entire world had shrunk the moment he’d arrived.

He still hadn’t said anything…and she was too nervous to say anything. Why had he come? Was this her second chance? What if she screwed it up again? What if he
left
again?

“What are you doing here?” she finally asked, her voice cracking.

“I tried to give you some space.” He stepped closer. “I heard from your boss at the security company that you were taking time off to be with your father, and I didn’t want to get in the way of that.”

She swallowed. “I picked up the phone a thousand times,” she blurted out. “But after what happened in the hospital, I thought…I thought you were done for good.”

“For about five minutes, I thought the same thing. I told myself I’d never needed to chase after any woman, especially one who wasn’t willing to share herself with me, who wasn’t ready to make
me
a priority.” He grimaced. “But it only took one night without you to admit how fucking selfish that was. I put up just as many walls between us as you did.”

“What changed?” she whispered, her cheeks hot.

“I remembered that I never give up on something I want.”

She held her breath. Could she risk the pain that might eventually come with losing him?

“I want
you
, April.”

She hesitated. “Now that my dad’s doing better, I’ve decided to reapply to the FBI training program. If I’m successful, I would be going back to Quantico to complete my training and then…”

He didn’t miss a beat. “That’s fantastic news, both about your dad and about your training.” He sounded absolutely sincere. “But it doesn’t change a thing between us.”

“What do you mean? How would that work? We’d never see each other.”

“I suppose you haven’t been keeping up with the business section the last few weeks?”

She frowned. “Not really.” Helping her father had become her sole focus, and she’d buried herself in it because it had also kept her mind off Nolan and all the things she should have told him to keep him from walking out the last time. She tried to remember those things now, but all she could think was
Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go
.

“Without any stalkers or threats against me and the company to make our stockholders uneasy, Harrison and I were able to close our big deal this week.” His eyes glowed with boyish excitement. “And the first thing I did was pick up the phone to call you, because
you
were the one I needed to share it with.”

“Me?”

He let out an exasperated groan. “April Porter, you’re the one I want to share it
all
with. Successes, failures, ideas, and plans for the future. All of it. How the hell can you not get that, yet?”

“Maybe because you never told me?”

“I told you in a hundred different ways,” he said, stepping even closer. He reached up and slipped his hand behind the nape of her neck. He kissed her with such burning intensity, she might be able to breathe fire when he pulled away. “It was in every touch, every look, and every kiss.”

She pressed her fingers to her lips, joy and hope blooming. But she had to be sure this was more than just Nolan deciding he wasn’t done with the challenge of her. “You’ve never had a relationship that lasted longer than five minutes in your entire life. Remember when I asked you if you wanted one? Well, you didn’t say yes.”

“You’re right.” He paused. “Neither did you.”

“You were right when you said someone had hurt me,” she blurted. “His name was Jeremy, and we dated for six months. Then I went to a fancy party with him like the one you took me to, and I overheard him telling his friends that he was just seeing how the other half lived, but he was done with slumming and it was time to get serious…with someone more suitable to his social position and who would fit in with his future goal of becoming governor.”

“What a fuckwit,” Steve snarled. “Just wait until he tries to run for office. I’ll make sure everyone knows what a selfish, pompous little douchebag he is.”

“He said…” She paused, having difficulty getting the words out. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d shown this much emotion to anyone other than her father. “He said a lot of the same things I overheard your mother say when I was hiding in the bedroom of your apartment that morning.”

He swore and took her hand. “My mother didn’t mean it that way. Well, she did, but…she thinks that reclaiming our past life will somehow make up for everything that our father cost us.” He pulled her closer, and she bit her lip as part of her tumbled into the gold flecks sparkling in his eyes.

“But she really only wants us all to be happy, and you make me feel more alive, more successful, more worthy than a hundred of those empty society girls, because with you I’m real.” His tone was raw; there was none of the teasing playboy left in him. For once, he was showing her exactly who he was, exactly what he felt. “When she sees that, she’ll come around.”

April swallowed hard. “It doesn’t matter. You were right when you called me a coward. I opened myself up before and lost, so how can I bet everything on you now? How do I know it’s going to stick, and that you won’t be looking for the next best thing in a couple of months, or a year?”

He shook his head. “You don’t, and if you’re looking for a guarantee, the only one thing I can give you is my promise to always be open with you.” His gaze narrowed. “But I’m going to need the same promise from you, because that’s the only way we’re going to make it work.”

He took another step forward so that she had to look up to hold on to his gaze. “Can you do that? Can you love me despite my track record and my past?” he murmured gently, smoothing his thumb across her cheek. “Can you forget about where you
think
you belong and embrace a world where we can be in gym shorts in a boxing ring one minute, and dressed up at a gala event the next?”

His tone was teasing, but it was no longer a game he played with her, or a mask that he wore. His real self showed through in the emotion pouring from his gaze, warming her from the inside out.

Her mouth was dry and her nerves jangled, but it wasn’t from fear or uncertainty. Love and hope filled her to overflowing. “Only if you can love me despite my prickly pride and ugly suits.” She grinned. “And as long as that world is right here, right now.”

He ran his hand over her hair tenderly, before tipping her chin up and claiming her mouth.

“
I
am here,” he murmured against her lips, leaving her breathless and whole as a tidal wave of love washed over her with his words. “Right here. Right now.”

“Then let’s do this,” she whispered.

His chuckle rumbled all the way through her. “That’s my brave Amazon warrior.”

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