Boxed Set: The His Submissive Series Complete Collection (Part One-Part Twelve) (44 page)

“The thing is, when she said that he told her he loved her, I got this feeling.” I unscrewed the cap slowly, staring off in space. “I felt like I was back in the hotel restaurant, barely over the fact that this mega actress was sitting beside me, totally ignoring my existence and picking up her not-so-subtle clues that she cared about Jacob. And he couldn’t possibly not return those feelings because she was Rachel Laraby.” I chewed on my bottom lip. “How could he not fall for her?”

“I know you’re not going down that rabbit hole, thinking that you can’t hold a candle to her,” Megan scoffed. “I swear if you start drinking that crazy chick’s kool aid-”

“It wasn’t that,” I said, only 90% convincingly. I took a swig before I amended, “Well of course at first I thought I was a rookie playing in the big leagues. Rachel is gorgeous and successful and I...I was still trying to get Jacob to open up to me. But back then, I immediately had this feeling that what they had was more than physical. And now I’m frustrated all over again because I had to collect scraps of how he felt about me, demanding more, having him add brick after brick to the wall around his heart until he finally let me in—and someone had already gotten past his defenses.” Knowing that he’d said those three words to her—it was more than infuriating.

It hurt.

I’d said the word before, generally out of obligation, because I figured that was the next step in the relationship. You meet someone, they end up being cool, then special, and then someone you don’t wanna be without. So when ‘I love you’ was exchanged, it was just the natural progression of things.

But my relationship with Jacob was different. There was no courtship—it was just seduction, angst, and a desire I’d never experienced before. Before him, love had always been an afterthought, a checkbox to tick on a lackluster journey to nowhere. But with him, love possessed me and wouldn’t let go.

It was dangerous because for the first time, I fell hard and worried I was the only one—that I’d say it and be met with hollowing silence. I was terrified because now that I knew what true love was, the idea of losing it was unbearable.

And Jacob, this stony faced man that I’d fought to let me see beyond the mask hadn’t always been that way, like I’d been led to believe. He’d been capable of letting someone in. He’d been capable of love.

Meg came over and dropped onto the futon beside me, snapping her fingers to shake me from my trance. “I can tell you’re jumping to unhealthy conclusions.”

“Oh there’s no jumping required. The conclusion is within stepping distance. Jacob loved Rachel.”

“So what?” she said, throwing up her hands. “That was then, Lay. He’s with
you
now. He loves
you
.
You’re
the one he wants to marry.”

I heard what she was saying and it made sense, but there was a cacophony of questions that kept rearing their ugly head. If his feelings for her were in the past and irrelevant, why wasn’t he honest? Why did he lie about their relationship and make it seem like it was just a fling? You don’t tell flings you love them.

I turned to her, biting my lip when I felt the tears rise in my throat. “I’m not trying to be combative, I swear. I want to believe that this is all in my head. That it doesn’t matter. That it was just an oversight and not proof of something sketchy. But this feels like something more. Why didn’t he tell me that they were serious?”

Meg’s eyes shifted downward for a moment before she raised them back to mine. “I wish I had an answer for you, but I think I’m the last person you should be talking to right now.”

“I should be talking to Jacob?” I snorted. “That’s clearly genius since he’s been
so
forthcoming.”

“I love you Leila, but you are in no position to be casting stones in the tight lipped category.” She arched a red brow pointedly. “It wasn’t that long ago that you were keeping things from Jacob for his own good.”

“But that was...” I trailed off, the ‘different’ unsaid and a pathetic excuse. It really wasn’t all that different. I’d delivered him on a silver platter to the Devil Herself because I thought I was saving him from public embarrassment. And I tried to keep the meeting with Cade hush hush because I knew how the very mention of his name made Jacob feel. Both times I was trying to spare him any undue hurt. Both times were betrayals and we worked through it. So why couldn’t I power on my phone and let him explain?

Megan gave me a small nod, her indication that she’d said her piece and would let me make up my own mind. “So you met his mom?”

Out of the frying pan and into the fire
. “Yep.”

“Your ‘psycho woman’ bit on the phone told me that maybe things didn’t go so well?”

I picked at the label on the water bottle. “Things started off great—she was in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by and say hello, meet me and all that jazz.”

“Uh huh.”

“Jacob and I were about to have breakfast, so we made it a table for three.” I left out the allusions about the contract and me and Jacob’s sex life. “She ate a grape or two and got right down to business.”

Megan raked a hand through her hair, giving me an expectant look. “Which was?”

“Giving me a blank check if I left Jacob.”

“Huh.”

I peered over at her. Now I was the one that was sure I’d misheard. “Huh?”

“I’m not surprised.” I opened my mouth to rebut that but she added, “Let me finish. I was surprised when I found out that less than twenty-four hours into your promotion you were going to Italy. I was surprised when I read on TMZ that you were Jacob Whitmore’s girlfriend instead of hearing it from you first. I was surprised that marriage rumblings were happening and I hadn’t even met the guy. But an uber rich woman using her buckets of money to make a problem go away? That’s not shocking to me.”

“So I’m a ‘problem’?” I said, nostrils flaring.

She narrowed her eyes and for a moment, her glare reminded me of Rachel’s. “I know you and Jacob have been on Love Island, where chubby babies flit about and what not, but in the real world, billionaires don’t marry their personal assistants.”

“A problem
and
a personal assistant,” I seethed. “You think that’s all I am to him?”

“No, I think he loves you,” she clarified. “But his mother doesn’t know that. She probably just sees the help trying to marry above their station.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was she really defending Alicia? “Jacob said that she was happy, that she wanted to meet me before someone started feeding her information about me.”

“And that’s another thing that doesn’t surprise me,” Megan said with a shrug. “A crazy woman acting crazy. Rachel didn’t do you any favors, but if you thought his mother was gonna throw a luncheon in your honor, you were being a little naive.”

“So you’re saying I should have what? Thanked her for playing her role so well? Told her that I totally understand why she insulted me because I’m ‘marrying above my station’?” I snapped upright, not really wanting to be anywhere near her. “This isn’t an episode of
Downton Abbey
, Megan. This is real life. This woman will be my mother-in-law someday. Grandmother to my children. Sure, it’s not surprising when in-laws are at each other’s throats, but she wanted to make me disappear. She thought so little of me, of my relationship, that she thought I could be bought.”

Megan stared at the floor, her nonverbal response her admission of guilt. No way was I letting her off that easy—not after she just tried to excuse the inexcusable.

She slowly raised her chin until she looked at me, her face flushed red with shame. “I’m sorry...I didn’t mean...” She cleared her throat. “You’re right. She’s sketch—and she had no right to treat you that way.”

I relaxed slightly, still a little miffed. “Thank you.”

She wiped her palms on her jeans. “So what now? You gonna give her exactly what she wants?”

I uncrossed my arms slowly. “Of course not.”

“Well, you’ve been eyeballing your cell for the past hour. He’s been calling?”

I nodded.

“And you don’t want to talk to him?”

“I do...I don’t...I mean...” I took the plunge and powered on my phone. When I saw the light flash and indicate that I had two new voicemails, I knew they were from him. I needed to let him explain. I wanted an explanation. But that would require either scrolling down my missed calls list or going back to the penthouse. Option B was too much too soon, but Option A seemed cowardly.

I knew we needed to have a conversation, but I felt like hearing his voice and seeing his face would make me forget how furious I was with him. He wouldn’t even get the ‘I’m sorry’ out before
I
started apologizing. I pried my eyes from my cell screen, expecting to see Megan’s eyes round with disappointment, but her attention was solidly locked on her phone. It was sitting on the coffee table and she was eyeing it warily like it was going to jump out and bite her.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, grateful to worry about something other than to call or not to call. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“What?” she said with a nervous laugh. “No idea what you’re talking about.” Her weird side eye showdown with her cell begged to differ.

“Somebody bothering you? Mark?” I lowered my voice, practically whispering the second name. “Brad?”

“It’s nothing,” she said firmly, finally loosening her grip on the phone—just long enough for me to lurch to the table and snatch it up. The number I saw on the screen- “Is this...”

No. The number was just similar. Because she’d all but told him to go to hell when they met and I was stuck playing referee all night. She couldn’t stand him. She made it crystal clear.

I held out the phone. “Why is Cade texting you?”

Cade Wallace, the action star who couldn’t take a hint for weeks until it finally clicked that I was taken. The same guy that she claimed she’d never date because he reminded her of Mark, the PE teacher she’d dated—except Cade was twenty times cockier.

“How do you know Cade’s number anyway?” she snapped, yanking her phone from me in a huff.

“Because it was my job to know how to reach him. Why do
you
know his number?”

She obviously ranked continuing this conversation below paying taxes and a trip to the dentist, but she crossed her arms tight and decided to give me the smallest crumb she could muster. “His assistant gave it to me.”

“And why did she give you Cade’s number? How did Lisa even find you?”

“It really doesn’t matter,” she said, trying for nonchalance and failing big time. She tossed the phone on the couch, out of sight but definitely not out of mind. “You didn’t come over here to talk about Cade. You came for my advice.”

This whole Cade business was too weird, but I was in no mood to pull off nails for information. I’d find out what was going on between Meg and Cade after I figured out what was going on with me and Jacob. “Alright—what’s your advice?”

“If you can’t let it go, find out why he kept his relationship with Rachel from you.” She gave me a long, soulful look. “But here’s my real advice. He loves you and you love him. Hold onto that. Don’t let the past dictate your future.”

****

I
walked into the conference room with two minutes on the clock, knowing that all the chairs in the room would be occupied except for the ones near the door. It’s what I was going for, needing to be far enough away from Jacob that I could try and focus on the meeting and not the stifling tension between us.

I didn't take Meg's advice, though I'd gotten crazy close to going back to the penthouse and emptying my heart. But when I hit midtown and a bus with Rachel's face plastered on the side huffed and puffed beside me for a good mile, I just couldn’t bring myself to face him.

I'd zipped to the suburbs, dreading walking up the steps to my parent's almost as much as talking to Jacob. I felt like everything would be scrawled over my face and Mom would gnaw at me like a dog with a bone until I broke. But she just gave me a hug and left me with my thoughts—which was almost worst.

I barely got three full hours of sleep, waking up intermittently, drenched in sweat, not escaping even in dream. Rachel’s twisted smirk, the tightening of Jacob's muscles when he realized that I would hear what she had to say haunted me. Devils, guilt, and hurt had me tossing and turning all night and not even a venti mocha with two extra shots was enough to help me fake that I was more than a zombie.

I lowered myself in a chair near the door and even though I knew I’d regret it, I raised my eyes. Jacob's icy glare found me and softened like the seafoam that caressed the shore. His lips parted slightly and in that moment, everything hung on what he mouthed next.

I'm sorry.

I ripped my eyes from him, guilt making me fidget uncomfortably in the confines of the leather chair. There was no ridding myself of the weight of it, no balancing act or body contortion that helped me relax; not when I was face to face with a hundred reasons why I should have answered his calls. Because he was the love of my life. Because people made mistakes. Because it was hypocritical of me to force him to carry this cross when he forgave me for my wrongs. Because a lack of sleep looked good on him. Because the dark shadow of hair highlighted his angular jawline and the cadence of his voice, deep and slightly gravelly, made me think about lazy mornings in bed.

His hair had a slightly mussed look, begging my fingers to roam through the dark locks as I moved closer. Closer—it was like he was a damn city away and all I wanted was to press my body against his.

It was the longest meeting of my life.

When the last idea was tossed around and the final client plan hashed out, I was the first to stand up and take a step in his direction. I didn’t miss the flicker of heat in his eyes but it was snuffed out as one of the publicists stepped in his path. I stood there awkwardly, worrying that the smile was pulled to tightly on my lips, that my black pencil skirt and emerald green blouse were somehow transparent and everyone could see exactly what Jacob Whitmore did to me—swollen nipples, sopping panties and all.