Chapter 24
?
This is exactly why I’m in love.
Damion
“Dating,” I echo, heart launching into my throat.
“Dating?” Forrest asks, because I forgot I was on the phone with him the second Mirabelle burst into my office with that single word on her lips. “Ah, well. I suppose we could, buddy. Just for fun, though. I’m not looking for marriage or an—”
I hang up on him, sit up straighter, and lace my fingers together atop my desk.
Mirabelle’s blue gemstone eyes flick from my face to the phone I’ve discarded and widen.
Stepping back toward the steps leading out, she hesitates, arms full of mysterious wonderful sheets of paper.
“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t knock.” She looks at the door behind her.
“I completely forgot to knock. You work in here.” Her face pales. “I am already messing this up.”
“No. No, no.” I rise to my feet, round the desk, and approach her, so I can catch her just in case she tries to make a break for it. “The great part about being a billionaire is literally nothing is ever messed up. No one else is ever more important.”
Terror in her face when she looks up at me, she says, “Everyone’s important. Always. People are important.”
“I just mean…you can’t ruin anything. I can call anyone back, and they’ll get over it, because I’m probably paying them well.”
“What about business partners? Other billionaires?”
“All the other billionaires I associate with would understand.”
She crinkles the papers in her arms.
“What…were you going to say about dating?” I ask.
Fortifying herself with a deep breath, Mirabelle offers me the stapled sheets she’s holding. “I made a plan.”
Be still my heart.
“First,” she says, after my shaking fingers have secured the plan, “we’ll go out to dinner at your soonest convenience.
I’ve reviewed local restaurants on page two and listed them, taking into account the dishes they serve, how they relate to your macro goals, and if there are enough options that satisfy both our palates. ”
Oh swear. Oh curse. Oh Mirabelle.
“Next, we’ll evaluate. I’ve purchased notepads for us to track pros and cons on during our dates. Should any date end with more cons than pros, we terminate the relationship.”
The relationship. With Mirabelle.
“The following date options aren’t in any particular order.
I’ve merely researched and collected a list of activities I wouldn’t mind doing.
You will note they are separated into private and public options.
You may also note that the classic movie is listed under private.
I talk through movies. And I need subtitles.
And that’s the only way it feels like a social activity to me.
Going to a movie and sitting in the dark in silence provides nothing in getting to know someone, so it doesn’t count as a date.
” Business-level appropriate, Mirabelle says, “Proceeding, you will note all guidelines for physical displays of affection are included before the final guideline, which is the relationship termination policy. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, since I hide it so well, but I have issues with rejection.
When, inevitably, you come to realize that this is a horrible idea, I expect you to follow these steps to a tee when you break up with me.
If you can’t agree to that, this ends now.
” Displaying her hand, she says, “If you can, though…may we have an amicable and uneventful relationship.”
I look at her hand, then skim the break-up rules, finding them outlined in such detail that there is a flow chart.
Have I made a fool of myself?
Yes.
Does it damage your reputation?
No.
May I continue working for you?
I flip the page, and find another flow chart, specific to deciding whether or not we should continue dating, period.
Do you hate me?
No.
Do you think you might come to hate me?
No.
Have I annoyed you more than a reasonable (2) number of times within the bounds of the past excursion?
No.
I guess we can continue dating.
I press my lips together and glance at Mirabelle’s stern expression above her extended hand.
Clearing my throat, I flip the pages, toward the middle. “Can we circle back to the PDA section before we shake on this?”
Her face blooms red as she lowers her hand. “Of course. I’ve recorded comfort levels and how they relate to public and private spaces.”
That she has. Very clearly, even.
“No kissing?” I ask.
Her hands find a home behind her, tangled in her apron straps. “On the lips.”
“Yes, I see that distinction. Does that mean I can kiss you not on the lips?”
“That information is included.”
Ah, so it is.
In private, anywhere but the lips is free real estate. The reason is not included. “Fully agreeable,” I say, “but might I be privy as to why?”
Her eyes dart strictly off me. “Despite previous displays of poor judgment and idiocy…I…would like to wait for marriage, please.”
“To kiss?”
She lifts her dainty chin. “It is not a matter I am willing to compromise on.”
My head shakes. “No, no. I would never ask you to. I’ve just…not heard about that before.”
“I’m messed up,” she says. “Not because of this decision. Just…my general state of being is messed up, and that led me to this decision. I don’t trust easily.
I put a lot of weight into what most people consider small.
Everything—everything—you have done to me lingers in my brain, on repeat.
I can’t shake any of it. But I can at least fool myself a little because the touches you’ve given me haven’t been the big ones that society has rammed into my head as important.
For the sake of my sanity, I’d like to keep the firsts I’m most likely to cry about off the table until there’s a sense of permanency. ”
“That’s perfectly reasonable and makes exceptional sense.”
A tiny breath leaves her as she seems to ease fractionally. “Thank you for understanding.”
I let the pages all fall back into place. “Am I right in assuming I am your first serious relationship?”
Eyes remaining squarely off me, she says, “Yes.”
“Am I also right in assuming it is the first you have approached authentically as yourself?”
A small breath trembles through her chest as it enters her. Soft, she says, “Yes.”
“I’m honored to have been trusted this far.”
“I don’t trust you,” she says, eyes flicking to and from me for half a second. “I just…want to.” Lifting her hand, she waits. “Do we have a relationship? Or do you need a moment to review the break-up charts already?”
Clasping her hand, I reel her in until I can circle her in my arms and nestle my forehead against hers. Breathing in the frantic exhale she releases, I let her warmth flow through my limbs. “I love you, Mirabelle.”
She tenses, then jerks and tries to get free. “Wha— Tha— We just started. Except, no we didn’t! Because you didn’t reply. I said, do we have a relationship; you said, I love you. That is NOT a reply!”
I chuckle at the way she made her voice deep to sound like me.
She fights me. “Don’t laugh now! I am in distress! What do you mean you love me? You can’t love me! You don’t know me! We haven’t begun the getting to know one another dating portion of our relationship, which hasn’t started yet at all, due to the non-answering!”
I hum as I snuggle. “I fear it’s too late for me already, precious. Everything you do, all of this planning and devotion to what you set your heart to, has me smitten. I’m so happy that you’re giving us a chance.”
The fighting leaves her, and her hands ball into fists in my shirt. “It’s…not annoying?”
“It’s peace incarnate. I don’t need to guess. Your honesty and sincerity is comforting.”
She shivers. “So…we have a relationship?”
“Yes, love.” I kiss her hair. “We do.”
Minutely, she settles in, closer. “I… I don’t want to be called your girlfriend. I’m not a girl. I’m a woman. But womanfriend sounds stupid. Please refer to me as your lover.”
A swear hisses through my brain in response to that. “Okay.”
“And…I like flowers, but I don’t like them for holidays.
I like food gifts that I can make. Like those jars with all the dry ingredients already in them and the recipe on a ribbon around the lid.
I also really like fancy chocolate. But I don’t want you to go all billionaire on me with anything.
Just regular little things. No more million and one dollar crowns.
” She pushes back and looks up into my eyes.
“However, an exception, if we last long enough for it to make sense, you may absolutely go billionaire on me and build me a library. I like romance. No-to-low spice. Do not trust Lynn or Leeann’s recommendations. They read some wild stuff.”
I smile and watch the way it causes her entire being to relax. “Got it.”
Slow, careful, she slips her touch up my chest, to my face, and cups my jaw. Half-dazed, she asks, “And…you?”
“Me?”
“I don’t have billionaire money, but you are paying me well.
Do you like flowers? Chocolate? Do you have any rules about gifts?
I’m specific about them because I grew up not understanding that I was supposed to pretend to be happy when I got something I didn’t like.
I got in trouble for it a lot. Called ungrateful.
Even when I said I was grateful for the thought, but they could return it and get their money back because I’d never use it. ”
I laugh. “You said that, huh?”
Her cheeks flush. “Well, what else is a seven-year-old supposed to say when she’s given a Barbie doll, instead of a babydoll?”
“Perfectly understandable, yes.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m basking in how kind you’ve always been. I would have asked that they return the gift and give the money to me, so I could invest it in stocks.” I clear my throat. “Because I did. At least. Several times.”
Her lips part, perfectly round. “You did?”
“Yes.”
“So gifting is a matter of importance to you, too. I need guidelines.”
“I, genuinely, think that any efforts you make for me would be so profoundly wonderful, you could get me a bucket of dirt, and I’d love it for the memory of the thought alone.
From someone I don’t know or care for, a gift I don’t want is a paperweight.
But from you? Paperweights are precious because they are still proof that you thought of me. ”
“So…no guidelines?”
“I am eager to learn what you gravitate toward and the reasoning behind the ways you might think of me.”
Her thumbs move across my cheeks, back and forth, worrying. “Without guidelines, I might go crazy. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“I long to learn.”
“It might be a terrible inconvenience for you. You might have many, many regrets.”
“That’s okay. I have a helpful flow chart to assist me in ascertaining my feelings.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“I think it is so dear I can barely form thoughts about it.” Letting my eyes close, I relish in her nearness.
“You are so dear. I hope, should you learn more about me and decide I’m not what you’re looking for, that I might still be able to show you just how beautiful you are.
Knowing you might leave me and face a world as a shadow of who you can be would only compound the agony of losing you. ”
“You think I might be the one to reject you?” she asks.
“Our history might suggest that is an accurate fear, don’t you think?”
Her gaze lowers. “I don’t know. I don’t make decisions lightly. And I’m very forgiving. Fawn recently horrifically betrayed me, and you know what I did? I went home and made her an overnight breakfast yogurt parfait.”
“And you didn’t even poison it?”
“I put a single blueberry. She doesn’t like blueberries.”
“You monster,” I murmur.
Her gaze slashes to mine. “Well, okay. I put the blueberry in a bag beside the parfait, just in case the flavor would have leeched into it all night. But I wrote on that bag, How dare you.” She mutters, “I’m not a monster…
And she didn’t seem to understand that I was being very mean to her, because she laughed in front of the fridge for a solid three minutes.
” Mirabelle sniffs, adamant. “We’re good now, though. All forgiven.”
“I love you,” I say, again, because I so utterly do not know how else I am supposed to respond to the most adorable woman in the world telling me the most adorable revenge scheme I have ever heard.
She flinches. “Can you stop that?”
“Loving you? No, I don’t think so.”
“Saying it. How am I supposed to respond? The correct response is I love you, too, but it’s too soon to tell, so it’s just awkward.”
I ponder that one a moment, then I say, “Respond with as you should.”
Her nose wrinkles. “As you should? Isn’t that kind of arrogant?”
“I don’t think so. I, personally, believe that loving you should be a standard for all people. It’s merely stating a fact. I love you, as I should. Commend my stating of the obvious. Let’s practice.”
“Ugh,” she mutters.
“I love you, Mirabelle.”
Huffing and eyeing me with judgment rife in her expression, she toys with the words, then—softly and shyly—she says, “As you should.”
The flurry of a smile that follows makes me so desperately wish we weren’t waiting until marriage to kiss.
But, with any luck, we won’t be waiting that long.