FOREVER BELOVED (Billionaire Love Series) (24 page)

I was done holding back, pretending I could
be a part-time dad. I may have missed the first twenty-two years,
but I wasn’t going to miss anything else.

I would do right by him.

No matter what.

One mild afternoon after my father had been
disgraced, I stopped by Marla’s and found her with Charlie on the
back porch drinking lemonade.

“How are my favorite people?” I asked, happy
to see them.

“Hey, Shepard. We’re good. Come join us,”
Marla said, standing up and giving me a sweet kiss. “You want some
lemonade?”

“Sure.”

While she ran back in for the drink, Charlie
turned his attention to me. “What’s going on, man?” he asked
suspiciously.

“Just wanted to stop by and see you
guys.”

“I didn’t think you were the
stop-by-kind-of-people.”

“I am now that I have people to stop by and
see. But you’re right. There’s another reason I’m here.”

“I’m listening.”

I took a deep breath and held his curious
gaze. “Son, you’re mine. My flesh and blood. I may not have been
around while you were growing up, but I’m here now and I’m not
leaving. We have a lot of things to make up for. But I think we can
figure it out. Either way, I’m in all the way.”

His face lit up in a beaming smile. “Wow,
that’s awesome. I want that too.”

Relief coursed through my body. “You wanna
give your old man a hug?”

“Sure.” He leaned over and I wrapped my arms
around him in a tight embrace.

“I love seeing you guys getting along,” Marla
gushed from the door as she set down the lemonade and threw her
arms around us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Marla:

My life took on its own rhythm with Beau. He
was busy, and so was I. But we spent as much time together as we
could. Usually, we had a late dinner after work or the various
charity functions we attended. Mostly, we tried to have private
time, where we made up for all those lost years.

I couldn’t get enough of him. He obviously
was an expert in bed after bedding half of Toronto and Baltimore.
He showed me things I had never heard of before and introduced me
to the delicious world of bondage.

Hot wax.

Handcuffs.

Hot man.

Sign me up, please.

When we weren’t in bed, we were getting to
know one another. Some things were the same. He still enjoyed a
bowl of shredded wheat. I still liked him to read to me out of the
newspaper on Sunday mornings.

In some ways, we picked up where we left off.
In other ways, we were miles apart in our thinking. This became
very evident one Sunday when Beau surprised me by taking me out to
Chesapeake Bay.

His yacht loomed over us, like a bad taste in
my mouth I couldn’t get rid of. A sick feeling settled in the pit
of my stomach as we approached the dock.

“Why are we here, Beau?”

“I thought we’d take her out for a spin,” he
answered without an ounce of concern.

I was instantly annoyed. “I’m not getting on
that thing again!”

He shrugged. “Why not? It’s just a
yacht.”

“Yeah, where you had your playboy bunnies and
all night orgies. Why would you think I would enjoy being on your
yacht?”

“I thought we could have a nice day out on
the bay.”

“Yeah, in something else. Why don’t we rent a
boat?”

“No, I’ve got this beautiful ship with a full
crew ready to go. It’s a perfectly good boat.”

“I thought it wasn’t called a boat.”

“Oh, who the fuck cares?” He pointed at the
yacht. “That boat cost me fifty million dollars.”

I wasn’t impressed. “I don’t care what it
cost. I’m not getting on it, Beau. I don’t like what the yacht
stands for or my last memory of it.”

“I named this boat after you!” he
justified.

“
Sunshine’s Fool
? I’m not honored by
that, Shepard. I don’t want anything to do with it!”

“Get over yourself!” he snapped at me.

I took a step back. “Why are you so
angry?”

“Is this how it’s always going to be? Like
this?”

“Like what?”

“Fighting. Yelling at each other.”

“This is fighting? I thought we were
communicating our feelings. Maybe you’ve had it too easy all these
years, Beau. You’ve been surrounded by people who says yes to all
of your demands. I’m not like that. Never have been.”

“Don’t I know it,” he shot off
sarcastically.

I took a deep breath. “Look, when we got
together, we were both young and stupid, just figuring out who we
were becoming. Now we know who we are. The question is can we find
compromises we can both live with?”

“Uuh! You make me so mad! I can’t even talk
to you right now.”

I stood my ground. “Why not? We have to be
able to fight, Beau. If we can’t say what we’re really feeling,
this isn’t going to work.”

His blue glance was fiery and unapologetic.
“That’s right, maybe this won’t work.”

My heart fell into my toes. “Do you really
mean that?”

“I don’t know. I can’t talk to you right
now.” He turned, walking away from me.

“Are you really giving up on us?” I shouted
as he stalked off.

He didn’t answer.

Shit.

I had pushed him too far.

But I was tired of walking on eggshells every
time something uncomfortable came up. Our relationship needed to be
strong with good communication and a willingness to be honest.

I thought we would work it out by that
evening, but after a couple of days went by, I wasn’t sure we would
make it through this latest setback.

Still hopeful, I kept my phone by my side,
hoping to hear from him. When forty-eight hours went by without
hearing anything, I sent him a text.

We can work this out. Call me.

No answer.

I tried again.

I miss you.

Call me.

Silence.

Beau?

Deafening Silence.

Yeah, it was bad.

*****

Beau:

I was mad at her for reasons I didn’t
understand.

It was such a dumb, stupid fight.

Yet, it provoked something inside that made
me question where we were going and if I really wanted it. One
thing was for sure, no one could push my buttons like Marla
Matthews. She got under my skin. Big time.

I didn’t know if I could handle that
twenty-four seven.

Did I really want a flesh and blood woman
spouting off all these opinions when the one-night stands didn’t
talk back?

At the moment, it was a toss-up.

Call me a jerk, but I was rethinking
everything.

Between processing what happened with my dad,
finding out about Charlie, and reconnecting with Marla, I realized
I was in emotional overload. I hadn’t felt that much in a long
time.

So I took a time out.

I took a couple of days off and didn’t
self-medicate or try to distract myself. I didn’t party my brains
out or bury myself in work, I just listened to my heart and thought
about what I wanted.

I didn’t draw many new life-changing
conclusions.

But something was very clear to me.

I was scared.

Scared of being broken again, scared of
loving too hard, and most of all, scared of losing Marla.

There was a steep cost to loving someone the
way I loved her, which was core deep and in my bones.

Part of me was determined to hold back and
resist how deep my feelings for her were. The other part of me knew
it was a done deal. She was mine. I had claimed her a long time
ago.

Either way, I needed to decide what I
wanted.

Over the next few days, Marla kept reaching
out. She sent a couple of texts, but the phone calls were killing
me.

Her first phone message was understanding and
sympathetic. “Hi, Beau. Look, I know you’ve been through a lot
lately. I understand you need time to get your head on straight.
I’m here when you’re ready to talk.”

I appreciated her willingness to understand
where I was coming from, but I wasn’t ready to spill my guts.

The second message was less forgiving. “It’s
been three days now. I’m starting to worry you don’t want this
anymore. Would you let me know if you’re okay? Call me.”

She sounded worried, but I needed more
time.

The third message was more desperate. “I
don’t know what to do or how to help you. All I know is this won’t
work if you won’t talk to me. I miss you,” her voice was small and
sad.

I didn’t like it.

She deserved to know where I stood in all
this. It wasn’t fair to jerk her around and leave her hanging.
Realizing I needed some help with this, I reached out to one of the
few people I could trust, Micah Turner.

I knew he’d give it to me straight.

I called him up and he readily answered on
the second ring.

“Hey, Micah. What’s going on?” I asked.

“Hey, man. I’m hanging out with Josiah
watching the game.”

The Gators were playing away in Tucson.

“Would it be cool if I came over and watched
the game with you guys?”

“Sure, come on over. We’ve got plenty of
pizza and beer. Come join us.”

This was new territory for me. I was a little
nervous and had no idea how to casually bring up the real reason I
was there. Turns out, Micah was more than happy to help me out.

“Want a beer?” he asked as I descended the
steps into his massive basement.

His man cave included a huge sixty-five inch
flat screen TV hanging on a wall with a large leather couch, which
sat about fifty.

“Sure,” I said as he opened the fridge behind
his decked out bar.

“Emma let you have a man cave?” I asked in
surprise as I took in the video game consoles resting on the
entertainment system.

“Come on, man. Emma wanted me to have it. She
knows I need my space and she wants me to have what I want. When
you’re with the right lady, she’ll want good things for you.”

“Hmm...” I said, taking the beer from him.
“Where’s the baby?”

“He’s sleeping. But I got the baby monitor
right here.” He pointed to his hip, where he was wearing the boxy
monitor like it was a walkie-talkie.

“So who’s playing?” I asked, sitting down on
the couch and putting my feet up on the leather ottoman in front of
me.

He joined me, sitting in the middle of the
massive couch. “You already know who’s playing. Why did you really
come here today?” he asked perceptively as he popped the top off
his beer.

“To watch the game and hang out with my
buddy.”

He narrowed his gaze at me. “Yeah, I’m not
really buying that. You’ve got world class Scotch and the best HD
TV out there. You didn’t need to come over.”

I sighed, not even trying to hide my feelings
anymore. “I don’t know, man. Marla’s driving me crazy. No one makes
me feel like she does. Good or bad. I’m old, man. Set in my ways
and she comes in and messes everything up.”

He smiled. “Oh, you mean she called you on
your shit?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s one way of putting
it.”

“Totally get that. Emma did that to me a
number of times before I understood she did it because she cared
about me, and wanted me to deal with my issues.”

“But you didn’t lose Emma for twenty years.
It’s different when you miss someone for that long.”

“You’re right. I can only imagine the misery
of missing someone for that long. So are you afraid she’ll be taken
from you again?”

I shrugged, ignoring the way his words made
my gut churn. “Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know if I can risk my
heart again. She crushed me, man. Destroyed me.”

“So would you rather walk away and live
another miserable twenty years without her? Come on, man. You don’t
want that.”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I need
help making a decision.”

“Okay, well there’s also your son to
consider. If you want a relationship with him, you can’t cut his
mom out of the equation. Charlie is a mama’s boy and he will stand
by her no matter what.”

“That’s true and I’ve already made a
commitment to be there for him.”

“Okay. Then tell me this, would you leave him
because he can cause you pain?”

“No way.”

“So why is it different with Marla?”

“I wouldn’t recover if she left me again,
man.”

“Valid point, but none of us get guarantees.
You have to adjust your perception about the situation. She didn’t
leave you willingly the first time. She had it just as rough as you
did. Now, twenty years later, you’re being given a second chance to
be with the one and only woman you’ve ever loved. You’re a fool if
you don’t seize this opportunity. I’ve never even seen Marla date
since I’ve known her. She held out for you, man. She loved you
despite the distance, your hostility, and all that shit you pulled
with her. She’s steady as a rock. Own it. Claim your woman for
good. Stop fuckin’ around.” He took another swig from his beer as
he gave me a hard stare.

“I knew you’d give it to me straight. That’s
why I came to you.”

“I earned it. Sam had to kick my ass several
times for me to even admit I loved Emma. I even had to watch her
date another guy. Do you know what that felt like?

“I don’t want to think about it.” That
thought made my blood boil. No one would ever touch Marla, except
me.

“Well, be thankful, she’s staying true.
Because seeing Emma with another man was a good kick to my gut. It
tore me up, made me crazy and, on top of that, I had to fight to
win Emma back. You don’t even have to do that. Marla’s yours, man.
Heart and soul. I see it every time she looks at you. If you can’t
recognize that, you’re in serious denial.”

This is what I liked about Micah. He cut
through all my bullshit.