Blackmailed by the Billionaire Brewer
Page 47“Not until you give my baby some tasty tuna.”
His baby? “She has perfectly good food as directed by the vet, stuff that has the right balance of nutrients.”
He ran Aspen’s tail through his fingers. “That European guy? He was good, I liked him.”
“You did?”
“Sure, he went over and above the call of duty seeing us that night. Look at her tail now, it’s perfect, you’d never know. What was his name again?”
“Uvi, that was his name, I think. I’ve got the vet documentation around here somewhere…” She realized he was doing it again, side-tracking her, making himself too comfortable in that armchair. “Matt, why are you here? Really? Besides the cat.”
“The cat has two names, you said to me once. You should use at least one.”
Exasperation made her voice rise a pitch. “Okay, but it’s not good for me seeing you here again like this, where I live, after everything that happened—”
“Do you love me?”
Her skin rippled all over, every inch of it. That was the most loaded, lethal sentence she’d ever heard a human being say and she was expected to answer it. Was he playing games with her, setting a cruel trap? Revenge for the mean things she’d said to him just before he slung her out of his Porsche? Her jaw quivered. “Do you love me?”
“Do you need to ask?”
“Actually, yes. You disappeared into nowhere two weeks ago after telling me to get the fuck out of your stupid car. Oh, and your life.” She gestured with her hands that she was waiting for an answer to that.
She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “Figures.”
“I was stupid, a shit, a total fuck up around you. Will that do?”
“There are some more words I could add to that list.”
“But I’m not that guy now. Not anymore.”
“No, of course you’re not.” She pushed herself up from the chair and crossed her arms over her chest—even he should be able to pick up on such blatant body language. “I’m not an idiot, Matt, I’ve been down this bad behavior/remorse, baby-I-love-you-really route before with Stan and it sucks. I won’t do it anymore, and I’m warning you now that I’ve had some martial arts training so don’t think you can outstay your welcome when I insist it’s time for you to go.”
He whistled through his teeth. “Training, huh? You have been busy in the last couple of weeks.”
“I thought it was necessary.”
“Maybe you could give me your tutor’s number. I could use some distraction. Five-mile runs are getting kind of boring every day.”
She laughed harshly, trying not to picture all six-foot-plus of Matt DeLeo pounding the streets, building up a sweat. “She works us really hard. I’m not sure you could keep up.”
“A she?”
“Yes, she.” He was sucking her in again and it had to stop. “You should go now. I’ll feed the cat, I promise. The kittens are asleep, and I don’t want them disturbed. Please go.”
That phantom horse kicked her in the chest again. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Probably. So will you?”
“You don’t even know what marriage means. It goes against every aspect of how you like to live your life. To you, it’s just an empty word, a word that men throw around sometimes to get their own way. To con women into thinking that they care about more than just getting them into bed.”
He nodded awkwardly. “Okay, how about it meaning that two people realize they love each other so much that they can never replace each other. It means that they die a little every time they have to be apart. It means they suddenly want to do crazy stuff together like buy property and have babies and they want the whole world to know so they tie themselves to each other legally?”
“Until they suddenly think a divorce would be the next logical step. Or one of them just runs away?”
“And marriage is forever.”
“Forever.”
His hands fisted. “That’s what I think, anyway.”
“So what happened to the guy who burned his neck tie, has no fixed address, and freaks out if he collects as much as a handful of postcards? No commitment, no pets, no stuff: that’s who you are, Matt. You can’t do it.”
He shook his head. “Sit back down and listen.”
“I already have and your five minutes is over—”
There was real feeling in that one word, and her knees suddenly felt weak. She flopped back into the chair. “Five more minutes, that’s all.”
“I freaked out on our last day, you’re right. The things you said in the car cut deep, but that’s because they were true and I couldn’t handle it. I’d been fighting with myself for weeks about my feelings for you and knew I had to do something, but I always seemed to be one step behind reality. I wasn’t ready to let you go and stupidly thought that something would happen at midnight to make everything feel better, that I wouldn’t care anymore.”
“Like magic?”
He nodded. “So I ran off. I didn’t even turn up to the launch.”
“You’re kidding me?” Shock hit her between the eyes and made her feel dizzy. He’d felt that strongly? “But that launch meant so much to you, your baby—”
“It didn’t mean nearly as much to me as what I’d just lost. What I’d thrown out of my car onto the sidewalk in a childish tantrum.” He hunched down in front of her so that their eyes were level. “I was also angry, raging with myself, hating so many things, and I decided it was time to go to Boston, to get answers from my mom and to hurt her as much as she and my dad hurt me. To show her that I made good even though they screwed up my childhood and left me with a fucked-up brain.”
“Oh…”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was just lashing out and buying a plane ticket into another dead end, another dark place that I’d have an excuse to leave and never go back to. I intended that trip to be closure, that me and Mom and Boston would be over, as if my childhood never happened.”
“More magic?”
“More magic, yes, but this time it was really there, Piper, because things got fixed. It was different. Mom was…Mom was like a mom to me. No harsh words, just open arms and…”