CHAPTER FIVE
JENNIFER
“What-” He reaches for it, but I hold the phone behind my back.
“No.”
His mouth quirks up, like he thinks I’m playing. “Jennifer, give me the phone.”
“No.” I end the call, and his eyes widen in shock. “Do you want to die? Because I'm not going to stand here and watch you kill yourself.”
“It's one phone call,” he sputters.
“It's never one phone call!” I’m talking too fast and too loudly, but yet I can’t stop. “It's one call, then one email, then one quick video meeting, and then suddenly you're back to a hundred hours a week and your heart gives out.”
My eyes burn with angry tears. The past and the present blur together, and all the emotion I couldn’t process as a child comes out now, leaving me panting. I couldn’t do anything then, but I certainly can now. “Is that what you want?”
“Of course not, but-”
“Then stop.” I'm shaking now, I realize. My hands tremble as I grip his phone. “You have people for this. You said so yourself. Let them do their jobs.”
He sighs. “It's not that simple.”
“Yes, it is.” I step closer, still holding his phone hostage. “You are not indispensable, Seth. Your company will survive without you micromanaging every deal. But you know what won't survive? You. You won't survive if you keep doing this.”
He stares at me, and I can see the war happening behind his bright blue eyes. The need to fix it, to control it, to make it right. The CEO, who always has the answer, always has the solution.
And underneath that, something else. Fear.
“I don't know how to stop,” he says quietly. “I've been doing this for so long. It's who I am.”
“No.” I set his phone down on the dresser, out of reach. “It's what you do. It's not who you are.”
His chest rises and falls rapidly. “Then who am I?”
The question is so raw, so lost, that it cracks something open in my chest.
“I don't know yet,” I say honestly. “But I'd like to help you find out.”
He looks at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, the tension starts to drain from his shoulders. He takes a breath, deep and deliberate, like he was doing during yoga.
“Okay,” he says finally.
I gasp, feeling the spiraling emotions abruptly drain out of me and leave me lightheaded. “Okay?”
“Okay.” He looks at his phone on the dresser, then back at me. “You're right. I have a COO. I have a whole team of people I employ. I need to trust them.”
I swallow hard. “And if it falls apart?”
“Then it falls apart.” He runs a hand through his damp hair. “Better to lose a deal than lose my life, right?”
“Right.”
We stand there in his bedroom, the morning sun streaming through the windows, and something shifts between us. Something deeper than attraction or chemistry.
This is the moment it hits me that there is no turning back.
I’m going to mother-hen him, and nag him, and do whatever I can to help him.
Not because he's handsome or rich or pays me well.
But because he's trying and underneath the CEO armor, he's just a man who forgot how to live, and he's fighting to remember, and it’s something that maybe we can figure out together. Because I care. I care a lot more than I should about a man that I met only a few short days ago, but I can’t imagine not caring.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
I grin to hide just how overwhelmed I am at the depth of my feelings. “For yelling at you?”
“For caring enough to yell at me.” His hand comes up to cup my face, and my breath catches at both his unexpected touch and the warmth in his eyes. “No one's done that in a long time.”
“Maybe they should have,” I whisper.
“Maybe.” His thumbs stroke my cheekbones, and inside I’m quaking. “I'm glad you're here, Jennifer.”
“Me too.”
He slowly leans down, giving me time to pull away. I don't. His lips brush mine, soft and questioning, and I rise on my toes to meet him.
The kiss is everything I dreamed it could be. And yes, I’ve done a lot of dreaming and fantasizing about kissing Seth. It’s a crazy and wrong and completely unattainable thing to want, yet here we are, his lips on mine, so guess maybe it wasn’t such a farfetched thing after all.
His mouth moves firm and sure over my lips with unbelievable gentleness. When his tongue lightly sweeps over my lower lip, I open to him and wrap my arms around his neck as his tongue slides against mine.
He’s so hard, all over, as my body molds to his and the kiss deepens. Need and want twirl in my lower belly as my core heats up. I could happily kiss Seth forever, but all too soon it ends, and he pulls back.
His eyes are clearer than I've seen them, as pure blue as the lake behind the cabin.
“So,” he says with a grin curving his lips. “You were going to clean. I should probably shower. And then maybe we could take a walk? The doctor said movement is good for me.”
It takes me a moment to understand his words. And another second or two to switch gears from the hope that he would toss me on the bed behind us and we’d spend the afternoon making love to the thought of taking a walk with him. But slow is good. Despite what the throbbing in my clit says.
I smile back. “A walk sounds perfect.”
An hour later, we're on the trail that winds around the lake. Seth is pointing out different types of trees, and I'm pretending I can tell a Douglas fir from a Ponderosa pine.
“You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?” he asks, amused.
I grin. “Not even a little bit. They're all just trees to me.”
He laughs, and it makes me smile even more. “Fair enough. I'll stop the nature lesson.”
“I don't mind,” I say shyly. “You light up when you talk about things you know.”
His head tilts to the side. “I light up?”
“Yeah. Your whole face changes.” I glance at him, at the way the sunlight catches in his dark hair. “It's nice. You should do it more often.”
We walk in comfortable silence for a while, the only sounds our footsteps on the packed dirt trail and the distant call of birds.
“Can I ask you something?” I say finally.
“Anything.”
“Why did you do it? Push yourself that hard? You had to know it wasn't healthy.”
He's quiet for so long I think he won't answer.
When he does, we both pause. “Because I was good at it. Building the company, making deals, and turning a profit. I was exceptionally good at it. And when you're good at something, people expect you to keep doing it. To do it better. More. Faster.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was. But it was also...” He pauses, searching for the word. “Validating. Every success proved I mattered. That I was worth something.”
Here is a man worth billions, and yet he feels worthless. My heart breaks at his words and that he could honestly believe that. “You know you matter without the company, right?”
He glances at me, and there's something vulnerable in his expression. “I'm starting to.”
My chest feels tight. I reach for his hand without thinking, threading my fingers through his, and then tense up at my impulsive action. My nervousness eases when he squeezes my fingers and holds my hand.
We continue walking, hand in hand, and then I can’t help sneaking a sideways peek at him and saying, “For what it's worth, you matter to me.” I rush on before I can lose my nerve. “Not your company. Not your money. You.”
He stops walking and turns to fully face me, his gaze moving over me slowly. “Jennifer.”
A pit forms in my stomach at the husky way he says my name. “Yeah?”
“I'm going to kiss you again.”
Warmth explodes in me, and it’s all I can do not to throw myself into his arms. “Okay.”
This kiss is different from the one in his bedroom.
Deeper. More certain. His hands frame my face, and I grip his shirt, and for a moment the whole world narrows to just this moment in time.
The taste of him, the warmth of the sun on my head and shoulders, and the gentle sounds of the lake lapping at the shore.
When we finally break apart, we're both breathing hard.
“We should probably head back,” he says, but he doesn't move.
My tongue glides over my lips, tasting him there and longing for more. “Probably.”
I continue staring at him like a lovesick fool until a faint gurgling growl splits the air. Seth’s cheeks pinken, and I grin. He insisted on not having breakfast.
“Sounds like you’re ready for lunch,” I tease.
“I guess so.” He stares at me, looking uncertain and boyish with his short black hair tousled by the slight breeze. “When you eat with me?”
“I'd like that.”
We walk back hand in hand, and I try not to think about the fact that I'm falling for a man who's going to leave in three weeks and go back to his real life while I remain here living my much less glamourous and unexciting one.
But when we reach the cabin and he pulls me close for one more kiss before we go inside, I push those unpleasant thoughts away.
Right now, at this moment, he's here. He's trying and choosing to live.
And I'm choosing to be part of that, however long it lasts.