Because He Watches Me (Because He Owns Me, Book Nine) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (38 page)

They took a walk around the estate, because Red told her he wanted some fresh air and a different perspective. As they walked along the beautiful property, she saw some of the caretakers mowing the lawn and clipping hedges.

Red waved and tried to appear happy, but it was probably only convincing from a few dozen yards away.

He wasn’t speaking much to Nicole, so she tried to stay quiet and just be with him. Occasionally he pointed out one of the more subtle qualities of the land, or explained why the bridge over the pond was designed the way it was.

Other than that, there was little real conversation about everything that was happening. Nicole desperately wanted to tell him her suspicions about his mother taking something from their bedroom, but she didn’t think it was a good time to further burden him. Especially since there was no proof, just a hunch she had.

Finally, as they made their way back over the bridge and toward the house, Red stopped and turned to her. “I’ve been thinking about the wedding,” he said, his face still deadly serious.

Her stomach did a double backflip. Was he going to break off their engagement for some reason?

“Okay,” she said, trying to steady her nerves.

“I’m thinking we should get married immediately upon our return from Germany.”

“Our return?” she said, doubly confused.

“Yes,” he said, turning to look out at the water. The duck family was paddling around just a few feet from shore. “I want you to come with me to Germany. I want you by my side, Nicole.”

“What would I be doing in Germany?” she asked. Of course she’d go if he needed her, but she couldn’t imagine what purpose there would be for her overseas dealing with this new, complicated business acquisition.

“You’d assist me,” Red told her, glancing at her briefly. “I need someone I can trust over there.”

“I’m still not sure what you mean.”

His head drooped forward a little bit. “I just got a very, very bad call from my overseas liaison. Word on the street is that tomorrow morning is going to be bloodbath for Jameson International in the markets. The stock’s going to hit rock bottom. All the rats will scurry to leave the sinking ship.”

“Are we really sinking?”

He just shrugged. “Not if we can salvage this company.”

Nicole swallowed. “I’m just a glorified intern,” she said, and then laughed. “This is a big assignment to bring me along for. Isn’t there someone better qualified, like Edward or someone from the marketing department?”

Red shook his head and grabbed her hands in his own. “You’re the one that I trust, Nicole. I have one hundred percent faith in your ability to work hard and be smart under pressure.”

She smiled, feeling her cheeks turn red. “Thanks for saying that. Of course I’ll come with you.”

“And then,” he said, squeezing her hands and looking into her eyes, “we come home and get married straight away.”

For the first time in the conversation, she broke from his gaze and looked into the distance. “Red, I don’t know about getting married so quickly.”

His voice took on a flat quality. “What’s wrong with getting married sooner?”

“What would we do,” she said, “just go to some justice of the peace and do a five minute ceremony?”

He looked at her and she could tell he was wounded. “All I want is to marry you, Nicole.”

“And I want to get married, too. But I want to do it the right way. Why the rush all of a sudden?”

Red shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking again. “Forget I said anything about it,” he said, quickly accelerating his stride toward the mansion.

“Hold on, where are you going so fast?” she cried, trying to keep up with him.

He didn’t respond, just kept walking.

“Red!” she yelled, and then ran the extra few steps to catch up. “Will you stop for one minute and let me explain myself?”

He stopped, folding his arms and staring at her with his hardened, guarded expression. “Go ahead, then.”

“Don’t do this,” she told him, breathing heavily.

“Do what?”

“Don’t push me away because I said something that hurt you.”

His stare grew more intense and his jaw tightened. “What am I supposed to do, Nicole? I put my heart on a plate for you.”

She tried to touch him, but he pulled away.

“Red,” she said, “I already told you I want to get married. But I’d like to have our family and friends there, witnessing it. I want to tell the world that we’re together.”

He snickered. “You mean you want it in the papers and on TMZ.”

She felt a flash of anger course though her veins. “How dare you accuse me of being all about fame and the media? You’re the one who’s made us a public spectacle!”

Now it was her turn to try and walk away from him. She couldn’t believe he’d say something like that about her.

But Red grabbed her by the shoulders. “Wait. I’m sorry, Nicole. Please come back.”

She spun on him. “What do you want from me? I’m here. I’m with you even though your life is crazy. But I love you, I love you more than anything in this world and so I’m going to stick it out with you no matter what.”

He was laughing a little, which only made Nicole more furious. She slapped at his hands, and then he grabbed her and pulled her close. Suddenly he was kissing her hard on the mouth, even though she resisted at first.

But Nicole could never resist Red Jameson for long, and soon she was melting into him, into his kiss, and the warmth and passion that radiated from him.

When they finally broke off, he smiled into her eyes. “I’m a fool. Please forgive me.”

“You are a fool,” she said, shaking her head.

“I know. But I’m smart enough to know that I’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy. I wanted to get married sooner because I know that people are going to try and tear us apart. People like my mother…”

“Don’t let her get in the way of living our lives the way we want to,” Nicole told him.

He nodded. “Of course you’re right.”

“And besides, nobody’s going to stop us from getting married and being together.”

He grinned wider. “When did you get so incredibly wise?”

“I just know what we have, Red. You taught me that what we have is stronger than all of the drama and silliness surrounding us.”

They kissed again, longer and just as passionate, if somewhat restrained by earlier standards they’d set. When he was done showing her just how much he loved her with his warm lips, Red grabbed her hand. “Come on, we better get a good meal in and hit the sack early tonight. We’ve got an early flight to Berlin tomorrow morning.”

***

I
t was
strange but also kind of beautiful to be travelling to Berlin with Red Jameson. Sometimes, like when they were sitting in first class on the airplane (no private jet today), Nicole looked over at her future husband and wanted to pinch herself.

This was the man she’d spent months and months idolizing, reading about—setting him up as a kind of god on earth. In the end, she’d found that he really was just a man, but quite an extraordinary man with more layers than she’d ever imagined.

Staring out the window of the plane at thirty-five thousand feet, all she could see were clouds beneath the plane, and the plane’s shadow trailing along on the puffy white surface of them. It was like a dream, an exciting but sometimes terrifying dream where she’d gotten everything she could ever have imagined—but there monsters she couldn’t yet see who wanted to rip it all away from her.

Eventually she rested her head on Red’s shoulder and closed her eyes and slept most of the way to Berlin.

Any hopes Nicole might have had in seeing Germany were soon put to rest, as they immediately were picked up by a car service at the airport, and taken to the Concorde Hotel, a very modern building that looked more like a museum than a hotel.

As they checked in, Red spoke German fluently with the staff. Nicole was shocked, and on their way up the elevator to their suite, she asked him how he knew German.

“Once I realized I wanted to bring Jameson International into a global marketplace, I spent the next four or five years learning German, French and even a tiny bit of Japanese. But I really took to the German language for some reason.”

“That’s incredible.”

“That’s not incredible,” he said, grabbing her and pinning her against the wall of the elevator. “You are incredible. Your mind. Your body.” He looked her up and down, his gaze raking her body with ferocity. “Those tits.”

“Red!”

The elevator dinged and he reluctantly let her away from the wall. They walked to their suite, a large, modern set of connecting rooms with brown and white décor.

“I wish we had enough time for me to throw you down on this bed and show you what the word incredible really means,” he told her, as they dropped their bags and surveyed the rooms.

“You’re frisky today,” she laughed.

“I can’t keep my hands off you,” he said, grabbing her by the waist, picking her up and kissing her deeply on the mouth.

As usual, she melted into his kiss and his embrace. And then his cell was ringing again. “Dammit,” he said, moving away from her and answering brusquely.

As she watched his expression, a feeling of dread overcame her. The color drained from his face as he listened to whoever was talking. “We’ll be right there,” he said, and then put the phone back in his pocket.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

Red looked at her and his eyes were like two dark stones. “The dominoes are falling,” he said. “We’re about to lose everything. Come on.”

And then they were racing to the elevator, downstairs to the first available taxi. She was desperately trying to keep up with Red, as he was in his own world now, walking at such a fast pace that she practically had to run to stay with him. He glanced at her once and asked if she was all right.

“I’m fine, please don’t worry about me today,” she said.

He nodded as if that’s what he needed to hear. And then they were in the taxi, Red speaking German, and the taxi was racing down unfamiliar streets. The landscape outside the car windows was beautiful, so different from everything Nicole was used to. She wanted to appreciate the strange architecture and the amazing buildings of Berlin, but her heart was in her throat.

She didn’t know exactly what had gone wrong this morning, but she knew it was bad, and that was enough.

They arrived at their destination, a squat white building with sloping walls that looked like a funhouse version of a “normal” building. Red kept up his fast paced walk into the offices and they arrived at the front desk, hosted by a strange looking woman with tiny glasses and a nasally, high-pitched voice.

“I’m Red Jameson, and I need to see Lucas Bauer, please.”

She spoke lightly accented English. “Yes, we’re expecting you, Mister Jameson. So lovely to have you here.”

He gave Nicole an exasperated look. “Lovely for me, also. Thank you.”

“I will let Mister Bauer know you’ve arrived.”

Red backed away from the front desk and checked the time on his phone. He shook his head.

“What’s going on?” Nicole asked.

“You don’t want to know,” he told her.

“Mister Bauer will be down in just a moment,” the birdlike woman told them.

“Can I just go up?” Red asked.

She cocked her head. “Visitors typically are met by an employee, sir.”

“I’m not a visitor, I own this company.”

She nodded. “He’ll be down in just a moment, I assure you.”

Red grit his teeth and blew air out through his nostrils. Nicole could tell he was a millimeter from blowing up. She wanted to say something to calm him, but this was now a professional, work setting, so she kept quiet.

Lucas Bauer arrived through a set of glass doors at the far end of the hall. He was tall, smiling, with a blond head of thick hair and a mustache that seemed almost fake, it was so bushy and sculpted. Like a movie mustache, Nicole thought. He greeted them with a level of politeness that also, like his mustache, seemed phony.

“So wonderful to have you here,” he told Red. “We are so pleased.”

“Great,” Red replied in a clipped voice. “Shall we?”

“Of course, right this way,” Lucas said. As they walked through the glass doors and into the offices of the ad agency, he kept up a running commentary. He explained that the architect who’d designed this building was one of the most famous German architects of the modern era, and how they’d been the top agency in the EU for nearly ten years.

Everything was white inside. The hallways, the offices. They walked through a cavernous white room that had no cubicles, just rows of tables and chairs with computers and people working away at them, reminding Nicole more of a factory than an ad agency.

Finally they arrived at a conference room.

Inside the conference room were two more employees of the company. A short, heavyset woman that reminded Nicole of a bulldog. Her name was Helga, which Nicole thought appropriate. She looked exactly like Nicole pictured a German woman named Helga should look. And then there was a young, dashing brown haired man named Alric.

Everyone exchanged greetings and handed their business cards out to one another (although Nicole had no card so she just shook hands).

“We have coffee and scones,” Lucas said, gesturing to the trays at the back of the conference room. Nicole and Red made themselves coffee. He gave her a quick smile but she could tell he was very preoccupied.

Nicole grabbed herself a scone, too, and then she and Red took seats next to one another at the large table occupying the center of the room.

The German employees sat down and Lucas took over the meeting. “Once again, we thank Red Jameson for coming all the way to Berlin on short notice.” He nodded and smiled at Red. “The circumstances are a bit difficult at the moment, but we are determined to come out stronger and better than ever.”

Red stared at him, and slowly Lucas’s smile faded.

“I heard through my CFO that you’ve had five executives leave the company since Jameson international acquired you.”