Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance (71 page)

“Nope. Your fillings and the Rolex might survive, but that’s about it.”

“This thing, truly?” He stripped the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona off his wrist, held it dangling from his fingers, and eyed the thirty thousand dollars of gold and steel like a scientist examining a new and doubtful species of bug.

“I can’t imagine this delicate bit of Swiss craftsmanship would survive the fall, but shall we perform a modest experiment to be sure?”

And with that, he spun the watch around by its band a time or two and then pitched it out into the air. It sailed through a gentle arc over the emptiness below, tumbled a bit as gravity took hold, and then dove straight down through the falling snow, one hundred and five stories to the ground.

Devon watched it plunge earthward, absorbed by his impromptu physics experiment.

“Devon?”

“Mmmm?” He continued peering downward, leaning forward by a few unnerving inches to get a better view as he puzzled over this fashion-related wrinkle in his plans.

“Devon, once you’re done gathering experimental data, could you maybe tell me what’s going on?”

“Oh, it’s quite simple.”

He tore his interest away from the watch and beamed a polite, press conference sort of smile my way.

Then he shifted his weight, turning to face back out over the city and the snow. He edged forward on the ledge, sliding his feet a few inches closer to the point of no return. He spread his arms wide.

No. God no, please.

He turned his head from left to right, as if addressing a vast audience. Snow swirled down, settling in tiny drifts on his outstretched arms. He tilted his face to the sky and more snowflakes dove onto his pale face as he spoke.

“You see before you the final moments of the special project.”

What the hell?

He pivoted right to left this time, like a stage actor accepting applause from a sea of admirers. Then he dropped his arms back to his sides and leaned forward to peer over the edge again.

“Devon, wait up – the special project? That was all about putting the Killanes out of business and into jail, and you’ve done that – what does the special project have to do with you being out here on this roof, tossing Rolexes into the abyss and scaring the hell out of your loyal girlfriend?”

“Don’t feel badly, Ashley. I told no one the true scope of the special project, not even you or Uncle Sheridan.”

“Look, I can understand an elaborate plot to bring down the Killanes, sure – after what they did to you, I think you showed a lot of restraint to not just mow down that entire tribe of assholes with an assault rifle. So drawing up a plan for revenge on those guys, fine – but why plan for this?”

I waved a shaking hand at him, at the roof and the gulf beyond, at the nightmare playing out live and in color, right in front of me.  “Please, help me to understand why you would plan to do this to yourself – and why would you plan to do this to me, Devon? I’m part of you, so you’re doing this to me too, you know.”

My sweet, broken guy stared down at the expanse of snow and death waiting below, as his loyal and popbrained girlfriend who somehow never saw this coming walked just a little bit closer. I closed the distance between us to barely more than ten feet.

Then he turned to stare at me with those strange, beautiful eyes.

“You were never meant to be part of this plan, Ashley.”

“I’m part of your life, Devon. Silly me, I kind of like to think I’m a pretty important part of that life, and so I’m part of this too, like it or not. How could you miss seeing that? How the hell did you think I was going to react to this, baby?”

He trembled – just for an instant, but I saw it. A tremor ran through his body, he blinked way more times than necessary, and I saw … not doubt, not really, but regret and fear and aching, bone-deep sadness.

“Ashley, I planned all of this with such great care – but you were not a part of my plan because the special project was set in motion long before you entered my life, when I was eighteen and you were only a child.

“The special project began on the day I signed away my inheritance at that conference table only a few blocks from here, and the special project has determined every moment of my life since, marching me along a path leading directly from my eighteenth birthday to this roof.”

He sighed. He turned from me, hands still deep in his pockets, and stared down past his feet. “But I never knew you would step out onto that path, my Ashley. When you did, when I looked into your fierce eyes on that first day in the lobby … did you know I was terrified?”

“Um, you came across as seriously pissed off and kind of an asshole, actually.”

He chuckled. “I fear I did not react well to a bold young woman throwing my foolproof plan onto the scrap heap, simply by existing. But though I may have played the part of an angry tyrant, it was purely an instinctive reaction, a defense mechanism of sorts – I assure you I was in fact quite frightened.

“I had no idea who you were, why you had suddenly appeared in my life, how you could thrill and terrify me at the same time, and what a woman who claimed my heart in a single instant meant for the future of a plan that had been twenty years in the making.”

“Devon, you’re still not telling me what an elaborate, decades-long plot to destroy the Killanes has to do with this, with why you’re on this roof, with what you intend to do to –”

“With what I
will
do, Ashley – never doubt that. Your loving attempt to save me from my fate is noble but misguided, and I –”

“There is no fucking FATE here, Devon!”

I shrieked at him, rage and terror and crying bursting out of me all at once, with no warning. “There’s just YOU, just YOU deciding to destroy yourself, no matter how little sense it makes, and no matter how much it will destroy ME right along with you!”

Yeah, and that’s when I sobbed like a useless crybaby for maybe five minutes straight – or it could have been five years, whatever.

Devon waited.

He stood there ten feet away on the ledge, and he waited. I cried until my current supply of tears was cried out, I hitched and sniffled and wiped my nose with the hankie I remembered Jimmy had given me, and he waited. I looked up, brushing blowing strands of hair away from my freezing, tear-streaked face, and there he was, still waiting.

So I waited. I crossed my arms, I sauntered over to him, I ignored the panic screaming along every nerve as I got closer to the edge, I stopped less than five feet away from his side and that stomach-plunging drop down to the street, and I waited.

Ball’s in your court, big guy.

“Ashley, I understand your rage at something that seems so senseless and brutal – and believe me, I know exactly what that molten ball of anger and despair burning inside you feels like. I’d say I’m quite an expert on the subject of despair. Anger, too.”

I kept my arms clamped firmly across each other, and I watched him through the falling snow. The wind gusted and eddied and swirled between us, whipping at our coats and blowing snowflakes into his midnight hair and his pale face.

I watched those eyes trained on mine. If he knew what I was feeling, could I maybe figure out what he was feeling, what was driving him to do this? If I could puzzle it out, could I use that knowledge to bring him back from the edge? Back to me?

Or was he already lost? Maybe it was too late, maybe I was looking at a dead man and just didn’t know it yet.

Whatever, you moron – just get him talking. You might learn something, and even if you don’t, a talking Devon is a Devon who is still here, still with you.

“Devon?”

“Yes, my Ashley?”

“If you know what I’m feeling, if you’ve felt it yourself and you understand what you’re putting me through … then why would you want to do this? Help me to understand, because I am lost as anything here.”

“Oh, I don’t want to do this at all, Ashley – I so much do not want to leave you, but I must.”

I popped up an eyebrow, going for a ‘doubtful but calm tower of strength’ thing that I totally didn’t feel.  “Explain why you must, big fella – and it better be good, because I am going to take a whole lot of convincing on this subject, believe me.”

“Understood. I fear, however, that my explanation involves asking you to listen to yet another ornate tale of suffering and revelation from my past – would that be acceptable?”

He stood there in the snow, waiting. He stood there looking down at me from that ledge with the patience of a marble statue, a statue of some ancient Greek philosopher to whom all of this would have been nothing more than a fascinating moral puzzle. From his expression, he might have just asked me if going to a Thai restaurant instead of a steak house would be acceptable.

I’m not sure where I found a brave, ridiculous smile, but I felt it stealing over my face. “Right now, baby, I would find it acceptable to stand here and listen to you recite the alphabet, or your laundry list, or the periodic table of the elements –”

“Ooh, really? Then I shall not deny my Ashley, not for another moment.”

And then he held his arms out again, he threw back his head, and he started in on the periodic damn table like the adorable loon he was. “Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium – ”

How the hell was I managing to giggle? “Devon, you idiot, please –”

“ – boron, carbon, nitrogen –”

“Devon, please stop –”

He broke off and turned to me, one eyebrow tilted up. “Are you sure? Once we get to the rare earth elements, it turns quite spicy – I find gadolinium in particular to be quite effective in persuading women to perform the most disgusting and deliciously perverted sexual acts imaginable. Are you certain you don’t want to hear more?”
            “Another time, Mr. Showoff Science Man. For right now – ”

“There won’t be another time, Ashley.”

The matter-of-fact way he said it terrified me right down to my bones, but I kept talking. What else could I do?

“For right now, tell me the truth that put you on the path to this roof. While I can’t say I’ll accept it, I promise I will listen and try to understand. Fair enough?”

He nodded. “As always, you are more than fair to me, and endlessly understanding – indeed, you seem to have bottomless reserves of patience when it comes to dealing with my nonsense.”

And there was that smile again – the sad and distant one this time, but under these circumstances, I’d take any smile I could get.

“So as long as I have all these patience points built up, could I maybe get you to come tell me this story in your nice warm office?”

“No.”

“Or at least down here with me and off that ledge, where the wind could shove you right over the side in an instant – you know, before you could finish your swell story?”

“And again, no. It won’t be that long of a tale, so I imagine I’ll be able to deliver it and then be on my way in a timely fashion, before the weather has a chance to interfere.”

“You do realize how cold-blooded and practical that sounds, right?”

Both eyebrows went up this time. “Me, practical? Goodness, Ashley, you know me far better than that – I am madder than a hare in the middle of March, and not at all practical.”

He turned away from me and looked down at the ocean of air and finality waiting beneath him. He kept staring down at all that nothing as he added, “And I’m not cold-blooded either, Ashley – I’m just so scared. Not of this” – he nodded at the endless drop before him – “but of not having the strength to do what I know to be right.”

 “Devon, tell me the story. Tell me the story that’s convinced you this is the right thing to do, and I’ll listen.”

I marveled at my steady voice, at the way my nerves were humming quietly, not freaking out nearly as much as they should have, given what was happening – was I that strong and badass?

Or was my own truth speaking to me, calming me with words that I knew, but couldn’t quite remember?

46. Time to Fly

“Ashley, do you recall my telling you of that nasty little moment when Aunt Emily came to me in my hospital room, when I was ten years old and recovering from a beating that should have killed me?”

“Yep – she sold you on another story, one where you had a tragic accident falling down the stairs and her husband totally didn’t try to murder you at all, right? And why did you buy into that scenario, Devon? I remember you said you had your own reasons, but being a shifty, obscure bastard and all, you didn’t elaborate.”

I made a mental note that if it turned out Aunt “Demon Queen From Hell” Emily had anything at all to do with putting Devon on this roof, my first order of business after … well, after, would be to hunt that bitch down and hammer a stake through her shriveled black heart.

Devon pulled his hands from his coat pockets, folding his arms across his chest as he leaned forward to assess the view of his impending resignation from the world. He spoke as he looked down, and I recognized his crisp, calm professor’s voice, the one he’d used to tell me those horror stories from across the kitchen table in our Montana hideaway.

“You may perhaps also recall that I said a number of hours passed between the moment I woke up in that hospital bed and the moment Aunt Emily arrived.”