Epilogue
Everly
2 Years Later
I felt a lot lighter when I woke in the morning, despite having Maddox’s arm wrapped tightly around me. He was sleeping soundly, as he always did on the weekends, and I couldn’t remember the last time he had woken before me. All You Can Eat had its best numbers in years, and we were opening a specialty fish restaurant on the pier in just a few weeks. That project had been all mine, and I don’t think Maddox realized how special of a gift it had been.
I ran my finger down his strong arms, skin hard with muscle from working out with me nearly every day. It had taken a while to fall into a routine, but now it was impossible to break. He was constantly looking for ways to make our lives exciting, despite me constantly assuring him that our life was as perfect as it could ever be. But that’s what I loved about Maddox; he was always planning and looking toward the future. We complemented one another that way, as I was always reminding him to enjoy the present.
I still wasn’t sure how I had managed to find a man like him. I could leave it to luck, but it felt like something deeper. We were meant to be, and he was meant to be mine. I cuddled up against his chest, enjoying the heat radiating from his body that always seemed to be warmer than mine. His body was beginning to react to mine, and I wondered how much longer we had until Abby’s eventual interruption.
“Daddy! Everly!” her voice yelled through the door before she flung it open. Maddox’s arm tightened around me as Abby jumped onto the bed and pounced on us. I laughed as Maddox groaned in my ear. What perfect timing.
“It’s time to get up!” she said. Her blonde curls were past her shoulders now, and as a 5-year-old, she was talking nonstop. “We need to eat breakfast and then go to the park and then maybe the animal shelter because I heard that they do free adoptions on weekends and I was thinking that what we needed was a dog.”
“Oh, is that right?” Maddox said. I smirked as Abby continued planning our day. She had a love for planning things, a trait she definitely took from her father.
“A dog?” I asked. “Are you sure you don’t want another cat?”
Both Abby and Maddox shook their heads.
“Nope. One cat is enough,” Abby said.
“How about no dogs and we get rid of the cat we have?” Maddox suggested. He crawled out of bed and slipped a T-shirt on. “I’ll start breakfast.”
“How do we convince him to get a dog and leave my kitty alone?” Abby asked me as I leaned back against the bed.
“How about this?” I said, and attacked her with tickles. She giggled and tried squirming out of my grasp, but I held her body against mine.
“That’s not going to help!” she yelled. Maddox crossed the room and watched with a smile as I tickled her. He had a pensive expression, eyebrows drawn up and the side of his smile tilted upwards, but he didn’t say any words.
Abby and I joined him for breakfast, an omelet full of vegetables with a side of fruit. We’ve been eating healthy for a little over a year now, but every now and then, I’ve snuck Abby and Nick muffins.
“So, there’s a special event tonight,” Maddox said as we ate.
“Oh?” I didn’t know of anything.
“Nick’s art show had the most purchases of any art show this year. It’s been his most successful one to date,” Maddox said.
“And mine was in it!” Abby yelled.
“I remember, I was there,” I told her and turned to Maddox. “I didn’t know it was such a big deal, though.”
“I guess in the art world it is. So, they’re having a special dinner at one of the newest upscale restaurants downtown,” Maddox said. “He wanted to know if we’ll be there for him.”
“Of course we’ll be there,” I said. “Should I invite Lacey?” Lacey and Nick had been in a constant will-they-won’t-they battle for two years.
“I already extended the offer,” Maddox said. “She said they’ll meet us there.”
“So we can go to the park and the animal shelter and then get ready for this special dinner?” Abby asked.
“We can go to the park,” Maddox said. Abby groaned and finished her omelet. I snuck out a muffin from one of the pantries and handed it to her behind Maddox’s back.
We spent the afternoon with a picnic at the park, and I managed to convince Maddox to take us to the animal shelter for 10 minutes. He had planned on staying in the car, but Abby and I begged him to come inside with us.
We found a small shepherd mix puppy in the corner of one of the cages, and surprisingly enough, Maddox was the one who fell in love.
“We can make him shepherd pies!” Abby said. “Oh, please Daddy?”
“No puppies,” he said, but he eyed the puppy on our way out and asked a worker for an adoption application. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said to me, and we returned home to get ready for the dinner. I followed Abby into her room and helped her pick out a dress.
“What’s your favorite one?” Abby asked. I picked a red dress with gold lace and held it against her.
“This is perfect,” I said. “Now, what about me?” We took her dress and went into my closet, flipping through way too many dresses.
“What about this one?” she asked. It was a tight black dress with a soft brown layer across the chest and half sleeves. “It makes your eyes greener.”
I remembered what Maddox had once said about my eyes and nodded. We helped each other zip up our dresses, and I clasped a pearl necklace around Abby’s neck. I stared a moment at the special child, and my heart warmed that I had her in my life. Even though I’d not wanted children in my life, I’d never trade her for anything in the world. She’d shown me that life didn’t always give us what we thought was best, but rather what was best for us. I remembered the words of that silly song my mother had teased me about. Que será, será, indeed. Life had shown me what would be and I was grateful for how it had turned out.
“We’re going to be late,” Maddox called from the living room, pulling me out of my daze. I held Abby’s hand as we walked down the stairs. Her shoes had slight wedges to them, and I was teaching her how to walk without an awkward wobble in her step. She was getting the hang of it better than I had at her age.
“Wow,” Maddox said as he saw us. I self-consciously played with the strands that curled around my ears. “You both look beautiful.”
“We picked out each other’s dresses,” Abby said. “We’re ready!”
We all climbed into Maddox’s new family car, a sleek black Jaguar, and Abby and I took turns singing as Maddox pulled onto the highway.
It wasn’t long until I realized we were passing by downtown, and heading toward the pier.
“I thought you said we were going to be late?” I asked.
“I just have to check out something first,” Maddox said as we pulled into the parking lot for the restaurant’s newest location on the pier.
“This couldn’t wait until afterward?” He left the car, and Abby hopped out. “Should we wait?”
“No, it might take a while. Just come in. Apparently they finished the second floor earlier today,” Maddox said. I gasped; the second floor of the restaurant was my pride and glory, an upscale, fine dining experience on top of a casual fish restaurant with the best views of the ocean in all of Seattle. Forgetting all about Nick’s dinner, I gleefully joined Abby and followed Maddox into the restaurant and up the stairs.
What I found made me trip over my feet.
An empty room with a single table in the middle greeted me, with three chairs and a single rose in the middle. The room was lined with beautiful candles that were shaped like giant statues inside metal basins, and the windows were pushed wide open and looked out over giant, powerful waves of a high tide. I realized the door to the kitchen was half opened, and that the kitchen itself was lit with at least a dozen chefs preparing food.
“What’s going on, Maddox?” I asked. “Is the celebration here?”
“No,” he said. ‘There is no celebration; I just wanted a night to ourselves.” He gestured at the three of us and pulled me toward the window. The fresh sea breeze danced around my hair and covered my skin in faint goosebumps.
“Just us?” I asked.
“Just us, my family,” he said. “Everly, my whole life I thought I had everything figured out, and each time something unexpected happened, I always had a plan. I planned for everything, but I never planned to fall in love.”
I blinked away tears.
“And the moment I saw you at that auction, I knew I was going to fall in love with you. But for the first time ever, I didn’t have a plan for that. I didn’t know what I was going to do. So for a while, I just let myself fall in love and prayed that you would fall in love with me. We’re already a family, you, Abby, and I. And now, I want to make it official.”
Abby held something behind her back and moved in front of Maddox. She held out a box with a giant golden bow around it and opened it. A diamond ring sat on a bed of flowers, silver on top of silver, and sparkled beneath the night sky.
“Will you marry me, Everly?” Maddox asked. “Or, should I say us?”
“Please?” Abby asked. I fell on my knees and pulled her into a hug.
“Yes,” I said and kissed Abby’s cheek. Tears were on both of our faces as Abby handed me the ring. It slid on perfectly.
Maddox grabbed my hand and helped me stand.
“Think you could say yes to me as well?” he asked, and I laughed.
“Yes,” I said again, and he pulled me into a kiss as Abby held my hand. In that moment, I knew what true happiness was.
BILLIONAIRE’S VACATION
By Claire Adams
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Claire Adams
Chapter One
Christian
I tapped my fingers against the edge of the couch as I waited for them to finish the final sound check and whatever other miscellaneous things that they were doing. I thought that they would get all that done while I was still in hair and wardrobe, but apparently, they weren't aware of how valuable my time was. I should have charged them extra.
“All right, I think we're ready,” Kelly, the interviewer, said, dropping into a seat to my left and giving me a winning smile. As though she needed a smile like that with legs like those. I watched as she carefully crossed her long, tanned, muscular limbs in front of her and carefully arranged her navy skirt. When she leaned toward me, clearly trying to appear friendly for the cameras, I caught a glimpse of a lacy, black bra beneath her gray shirt. Maybe she wasn't quite as straight-laced and prim as she appeared to be.
I smiled back at her, albeit more predatorily than anything else. I was so going to bag her by the end of the night no doubt. No woman could resist me for too long, though the small portion of the chase was most of the fun.
“All right, everyone, we're live in three, two, one!”
“Rolling!”
Kelly turned toward the cameras, giving her viewers her classic grin. She was a pretty girl, no doubt. Half the reason the viewers watched her was because she reminded them of who they wanted to be. Young. Successful. Sexy.
“All right, everyone, we're here on The Latest, bringing you the best in entertainment interviews and gossip. And tonight, we have a very special guest for you: Christian Wall!” There was clapping from the studio audience, and even though I hated interviews like this, I forced a charming smile on my face. Time to put on my best façade and give them what they wanted. Sounded like the cadence of my life story.
The thing was, even though I wasn't the sole owner of Sunrise Real Estate, I was the face of the company. I loved working press conferences, and I loved going out and talking to people who were looking to buy houses and helping them find their dream homes. I'd had the chance to be on a number of reality TV shows where I helped sell homes to couples looking in various cities that we operated in, and that was always worth all the fuss.
But the entertainment ones were always a bit trickier. I'd have to be careful not to let Kelly trip me up. I knew the kinds of things that had been in the news about me lately, things that were making everyone, even Paul, a bit frustrated.
“So, Christian, as you probably know, the main reason that I've asked you here today is that you have recently been named the hottest bachelor in the United States. Can we just start with a talk about that title?” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. I couldn’t help but wonder how many other people in the world were walking around, faking happiness.
I laughed a little, shaking my head. “Well, it's of course very flattering,” I said. “I've heard about guys getting named the hottest bachelor in their city or things like that, but I thought Mr. USA had to be a model!”
Kelly gave me a smirking once-over and looked out toward the audience. “I don't know about the rest of you, but if Christian here isn't fit to be a model, then I don't know who is! In fact, I'd say it's only a matter of time before they have you up on underwear ads around the city.”
“You wish, maybe!” I said, even though I was inwardly rolling my eyes. Sure, I was hot enough to be up on those sorts of ads, and what I did with my personal life had always been, I held, no one's business except for my own. However, she did have to realize that for all the other things that had made it into the news, I did have some professional reputation that I needed to uphold. Not many young husbands would feel comfortable buying a house from someone they knew their wives were wanking to. It was disturbing, and yet a little hot.
“From what I hear in the news lately, there are other ways to get the great Christian Wall down to his underwear,” Kelly said, a gleam in her eyes, and of course that was where she had been heading with that remark. I might have seen that one coming.
I cut her off with my canned response before she could mention the whole underwear incident. It had been a stupid bet with one of my friends, fueled by way too much alcohol. We'd been out at this bar, and girls had been stripping their shirts off so that guys would do body shots off them. Originally, I'd ended up on the table with just my shirt off, but then one thing had led to another, and there had been these two sexy Swedish girls practically fucking me right there on the floor, their hands trailing everywhere.
Someone had gotten a shot of me stripped down to my black boxer briefs and laid out on a table for them to do body shots off of me. That photo had proceeded to be picked up by seemingly every entertainment source in the world. It wasn’t my finest moment by far, but one that everyone seemed to cling to as if they had nothing better to do. It was one of the incidences that had made Paul a bit exasperated. Or maybe more than a bit.
But, obviously, I couldn't just tell Kelly to fuck off.
Instead, I smiled at her. “If you're suggesting that we go out to dinner on Friday night, I'm afraid I'm already taken,” I told her. “I've recently started seeing someone. It's nothing too serious now, but I'm not sure how much longer I'll be the hottest bachelor in the U.S., unfortunately!”
“Oh, really?” Kelly asked, arching an eyebrow at me.
It was total bullshit unless you counted this thing that I had going on with this girl Megan, but that was more of a 2 a.m. drunken thing than anything else. I wasn't about to quit being a bachelor anytime soon.
“But the parties aren't going to stop, are they?” Kelly pressed. “It seems like you've been at all the red-carpet events lately; it seems like you and Jamie Michaels are getting pretty chummy, hmm?”
“Jamie's a great guy,” I told her. “I was lucky enough to meet him on a ski trip last winter in the Alps; we started out at Meribel, but at the end of the week, neither of us were ready to go back to the grind.” I laughed a little. “Fortunately, I could get some work done remotely, and off we headed to Italy for a second week in Cortina. He's an amazing skier and a great guy.”
“Some people might say that you have a little too much fun sometimes,” Kelly said. “Tell us what you think about that? Is life just supposed to be fun and games for some and toil and work for others?”
I shrugged and smiled disarmingly at her. “I’m not too sure about what life is supposed to be about, or if you could put it into one or two words.” I shrugged. “But as far as my crazy life, you know what they say. Boys will be boys. And especially for Jamie and I, who have access to some of the best toys in the world, from snowmobiles to dirt bikes and more, yeah, we're going to have a ton of fun. Of course, we're always safe with them, and we haven't dropped off the globe like we did during the ski tour. For me, things have been busy around the office as people book their last-minute summer vacation homes and start looking ahead to next winter. And Jamie's working on shooting his latest movie.”
“Any details you can share about that?” She wagged her eyebrows.
I laughed. “Jamie's totally close-mouthed about it,” I told her, and that one wasn't a lie. “You probably know more about it than I do!”
“We wish!” She glanced toward the cameras as if including the audience in her ‘we.' “Christian, one more question before we let you go: any details you can give us about this mystery woman who has captured your interest?”
I mimed zipping my lips and throwing away the key, laughing at the noises of protest from many of the female audience members. “A gentleman never kisses and tells,” I said, holding up my hands. “Anyway, I believe in true love and all of that. I'd hate to think that I jinxed things by getting too far ahead of myself.”
“Aw, that's sweet,” Kelly said. She looked back out at the audience and began to introduce the next segment of the show; I gave a little sigh of relief, keeping the smile plastered on my face, and tuning her out.
Despite all the talk about this woman who I was supposedly seeing, I didn't even have to try to take her home that night, really. She would entertain me for the night, or a bit of it, for sure. The way she subtly eye-fucked me before the interview gave me full assurance. I was fucking her within an inch of her life later.
I walked off stage with various members of her crew patting me on the back and shouting words of encouragement. I needed a shower, and then I was headed to find her again.
Funny enough, I ran into her as I was finally coming out of my long shower. I'd done my best to scrub off the excessive makeup they'd covered me with prior to the interview, highlights and eyeliner and all sorts of silly things that combined to make me look better under the harsh lighting of the studio. Finally, I felt human again. Like a man.
“Oh! I didn't realize you were still here,” Kelly said as her eyes went a little wide. The soft smile playing at the side of her lips let me know that even though she might be a little surprised, she was happy about it.
I smiled at her, running a hand back through my still-damp hair. “Yeah, I chatted with a couple of the other guests for a bit and then got someone to let me into your dressing room so I could take a shower. I hope that's okay.”
I watched her expression carefully and, yeah, she was probably already wet in her panties. I could only hope her panties matched that flash of a bra that I'd seen. I could only imagine the way the black lace would look across her tight, sexy skin. My cock twitched in my pants at the thought of gripping it and running in along her soft curves.
“It’s perfectly fine.” She licked her lips and eye-fucked me again. “Did you like it?”
I chuckled. “The shower? Yeah. There was this hot guy in there, and he let me run my hands over his wet, muscular body.” I winked. “Wait. That was me…”
She laughed. “You’re so full of it. I swear the world waits in wonder for your next stunt or to see who you really are under that handsome mask.”
“I’m just me.” I lifted my hands to the side and gave her the cutest little boy look I could. “And me wants to know if you'd let me buy you a drink. It’s a ‘thanks’ for not totally destroying my reputation like so many entertainment anchors seem to want to do lately,” I told her, cocking my head to the side and smiling down at her.
There was a moment of indecision on her face, but then, she smiled. “Sure thing,” she said. “Can you give me ten minutes to get changed out of my suit, though?”
I spread my arms generously, nearly snorting as I saw her eyes dart down toward my abs. “Take as much time as you need,” I told her. “I've got some work emails that I need to answer, so I'll just lurk around the break room doing that.”
“Great,” she said and disappeared for a bit.
My mind became a playground of possibilities. I loved women. Especially when they were naked and moaning. Chill bumps pinpricked my skin as lusty images rolled through my mind, one after the next. I was heated and panting a little by the time Kelly showed back up.
“You ready?” she asked, looking like heaven.
“Yeah. Let’s get out of here.” I stood and lifted my hand. “Lead the way, beautiful.”
“Oh no, don’t you start that.” She laughed as she turned and walked in front of me. I let my eyes run down the long line of her back to the thick curve of her ass. Wonder if she likes anal?
“Start what?” I asked innocently.”
“You know what.” She laughed and moved through a large crowd of people.
From there, it was easy enough to lead her out to the street with a hand at her lower back. “You know,” I said slyly. “My place isn't that far from here, and rather than going out to a bar, I've got a really good wine that you might like. I picked it up the last time I was in Italy.”
Kelly moved onto the street and glanced over at me as she bit her lower lip, no doubt thinking about that imaginary girlfriend. Sure enough. “I thought you were interested in someone?” she asked.
“We're still pretty casual,” I said. “She's not going to protest if I have you over for a glass of wine. I think people are putting a little too much weight on the relationship anyway. She’s not wearing a ring, and I’m not buying one. And here’s this… what with you interviewing me and all, we're basically coworkers, right? It’s like a coworker happy hour. At my place.” I lifted an eyebrow, hoping like hell my antics would work.
Kelly laughed. “Maybe just for the day we are,” she agreed. “All right. I'd love to. Anyway, I can only imagine what kind of pad the world's hottest young real estate bachelor lives in.”
I shook my head, still smiling. “I hardly think I count as the world's hottest young anything,” I told her. “Maybe the city's hottest young real estate bachelor.” I winked at her, and could practically see the way she melted.
Of course, she didn't see much of the penthouse apartment that I lived in. I cornered her as she was taking off her shoes, crowding her up against the door as much as I thought she'd let me. “You’re a very attractive woman; do you realize that?” I told her.
“Oh no,” Kelly said, laughing and shaking her head, but making no move to leave, even though she must know what was about to happen. “I'm not going to be just another of your flings, Christian Wall. You can forget all about that.”
I sighed. “That's a pity,” I told her. “I'm pretty sure you're the world's hottest young journalist. We would have made quite the pair.”
Kelly bit her lower lip. “Do you think so?” she asked breathily.
Playing on a woman's weakness to want affection was all too easy. And it was a pretty easy guess that anyone who had chosen the entertainment field definitely had an underlying need to be wanted, namely by the masses. For some reason, it seemed like the hotter a girl was, the more worried she was that she was a no one.
“Fuck yes,” I whispered seductively. “I’ve been hard since I got to the studio.” My eyes moved down her body. “I’ve imagined making love to you twenty times since the interview started.”
Suddenly, Kelly surged up and kissed me, as I might have predicted that she would.
I slowed the nervous motion of her lips, stroking a hand down her back to calm her down. Even though I wanted to make this quick and dirty, to make her scream my name. I could tell I would have to go a bit slowly with her. She clearly didn't have that many one-night stands, and she had to know that this was a one-night stand; she was in entertainment, and she had done her research before interviewing me.
I lengthened the kiss, allowing it to deepen into something slow and lewd, our tongues twining around one another's. I slid my hands up under her shirt, stroking them tantalizingly across her skin before lifting the garment up over her head, revealing that lacy black bra that she'd unknowingly been teasing me with. It was thin, flimsy, and I could see her nipples were already pert little nubs beneath the fabric. I bent down and raked my teeth over those two points of pleasure while my hands worked at her jeans.
Then, once I'd stripped her down to nothing more than lace, I led her into the bedroom. She looked gorgeous sprawled out across my sheets like that. I kept a burning gaze on her as I stripped off my clothes, and then I crawled across the bed toward her, nudging her knees apart so that I could crawl between them.
I licked and sucked my way up those luscious legs of hers and then pulled her panties down away from her pink pussy, bending in to kiss that as well. Even with something that simple, she was arching against the sheets, and I knew this was going to be over fast.
It was a pity. I always hoped to find a sexy girl with a bit more stamina. But then again, if her stamina was that good, it probably meant that she slept around a lot, and I wasn't exactly looking to sleep with a slut.
Sure enough, though, it wasn't long before Kelly was gasping out my name and coming, her pussy pressing hard around me and her hands clawing desperately at the sheets. I kept going, managing to bring her to come again and again.
“Stop,” Kelly whimpered, pushing back against my shoulders. “It's–It's too much, Christian.”
I rolled my eyes and pulled out, jacking myself hard for a few moments before coming across her tits. That was never my preferred way to finish, but that seemed to be the way it always happened with women at this point. They just couldn't handle me.
I slipped out of bed and began collecting her things for her, ignoring the disappointed look she gave me. What, had she thought I was going to let her stay over in my bed? The thought was almost laughable. I escorted her back downstairs and got her into a cab. That was the most I had to offer.