Bedding the Billionaire (Book 3) (Legacy Collection) (9 page)

Evidently, lying did not come naturally to this kid
.
He remembered a ti
me when he’d been the same way.
“Lil said you wrote a gag order for the news station.”

“I did
,” Aaron said and awkwardly
waved
them into his room.
“I just pri
nted it out.”
He stepped over
several pieces of laundry on his way to the printer. “Don’t mind the mess. I would have cleaned up if I
had known
you were coming.
I thought it was just Lil.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Jake said and glanced back at Lil.

She was watching the exchange closely.

He wanted to say,
“
See, you worried about nothing
.
”

The stiff set of her shoulders and that beautifully jutted chin told him that
she was prepared to
intervene
if he stepped out of line with her precious little friend.
Since their relationship was clearly not based on anything sexual, he was at a loss for how to categorize it.
She’d said
he
was
like family to her
.
In his experience,
friendships
between men and women were a cover
for something less pure.
What did she get out of this association?
He had a feeling that the answer to that would go a long way toward deepening his understanding of what Lil wanted.
And discovering what she wanted only mattered as far as it would help him convince her to accept Dominic’s
protection
.
The sooner he did that, the sooner
he could return to New York
and
find out who Dominic thought had the answers they needed.

Jake
turned in time to receive a paper from
the shaky hands of Lil’s “lawyer.”
His quick skim of the document slowed as he perceived quality.
The
kid was good.
It was
well-crafted
and
as
professional
as he would have exp
ected from his seasoned lawyers.
He nodded, “This is impressive.
Good work.”

Aaron
’s face transformed with an ear to ear grin. “Thank you.
I based it on
the Sterling vs.
Laudin
Communications case.”

Lil
looked across the room and pinned Jake with those
amber
eyes of hers.
“Good enough that you would write him a
letter of reference
?”

Aaron’s face reddened. “Lil, Mr. Walton doesn’t have to do that. He doesn’t know me.”

It was clear that Lil wanted Aaron to succeed.
Why, he couldn’t say yet, but it would cost him nothing to toss the boy an opportunity.
“I’m always looking for entry level people
and we have a branch in Boston
.
If you send me your resume, I’ll give it to my legal department.
Then it’s up to you to impress them.”

“Oh, my God!”
He turned to Lil and his grin grew even wider, if that were possible.
“Oh, my God!”
A
spontaneous hug
threatened to
erupt from him.

Jake held out his hand to
deter him.

Aaron
shook his hand with enthusiasm.
He turned to Lil. “Thank you, Lil!
Thank you!”
and hugged her.

Jake
wanted to rip the little
, tail wagging puppy off of Lil, but he didn’t.
Lil hugged him much longer than he would have liked, but eventually, thankfully stepped back and said,
“I didn’t do anything, Aaron.
You did.”

Jake looked down at his watch
and pocketed the paper. “We have to go
now
if
we plan
to get to the station early.”

Lil’s eyebrows furrowed,
she
seemed to want
to say something
regarding the paper, but instead she said,
“I’ll get Colby.”

She stepped out of the room and Jake had every intention of following her when Aaron stopped him with a hand on his
sleeve.
“Mr. Walton?”

Jake looked down at the hand, which he expected the boy to
hastily remove, but he didn’t.
Instead
Aaron
met his eyes with surprising
directness
.

He said, “A lot of people judge Lil before they know her.
She says what she thinks and sometimes she’s more impulsive than she should
be, but when she loves someone–
there is nothing she won’t do
for them
, even if
it
hurts her own chance at happiness.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“
Because I saw the way she looked at you.
If she falls in love with you,
make sure you are worthy of that kind of love.
Colby’s father took advantage of her.
She doesn’t need to go another round with disappointment.”

The puppy had teeth.

“Is that a warning?”
Jake asked in a tone that backed most men down.

Aaron removed his hand from Jake’s
sleeve, but did not step back
. “I guess you could
say
that it is.
”

“
Bold move to take with your potential new employer.”

The young man
adjusted his wrinkled t
-
shirt and
said,
“
Some things are worth the risk.”

Jake
nodded
.
Loyalty was something he respected.
“
Send that resume.
I think you’ll do fine in the Boston office.”

Aaron let out a long sigh.
Not smiling.
Just waiting.
Even more impressive.

Jake said, “
I’m only here to make sure Lil is safe. There is nothing more than that between us.”

After a moment, Aaron stepped away and seemed to relax.
He said,
“
Whatever you do
,
don’t send her flowers.
She hates
watching them d
ie.
She says
it’s as sexy as receiving a bouquet of hamsters stapled to rulers.”

Jake
grimaced
a bit at the image, “That’s quite a visual.”

Aaron said, “
That’s Lil.
She likes images that evoke emotion.
Ask her to sketch something for you sometime.
She doesn’t belong in an
office,
she belongs
in a studio bringing those images to life
.
She’ll never be happy on the path she’s recently chosen for herself.
If you care about her, you might want to help her see that.”

A fist of fire curled deep in Jake’s abdomen, but
he
held back further discourse.
He didn’t like Aaron giving him
advice on how to deal with Lil.
He didn’t lik
e that his displeasure was most
likely obvious to the
young man
before him
.

The entire trip was a waste of time and emotion.
After today, Jake would have
no reason to ever see Lil again–
except perhaps across the room at a social event.

Whatever mess she got tangled up in nex
t
time
would be none of his concern.

Oddly, that thought
made him scowl again.

Lil pulled up to the front of the news station.
She unbuckled her seat and turned toward Jake.
“Give me the paper.”
She held out her hand.

Jake took the paper out of his pocket and turned it in his hand thoughtfully.
“It’d be better if you wait
ed
out here with Colby while I go in.”

“Just give me that damn paper,” Lil said and made a grab for it, but Jake moved it back out of her reach.

“I don’t understand you,
Lil.
Why is it so important for you to
do this?
Dominic or I could have easily handled it with a phone call from New York, but you didn’t
take anyone’s calls.
I could resolve this for you
right no
w
–
be back in the car in ten minutes and you wouldn’t even have
disturb
Colby.”

“I want to fix this myself.”

“
That much is obvious, but I keep asking myself the same question.
Why?”

Lil gestured at her baby in the backseat.
“She’s why.
If you genuinely want to know why I’m doing what I’m doing, the answer is almost always the same
.
Her.
She deserves the kind of stability and love that I had growing up.”

“Then why won’t you let Dominic help you?”

Lil threw a hand up in the air for emphasis.
“You don’t get it, do you?
Dominic is a fantasy.
Not even my
fan
tasy–
Abby’
s
.
Which is fine.
She can walk away from her life and tie her happiness to the whim of some man who may or may not be there for her in a month, but I can’t.” Lil laid a hand on the back of her baby’s car
seat.
“I have to think of Colby now and what’s best for her.”