Reckless Hearts: A Billionaire Romance (14 page)

"Why do you think I always get what I want in the end? Everyone treats it like a foregone conclusion, so it happens. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Part of the aura of Mr. X," he said. I detected a scoff in there, and I wondered if he didn't find that whole alter ego tiring and trite. He used it because it served its purpose, that was all.

What is my purpose? And have I served it yet?
I looked at him in the darkness, the moonlight spilling over the top halves of our bodies, and couldn't discern the answer.

"So why did you do it, then?" I said.

"Because it made him happy. It's funny what you'll do to make the people close to you happy. I did it as long as I could, but it was never meant to last. So I left, and then he did, too."

That heart of his hammered harder.

"You think it's your fault?" I said. I started thinking of how I could make it better for him, surprised at the speed the urge came over me with. I realized that this was another of his secrets, that this room contained the only two people who knew the truth.

"I wonder, sometimes. But I have no regrets. I made the choices I had to make to be the person I wanted to be, to control what I wanted to control. Do you have an answer to my question, yet?"

I liked being close to him, learning about him. My mind kept tracking again and again to his solidity, his physical perfection. That fire in me, burnt almost to embers before, flared up again.

I nuzzled at the side of his neck, nipped at his earlobe. My hand drifted lower down his body. He didn't stop me. He was ready again almost as soon as I touched him.

"I have one other question, actually." Anything to postpone answering the one he put to me.

"What?" he said.

"Do you want me again?"

He did.

I
wanted to spend all day with him out at that cottage. In the daylight I saw it was secluded, the lake stretching away to the far shore. In front the narrow gravel road passing for a driveway and tall pines curtaining the place from the road.

A narrow pier struck into the water like a solitary wooden finger. It bobbed while I watched, a small boat tied up near the end.

I wondered what it would look like during winter, the ground covered in a blanket of white, the green boughs of the trees still showing no matter how cold and snowy it became.

A nice big fire roaring and crackling, splashing its yellow-orange light onto that shag rug. That sounded nice.

"It's my lake," Owen said when I asked him why no I couldn't see any neighboring houses or jetties along the shore.

We had fallen asleep on that shag rug and I woke up sore pretty much all over. I showered and when I dried myself and came out Owen had bacon crackling on the range and coffee brewing in its pot.

Needless to say, the place smelled great. Sometimes I believe that the true way to a person's heart, man or woman, was some nice, crispy bacon offered without having to ask.

"The whole thing?" I said, gobbling down my last slice of bacon and licking my fingers clean after. We sat at the breakfast island in the kitchen, a view of the pier and lake coming in through the window over the sink.

"What's the point of having all this money if it doesn't get me what I want?" he replied. He smiled at the way I cleaned my fingers. When I caught his expression, heat burned in my cheeks and I dropped my hands to my lap.

I still couldn't quite believe what happened not so many hours ago.
Happened twice
, the ache inside me reminded.

"I think the point people usually make is to have as much of it as they can. The more the better," I said, remembering my outburst at his keynote.

"Ah, the person with the biggest Swiss bank account at the end wins, right?" Owen said, taking a sip from his coffee and then setting the mug back down.

It started in the back of my mind, an irritating little voice that refused to shut up, refused to step off its soap box.

Owen was different, though. I just knew it.

Is he, though? Is he really? Wait and see.
"Something wrong?"

"Hmm?" I said. I looked down at my plate, saw how I'd been pushing a few crunchy bacon crumbs around on it.

"You got distracted there for a second. What were you thinking?"

I smiled, reaching out and putting my hand on his thigh. He'd changed into a pair of khakis when we got up that morning. "About how nice it would be to stay here. I bet it's beautiful in the winter. Is it?"

I didn't think he believed it, but he nodded anyway. "It is."

"Why don't you tell me more about yourself?" I said, "You keep leaving me hanging."

He took my hand off his thigh and got up, collecting our plates and putting them in the sink. They clattered against the stainless steel.

"You keep avoiding my question. Do you have an answer yet?" He waited. My silent pause didn't end. "You don't get any more answers until I get the one I'm waiting for."

"What if I can't answer?" I said, brushing my hair back over my ear.

"I'll get one out of you, sooner or later." He checked the time on the clock by the doorway to the back porch. "I should get you back to campus. I wouldn't want you to miss a lecture and jeopardize that grant."

"I..." I started, but I couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't say it out loud.
I don't care about school. I don't care about that stupid grant. Can't you see?

I did care, though. Up until a couple weeks ago, there hadn't been a single more important thing to me than school and that grant.

Who am I, now?
I caught a hint of that existential dread associated with first year philosophy students. It broke into me like a cold draft breaks in through an un-insulated window.

I didn't know the answer to that question anymore. What I had thought was bedrock beneath my feet turned out to be ice rotting in the springtime sun. And it started cracking, the sound of it a gunshot in my head.

"You either won't admit the answer or you don't believe it," Owen said. He stomped out of the kitchen and I heard him snatch his jacket down off the hook beside the front door.

I followed him, a seething sensation filling my stomach. "And what about you?" I said, speaking the question to his back while he looked out the window at the Corvette.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said, not looking at me.

"How can you be so certain that this is what you want? Do you like the person it makes you? Have you been having sleepless nights, too? How does your board of directors feel about that?"

He spun around. "They feel however I tell them to feel."

"Because God forbid you ever lose the smallest measure of control over something in your life. But you have, haven't you?"

"No."

"Really? Because let me tell you, I've lost plenty of control. And it scares me. This scares me."

I went and grabbed my jacket, too, pulling it on like a suit of armor and zipping it all the way to my chin even though I didn't need the warmth. There was enough of that inside me.

"Don't you ever wonder if maybe it would have been better for both of us if I never put my hand up during that little surprise Q&A? This is dangerous, for both of us."

He shook his head, wrenching the door open and letting it slam against the stop. "You ask so many damn questions. Maybe you should start answering some of them yourself."

He stalked out onto the porch, hitting a button on his key fob and making the Corvette beep.

I marched across, grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. Standing on the first step down like that put his eyes on level with mine. "Like what?"

His face clouded, flushing a deep red and I thought for a second that he might get violent. No one ever spoke to him like this, I knew. No one ever grabbed him and confronted him.

He didn't get violent, though. He grabbed me and kissed me before I could stop him. Then he let me go. "Like maybe asking yourself what you're so afraid of? Is it me? Or is it you?"

"You're full of yourself." That kiss had me tingling down to my toes, but he didn't need to know that. I crossed my arms, cinching them tight to my ribs.

"If you want that ride, get in the car before I change my mind."

I began refusing, but a sliver of sense returned to me. I didn't know where I was or how to get back. I could try the shuttle service, but didn't really have an address to give them. And I didn't know if they'd take GPS coordinates.

So I got in that car. As I sat down and pulled the door shut, I noticed the long scratch across the hood and remembered the way Owen had slid across it, too eager to walk around it.

Good,
I thought,
It's a stupid car anyway.

The mental barb didn't feel as good as I thought. In fact, I kind of regretted thinking it.

Not enough to try and smooth things over, though. He sat in the car, the suspension shaking as it caught his weight.

Neither of us spoke the whole way back. I half expected him to try and kill us in a curve again, but he didn't.

Wondering how I could be all wanting him one moment and telling him I wanted nothing to do with him the next, most likely. Maybe wondering if I was worth all this effort, wondering if maybe this whole shebang was a mistake.

Coldness filled the pit of my stomach when the thought occurred to me that maybe he agreed with all those things I just said to him.

He dropped me off at the edge of campus. I stood on the curb, looking down the road. The rotunda of the amphitheater poked out over the tree canopy, and the windows of my dorm apartment a bit farther on.

I don't know if it was my mood, but the air had more of a bite to it, the breeze cool enough to be unpleasant against the back of my neck.

"Is this goodbye, then?" I asked. I wished it was and wasn't at the same time, my mind struggling with the dichotomy. The Corvette rumbled beside the curb, the passenger window down.

"Always more questions and never any answers," Owen said. "You're going to have to wait to learn the answer to that one."

He peeled out before I could come up with a good retort, the 'vette's back tires screaming and leaving twin patches of rubber on the road. It also left an acrid scent in the air.

I got back to my room, intent on going to change out of my walk-of-shame clothes and to take a swing at getting into the right headspace for the day.

Then I saw the message light blinking on my phone.

It couldn't be Owen. I'd been with him all night.

I pressed the play button. It wasn't him.

"Miss Chambers, I'm calling on behalf of President Peabody. He'd like to speak with you today. Your schedule says that you're free between 1:00 and 2:00 this afternoon. Please come in as soon as possible after your lecture."

I found it kind of creepy that they checked my schedule. The president's office had that information, yeah, but having something and using something are two different things.

It reminded me of a doctor checking out your x-ray slides. Violating in some way I couldn't quite comprehend

"What now?" I said to myself. Unlike the message from Owen, I didn't play this one again. I didn't want to. Nothing like a call to the principal's office to ruin the day.

So I changed, wondering while I pulled my shirt down and stuck my legs into my jeans what he might want to talk about.

I had been operating under the idea that nothing had come of my little embarrassing outburst at Owen's speech. The speech was more than a couple weeks gone by now, and I also figured Owen told them not to give me any trouble over it.

So what, then? The Dean's list? I was already on that. Something to do with the Duvall Grant? That was all sorted out months ago.

What, then?

Wondering about that gave me a reason not to think about Owen and everything that came with him. For a few blessed minutes before I went to class, I thought of nothing but school-related things.

It was a return to form, but also different. Like the first time you go home when you start college and you realize that your parents' house is just that, a house. Not your home. Even though it still is.

It was that feeling that something fundamental had changed in your life, but you just weren't quite sure yet what.

I hated it. I hated not knowing, not having a clear picture of my destination or even a map telling me how to get there.

Bah, he ruins everything
, I thought, slinging my messenger bag over my shoulder, its textbook-laden weight no longer comforting.

The lecture went smoothly enough. I did enough reading heading before all this started to carry me. But I knew the end to my breathing room approached.

And then I'd be, sin-of-sins,
behind
. That was a path I thought far behind me. Yet here it was, the sign by the road warning of a fork up ahead.

"That's all for now. Remember to start studying for your midterms now, people. They come up faster than you think," Professor Renwick said from the front of the lecture hall.

He had a mustache the same black as his hair, a pair of aviator frame glasses, a pull-down vest, and the most knowledge on third-world economics of anyone I'd met or read.

"Miss Chambers? Please come down to the front of the room for a moment," he said.

There were only 14 other students in this class. Like I said, small, elite school. They all looked at me while they packed their notes away.

I went down to the front of the room, a nervous tickle at the back of my throat. "Yes, professor?"

He pulled a small note from his vest pocket. "President Peabody wanted me to remind you to see him straight away.

"Oh, that. Yeah, of course. I hadn't forgotten."

"Good. And good work so far this term. I hope it's a trend that continues." He left the rest hanging in the air. The rest being the part about he hoped whatever trouble I was in didn't get in the way of my studies.

Again, another question I couldn't answer. And the mystery of the summons intensified.

"I guess we'll see on the midterm," I said. I tried sounding confident, like the student I used to be.