Redemption (The Bet) (29 page)

She pouted.
"Do you have to leave? You can stay over and we can have a sleepover! And you can stay in Mom’s room..."

"Bella..." Ellie
said in exasperation, unable to believe the things her children said or did sometimes. Her reaction brought a smile to Nicholas's face.

"But Mom
..."

"Your father has a perfectly warm and comfortable room of his own to sleep in at
 his house, now let's say goodnight."

"I'll see you next weekend, Bella."

"Promise?"

“Have I given you reason to doubt me?
"

She grinned. "
No."

"Well then, I guess we'll be seeing each other on Saturday wont we?"

"Yes, I can't wait!" She gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek."I love you, Daddy."

"Love you too,
Bells."

Ellie tried no
t to draw attention to herself while witnessing the touching scene between Bella and her doting father. But despite her best efforts, that inevitable pull drew her in. Nicholas raised his head, his eyes meet Ellie's own and it was crackling energy. It was there, magnetic, tangible. A gravitational pull that couldn't be helped, couldn't be stopped, it was a burning fuse that would, at any moment, burst into a grand display of heated tongues and limbs, if immediate action wasn't taken. Ellie wrenched her eyes away and took a step back, but unfortunately lost her footing and would've ended up falling backwards was it not for Nicholas's swift action.

"You Ok?" With Nicholas's arm securely wrapped around her waist and their daughter cocooned between them, Ellie
fought for breath. "Ellie?"

Hazel eyes rose and met Nicholas's silver grey ones. "
hmm?"

"I asked if you were, Ok."

Ellie nodded numbly, her heart racing.

"Y---yeah, um, it's getting late, Nicholas. We'll see
you next week." She retreated, completely unhinged now. "Say goodnight to you father, Bella."

Bella said a final goodnight and the very second she entered the house, Ellie gave Nicholas a hasty goodbye of her own before rushing inside after her children.

Nicholas chuckled. Stuffing his hands inside the pockets of his khakis, he cheerfully made his way to his parked car.

~*~*~*~

"Samantha, in my office
." It didn't sound as though he was asking, in fact, since arriving this morning, Nicholas had seemed particularly pissed off about something and that something was probably the reason why he was ordering her to his office now.

Hastily running a list of things she could've forgotten to do, Samantha came up with nothing, so she figured maybe it was someone else's
incompetence she would now have to clean up. The HR staff upstairs probably hadn't found their mole yet, damn lazy bastards got paid just to sit on their asses. She grabbed her iPad from her disorganized desk and proceeded to his office, slightly weary of entering, but she braced herself for the worse.

"Yes?"

"Close the door."

Samantha did as instructed and
quietly closed door behind her. She walked further into the room and waited. While she waited, she took in his appearance. There wasn't a day that Nicholas dressed less than what he was worth, even when in casuals, he still looked as though he spent thousands. Today being a day of business and all, he was once again bedecked in one of his tailor made suits, an off grey color that set off the silver flints in his eyes. The documents on his desk far too important to give his attention to anything else, he had Samantha wait for a stretch of an eternity before raising his head to greet her with his discontented visage. Again, Samantha desperately tried to remember whether she'd forgotten to do something he'd asked her to do over the weekend and again, nothing particularly important came to mind.

"Were you aware that my son was scheduled to have his
first baseball game this past Saturday?" Samantha's heart struck against her ribcage and she silently screeched out a barrage of obscenities that would've had her dear old mother blushing right down to her silver roots. There was no use lying, from the way he was looking at her it appeared as though he already knew the answer, lying would be a surefire way to dig her own grave.

Feigning ignorance, Samantha innocently peeked at her 'trusty' PDA and abashedly peered at Nicholas through the veil of her lashes. "Oh god, Nicholas! I wasn't aware that it was this past Saturday." She was embellishing, it was the only way to save face. Of course she'd known about the damn baseball game! She wasn't known as the best P.A. in the building for nothing. She'd known since last Wednesda
y afternoon, when Nicholas's ex had called and asked nicely that she inform Nicholas of it.

Nicholas had been away from his desk at the time, the urgency to ferret out their mole had taken him to the 25th floor and he hadn't returned until much later. By then, Samantha had made up her mind to keep the message from her boss. There'd been a part of her that had felt horrible for deliberately being cruel to a child, who probably wanted nothing more than to have his father at his baseball game, but at the time, in that present moment, Samantha hadn't cared.

The last thing she'd wanted was for Nicholas to spend time with his family and get closer to his 'perfect' tart of an ex-lover. "I'm so sorry, I accidentally wrote it down for this Saturday. We were so busy last week…I'm so sorry." Did she sound sheepish enough? She wished that she could blush at will; that would've added to the effect perfectly.

She held her composure and evenly met his piercing gaze, a minute, sixty seconds of pure torture, he finally looked away. Samantha had to applaud her performance.

He stared at her for a brief eternity, his pewter gaze boring into her and Samantha tried very hard not to squirm. "Be sure that it doesn’t happen again." He said tersely a moment later, his gaze returning to the files on his desk.

"Will you
need anything else?"

"
I’ll let you know when I need you.” In just that moment she was dismissed and Samantha couldn’t have felt worse if the occasion called for it. She'd royally screwed up and she was now paying for it. With a great sigh, she continued her earlier tasks all the while contemplating how to get back in Nicholas good graces.

Samantha happily stared at the tickets in her hands and still couldn't believe her luck. She taken all her lunch hour and a thirty minute dinner just to purchase and retrieve these tickets. Finally! Something was going right for her, the heavens were shinning down on her and boy did it feel good! She hadn't even believed that it was possible to get these tickets so late in the season and had only gone online as a fluke, hoping to find something endearing to gift Nicholas with and these were by
0far the best present she could've ever hoped for.

Yves Charmant, a very gifted art prodigy who had become world famous practically overnight with his thought provoking opuses, was having a gallery opening downtown. She'd first seen one of his pieces hanging in one of Nicholas's Tokyo office years prior and had become fascinated by it. Nicholas had caught her looking at it during her first month in his employ and a sort of nostalgic smile had overtaken his visage when he'd told her that he was a collector of Charmant's masterpieces. He hadn't divulged any other details aside from the fact that the paintings gave him a sort of serenity; almost like coming home.

This was perfect. He would forget the incident this morning and she could finally have a date with him; two birds, one stone. The 9 to 5's were preparing to leave by the time she came back to the office, she just hoped that Nicholas had remained and not spontaneously up and left as he was known to do at times. She gave a short knock on his office door before entering and found that he was still hard at work, no longer perfectly put together, but still undeniably handsome.

"Samantha, I thought you'd left." He didn't look up as he contin
ued to tap away on his laptop. His hair looked as though he'd raked his hand one too many times through it as it fell across his forehead. His tie was undone and hung around his neck. The sleeves of his collared shirt were rolled halfway up his forearms. His rumpled appearance made him look so damn good. Samantha wanted to lock the door behind her, peel her clothes off one garment at a time and splay herself out on his large desk, ready and willing to do anything he wanted.

She shook her head to clear out the fantasy and cleared her throat. "I took my dinner early. Nicholas?"

"Hmm?" his head remained fixed on that damn computer screen!

"
I have these tickets to the opening of Yves Charmant's gallery and I was wondering if you would like to attend with me. I know how big of a fan you are of his works and so I thought maybe…"

"Ok, I'll go."

"I mean you don't have to go, I know you have a lot of work to do, but you don't have to go with me if you don't want to, maybe I'll just go with a friend or sell them on eBay…"

"Samantha! Did you hear me, I said I'll go!" He looked up and for the first time that day and gave her a smile that had her knees wobbling.

"You…you'll go?"

He closed the notebook and gave her his attention. "Yes, I'll go. These reports can wait until tomorrow."

She was shocked, excited and nervous all at the same time, but tried very hard not to act like a complete idiot. "Are you sure?"

Nicholas raised a brow. "Did you expect me to say No?"

"No…yes…maybe." her cheeks bloomed. "I'm just glad that we can get to see this together, you know, as art fans and all."

"Of course, I'm honored that you invited me. It's been a while since I've been to one of his openings, the last I believe was in Paris three years ago, it was very exciting."

Samantha held down a girlish squeal of glee. "I'm excited to go, this will be my first."

"And you've picked me to share it with you? Truly I'm honored, Sam."

God! Was there a limit to how great this night could get? He called her Sam for God sakes and it sounded so endearing coming from his lips.

"So, when does it start?"

"Seven thirty."

He took a glimpse at his wristwatch. "Great that gives us plenty of time to go home and get ready. I'll be by your house at seven."

With her heart close to bursting, Samantha said her short goodbye before leaving the downtown office; she hurried home to get ready! Eager to begin her date.

~*~*~*~

"Are you going to tell
me where we're going?"

Devlin took a moment to glance at his blindfolded fiancée before retuning his eyes to the road. "I already told you Ellie, you'll know when we get there."

"You're not being very helpful."

Devlin chuckled. "And you're not being very patient."

"It's hard being patient when you've been blindfolded for more than an hour."

"I didn't realize traffic would be this bad, just bear with me, babe, we're almost there."

Ellie sighed, leaned back into the passenger seat and tried to give Devlin the benefit of the doubt, despite her misgivings. It wasn't so much that she doubted her fiancé, in all actuality she trusted Devlin implicitly. But being blindfolded for the extent of time that she has without so much as a clue as to where they were headed was bound to get anyone antsy. She wasn't big on surprises and would've preferred to know what was going on rather than finding out later, but Devlin had wanted this. He'd been so eager this evening when he'd picked her up, his enthusiasm encouraging Ellie to reluctantly put on the black satin blindfold. That had been almost an hour ago.

The unexpected weight of Devlin's hand on her thigh caused Ellie to jump. "You alright, Ellie? You seem a little jumpy."

"I'm fine. I'm just worried about the kids."

"The kids are fine staying with Gab
e and Ronnie. I want us to have a good time tonight."

Ellie halfheartedly smiled. "I'm sorry for acting so weird. I've just been sort of out of it all day. Even my students noticed it."

"Are you Ok? Are you coming down with something? Maybe I should turn the car around…"

"No!
" Ellie hurriedly interrupted. "No, Dev, that's not what I want. I'm fine. I think you have the right idea with this tonight, we'll just go and have a good time."

"Okay, but any sign of
 anything you let me know and we'll head back."

Ellie smiled, touched by his kindness. "I promise."

Minutes later and they finally arrived at their destination. Devlin hastened to the passenger side to help Ellie out, before handing the keys over to the valet attendant. Leading her from the car to the revolving doors of the opulent building they were to enter, Devlin stepped behind Ellie and leaned down to whisper against the shell of her ear. "I know how much you've wanted to see this." He freed her of the blindfold and quietly waited for Ellie's reaction.

It took a moment for Ellie's eyes to readjust to light, but when it did, she saw what Devlin wanted her to see and her smile could've rivaled the sun. "Oh, Dev." She turned around after taking her fill of the poster announcing Yves Charmant's gallery op
ening. "This is, how did you get tickets?"