His Absolute Insistence: A Scandalous Billionaire Love Story (Jessika, #2) (7 page)

J
eremy carried our breakfast take-out bag and followed me through the halls of the apartment building.  Neither of us said anything.  To be honest, I was too nervous to break the silence.  I didn't know what he would think, or what Asher would think if he knew, or why I'd even done what I did.  I didn't know a lot of things right now, but for some reason this felt right.

I stopped outside one of the doors.  I didn't have my purse or my keys, but I didn't need them for this.  Standing on tiptoes, I reached above the door casing and pulled down a solitary key.  Jeremy raised one brow at me.  I ignored him, put the key in the lock, turned it, and then opened the door.

I pulled the key out.  Stepping inside quickly, I put the key on one of the kitchen counters, then waited, anxious.  Jeremy came in behind me and closed the door.

He stared at me.  I stared back.

"What?" I said finally. 

He wasn't saying anything, and actually he wasn't even looking at me now.  He busied himself with putting the take-out bag on the kitchen counter and pulling our food out.  Still without saying anything, he opened one of the cabinets, grunting noncommittally when he found plates and glasses inside.  They were cheap plates and plastic glasses, nowhere up to the standards of Asher's mansion, but I liked them.

Jeremy took out two plates and set them by our food containers, then he went in search of forks and knives.  I hurried to grab the plates and rinsed them off, shaking the water from them after.

Jeremy started shoveling his food from the container to one of the plates, using a fork he'd found.  He offered me a fork of my own and nudged my pancake box over to me, too.

"Are you going to say anything?" I asked.

"What do you want me to say?" he said.  "Should I be asking you why you still have keys to your old apartment when you moved out almost a year ago?  The keys are probably the least of it, to be honest.  All your stuff is still here, too.  I mean, I only came here a couple times to help you out, so I could be missing something, but it looks like you've got your plates, forks, knives, spoons.  There's a couch over there in the living room, I guess?  Is that even a living room?  Kind of connected to the kitchen, but there's rugs, so maybe.  Little dining table?  Even your old TV that looks like it belongs in a museum."

I didn't really know what to say to that.  Besides everything here, my bed was still in the bedroom, too.  I kept a spare toothbrush in the bathroom, an extra pair of sheets in the closet in my bedroom, and a dresser with some of my clothes, plus a few things hanging up in the closet.  They weren't the nicest outfits, but they were all things I used to wear.  They were clothes I wouldn't wear now—or ones I felt like I couldn't wear—but they were mine.  They were my past.  They were...

"I don't want you to get the wrong idea," I said.  "I didn't keep all of this for any particular reason."

"Sure," Jeremy said in between stuffing his mouth with a bite of fluffy omelette.  "I can get behind that reasoning."

"I'm serious, Jeremy.  I know what it looks like, alright?  You're probably thinking that I kept this because I didn't think things would work out with Asher, so I'd have a place to go.  I'm sure that's what it looks like, but it's not.  I didn't do that.  I wouldn't.  It's just... I needed this.  I needed something of my own, you know?"

He shrugged.  I really wished he would have said something.

"I sound ungrateful, I bet.  I love Asher.  I love everything about him, but it's just so strange to me sometimes.  Who wouldn't love living in a mansion?  It's wonderful.  Why do I feel more comfortable in the guest house, then?  Asher buys me all of these beautiful clothes, but sometimes I just want to wear old pajamas and comfy slippers.  It's nice to have macaroni and cheese for dinner sometimes, too.  It's nice to not have to worry about everything and to just be normal.  I don't know.  This is so stupid.  I don't know why I said we should come here."

"Look," Jeremy said.  He took my hand, the one still holding a fork, and guided it to my food.  The prongs of my fork poked into a pancake and he shook my hand until I had a little piece loose.  "Eat.  I don't care about the apartment or anything else.  I get it, alright?  How do you think I feel?  I'm just some random guy who happens to be friends with a billionaire.  Maybe you feel uncomfortable, but at least you're married to him.  What about me?  I have a room in the mansion, everything's paid for, free food, the works.  And then on top of that Asher gives me a paycheck every week that's way too much considering I only drive you and him around for maybe ten or twenty hours?"

"You're Asher's friend, though," I said.  I stuffed a bite of pancake in my mouth, chewed fast, then swallowed.  "You've known him longer than I have.  You do other things for him, too."

Jeremy laughed.  "I don't know about you, but where I come from, wives are kind of important, too.  If you're going to pull the 'but you're Asher's friend' card, I'm going to use the 'Jessika, you're Asher's wife' one on you.  It goes both ways."

"Maybe," I said, reluctant to admit it.

Jeremy nodded twice, agreeing with me agreeing with him.  "The thing is, I don't think we can stop it."

"What do you mean?" I asked.  Poking my fork into a piece of pancake and apple, I took another bite.

"I'm guessing you haven't told Asher about this?" he asked; I shook my head, no.  "Right.  So it's a secret, and I get that, but if you tell him, he'll probably love it.  He won't even be mad.  It's weird."

"I don't know how you can know that."

"I know that because I've done stuff like that before.  I told Asher that maybe I should get another job or go to college and get some degree in something or other, or that I should find my own place.  You know what he said?  Sure, that's fine, he said.  I'll help you.  I told him I'd wait and help him look for a new driver if he wanted, but he said he'd probably just start driving himself, so it was no big deal.  If I wanted, I could drive weekends only, he told me.  No pay cut or anything, same pay for two days instead of seven?  It's not even seven now, it's more like four or five, which makes it even worse.  And to top it all of, he barely has me drive him around on weekends as it is."

"Well... I don't know?" I said.  "He does really like you."

"Asher's great," Jeremy said.  "I think he's a great guy and a really great friend and most of the time I forget it all and I have a great time.  Every single day is different and interesting, even if some of it's the same.  I get to go on vacations and have a fun time.  Sometimes I even get to plan out escape routes from hospitals for two people who are being hounded by the press."

"It's just a little weird sometimes, though," I said.  "I know what you mean."

He smirked.  "Yeah, a little bit.  I feel like I'm standing in someone's shadow, but he doesn't even know it.  It's impossible for me to ever have half of what Asher has, but he'd never treat me like that.  He'd never treat you like that, either.  I want to appreciate it, but I don't know how I can ever thank Asher enough, and it gets overwhelming."

"Maybe we should do something?" I said.  "We could plan out a surprise?"

"Oh yeah?  Like what?"  Jeremy grinned, then stole some of my pancake.

"Hey!"  I started to steal one of his sausages, but I remembered I already had.  Perhaps turnabout was fair play.  "I gave that to you," I said, sticking my nose up at him.  "You didn't steal it."

"How about this one?"  And he stole more!

"Jeremy!"  I pulled my plate away, hovering over it to protect it from his pilfering fork.

"In all seriousness," Jeremy said, smiling.  "You should tell Asher about this.  It might be nice for the two of you.  Sometimes I don't think he sees everything around him.  It's there, everything is, but he doesn't realize he goes to work every day in some huge tower office building that he owns, or that he lives in a mansion with a guest house next door bigger than most people's regular houses.  He doesn't see it because I don't think he thinks it's important.  I bet he'd love coming here with you, because if it's important to you, I think he'd see that and it'd be important to him, too."

"You think so?" I asked.  "I think he might get mad, wondering why I kept paying rent for a place like this.  It's kind of shabby.  He's never even been here.  I was embarrassed to show him, so when I lived here I never brought him over."

"I guess that makes me awesome, then," Jeremy said, before taking a bite of sausage.  "I've been here four times now, or something?  I don't remember."

"Don't let it get to your head.  You're only invited because you won't make fun of my TV."

"That," he said, "is where you're wrong.  I will definitely make fun of your TV.  Do you still have cable?  I bet you don't even have any of the premium channels.  How are you going to watch HBO on that thing, huh?  It's definitely not HD."

My mind whirred with seemingly inconsequential thoughts, but somehow they came together into an odd mix of genius rationale.  Or, at least I thought it was fairly intelligent.  I did still have cable.  I'd paid for it along with the rent, the electricity, heat, and water.  Not that any of those bills were excessive, seeing as I hadn't been here in a year, but I still paid them.  Everything was still connected.

And with my cable bill came a landline phone plus internet.  One of the things I probably didn't miss about my old life was the fact that my desktop computer was kind of slow and bad, but it should still be here, sitting under the desk in my bedroom, just waiting to be used.

I could look up everything on the internet without leaving my apartment.  I could find the articles about me and Asher, browse the pictures, see the videos?  Were those online yet, or...?  Yes, they probably were, but I didn't need to guess at it, I could see for myself.

"We have a mission," I said.  "Once we finish our food.  Also, I do think that'd be nice.  The surprise planning thing for Asher.  We should talk about that more.  It's a secret, though, alright?  Don't tell him!"

"Yeah, sure," he said.  "I mean, I can't tell him anything about it now, anyways.  We haven't even figured it out.  Should be easy."

I rolled my eyes at him, then sawed off a hunk of pancake and threw it into his plate with my fork.  "Shut up and eat that."

"Wow, you're bossy.  Forcing me to eat your delicious apple pie pancake.  Not sure what I should do about that."

I glared at him, trying not to smile.  He ate the piece of pancake and made a funny face at me.

A
sher's stalwart stance and vehement glare kept most of the news crews at bay while he waited for his taxi to arrive.  It came quickly and with little fanfare to speak of.  The driver pulled into the parking lot area where Asher stood and stopped to let him in.

That should be that, except unfortunately it wasn't.  One of the reporters had the gall to come up to him just before he entered the cab.

"Mr. Landseer, can I have a word with you in private?" she said.

It was her.  The woman who asked most of the questions during his impromptu interview, the one who bothered him the most.  Hanna.

"I have work to do," he said.  "What happened might seem like fun and games to you, but I really must be going."

"No, not at all," Hanna said, frowning, perplexed.  "I guess I can see why you'd think that.  If it was up to me, I wouldn't want to bother anyone at the hospital, either.  Journalism and reporting can be rough sometimes, though.  As necessity dictates, do what the job demands, and so on.  I apologize for intruding into your personal affairs, but unfortunately nothing you or your wife do is really personal, either.  I guess you could say it goes with your business as much as what I do comes with mine."

Yes, well, he understood her general point, even if he disagreed with it.  He didn't necessarily hate anyone involved in the media as a person, and he recognized that many of them had families and lives outside of that, too.  That didn't quite condone their vulturous behavior, though.

"Thanks for the apology, but I do need to go.  There's nothing else I can help you with."  Turning away, he opened the door to the taxi and stepped inside.

Before he could close the door, she said, "I was actually thinking I might be able to help you.  It really will just take a second of your time."

He stared at her, completely unwilling to believe anything she said.  He'd been burned too many times by trusting people who told him they had his best interests in mind.  Unfortunately, despite this he kept trusting in people, too.  Maybe that was a fault, but he didn't want to become a bitter and jaded person, no matter what it looked like to the press.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It's something of an extremely private nature that I'd rather not discuss in the open."

He honestly didn't know what to say to that.  It wasn't like they could go anywhere private right here.

She smiled sweetly and stepped towards the front passenger side door, knocking lightly on the window.  The  driver cracked the window enough so she could speak to him.  They exchanged hushed words about something or other, then the cab driver stepped out and went for a walk.  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started calling someone.  Asher frowned.

"Great," Hanna said.  "I'll make this quick.  Would you mind moving over?"

This was not how things worked in Asher's life.  Not now, nor ever.  "The cameraman goes," he said.  "This is off the record.  Nothing is being recorded.  Not that I'm going to answer any of your questions, anyways.  I hope you don't think that you're somehow going to get an exclusive interview, because it's not happening."

Hanna shook her head, no.  She waved off the cameraman who had been standing quietly nearby.  He left and went to join the rest of the media milling about and doing livecasts in front of the hospital.  Watching them was almost impressive in a way.  They each took turns doing their routines, then moved aside for the next one, so that no one interrupted anyone else and they each had a clear opportunity.  It reminded Asher of some sort of odd news crew brothership.