Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IVY
The door clicks shut behind us, and the air in the guest cottage instantly changes.
The silence isn’t empty anymore; it is heavy with everything we didn’t say during the two-hour performance we’d given in the gala tent.
The roar of the helicopter and the blinding spotlights of the stage are gone, replaced by the scent of Brooks’s expensive sandalwood soap and the rhythmic, mocking tick of the clock on the mantel.
My body is still humming with a jagged, electric adrenaline, but beneath it, I am starting to shatter.
I am still windblown and disheveled from a frantic helicopter ride that cost more than my first three cars combined.
I am a foreign object in this room of mahogany and cream silk, a "Fixer" who has finally run out of disasters to manage.
Brooks doesn’t move from the door. He’d shed his suit jacket back at the tent, and his white dress shirt is unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the hard line of his throat and the pulse point hammering as fast as mine.
He is looking at me with an intensity that makes my lungs feel like they’ve been vacuum-sealed.
“I’m crashing, Brooks,” I admit, my voice a low, rough rumble that feels like it is being dragged over gravel. “The adrenaline is leaving the building, and I think it’s taking my ability to stand with it.”
I force my feet to move, my heavy boots thudding softly on the floor as I walk toward the kitchenette. I stop at the mahogany table, the site of our most clinical negotiations, and stare.
The table is bare, save for one thing.
Gleaming under the soft, yellow light of the kitchen lamp is the ring. The emerald-cut diamond looks back at me like a sharp, clear eye, a cold, beautiful witness to the worst decision I ever made. Seeing it sitting there alone, exactly where I left it, knocks the air from my lungs.
“Everything is okay,” I whisper, staring at the diamond because I can't bring myself to look at the man standing by the door. "I used ten thousand dollars for a last-minute helicopter charter. It was the most reckless thing I've ever done. But Penelope can't touch you. It's over."
"What's over ... the job?" Brooks asks. I don't have to look up to know he is moving. His footsteps are almost silent on the hardwood floor as he closes the distance between us. “You think this was about a job, Ivy? You think you spent ten thousand dollars of your future to fulfill a contract?”
“I’m a professional,” I say, though the lie feels like ash in my mouth. “I finish what I start.”
He stops inches from me. Heat radiates off him, a physical wall of warmth that makes my knees go weak. He reaches out, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone, his touch so light it is almost a question.
"I don't love you because you're reliable, Ivy," he says, his voice edged with a vulnerability I've never heard from him. "I love you because you are the only real thing in my world. I realized tonight I'd rather be bankrupt and disgraced with you than the King of Wall Street alone."
My chest tightens, then settles into a slow, heavy roll. I finally look at him, seeing the dark, stormy honesty in his eyes. “You’re an idiot, Taylor.”
“I’m your idiot,” he whispers.
He leans in, his forehead resting against mine. The scent of him, scotch, sandalwood, and pure, unadulterated Brooks, floods my senses. I reach up, my hands finding the hem of his dress shirt, needing to feel the reality of the man beneath the suit.
“No more contracts,” I breathe.
“No more contracts,” he promises. “No more management,” he vows.
He captures my mouth in a kiss that isn’t a performance for the board or a strategy for the press.
It is a claim, raw, desperate, and filled with the hunger of eight weeks of pretending we don’t want this.
I make a soft sound in the back of my throat, my fingers tangling in his dark hair as I pull him closer, wanting to dissolve the last few inches of air between us.
Brooks doesn’t stop. He backs me up until my calves hit the edge of the California King.
“Take it off,” he murmurs against my lips, his hands finding the zipper of my leather jacket.
I help him, the rasp of the metal sounding like a final goodbye to the Stand-In.
The jacket hits the floor, followed by my boots, until I am standing before him in my jeans and the thin tank top I'd flown in.
He lifts me onto the bed, his weight following me down until I am pinned beneath the commanding pressure of him.
The balance has tipped, and it isn’t his. He is a man, and I am a woman, and there are no clauses left to hide behind.
"I love you, Ivy Sullivan," he says, looking down at me with an intensity that makes my vision blur.
"You better, Taylor," I gasp, already pulling at his shirt. What follows is a blur of discarded clothes and desperate hands. We move together in the dim light of the cottage, a rhythmic, soul-deep dance that echoes the waves crashing on the shore outside.
It isn't the "biology" he'd claimed before. It is the Main Event I have been waiting for my entire life. Every touch is a revelation, every moan a truth we’ve been suppressing since the night of the thunderstorm.
When we finally shatter together, the force of it leaves us gasping and clinging to each other in the quiet aftershock.
Later, as the moonlight filters through the French doors, casting long, peaceful shadows across the room, Brooks pulls me close against his chest. My skin is cool now, my breathing finally slowing. I look at the emerald-cut diamond sitting alone on the table, catching the moon.
Tomorrow, we will face the press and the board.
We will deal with the Vanderbilts and the headlines.
But tonight, the only thing that matters is his arms around me and the way he kisses the top of my head in his sleep.
He didn’t save his company; he let me save him.
I close my eyes, his heat lulling me toward a sleep that doesn't require a plan.
The Stand-In has done her job so well that she has become the only thing that is real. The contract is over. The job is finished. I am exactly where I am meant to stay.