His to Have: A Billionaire Romance (8 page)

Either he’s the best manipulator I’ve ever met or he’s completely sincere. I can see the pain in his eyes. He thinks he’s right. I know it. He thinks Blake is the bad guy and that I’m blind to reality. He’s trying to protect me. I feel a lump in my throat. Why am I getting emotional about this? I want to believe Ben just as much as I want to believe Blake. I really do, but I know I have to make a choice. I can either let my life be ruled by fear or I can make something better for myself. I’ve come too far not to take a risk on Blake. I’ve come too far not to take a risk on myself.
 
“You should go,” I say.

“So should you,” he says as he turns to leave. “So should you.”

CHAPTER 11

BLAKE

Even on a Saturday afternoon, the office is a hive of activity, a sea of employees working their asses off because I’ve asked them to. When I first chose this location for the office, I was afraid that it would be too cold and severe, that the architecture would drain all the life from my company. Once we filled the place though, I knew my worries were unfounded. If there’s one word that describes the bullpen of desks that stretch beyond my office toward the plate glass windows on the opposite wall, it’s loud.
 

I should go out there. I should step out of my office and leave this meeting, find an empty seat in one of those cubicles and dig into my work. Maybe that would take Catherine off my mind for even a minute. Maybe that would keep me from fixating on her and the way she drives me wild. Even just thinking about her, I can taste her lips and hear her excited breaths; I can picture how beautiful her eyes are when she looks at me like she’s the only person in the world who can truly see me.
 

“Blake, are you with me?” Damien asks. “You’re staring off again. That’s the third time in fifteen minutes. What’s going on?”

“It’s her,” I say. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”
 

“I’m not going to tell you how to run your private life, but she’s a distraction you don’t need right now, Blake, and she could be a liability. We should really get back to the Agenda. We still have to talk about Boston and Singapore, and I don’t even want to think about how long it’s going to take to unravel the whole mess with the Stapleton debt write-offs.”

“Stapleton, yeah, I think we’re still in a strong position there.” Honestly, I don’t even remember what Stapleton is. Just as Damien is about to call me out on it, my phone lights up.
Edna knows I’m meeting with Damien, and she knows I don’t take calls during meetings with Damien unless it’s an emergency. I pick up the phone.

“Mr. Bennett, it’s Charlie, you told me to call you if I saw anything going on. Well, he’s back. The guy you asked about. He’s headed up to your apartment right now.” Charlie’s the doorman from my building. He’s about my age, but he’s got a wife and two young kids. He takes the subway from the Bronx every morning, and I give him a heavy tip every Christmas and on his birthday. Even though I have a private entrance, I stop by and chat with him at least once a week. Then I take the service elevator up to the back entrance. Last week I showed him a picture of the guy who has been hanging around the building, and I asked him to give me a heads up when he next showed. Treat people like people instead of dirt and they’ll look out for you.

“Thank you, Charlie,” I say. I have a clear image in my head of Ben standing in the middle of my living room, looking at everything I have, looking at Cat,

“Do you want me to send someone up to make sure everything’s ok?”

“Just keep me informed. I might need you to do something for me soon, but for now, sit tight.” I hang up. Damien is staring at me like I just lit my desk on fire. “What?” I say.

“What do you mean what? I’m your fixer, and it sounds like you have a situation.”

“I have it under control. It’s personal.”
 

“If it involves that FBI agent, it’s not personal. You had me look into him last week. Then I met with him like you asked, pretended to have information on you. He seemed to imply that he had other sources close to you. You know all of this. It has to be her, Blake.”
 

“It’s not her. I know it’s not her,” I tell him. I’m not going to have this conversation. “I’m telling her tonight.”
 

“You can’t do that,” Damien says. “Think with your head, not your dick for a minute here. How much do you really know about her?”

I smile. “More than you think.”

“I’m not talking about what kind of freckles she has between her bikini line. I’m talking about her intentions. You put her father out of business. If anyone has motive to come after you, it’s her.”

“She’s not like that,” I say.

“Don’t be naive. You can’t trust her.”
 

If there’s anyone I can trust right now, it’s Cat. She trusts me too. I know it. “Well, I trust her.”

“You have the doorman keeping tabs on her. I wouldn’t exactly call that trust.”

I’m looking out for her. I didn’t want her getting dragged into all of this, and now she is. I just hope she’s on my side and that she’ll find some way to forgive me when this inevitably blows up. “I know what I’m doing.”
 

“I can talk to her, find out what she knows.”

“No, I have this under control. Just stick to the plan, and everything will be fine.” I shake my head and smile.

“This is what you pay me for. Let me ask around and figure out if there’s anything else going on. No one else will know anything, especially her. If I find nothing, I’ll tell you. If I find something, you’ll know as soon as I do.”
 

“Stay away from her,” I say. There’s a hardness to my tone that surprises even me, and Damien is back on the defensive, all but physically backing away from me. “I have everything under control.”

“There’s got to be something I can do,” Damien says. He’s leaning over and fidgeting in his chair, shaking his knee up and down as he tries to figure out some way to convince me to see his side of things. I get what he’s saying, but I can’t accept it could be true.
 

I know it flies against everything I’ve ever learned, everything I’ve ever told myself, but I’m going to trust Cat with everything I am. “There is one thing,” I add. “Get me in touch with the FBI agent.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Damien says.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, and I’m not going to let anything happen to anyone who’s working for me. I made you a promise when you came on board, and I keep my promises.”

“So what are you going to do?” Damien asks. “What are you going to tell him?”
 

“I’m going to tell him to arrest me. But first, I have something else I have to do.”
 

“This is a joke, right?”

“No.” I pick up the phone. “Edna, cancel my meetings for the rest of the day. I have urgent business. I’ll also need you to call the board and set up a meeting for Monday morning. They’ll understand the reason soon enough.”
 

Damien is staring at me in disbelief. “Remind me again why I work for you when you won’t listen to a word I say.”
 

“It’s because I’m right.”

“Let’s hope so.”

***

I make it back to the apartment as quickly as possible. I wonder if Ben’s still there as I step into the elevator. I wonder if he’s searching through my place as Cat begs him to leave. There’s so much about this situation I don’t know. I hate not knowing. I’ve based my entire career and most of my life on working on whatever concrete information I have available. I don’t take leaps of faith. I don’t trust people. I don’t make guesses. Yet, right now, at this very moment, I have no proof that Catherine truly has feelings for me, that she would do whatever it takes to protect me in the same way I’d do anything to protect her. I feel a sharp pain in my chest and behind my temples at the thought of losing her… I can’t even place a name on it. The pain grows and grows as I try to imagine that betrayal. And then, I realize what it is, and I know why I’m acting so recklessly, why I’m risking everything. I love her.

The door opens, and Catherine is standing in the living room with an evening gown and a bag over her shoulder.
 
She’s alone, and she looks pissed off for the fraction of a second before she fully recognizes that it’s me. She looks beautiful, even without her hair done up, even without her makeup and expensive clothes. I wish she could understand that about herself. I wish she could understand that even if there was no money, no family name, none of that, that I would still move heaven and earth to be with her, to make her happy, to keep her safe.
 

“Hey,” she says as I stand there lost in thought.

“Hey,” I reply. I cross the space between us and wrap my arms around her, hugging her tight. I kiss her, not because I want to but because if I go another second without kissing her I feel like I’ll die. But as soon as I taste her sweet lips all of my worry and need fades away, and I feel a warm bliss. I want this feeling to last forever, and there’s only one way I can think of making that happen.

“Cat, are you ready for this to be something more?” I ask.
 

“Of course.” She raises her shoulder. “I have the clothes right here. Although if you wanted to sneak off to the bedroom…”
 

“That’s not what I mean. I mean us, our relationship. We’ve been skirting around it for a while now, and I don’t know if I can wait any longer.”

“Actually, there is something I need to tell you.” Her expression changes. I can see the worry gnawing away at her. She’s going to tell me. She’s going to come clean about whatever’s been going on. She swallows hard and looks into my eyes. This isn’t what I want. Not right now. Right now I just want to tell her how I feel, but I can tell by that look that the moment’s already gone. She clears her throat and takes a slow breath. “I want you to know that you can trust me,” she says “I need you to know that I’d never do anything to hurt you.”  
 

“I know,” I say. It’s reflexive, really. I want to hear her tell me everything, I want her to open her heart to me. Instead, she’s telling me my own lines. She’s asking me to risk everything for the promise of something better. It guts me. She doesn’t trust me yet. Not fully. I’m not hers, and she’s not mine. I was wrong. This was too soon to tell her how I feel. I haven’t earned it yet. I need to earn it. She’s inches away, but there’s a wall between us. It’s unspoken and invisible, but it’s real. I’m going to do everything in my power to show her what she means to me.

I get up and walk to the office. “Blake, what’s going on?” she calls after me. I open the desk and lean under the open drawer, removing the tape that holds the old, scratched-up key in place. Cat’s standing in the doorway as I get back up.

Everything else can wait. I need to prove to Cat what she means to me. “I want to show you the real me. Do you think you’re ready?”

CHAPTER 12

CATHERINE

Blake and I leave early for dinner. It’s probably about seven when the town car arrives. I still don’t know what he has in mind, but I’m wearing a four thousand dollar dinner dress and custom made heels, and he has me carrying a bag with jeans and a sweatshirt. To say he’s piqued my interest would be an understatement. Blake’s wearing Armani like it was designed specifically for him. Wherever we’re going, it will be hard to miss us.

As we make our way to the car, I decide I need to tell him something about what Ben said to me earlier in the day.
 
“Is everything alright?” I ask.

Blake gives me a puzzled stare. “Everything is great. Don’t worry, I promise you’re going to enjoy tonight more than you can imagine.”
 

“Why’s that?” I ask.

“We’re going to the hottest restaurant in town, and I have a surprise planned for you there.”

“I need to talk to you about something serious,” I say as we get into the car. “I think you could be in trouble.”
 

“I’m always in trouble,” Blake says as he shuts the door and we head off. “Whatever it is, don’t worry about it. Wait until tomorrow, and if it’s still gnawing at you, I’ll look into it.”
 

“I don’t know if it can wait.”
 

“Just give me tonight. We can go over whatever you want in the morning.”
 

“Assuming I’ll stay the night?”
 

He laughs. “If the past several days are any indication, yeah. But seriously, as much as I think you’ll enjoy tonight, I need you to know that this is very important to me, and that I’m showing you something that I haven’t shown anyone in a long time.”
 

“Do you have a tattoo I haven’t noticed?” I ask.

“Something like that,” he replies with a laugh. The car pulls up in front of Afton. Blake has high end taste. This place has barely been open for six months, but I’ve heard of it. I didn’t have a chance to go before the world fell apart on me, but I remember it being a serious topic of conversation at one of the last parties I attended before my father had the bad manners to go broke.

“Here?” I ask. I don’t know where the question comes from, really. It’s not like Blake doesn’t have taste, and it’s not like I don’t want to eat here, (I do) but it’s something else. From what I’ve gotten to know about Blake over the past few weeks, it doesn’t seem very him. “I thought I was learning more about you tonight. This seems more for me.”