Devotion - Billionaire Contemporary Romance Novel (27 page)

“It would have been well within her right.” Phillip touched his jaw. 

“Truer words have never been spoken.” Norton closed his eyes, taking in the dimness within the office.  “I also saw that she left with Eliot Watercross,” he added cautiously.

Phillip did not respond.  Instead, he stood from his seat and paced around his desk, exhaling all the words that he could not express through his heavy sigh.  He moved to the panel of windows farthest from his desk and drew up the blinds—an action she always performed whenever she entered his office.  He cast his pensive gaze across the magnificent lakefront that had always comforted him.  “I’ve made a mistake, Norton.  Several mistakes, perhaps.  And now, I fear that I’ve driven her away.”

There was a long pause as both men reflected on the merits of their own private regrets.  “Mistakes are never permanent, my dear boy.  They can always be rectified based on our own admission of them.”

“She may not grant me the opportunity, Norton.”

“The soul of a woman is not leaden like yours, Phillip,” Norton quipped.  “You simply need to make it known to her that you recognize the error of your ways.”

“What if that’s not enough?”

“Phillip—” Norton insisted, rising from the couch like a father challenging his son. “Within matters of business, it is true that money and titles cure all differences.  But within matters of the heart… ” he hesitated, acknowledging that he was treading across fragile terrain, “there is only one cure—and that is the admission of one’s willingness to change.”

The sharp buzz of the phone’s intercom interrupted them.

“Mr. Spears…she’s on her way into the office now, and she’s coming to see you.”

Phillip locked eyes with Norton.  “Thank you, Lucy,” he called to the intercom.

“Don’t let your pride supersede your need for others,” Norton cautioned him.  “For us men, it’s a difficult balance, but the rewards far outweigh the risks.”

Norton slipped on his shoes and hobbled towards the door like he intended to avoid a tempest.  But as he reached for the doorknob, Isabel whisked it open for him.  It was the first time in five years she did not knock. 

“Norton,” she said with surprise.

“Good morning, Isabel.  Wonderful gala.  Congratulations on all your efforts.”

Her eyes shifted onto Phillip, who held her gaze.

“Thank you,” she whispered, like it was a painful memory.

“I shall leave you two now,” Norton said, connecting them both with his foreboding voice. “I can only imagine that you both have much to discuss…”

He closed the door behind him, filling the office with inescapable silence.  Phillip stared at Isabel; he had waited all weekend for this moment—just to see her, just to settle his eyes upon her and have her return his gaze with her dark Spanish eyes. 

Dignified and beautiful
. 

Even after the distress and heartache he had inflicted upon her, she stood before him and held herself like an indomitable queen. 
Always so formal in her black pencil skirt and white button-up Oxford shirt
. 

He could tell it was her blatant attempt to keep things all business and dismiss everything that had happened between them. 
But he had no intention of dismissing it
.  He fixed his eyes on her, wanting her to know it was impossible for him not to look at her now without reflecting on the night they shared on his yacht—a night of pure passion and vulnerability.  She had allowed herself to become the fantasy he never dared to indulge in, not even in his most private moments of thought within the darkest parts of his soul—until that night, when she submitted to his conquest and sealed his fidelity to the one woman who had become the most important thing in his life. 
And she would not leave today until he made her realize it
. 

Isabel edged away from his desk, as if she was gauging whether or not to confront him or simply turn and walk out. 

He would have to be the one to speak first…he
should
be the one to speak first. 

He lowered his eyes and acquiesced.  “Isabel,” he said, hearing how his own voice dropped an octave.  Within his mind, he had rehearsed every word, every glance that he intended to exchange with her; now, that script faded away from his lips as he noted she was conveying her own message through her deliberate distance:
it had all been a shameful mistake
.

“Phillip,” she cut in, then paused, as if she, too, had rehearsed her own script, and needed a moment to mentally consult it before making the leap and pushing out the words. “I’ve come this morning to…deliver you my resignation.”

He seized his eyes upon her.  Like a masterful chess player, he had considered all her possible moves, including what he would say if she attempted to resign.  He knew it was a possibility, and over the weekend, he had checked his phone and email every hour, anticipating the worst with anxious dread.  But he was unprepared for the way her rejection of their professional relationship—and everything else they had mutually shared together—would overwhelm his sense of pride.

He searched her fierce challenging eyes. 
Was there really nothing between them
? 
Nothing worth salvaging?  Nothing worth acknowledging through conversation or even silence
? 
Was she really ready to dismiss the past three weeks of intimacy that had been mutually shared, but never verbally expressed
? 

“Effective immediately,” she asserted.

Suddenly, motivated by a flare of impulsive anger, he pushed back with aggression.              “Surely you must reconsider…your mother, your son—both depend on you and your employment.” 

Phillip stopped, feeling himself reeling out of control.  Nothing about their exchange resembled what he hoped to convey to her.  He had slipped behind the persona of the surly, unforgiving billionaire boss, and it filled him with both security and disgust.

Isabel accepted his disdainful glare, as if it fueled her motivation to forge ahead.  “I’ve accepted a position with Watercross Capital,” she punctuated with finality.

Phillip shut his eyes, as if he had just been shot.  In his youth, he had known a good friend who had caught a stray bullet while hunting in the fields.  His friend described it as a blunt assault to the body, inhibited by surreal shock.  The actual sensation of pain didn’t come until minutes after…when the sight of blood made the disbelief a reality.

“Did you spend the night with him?” he suddenly asked like an accusation.

She glared at him with defiance; her silence confirmed the worst.

Furiously, he swept his hand across his chessboard, scattering the marble pieces like pellets of ice across the hardwood floors.  He saw her flinch, then hold herself firmly in place, deliberately absorbing the full force of his rage.  He clenched his jaw and tightened his fist, tempering his instinct to punch his hand through his glass desk—just to diffuse the searing pain within the depths of his heart.

Five years of their working relationship—his direct mentorship of her career and training—had meant nothing to her. 
Nothing
.  And three nights of their mutual passion and intimacy had meant even less.  He glared at the indifference within her expression, sensing its detachment like a callous stranger.  She was not only rejecting their professional relationship; she was fully and completely rejecting him.

“Please get your things and leave.”  His salty throat was the only evidence of his inability to speak. 

He turned away from her, searching out a distraction to cage the raging violence within him.  Flicking open the blinds, he allowed the flood of light to shower upon them as he listened to his own accelerating breath.  He waited and waited and waited for her response while scanning the skyline.
Her merciless
,
punishing silence
.  It seemed to last an eternity before her heels clicked across the floor and approached his desk to deposit something across its surface.

“The rest of your jewelry I put into a box and left with Lucy.  But this…I wanted to give back to you personally.”

He heard her pause, as though she was waiting for him to turn to face her.  But he refused. Instead, he caught her wounded gaze in the reflection of the window; it was filled with hesitation and penance, as if she was suffering—even more than he—because it was she who was choosing to inflict her punishment upon them. 

“And no…” she said flatly.  “I didn’t spend the night with him.”

Only when he heard the sound of the door, closing behind her, did he drop his head and shut his eyes, releasing the surge of adrenaline trembling his throat and hands. 

He.  Had. Failed
.

He scanned his desk and spotted the familiar sparkling cord of platinum and its modest solitaire diamond—his Christmas gift to her after her first year of working as his assistant. 
A careful, calculated choice
, he remembered.  S
omething simple, but elegant.  Something beyond friendship, but just short of romantic
. It had been purchased as a gesture of gratitude—he had convinced himself at the time—for all the long hours she had granted him that year, when so often they were the last ones to leave the office and the first ones to arrive in the morning. He remembered how she gazed down upon it, even turning away from him, as if she might refuse it.  Then, like a light that illuminated his shadowed heart, she had smiled, offering him the honor of draping it around her neck.  It was the first time she had ever granted him such close proximity to her—close enough to indulge in the scent of lavender in her hair and hint of perfume beneath her shell pink sweater. 
Even back then, she loved blush pink
.  His fingers had wisped across the nape of her neck, briskly, confidently, feeling the velvet tenderness of her skin and the way her sloping shoulders relaxed with his touch. 
She trusted him.
 

Every day after that, she had worn it like an acceptance of his appreciation.  And every time he looked at her, it served as a reminder of her unwavering commitment to him.  During his most grueling days, filled with endless conference calls of legal negotiations and threats of law suits, he would peer at her from across his desk and take comfort in the way she gazed back at him, donning the necklace like an unspoken symbol that she was dedicated to him until the bitter end.

Loyalty and devotion
.

Phillip gripped the necklace in the palm of his hand and dug the hard surface of its diamond into his flesh. 

No, he would not fail
.

“Isabel—” he suddenly hollered out, rushing to the door and throwing it open. “Isabel—” He scanned the desks of his staffers.  They stopped typing and peered up at him with concern, noting the uncharacteristic alarm in the tenor of his voice.

“She went…that way,” Elisa dared to offer, pointing towards the elevators.

Phillip nodded and strode down the hallway, pushing through the glass doors into the reception lounge. 

He locked eyes with Lucy, who frowned, sensing their conflict.

“Out there,” she said with a nod.

He shifted his wild gaze out through the final set of glass doors, and spotted her waiting for the elevators.  This time, he called after her with ferocity. “Isabel—”

She glanced back at him with shining eyes and hesitated as the chimes of the elevator rang.  Then, she slipped through the shutting elevator doors like a fugitive fleeing from her captor.

Phillip bolted after her, jamming his hand through the final sliver of space.  The elevator shuddered with violence as he forced his entrance.  She pressed herself against the farthest wall, daring him to close the separation between them.

His eyes and furious heart accepted her challenge—
he would not let her go so easily
,
not this time
. 

“If you truly have no feelings for me—for us—except hatred and regret, then, yes…I shall accept your resignation and release you from my life forever.  But if you are doing this to punish me…” his voice grew guttural and raw, choked with an uncontrollable surge of emotion, “punish me for the way that I…used you—as you believe is the case—then you are not only punishing me, but you are also punishing yourself.”

The elevator doors closed behind him, forcing his physical proximity to her.  He seized her arm, an insistence for her surrender.  She protested, shutting him out of her view like she intended to shut him out of her heart, refusing to grant him what he wanted—an acknowledgement that she needed him as much as he needed her.

He slowly drew her body against his own; she did not pull away from him.  He grazed his nose along her ear, exhaling his desire for every part of her that she had once permitted him to touch—and pleasure.  The graceful slope of her neck, the tender crease along her collarbone, the sensual curves of her breasts, the supple taste of her lips, the inviting rotation of her hips…Their three nights of passion had been the most intimate, sacred experiences of his life; and perhaps now, she simply needed him to openly confess it.

“If you truly no longer want to accept me in your life, then I shall bid you goodbye and all shall be forgotten.  But if there is a part of you, Isabel…a part of you that I believe consented to—and desired—everything we shared, then know this…”  He pinned her against his chest and pressed his promise against her ear. “I shall not surrender you so easily.”