Always Mine (The Barrington Billionaires, Book 1) (7 page)

“Then you’ll love the kick to the shin I give you if you don’t return my phone.” Emily held out her hand.

A smile curled one side of his mouth. “You’re a violent little thing when you’re angry, aren’t you?”

Emily took a calming breath and clenched her hands at her side. “Not at all.”

He handed her back her phone. “Only for me? I like that.” He sounded pleased as he straightened and began to usher her out of the plane again.

Holding the phone tightly, Emily raised her chin and walked down the steps onto the tarmac. She wanted to tell him where to go but didn’t. She couldn’t risk throwing away her only chance of convincing him to find an alternate site for his facility. She searched his face for a moment. “I’ll call Mr. Riggins and have him leave the lights on for us. It gets dark early this time of year.”

Asher suppressed a
grin as Emily shifted even farther away from him as they drove down the winding New Hampshire roads. She was still fighting her attraction to him and probably would until after he made his decision regarding her property. He was okay with that. In fact, he was enjoying the spontaneity of their heated exchanges.

“Tell me about Mr. Riggins,” Asher prompted as he wound the car down another mountain road.

Emily turned slightly toward him. “He and his wife are the museum’s caretakers. They are helping to get the building ready for the public as well as helping keep an eye on it when I can’t. They used to live in the adjacent house until your company bought their home. Now they rent a place one town over.”

After meeting Emily, Asher had brought himself fully up to speed on the Welchton project. “They were one of the first to sell. If I remember correctly, they were quite happy with the offer we gave them.”

Emily’s expression remained carefully calm. “There isn’t much work in the area. I don’t blame them for taking the money.”

Asher watched her expression out of the corner of his eye. “Every single buyout ended with the seller’s satisfaction. Some held out for more money, but they all eventually came to an agreement both sides were satisfied with.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Some of those homes had been in families for generations. How do you feel about demolishing history?”

Asher turned his eyes back to the road. “It’s called progress, Emily. For something new to be built, something old must usually be torn down. Although your sentiments are quaint, they aren’t realistic. I offered above market price to your neighbors and they chose money over the history you’re suggesting I put value in. What does that tell you?”

Emily let out a harsh breath. “If you offer a loaf of bread to a starving man in exchange for his soul, who is at fault if he takes it? Him for not choosing the harder road, or you for not offering him another alternative?”

Asher knew it wasn’t the response she was aiming for, but he smiled. Although he didn’t agree with her view on the situation, it was refreshing to be with an intelligent woman with whom he could debate topics. “Your neighbors were hardly starving. What I did was give them a second chance to have a nest egg for retirement or pay for their children to go to college. My company requires a facility in this area. Would you prefer I offered the money to another town? You claim to care about your community, but do you? It seems to me you’re putting your own interests above theirs. They aren’t complaining, but they would be if they were still trapped in homes many of them could no longer afford.”

“That’s what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?”

Asher shrugged and met Emily’s eyes briefly. “It’s the way the world works, Emily. You’re naïve if you don’t see that.”

Emily turned to look out the window again. When she turned back she spoke quietly. “I don’t agree, and there’s nothing heroic or admirable about being jaded.”

“I never claimed to be heroic or asked for your admiration,” Asher said harshly. Their conversation had moved from interesting to uncomfortably personal.

“Wow. What happened to you? Your parents seem like wonderful, caring people. What made you afraid to be the same?”

Asher slammed on his brakes at a stop sign and gripped the steering wheel. “Fear has no place in my life, but you’re right, I’m nothing like my parents.”

Emily clasped her hands on her lap. “Isn’t it sad that’s the first thing we agree on?”

Asher cursed. Their trip wasn’t going at all the way he’d planned it. He’d confidently assumed he would be able to convince her to not only sell, but to spend the rest of the weekend celebrating that decision with him. He saw now that he’d been overly optimistic. Emily wasn’t what he’d expected at all. She wasn’t impressed by his wealth, and she was, by far, the most stubborn woman he’d ever come across. He was used to people retreating from his temper, but Emily wasn’t intimidated. In fact, her reprimand still hung in the air between them. Worse, she looked like she felt sorry for him.

Him.

Emily had evaluated him and clearly found him lacking in certain areas. He didn’t normally put much thought into what others thought of him, but Emily’s opinion mattered. He knew she found him attractive, but with her, he wanted more than that.

As they drove through the area of his proposed facility, they fell into silence. The windows and doors of the homes were boarded up. The lawns were overgrown. The area had the abandoned feel of a ghost town. This was a phase of development Asher had never witnessed in person. He’d read about it in reports. He’d seen photos of areas before the demolition commenced, but he’d never driven through a project site so early on.

He gave himself an internal shake. If he felt anything at all, it was because Emily had planted the idea in him that he should. There was nothing wrong with progress. Change and death were life’s only certainties.

Still, when he glanced over and saw Emily’s sad expression, he gritted his teeth. He felt compelled to say something, but there wasn’t much he could say. They had both made their positions clear.

As soon as he turned onto her street, he was taken aback by the contrast between her property and those around hers. Her building and the park-like lawns that surrounded it looked out of place among the abandoned homes. He parked in the paved lot beside it and walked around the car to open Emily’s door, but she had already let herself out.

Her expression warmed with pride as she looked the building over. “Welcome to the Harris Tactile Museum of Art.” When she turned to look at him her eyes were bright with tears. “We’re finally close to being ready to open.”

He wanted to shake her and tell her to look around. She may not want to see how the area had changed, but she was living in denial. There was a reason most museums were in or around cities. The traffic needed to keep a museum open was simply not there. Seeing the place in person reaffirmed his conviction that relocation was her only option.

As they approached the building, he inspected the exterior. He was well traveled and considered himself difficult to impress, but even in the early darkness of the late winter evening, the details in the molding were master carpentry. Just as Emily had said, the two-story home had been built with such attention to detail that it was surely a piece of art in itself.

They walked up the steps together, and Emily unlocked the front door. Asher expected to walk into a home that was in a chaotic state of renovation. Instead, he was surprised by how far along her museum was. The path that led to a payment booth was flanked by a railing, which displayed several Braille signs. Translations of the signs were posted beneath the Braille. Headsets hung on the wall beside the payment booth.

Emily walked ahead of Asher and touched one of the headsets. “This was one of the more expensive renovations, but we’re working on an audio tour for the entire museum. It includes music and sounds that go along with the mood of each piece of art. All of our senses are important and even more so when one is limited to fewer of them.”

Asher followed Emily through the entrance and down a corridor flanked by large paintings on slanted boards. He stopped at one such station and ran his hand over a self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh. “Amazing.”

Emily stopped beside him and said, “It’s a 3-D print donated to my family while my mother was still alive. The original is in a private collection, but I was able to convince the owner that copying the masterpiece for this medium would only increase its value.”

Asher looked around and asked, “I’m curious. Why are all the paintings in color?”

Emily stepped away and Asher followed. “There is a wide spectrum of blindness. Many people are visually impaired but can still see color. This allows them to connect what they feel to what they’re able to see.”

They walked down the main hall together. Off to one side, Asher spotted a room of paintings that were all in one color. He nodded toward it and Emily led the way inside. “My mother painted these. They’re an entirely different medium. 3D computer prints take the work of a sighted person and make it accessible for the blind. My mother was blind. Her works were her attempts to give everyone access to how she envisioned the world.”

Asher hesitated. Knowing that her mother had created it, and what it represented, gave the experience an emotional depth he wasn’t comfortable with.

Emily studied his face for a long moment then said, “Close your eyes.”

Asher didn’t like that she seemed aware of his level of discomfort. “How many paintings did your mother create?” he asked to distract her.

Emily took one of his hands beneath hers and placed it on one of the paintings. She moved his hand back and forth over the texture of the paint. “Focus on this one. You won’t understand what she did unless you let yourself experience it.”

Reluctantly, Asher closed his eyes. At first all he could think about was Emily’s touch, her nearness, how much just being next to her made him want her. With his eyes closed, he was more aware of how close she stood beside him, the sweet smell of her shampoo.

“What do you feel?” she asked.

Asher held back his first answer and attempted to concentrate on the painting. The painting was layered with many different lines and textures that at first made no sense to him. Slowly, though, an image began to take shape in his mind. Part of the painting was raised in a way that reminded him of sand. It brought back a memory of a lake his parents used to own a home on. The smooth circles of paint reminded him of the rocks he’d skip across the water. There were other details he couldn’t describe precisely, but they felt familiar to him. The more he ran his hand across the painting, the more vividly he could recall being on that beach until he could have sworn Emily’s mother had painted his memory. Even though he doubted he was correct, he asked, “Is it a sandy beach by a lake?”

Emily’s hand tightened on his. “There’s a pond behind our property that has a beach. We spent a lot of time there when I was young. My mother loved to hunt for the perfect rocks to throw in. She swore different shapes made different sounds. I could never hear the difference. I preferred flat, smooth rocks I could skip across the water. That memory comes alive for me when I touch that painting, and it’s an emotional experience for me.”

Asher opened his eyes and tore his hand from the painting. He wasn’t ready to admit it had done the same for him. “Interesting.”

Emily ran her hand over her mother’s work again. “My mother was gifted. She was able to capture the essence of what she’d never experienced visually and do it in a way that connected with everyone who touched her work. People need to feel what she was capable of. Not just visually impaired people. Everyone. She taught me that life is full of challenges, but it’s what we do with those challenges that can be truly beautiful.”

Asher cleared his throat. He hadn’t understood true beauty until that moment. As he looked down at Emily he saw purity and goodness, inside and out. It was a realization that made it difficult for him to reconcile how he felt about her museum with the reality of its fate.

At best the whole building could be relocated. Even though that option was expensive and complicated, seeing it had proven it was an option worth considering.

“Would you like to see my contributions?” Emily asked with a hopeful smile.

There was an innocence in her smile that gave him pause.
She and I couldn’t be more different. It takes so little to make her smile, and I’m nearly impossible to please. A woman like that should be with someone less jaded than I am.

What am I doing here?

He nodded and followed her into an adjacent room that was filled with sculptures of animals and people. Some were recognizable copies of famous sculptures; some were not. Emily walked over to a bust of a woman. “This is my grandmother. It’s not my best work because it was one of my earlier ones. My grandmother died giving birth to my mother, but I used old photos to make this. My mother cried for a whole week after I gave this to her. She said they were happy tears. I knew then that I had found what I wanted to do. There are now 3D printers that can create similar sculptures from photos and those will be part of my museum one day, but people can do something computers can’t—we can see another person’s true essence. I like to think my mother cried because I allowed her to see her mother’s soul.”

Asher was a man rarely at a loss for words, but when he saw how Emily’s eyes had misted over with emotion, he pulled her to his chest and hugged her quietly.
Fuck.

A moment passed, then two. Asher expected Emily to pull away from him, but she didn’t. His heart was beating wildly in his chest, and he wondered if she could hear it. He looked down at her and gave in to the impulse he’d fought all day. He kissed her lightly on the mouth.

It was a kiss unlike any he’d experienced. There was passion in it, but when her lips moved eagerly against his, he felt more. He tasted her sadness, her vulnerability, but also her determination and fire. He brought his hands up to cup her face and kissed her gently. She arched against him, opening her mouth to him, and he knew then she would be more to him than a weekend fling.

He broke off the kiss and rested his chin on top of her head. The only sound in the room was their ragged breathing.