Chapter 8

In the quiet of the elevator humming upwards, Ruby found a voice to ask, “What is this place?”

“They’re having some kind of show downstairs,” Chad murmured back, “but we aren’t going there.”

She dared not ask where they were going. The car stopped, and Chad stepped out onto another crimson carpet. Golden lamps illuminated the walls, and rubber trees stood in pots around the corners of a long hall. They walked on in silence until Chad stopped again in front of a glass door.

Before she could question, he pushed open, not the glass door, but a side door in the hall leading into an ordinary hotel room. The room lay in darkness, with only the city’s million lights glowing beyond the room’s big windows. The city spread out before them in a mysterious tapestry of far distant activity. Cars honked far below, and the low rumbling fog horn echoed off the harbor wharf. Ruby hugged her arms around her.

Chad moved around the darkened room, but the windows drew Ruby toward them. Every tiny light represented a life. Someone on the other end of each one of those lights looked out at the night and wondered about the life behind this window. Did they know about her? Did they know about her life changing right now? The crystal night stretched its magnificent beauty to the stars in the velvet sky above. Nothing could end this perfect night like this. She could never get enough of this night.

Chad came up behind her and slid his thick arms around her waist. His palms flattened on her stomach, and he cradled her against his chest. His broad chest radiated heat into her, and she relaxed back into him. He touched his face to her bare neck and rubbed her arms to warm them.

She gave a deep satisfied sigh. “Thank you. This is wonderful.”

He murmured in her ear. “You deserve it.”

“You didn’t have to do this. You could have left me at home, and I would still think you were the greatest.”

“I’m not the greatest. You’re the greatest.”

Ruby snorted. “Ha! I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”

He chuckled. “Actually, I do, but with you, it just happens to be true.”

She rested her head on his shoulder. “Stop it. I’m sure you can have any girl you want.”

“I can have any girl I want, but you’re the first girl I’ve ever wanted that I wasn’t sure I could have. You had me worried there for a minute.”

“What? Only a minute?”

“I thought you would turn me down. I couldn’t live with that.”

She gave him a jab with her elbow. “Don’t lie. You’ve done it with lots of virgins before.”

He didn’t chuckle now. “Actually, I’ve never done it with a virgin before.”

“Never?”

“Never—at least, not until tonight.”

“Well, now you have. I’m another trophy on your wall.”

“I don’t have a wall.”

“Shut up. Do you think I didn’t see everything you did at that party? Do you think I haven’t seen you with dozens of women before? Everyone knows what a playboy you are.”

He rocked her back and forth in his arms. “None of those women has ever given me what you gave me tonight. They give it to anything on legs. They don’t mean anything to me, not like you do.”

She tried to turn around, but his arms encompassed her whole world. “What do I mean to you? What could I possibly give you that those women don’t give you? I’m sure they’re a lot better at it than I am.”

“I told you. You’re the greatest. Your pleasure makes me think maybe there’s hope for me after all. It makes me think maybe I’m not such a waste.”

“A waste—you? How could you be a waste? You’re rich beyond your wildest dreams. You command a business empire spanning the world. You have men and women falling at your feet wherever you go. How could you be a waste?”

He laid his cheek against her ear. “I didn’t know I was until I met you. I didn’t know anything was missing from my life until I found something I couldn’t have. You don’t know how relieved I am that you agreed to let me touch you and take you. I would have fallen at your feet and begged you if you hadn’t.”

She could only shake her head and stare out at the city before her. “I don’t believe you. You’re full of flattery.”

His voice drifted into her ear from far away. “Do you think this sort of thing happens to me all the time? Do you think I meet someone like you every day? You give me hope. You make me see my life in a whole new way. You make me see what could be possible.”

“What could be possible?”

“Run away with me.”

She whipped around fast. “What are you talking about?”

“Run away with me. Don’t go back to that cheap apartment with Tom. Let’s get out of here and find out what is really possible.”

“You’re crazy. I’ve got to work tomorrow—at your company.”

“Don’t go to work tomorrow. It’s as simple as that.”

Her jaw dropped. “How can you say that? You’re my boss. You’re CEO of the company I work for, and you’re telling me not to go to work tomorrow?”

“I’m ordering you, as your boss, not to go to work tomorrow. I’m ordering you, as your boss, to run away with me and turn your back on Tom and everything you hold sacred.”

She swatted him on the shoulder. “Cut it out. You might be able to order me to ride home in your limo and you might be able to order me to spread my legs for you to fuck me to kingdom come, but you can’t order me not to go to work tomorrow. You’re off your rocker.”

“I don’t want this to end, Ruby. I want to find out what it would be like to have nights like tonight all the time, to do it with someone I really care about. I want to take you home to my house and live with you.”

Ruby backed away. “I’m not going home with you to your house, and I’m not quitting my job, and that’s final.”

His face hardened. “Why not?”

“I’m not running away. I might care about you and everything, but I’m not running away from my life. That’s not what this is about for me. I’m not running away from my job, and I’m not running away from Tom. I’m not running away from my apartment to go off with you. No way.”

“You care about me? How much do you care about me?”

She waved her hand. “That’s neither here nor there.”

“Oh, it’s very much here and there. Do you care enough about me to want this to continue?”

“I might want it to continue, but that doesn’t mean I want to run off with you.”

A black cloud darkened his countenance. “I care about you, Ruby. I care about you enough to run off with you. I care enough to throw away everything on the chance that we could have more nights like tonight. Do you want more nights like tonight?”

“I want all my nights to be like tonight. I would give just about anything to get that, but we couldn’t get it by running away. We could only get it by facing reality and making a real life out of it.”

“I have to have you, Ruby. I fell in love with you. Don’t ask me when or how it happened. I only know I can’t let you go. My whole life has changed. I can’t let you go back to Tom.”

She smacked her lips. “Don’t go throwing around a word like love. That’s the coward’s way out.”

He bared his teeth in maniacal fury. “Did you just call me a coward?”

She took a step closer to him. “You’re not a coward, Chad, so don’t talk about loving me and don’t talk about running away. If there’s a way we can have more nights like tonight, or if there’s a way we can have this all the time, night and day, we have to do it another way, without running away.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I don’t know. The first thing we would have to do is go to work tomorrow morning.”

“Why would we have to do that?”

“To make it real. Tonight was nice and all, but it wasn’t real.”

He pulled his head down between his shoulders. “It was real to me. I guess it wasn’t real to you.”

“It wasn’t part of real life. That’s what I mean.” She came nearer and tried to take his hand, but he balled it into a fist. He stiffened his arm against her touch. “If I’ve learned one thing in three years with Tom, it’s that love is about the everyday details. It’s about waking up together and getting ready for work and coming home and cooking meals and cleaning the kitchen. That’s love. We wouldn’t get that by running away.”

“That’s why I want you to come to my house. Believe me, it’s a lot nicer than your apartment with Tom.”

“Talking to Tom is the very first thing I would have to do if I wanted to spend any more time with you at all. We have to face this thing head on, not run and hide in fairy tales. I have a job to do, and so do you. You have a company employing hundreds of people, all counting on you for their livelihood. You owe it to them and to yourself to show up to work tomorrow morning and not run off with some floozy from HR.”

He didn’t take the bait. He compressed his lips and turned away. “I could make you happy like that. I could love you like that and share all your days and nights. You obviously don’t love me the same way.”

She shook his stiff arm. “If I say I love you and want to make this a real thing, the first thing I have to do is get my own place. I have to meet you on equal terms, not move into your house and set up shop. I have to move out from my apartment with Tom and start a whole new relationship with you. That means we live separately and build one block on top of the other. That’s the only way we could have any kind of real love. If we didn’t do that, this thing would die a wretched death. We would start to hate each other, and we would both go back to the way we were before—maybe even worse off than we were. Neither of us wants that.”

He waved his hand. “If that’s all you want, you could move in here. This room is empty. You could stay here, and you could come to my house and I could come and visit you here.”

“That won’t work. I guess this is your room, isn’t it?”

“Sure, it’s mine. I pay for it. That’s how I know you could stay here as long as you want. Isn’t it nice enough for you?”

“It’s very nice, but it’s yours. I have to have some place of my own, where I can tell you to beat it if you make me mad. We have to meet each other as two consenting adults, not as boss and employee.”

“But if you keeping going to work every day, that’s what we will be.”

“We won’t see each other at work. We never have before, and we would be two anonymous people outside of work. That’s the best we could hope for.”

“If you don’t stay here, where will you stay?”

“I’ll have to work that out.”

He rounded on her with a tortured snarl. “Don’t go back to Tom, Ruby. I can’t stand sending you back to him after you just spent the most amazing night of my life with me.”

“I won’t go back to him, but I do have to talk to him.”

“Send him an email.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “I wouldn’t be the person you want to spend time with if I did. Besides, he knows something that could help us. Some friends of his are going out of town for a month. They asked us to water their plants and feed their pets. I could stay there until I find my own place.”

He glared at her under smoldering brows. “Are you sure you have to do this? I don’t like it.”

“I’m sure. It’s the only way.”

“So what do you have to do?”

“I have to go back to the apartment, for one thing. I have to pack some clothes. I have to get my phone, and I have to text the people about their house. I have to talk to Tom and tell him I’m leaving. I have to do all of that, and I have to do it tonight before I go back to work tomorrow morning.”

He growled under his breath. “Do you have to?”

She pulled away. “Yes, I have to, so come on and drive me home. The sooner I do it, the sooner we can come back together.”