Devotion - Billionaire Contemporary Romance Novel (29 page)

“Don’t be so fast that you trip and fall down the stairs,” she cautioned him while handing off Phillip’s coat.  Then, she took up Aidan’s blanket off the floor and into her arms. “Where’s your pillow?”

“Ugh!” Aidan slapped his forehead.  “I forgot it.” He started up the stairs again, but she secured him in her arms.

“No… Stop running around.  Stay here and calm down.  I’ll go and get it.  Say good night to Phillip.”

“You’re leaving?” Aidan asked him.

Phillip watched Isabel trudge up the staircase.  “Yes, I believe so.”

Aidan kicked the floor with disappointment. “Is that your monster coat?”

“Yes,” Phillip nodded, slipping it on. “How do I look?”  He outstretched his hands, set his jaw into an overbite, and moaned with menace.

Aidan giggled and spun away.  “I think you look silly.”

“I’m certain you’re right.”

“Are you sure you can’t spend the night?”

Phillip glanced upstairs.  “No, I don’t think that’s possible. Your mother needs her rest.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty sad.  She cries a lot now.”

Phillip eyed the boy. “What do you mean?”

Aidan shrugged. “She says it’s her allergies.”

“Okay, here it is—” Isabel called across the banister, waving Aidan’s pillow.  Phillip fixed his eyes on her.  With her ponytail swinging side to side, she bounced down the plush white carpet like a teenager. 
Bare feet and yoga pants
, he noted. 
She seemed so carefree and happy
.  Obviously, she had perfected the art of repressing her emotions as well as he had.

Aidan dove onto the couch and nestled into its cushions while his mother tucked him in.  “Mommy,” he whispered. “I asked Phillip if he wanted to stay and spend the night.  But he said you need to rest.”

“
You
need to rest,” she insisted, kissing her son’s forehead.  “And yes, it’s time for Phillip to go now.”

“Can he come back and play another time?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Phillip stared at her, absorbing the finality of her words.

“Then, this shall be our final goodbye?” he said, testing her.

She nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

“’Tis a pity.  After so many years of allegiance between us.”  He heard his own voice drop into bitterness.

She glared at him, recognizing his signature tone of displeasure.  The expression in her face changed from hesitation to confrontation. 

“Phillip, the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t matter now.  We cannot go backwards and we cannot go forwards.”

“You say that as if you feel you are trapped.”

“I am trapped, Phillip,” she asserted, anger and resentment simmering just below her voice.  “You were my boss.  I was your assistant.  I took great pride in that work—in working for you.  And now…”

She stopped, but he pressed her.  “And now?”

She lowered her gaze, collecting her words and thoughts.  “And now…regardless of whatever was expressed in our moments of…weakness… I cannot continue to come into the office every day and stand before you as both your assistant and your lover.  I’m sorry, Phillip. But you know that, too, because that is the truth.”

He did know it, but her brutal honesty hit him harder than when he endured her physical slap.  From the very beginning, he sensed that she was not the sort of woman who would allow him to ever be more than her boss, and it was a fact that he admired like a virtue and spurned like a prison sentence.

“So my loss is Eliot Watercross’ gain,” he said flatly, edging towards the door.

He had consciously avoided the topic all night, but now in their final moments of candor and conflict, there was no reason to refrain from acknowledging the salted wound.  The next time Phillip would see her, it would be during an opening night gala hosted by one of their mutual business colleagues, where he would be forced to graciously pretend that he had accepted Isabel’s departure from his firm, and publicly act as though she had meant nothing to him beyond the disposable relationship of a former employee.

“Phillip—” she said like a command, keeping him there rather than pushing him away.  “It’s true that Eliot has offered me a position as a business partner in his newest venture.  But it wasn’t true what I told you this morning.  I haven’t officially accepted his offer—yet.”

He gazed at her, waiting for her to confirm what he feared most. “And will you?”

She held his gaze without betraying anything other than her silent strength.

Unexpectedly, Aidan’s snoring interrupted them.  It transformed itself into a sonorous wheeze that only a child could make sound endearing.  Phillip smirked at her.  She ignored him, attempting to hold her ground without conceding anything to him until Aidan’s snoring grew guttural, grossly offensive and comical. 

“That’s a brilliant trait,” Phillip quipped.  “Being able to fall asleep in the middle of an argument.” 

Finally, he registered her resistant smile, as if she was unable to ignore the innocence of her own flesh and blood.  She circled around the couch to adjust Aidan’s head on the pillow.  He closed his mouth and rolled away, blissfully silent.

“It’s the same almost every night,” she said, gazing down upon him.  “He’s grown used to sleeping down here on the couch while I work late.  He doesn’t want to fall asleep upstairs in his own bed if I’m not up there with him. I used to be able to carry him up the stairs without waking him.  But not anymore.”

She lifted up her laptop from the coffee table and pushed it back against the fireplace mantel.  “I’ve learned that the best thing I can do is wear earplugs and grow fond of sleeping on the floor.”  She pulled off a folded quilt from the adjacent sofa chair and spread it across the carpet. When she shut off the lamp, it cast deep shadows across Aidan’s face.  She stopped and gazed down at her son, indulging in a moment of reflection. 

“He has such long legs now.  He gets them from his father.  His height and his persistence.  I used to look at him at night, when he was sleeping so quietly like that, and see the resemblance of the man who broke my heart.  Now, I look at him and wonder if tomorrow will be the day when having only a mother won’t be enough.”

Phillip suddenly realized he had never asked Isabel about Aidan’s father.  “Does he know him?”

She shook her head.  “No, not at all.  He didn’t want a baby.  I didn’t want an abortion.  It’s been more than four years since we’ve last seen or spoken to each other, but I still have his email address.  I send pictures occasionally, but I never get a response—not even when Aidan was born.”

“I didn’t realize...” Phillip whispered.

Isabel looked away, flopping down a sofa pillow onto the floor.  “It’s fine because Aidan’s fine, and the only thing I care about is his happiness.”  She paused, choosing her words carefully.  “And you’ve helped me with that, Phillip.  You gave me a job when no one else would, and the chance to provide Aidan with more than I ever thought possible.  I will always be grateful to you for that.  Always.”

She stared at him—a confessional moment of gratitude that softened her frown and reminded him of so many times when they had found a way to understand each other through their unspoken connection.

Like a jolting reflex, Aidan kicked his leg, almost pushing himself off the edge of the couch.  Isabel rushed forward, barely securing him in place.  Phillip intervened and swept up the boy into his arms.

“Come now,” he urged her. “Let’s get him upstairs and into bed.”

Gathering up Aidan’s pillow and blanket, Isabel led them up the staircase and into Aidan’s bedroom.  Pushing past fire trucks and race cars littering the floor, Phillip navigated through the shadows and gently laid him down in his bed.  He traded places with Isabel who tucked the blankets over her son with a final kiss goodnight.

She followed Phillip out of the room, shutting the door behind them.  They both paused without movement, listening for the sound of stirring beyond Aidan’s door.  But there was nothing except heavy silence within the empty house.

Phillip gazed at her.  She smiled, acknowledging their cooperative success.  Then she turned away, preparing to lead them down the stairs until Phillip clasped her hand and drew her towards him.

“Isabel…” He said her name like a plea for their reconciliation.  Then, he fell silent and waited, not for her response of encouragement, but rather for his own courage to push him forward—whatever the cost to his pride.

“Phillip…” she said softly, not with censure, but with a simple petition for him to remain silent.  Moonlight streamed in through the bathroom window, reflecting off its vanity mirror and illuminating the indecipherable expression on her face. 

But he could no longer remain silent.  He had remained silent for five long years.  Tonight was his final chance to betray the deepest, most painful secrets within his soul.  And he would never forgive himself if he left her house without openly confessing what had always been present within his heart.

“If I have caused you pain or shame because of my actions, then I want nothing more for you to know that I am truly sorry.  But you must know, Isabel…you must be made aware that this distance…this distance between us I cannot endure.”

He dropped his gaze, suddenly unable to face the consequences of his confession. 

“And it is this distance that I feared all along if I openly admitted my affection for you, and yes…in that way, it was fear that perpetuated our lie—as you call it.  But this distance, Isabel…this distance between us is rotting my soul because it is denying me the pleasure of one of the most sacred relationships in my life.”

“Phillip—” she petitioned him again, tugging back on his hand. 

But he would not relent—not until he had properly expressed in words what he had attempted to express through his passionate seduction of her.

“You claim that I am merely your boss and you are my assistant, but that, too, is a lie.  Because when I look at you…when I look at you now, I do not see my assistant or even my temptress.  I only see a woman who has graciously endured my selfish pride for years without challenging my surly attempts to remain closed off from her—and the rest of the world.  I see a mother who has struggled to provide for her family through her dedication to her work, which often resulted in the sacrifice of hours and hours of her time because of the professional demands that I placed upon her.  And I see a woman who has offered me her loyalty—every day for the past five years.  A woman who I cannot bear to live without…” 

He paused as if he could barely speak the words. “For the past five years, I have been sick with longing…longing to express my deepest devotion to you, all the while knowing that in doing so, I risked losing you completely.”

He did not dare raise his eyes to meet her own.  He simply focused on the subtle change in her body and the way her hand reluctantly relaxed in his grasp.

“If you truly regret everything that has transpired between us, then I will agree to pretend that it was nothing more than an unfortunate lapse in our judgment for which I must pay the ultimate price.  But if some small part of you feels that there is something more between us—more than just the professional admiration between a boss and his assistant—then we have a duty to ourselves to explore it rather than simply abandoning it.”

He finally found the courage to fix his eyes on her, like a man who was searching out the merits of his own soul within her acceptance or rejection of him. “Please, Isabel.  Please do not deny us that.”  He stared at her with an intensity that mirrored the full force of his emotions.  She did not avert her eyes or reject his gaze. 

“You were only surly when you didn’t get want you wanted,” she unexpectedly whispered.

“And I cannot promise that I will ever change,” he whispered back, sensing the absence of tension between them. “But for you, I shall strive to be a better man.”

His gaze lingered on her as he reached out to stroke her cheek.  She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch.  For a silent, penetrating moment, their hearts were united.  Then, she enveloped his hand and nudged him forward, leading him down the hallway and through a door.  He stopped in its threshold and surveyed the modest bedroom—a queen bed crowded into the corner near the window, decorated with simple ivory shades knotted at their ends with a silver loop.  There was a small dressing table, cluttered with personal items: hair brushes, makeup, tissue paper, and something unexpectedly familiar—the swan Chihuly vase,
his
first gift to her, and a single pink rose, dried and withered with nostalgia.

He stared at the vase and dried stem, then glanced at her.  “You kept it?”

“I meant what I said,” she admitted, lowering her voice.  “And after our first night together—one of the most intimate nights of my life—I tried so hard to convince myself that it wasn’t you because I didn’t want to endure the risk of everything coming to an end.”

It was a confession of her own, and he suddenly felt like she had invited him into the most vulnerable space within her heart without restrictions or expectations. 

“It doesn’t have to end,” he whispered through the darkness.

This time it was she who reached out to him, encouraging him to slip off his heavy trench coat before opening a drawer of her dresser and draping it across it.  She lifted up his hands, unfastening his diamond cuff links from his shirt, and set them aside on the corner of her dressing table.  Slowly, she turned back to him, undoing the tortoise shell buttons along his neckline. 
How many times had he imagined her undressing him
? 
Too many to admit
.  But he could never have imagined this feeling of serenity as he submitted himself to her, savoring the sensitive tug of her fingers against his chest that eventually peeled back the folds of his shirt, exposing his bare chest to the caress of her fingertips.