Passion Abroad: A BWWM Billionaire Holiday Romance (12 page)

Actually,
what she was feeling was what her sister would define as ‘being
in love’. She shook her head at the thought. All she knew was
the fact that she was confused…a lot. She reached for the iPad
she had stashed in the seat pocket and sighed. She needed to get
everything she was feeling out. And the best way she knew how, the
only way she knew how was to write. She needed to write.

For
years, that was the only thing she could do that could actually
ensure that she kept herself sane. She sighed when she remembered her
detachable keyboard was in the luggage compartment above. She
unbuckled her seatbelt and stood up slowly, careful not to wake
Daniel. She pulled her bag from the luggage compartment before she
got her keyboard. She put the bag back in the compartment and sat
down wondering how she would start her entry. She looked at Daniel
again as she sat down and sighed.
“Just
like journalism club back in college. Just put your thoughts down,”
she thought as she
opened a new document. She looked at the screen and attached the
keyboard making a small computer from the two gadgets.
“Just
put down your thoughts. My thoughts…what do I think about
Daniel Reese?”
She
was now drumming her fingers against the sides of her screen.

Two
weeks ago, I met the one good man who…
She stopped and read the line she had just typed.

“
That
just sounds corny,”
she
thought as she erased it. She didn’t know whether to be real or
poetic. She wanted to express the confusion she felt. The crazy weird
things she had going in her head, in her heart. She was just about to
begin typing when a flight attendant passed by checking if everyone
had their seatbelts on. She had been too engrossed in what she was
doing that she had not noticed the seatbelt signal come on. She
quickly buckled herself in and sighed. She found herself picturing
the office back when she was doing mediation. She would tell her
clients to look at each other and speak from the heart. Maybe that
was exactly what she needed to do. Look at Daniel and speak from the
heart. She turned and looked at Daniel. She could not help but smile
when she looked at him. He had beautiful long eyelashes that made her
conclude that he would father some beautiful girls someday. The three
stray hairs that usually fell out of place shielding his eyes were at
it again. She looked at him and suddenly, it all dawned on her, what
she wanted to say.

They
say that all good men are either married or gay. Well, as it turns
out, I may have just met the one good man who isn’t married,
gay or held down by anyone. He is a gentleman and he is good looking
and I know, the one question I should be asking myself is what is
wrong with him? Right? Well, I have been asking myself the same
question for the last two weeks. Every time I look at him I feel like
there is something I am missing, something I am not seeing. Or is it
that I am too infatuated with his perfect gentlemanly personality
that I cannot see what is right in front of me?

She
looked at Daniel again and smiled.

Or
is it that the universe is finally giving me something rather than
taking something away? I could very well be falling for him and I
don’t even realize it or I realize it and I am afraid of what I
might be getting myself into? Eli was the same at first. Sweet, nice
and loving and then he suddenly became this lying, cheating bastard.
I gave him everything. My heart, my love, my all and he swung shit at
me. I’m scared of giving into what I am feeling. What if I give
into everything and then I end up in the same position I was in with
Eli? What if I admit that I have feelings for him and he hurts me? I
can’t…I can’t take another heart break.

She
didn’t know how she had gone from writing about Daniel and how
he made her happy to Daniel and his potential to hurt her. She
couldn’t let this happen. Not again. She looked at him and
slipped her hand into his making him stir a little. She leaned back
against the seat and rolled her head to the side as his eyelids
fluttered open.

“
Hey
there,” he said in a low voice. She smiled at him.

“
Hey,”
she said in a whisper. “Sleep okay?”

“
As
well as I could manage,” he said with a smile. He turned on the
plane navigation and smiled. “We’re almost there,”
he said as he looked out the window. She nodded and turned off her
iPad before she detached the keyboard and stashed it in the seat
pocket. “What? The in-flight entertainment wasn’t good
enough?” he asked.

“
Kind
of. I just needed to make a journal entry,” she said.

“
You
journal?” he
asked raising an eyebrow at her. “What is that supposed to
mean? You made it sound like it was such a big idea. In a bad way,”
she frowned.

He
shook his head and straightened his back against the seat.

“
No,
what I meant was that you…you don’t look like the kind
to journal. You look like a shooting range kind of person.”

“
There
is a lot you are yet to find out about me,” she said. “But
you are not so far off as far as the shooting range is concerned.”

Daniel’s
eyes lit up.

“
So
I was right about that? You like guns?”

“
Actually
Emily is more of the shooting range kind of girl. She actually has a
gun collection…beats me why she needs a collection of
firearms,” she said.

Daniel
raised an eyebrow. “You are kidding right? I mean you are
familiar with the second amendment, right?”

“
Yes
I am but she has a collection. Almost three,” she said matter
of factly making Daniel laugh. “What? What’s so funny?”
she asked as he looked at him.

“
Well,
when you said collection, I was picturing something like this,”
he said as he reached for his phone from his pocket. She waited as he
scrolled through the pictures to show her a photo of a room literally
lined with firearms.

“
Whoa,”
Erica said under her breath. “Why the hell would you even need
so many of these anyway?” she asked as she looked at the guns.

“
Well,
I like to consider myself an enthusiast really. See that?” he
asked as he pointed at one of the firearms on the wall. It looked old
school. If she didn’t know any better she would have thought it
to have been used in the civil war. “That’s a 73 Cal
pistol. It was used in the American Civil War,” he said. She
smiled in satisfaction. At least she was not completely oblivious as
far as firearms were concerned.

“
That’s
definitely a beaut. I can say that for sure,” she said as she
double tapped on the screen to enlarge the photo.

“
I’ll
make a gun enthusiast out of you, Hayes,” he said as he looked
into her eyes.

“
I
have been dodging my sister on that for most of my adult life. I’m
not sure how successful you are going to be in that,” she said
just as the captain announced over the system that the passengers
should prepare for landing.

“
I
don’t know about that,” he said with a smile. “If
you had told me a month ago that I would be traveling the world with
a woman who would take my heart captive, I would have most probably
laughed in your face. So you coming to see the other side of firearms
like I do is definitely a possibility,” he said as he lifted
the window blind as per the flight regulations.

She
looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Take your heart captive?”

“
Really?
Out of all that, that’s all you got?”

“
I
can’t help it if some words you speak totally catch me off
guard,” she shrugged. “You almost sound like an actor on
some Shakespearean play or something.”

He
looked at her and took one of her hands in his.

“
Guess
that’s the effect you have on me,” he said before he
looked out the window. “Say hello to Greece,” he said
with a smile.

She
looked out the window and a smile played on her lips. The perfect
blue of the water and the white of the buildings was more than enough
to send a warm tingle down her spine. The small specks of luscious
green vegetation was a welcome sight contrasting the white and blue.
She was going to love her time here. She was going to
cherish
her time here.

*****

“
I
have always wanted to ask,” Erica started when they had booked
themselves in at the hotel. Daniel looked at her and laughed. “Now
what?” Erica asked rolling her eyes.

“
Nothing,”
he said shaking his head as he walked towards her.

Erica
sat on the bed and crossed her arms over her chest feigning a frown.

“
You
just laughed at me and you are telling me that it’s nothing?
There is definitely something,” she said moving back on the bed
so she could rest her back on the headboard.

“
Fine.
I’m laughing at what you said, not at you,” Daniel said.
“What did I just say?” she asked looking at him.

“
You
just said you’ve always wanted to ask me…like you’ve
known me since college or something,” he said joining her on
the bed. She smiled as he draped an arm around her shoulders.

“
Well,
maybe it feels like I have known you since way back then. And even if
I did, what’s the biggie?” she asked.

Daniel
shook his head and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“
No
biggie. So what have you always wanted to ask me, Miss Hayes?”

“
Why
are you on this long vacation?”

“
Have
you grown tired of me already?” he asked looking into her eyes.

She
smiled and playfully punched his arm.

“
No
silly. It’s just…” her voice trailed off when she
realized that there was no polite way of asking what she was about to
ask. “It seems like you are in no hurry to get back home
considering that by the time I met you, you’d already been MIA
from your daily routine for almost a month,” she said.

He
looked down at her and took a long deep breath. “It’s a
long story.”

“
At
the risk of sounding clichéd, I’ve got nothing but
time,” she said. “Unless of course you don’t want
to talk about it,” she added quickly. Daniel shook his head and
ran his fingers through his hair. Erica could tell that she had
pushed the wrong button.
“Maybe
I shouldn’t have pushed it,”
she
thought. “Wait. Did you take off because of what happened with
Zoe?”

“
Not
exactly. But it had a lot to do with her,” he sighed.

*****

Daniel
was breathing hard as he looked at the company’s quarterlies.
There were certain days in the year he hated and this was slowly
turning out to be one of them. As far as he was concerned, the
company should have been making profits and not just mere profits but
a shit load of profits and judging by the financial report he had in
his hand QKM was in the hole. A very dark, financial hole. He ran his
fingers through his hair and loosened his tie before he slammed the
report on his desk. He leaned forward and ran his finger on the edge
of the telephone before he finally pressed the intercom button.

“
Suzie,
get me Proctor and Wells. Now!” He was yelling, even though he
never meant to. He walked over to his mini bar and poured himself a
whiskey, neat. He flashed down the contents of the glass before he
poured himself another glass. He had just put the bottle back down
when he heard a knock on the door. He walked back to his desk as
Micah Proctor and Spencer Wells walked into his office.

“
You
wanted to see us, Mr. Reese?” Spencer asked.

“
Yeah
I did. Come on in guys and explain what the hell those financials
mean,” he said as he put the file in front of the two men from
the accounting office. He took a seat and ran his finger around the
rim of the glass. He could feel his heart beating hard in his chest
and he knew that after years of working with his team, Proctor and
Wells knew exactly what he was thinking. “Well?” Daniel
pressed as he took a sip of his drink. He had no idea what kind of
shit storm his question was about to raise. He looked at the two and
wondered what kind of lies the two would cook up.

“
Well,
to be honest Mr. Reese,” Spencer started. “We’ve
been looking into getting more turnover.” Daniel looked at them
and shook his head. That sounded like good news but the way Spencer
was talking made him think that there was something more. “We
might have made the wrong choices as far as stocks are concerned,”
he said. Daniel rubbed his temple and took another sip of his drink.
He could not believe what he was hearing.

“
And
whose idea was this exactly?” he asked. Wells and Proctor
exchanged a knowing glance.

“
Well,
it may have come right from the top,” Proctor said.

“
What
do you mean right from the top? Did my father do this?” Daniel
asked as he looked at the two of them. He noticed the knowing look
between his two accounting guys and rubbed his temple again. “Guys,
if there is anything I need to know, I would like to know right now,”
he said.