Senior Advisor to the Boss: Billionaire Obsession Dark Romance (Managing the Bosses Series Book 9) (4 page)

Jamie stretched, luxuriating for a moment in the brush of smooth sheets against her skin, the early morning sun sliding in through the window. It was the weekend, and she intended to take full advantage of that fact. Despite all the stress lately, she was sure they were still capable of enjoying a Saturday.

Alex was beside her, for once not awake before she was, and she rolled onto her elbow to look down at his sleeping face. Maybe she was a little bit biased, but it seemed to her that he was even more handsome than he had been the day that they met. Familiarity with his features hadn’t made them any less enticing, and she still wanted nothing more than to drag him into bed pretty much any time she looked at him.

Lucky for her, he was in bed already.

He must have felt her looking at him, because his eyelids fluttered open and then he was looking at her, and Jamie found a smile stretching across her face, an automatic reaction to his gaze.

“Morning, handsome.”

Alex reached up and traced the curve of her cheek with his fingertips. “Morning,” he said, voice still rough with sleep, and Jamie felt a pleasant warmth kindle in her belly at the sound.

“Sleep well?” she asked.

“Better than I have been,” he said, and she heard the shift in his tone. He was thinking about things that he shouldn't be thinking about so early in the morning. About the job and stress, and everything that she had wanted to avoid this weekend.

“Why don't we think about other things,” she said, stretching out beside him and pressing her body against his.

Alex's eyebrows lifted. “Oh? What kinds of other things?”

“Well,” Jamie said slowly, tracing a finger up his chest. “I was thinking that there are other things that we could do this weekend. Things that don't involve work and usually are done in bed.”

“Is that so?”

“Are you opposed?”

His arms wrapped around her and pulled her down on top of him, and Jamie went, laughing. “Does this feel like I'm opposed?” he asked.

It didn't, and Jamie was more than happy to enjoy his enthusiastic consent to her plan.

***

When they were lying quietly in the bed again, side by side, Alex spoke.

“I've missed this,” he said. “Even though you're at work again, sometimes I feel like I never get to see you. We're always running in opposite directions.”

“I know,” Jamie answered. It wasn't exactly the cheerful subjects that she'd hoped to stick with, but she wasn't going to tell Alex not to talk about something like this, especially not when it was so hard for him to bring up these feelings in the first place. “I feel that way, too.”

“I just wonder sometimes when we're going to get a break.” He sighed. “It seems like every time we turn around there's something going wrong, and I'm getting really tired of it. Now there's this with someone in my own company stealing from me, and every time I think that we're going to catch up with them, they disappear again and show up somewhere else. It's driving me insane.”

Jamie curled herself close against Alex's side, and rested her head against his shoulder. “We'll find a way to get through it. Just like we've gotten through everything else. I know that we will.”

“I hope that it's soon,” Alex said.

“I'm glad that I can be back at work helping you. Even if we don't get to see each other in the office as much as I hoped that we would.”

Alex looked up at her. “Are you sure, Jamie? I know that it's been hard for you to be away from the twins for so much of the day. And if you want to, you can always go back to being a full-time mom.”

Jamie was silent for a minute, wondering if she should give him the honest answer to that question. He was having enough trouble without her telling him that she wanted to desert him. Which she didn't. But it might sound like that. “I do miss the twins,” she said finally. “I'm not used to being away from them for so much of the day, even when it's only a few days a week, but I also don't want to leave the office. I feel better about everything that's happening if I can have at least some ability to help with it. And I can't really do that from home. I've been able to check my email occasionally, but that doesn't give you enough.”

“Jamie, just because things aren't going well at the office doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to do what you want to do. I can take care of things there if you would rather spend your time with Lilliana and Benton.”

Jamie looked down at him. “I think I just said what I would rather be doing, didn't I?”

Alex's fingers tangled in her hair, and then he drew her down, more gently than he had before. His lips were soft against her own, and the kiss was tender. “You know you're amazing, Jamie? I don't know what I would do without you.”

“Probably have a life without so much press in it,” Jamie answered, smiling. “Things seemed to be going pretty flawlessly for you until I showed up.”

It was a joke, but Jamie didn't think it was entirely untrue. Until she'd come into his life, everything had been perfect for Alex Reid. His company had been constantly rising in the business world. No one had followed him around, waiting for him to make a mistake – or if they had, there hadn't been one to document. Sometimes she wondered if she had done him enough good to make up for all of the trouble that her presence had caused.

“You don't really think that, do you?” Alex demanded. There was an urgency in his tone that surprised her a little.

“Think what?”

“That you coming into my life somehow caused the crazy things that have been happening.”

“Well, I am the reason Stephen tried to murder you.”

“No.” Alex pressed his palm against the side of her face, lifting her head up so that she had to look him in the eyes. “Stephen is the reason that Stephen tried to murder me. Just like Nicholas is the reason that Nicholas tried to steal from me. They all made their own choices, and you're not going to take responsibility for that. It's not your fault.”

It was obvious that he believed the words completely, and Jamie wanted to believe them, but she couldn't help thinking of some of the things her mother had said to her before she'd finally given up on the woman for good. Words that had left her feeling like she could never quite be enough. And even now, after more than a year of being married to Alex, she somehow felt a little like an imposter in some of the circles that he moved in, and she wondered if they were going to figure out that she didn't quite belong.

“Listen to me, Jamie,” Alex said, and Jamie closed down her uncertain thoughts and listened. “Nothing that has happened since you and I met has been your fault. All of that is something that someone decided to do themselves, and that's their problem.”

His hand brushed hair back from her face and Jamie looked up into his eyes again.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” Alex said, slow and absolutely earnest. “I don’t care if the whole world falls down around my ears as long as you and the twins are here with me.”

Jamie kissed him, and then kissed him again.

It took a long time for them to get out of bed. Again.

***

Later, leaning against the counter with a piece of toast in his hand, Alex asked Jamie, “What do you want to do with the day?”

She was sitting with the twins, watching them eat little pieces of cut up melon from their plates with a look that said she was remembering when they were too young to eat anything solid and was feeling a little nostalgic. “I want to do something as a family,” she said immediately. “Even if it's just stay in.”

“Staying in sounds nice, actually.” Alex paused to take a bite of his toast. “We could maybe just watch a movie with the kids. Play some games.”

His phone rang at his hip, and Alex reached down to check the caller ID. Mark's name flashed across the screen. “Hey, baby,” he said, flicking his thumb across it. “It's Mark. I'm going to take this.”

Jamie nodded, and Alex lifted the phone to his ear.

“What's up, little brother?”

“Hey! Alex!” There was a smile in his brother's voice. “I've got some seriously big news and I couldn't wait to share it with you, so I thought I'd give you a call.”

“News?” Alex exchanged a look with Jamie, who was turned toward him, her expression expectant. “Jamie's here, too. She says you'd better tell us.”

“Well, the date's not for sure yet—”

“Oh shit, did you knock up Erica?”

“What? No!” Mark laughed. “But I did just get a phone call. Seems the Pro Golf Association wants to use my course as a stop on the tour. That’s the PGA.”

“I know what that is.” Alex chuckled and then blinked as the news sank in. “Oh, wow. Mark, that's amazing.” Alex grinned at the impatient look Jamie shot him, after ignoring the surprise one from his previous comment. “I'm not surprised they chose your course. You've got a great facility.”

“Well, we've got a good facility. We're going to have to upgrade some things. It won't be happening until next year, but we need to overhaul the course. Maybe look at whether the clubhouse is big enough. We might have to do some serious renovations.”

Jamie was glaring at Alex, and he smiled back at her, just a little too sweetly.

“I'm sure that we can find donors for that,” Alex said. “I'll put up some capital. You're going to get a huge amount of business with them coming through, so I'm sure you'll be making that and more back.”

“I'm sure that we will, too,” Mark said, talking a little too fast in his excitement. “Erica made sure that we got it. Pulled some strings with some friends of hers so that my name came up. She's honestly amazing.”

Alex didn't get a chance to reply. Jamie had snatched the phone out of his hand while he wasn't expecting it and was demanding that Mark tell her what the news was. When he did, her eyes widened.

“Holy crappers! That's fantastic, Mark! I'm so happy for you.”

Alex could hear his brother dying laughing. “Crappers?” he asked loudly.

“Have to be careful these days, as the kids repeat everything.”

Alex heard his brother saying thank you over the line as he took another bite of his toast, moving over to the highchairs where the twins were busy making a mess of everything. Lilliana was using her fist to mash her fruit as she chanted, “Cappers, cappers, ollie cappers.”

“Hey, peanuts,” he said, taking the chair that Jamie had vacated.

“Dada,” Lilliana said. “Dada.” She smacked her chubby little hands excitedly against the tray of her chair. “Ollie cappers.”

Alex laughed. “Ollie cappers to you, too, sweetie.”

Not to be outdone, Benton called his name, too, and Alex felt for a moment like his heart might burst it was so full of love for the two little humans sitting in front of him. He still couldn't quite believe that he and Jamie had made them, except that, of course, Jamie had been the mother to two such amazing children. A wide smile spread across his face, and he reached out to brush a little chunk of melon off Benton's cheek.

“You two are making a mess,” he informed them. In the background, he could hear Jamie still talking to Mark. “That's next on your skill list, I think. How not to spread food over every possible surface in the vicinity while eating.”

The twins, obviously not as interested in learning that as he was in teaching it, just giggled at him, and Alex shook his head, laughing as Lilliana smashed a chunk of melon against the tray. “Ollie cappers!”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Okay. I guess I'm expecting just a little too much, aren't I?”

Benton shook his head, lips pressed together.

“No?” Alex laughed. “Well, if you really think so...”

“What are you talking to them about?” Jamie asked suddenly from over his shoulder, handing him his phone as she wrapped a hand around the back of the chair and leaned her weight into it.

“I'm telling them that we're going to teach them how to eat without making such a huge mess.”

Jamie laughed. “Good luck with that one. I'm pretty sure they're hardwired to be as messy as possible until the age of six.”

“What else did Mark say?”

“Well, he told me about the tournament. And that he's going to be doing some renovations on the country club, which I'm sure he told you. I don't really see why he needs to do any so soon after he built it, but I guess I don't really understand golf that well.”

“It's more a matter of professional pride than golf,” Alex said, taking the cloth that Jamie handed him to clean the sticky hands and faces of the twins. “He wants to make sure that his course will be as good as the rest on the tour. And he's probably going to want to put in some features specifically for the increased flow of pros. A few more difficult holes, things like that.”

“That makes sense, then. I told him that we’d be happy to help him any way that we can. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Not at all.” Alex stood up to lift Benton out of his highchair and into his arms. “I already told him that I would help him—financially if he needs it.”

“You know,” Jamie said, switching the subject as she perched Lilliana on her hip, “it’s going to be the twins’ birthday soon. We should probably start planning the party for that.” She smiled down at her daughter. “They’re really starting to get a heavy, too. I can’t believe how big they are, honestly.”