~ Cece

 

There wasn’t nearly enough here to write the comprehensive article that I had planned to. All the notes I’d taken, the outlines Jim had given me and the plans I made ended up falling apart the moment Rhett and I were together.

I sat at the desk in my room, trying to concentrate on my work in lieu of remembering what it was like to wake up in Rhett’s bed.

It smelled like him. The whole room smelled of him, and it was enough to make me luxuriate in bed for an extra hour as I imagined him lying next to me. I had to admire the man’s drive. After a week chocked full of death-defying adventures and two fourteen-hour flights, he went straight to work. He never stopped putting in the effort that had helped him rise to the top.

The realization made my heart swell with pride I couldn’t avoid, no matter how hard I tried.

I told myself that my feelings where Rhett was concerned didn’t matter, because our little indulgence was over. I forced myself to leave his bed and his room - to shower his scent from my body and to face the decision I’d been putting off for the last two weeks. Though, really, what kind of decision was it at this juncture?

I hadn’t done the interviews I was supposed to. If I’d stuck to my job, I’d have the material I needed - and my head would probably be screwed on a lot straighter. Instead, I gazed down at page upon page of notes detailing Rhett as my lover, and wondering if I really had the balls to hand it over to Jim.

There was no way.

I’d written things here that made my face burn.

Somewhere during the process of trying to figure out what the hell I was doing, I had stopped writing like a journalist and started keeping a diary of sorts - questioning myself and gathering all my doubts and insecurities in written form. Of course, that wasn’t all I had written about. Rhett’s story was there, in all its brilliant glory. How we’d met as children, all he’d been through and how I hadn’t been able to save him from any of it. How he’d turned up in my adult life and proceeded to wreak havoc on it.

And how things had gotten so completely, irrevocably complicated. It was just as steamy and convoluted as Jim wanted - all that and more. But I couldn’t bring myself to send it to him.

My boss wasn’t happy that I’d skipped the country for a week. I came back to a barrage of calls and e-mails demanding an update on his pet project and done my best to ignore them. I wrote something, yes, but that something seemed far too intimate to turn over to someone like Jim.

To let half the world read.

I wanted to be an actual reporter with every fiber of my being, but I didn’t know if that was enough to expose Rhett like I did in the pages I’d written. Turning in something like this...it made me no better than the gossip columnists I despised.

So, I stared at it. Agonized and stared at it some more. I remembered seeing Rhett for the first time after twelve years of separation and feeling something in me click, hard as I tried to fight it. I had never believed in fairy tales or second chances, but when life dumped something like this in your lap, what the hell were you supposed to do?

After an entire morning of beating myself over the head, I finally threw the damned thing in the trash. It hurt, knowing what I was giving up, but I felt secure in the fact that I wasn’t as heartless as I’d once aspired to be.

Christ, the irony was suffocating. I’d been lured into this assignment with only the prospect of a promotion to keep me going and now I was forgoing said prospect for the subject himself.

Dear God, I was the world’s foremost cliché.

When my body bid me to sleep again, I did. Jetlag was funny that way, and, having no experience with it, I let it have its way with me. I woke up around six that evening to the sound of the intercom ringing. Normally, I’d have let Rhett answer it, but the incessant ringing made it clear enough that he wasn’t home yet.

I dragged myself from bed to answer the call, surprised when the doorman told me that there was someone there demanding to see me, but he couldn’t buzz them in without Rhett’s approval. My nose wrinkled in confusion. As far as I knew, no one besides Jim was even aware that I was staying with Rhett.  “Who’s here to see me?”

“Says his name is Jebediah Warner, Miss.”

I was immediately wide awake. “Jeb is here?” Of course, the doorman had no idea who he was, but I sure as hell did. I’d gotten a few emails from Jeb over the past few weeks and even a handful of missed calls. He liked to drop in unexpectedly, and I liked to make sure my schedule made it hard for him to do so.

But, apparently, it was too late for that. I tried not to think what his knowing I was in Rhett’s penthouse might mean. “Would you like to speak to him?”

“No! I mean…” Jesus that sounded incriminating. “Yes. Put him on.”

“Certainly miss.” The two seconds that I waited to hear Jeb’s voice were some of the most nerve-wracking in recent memory - and that was considering that I’d jumped out of a plane two days ago.

“Cece, what the hell are you doing up there?” I winced a moment before my anger flared. It had been years since I’d been under Jeb’s thumb and he was still treating me like I was a child.

“Jeb, what are you doing here?” I fired back, my eyes narrow. “You didn’t even tell me you were coming.” He never did.

“I left you a few voicemail messages. You probably didn’t get them seeing as how you skipped the goddamned country.” I swallowed a groan. Though things had gotten better between Jeb and I over the years, I still considered him largely insufferable - and this was one of the reasons why.

“I was working,” I hissed, reddening at the notion that the doorman was overhearing this entire tirade. “Which you’d know if you paid any attention to my schedule at all.”

“Cece, just come down here,” he insisted in the steely, firm tone that had worked so well when I was a teenager. “We need to talk.”

“I can’t imagine what about,” I returned, annoyed. “If you really wanted to talk, you’d call my cell like a normal human being.”

“You’re in Rhett fucking Wilder’s penthouse! I came to get you before you do something you regret.”

The phrase was enough to rankle me. How many times had I heard those exact words as I was growing up? Jeb was always convinced that he knew what was best for me, though the fact of the matter was that he barely knew what was best for himself. He thought that having a job and finally being self-sufficient gave him license to check up on me whenever he liked - and I was sick of it.

“Jeb, last time I checked I was almost thirty. I don’t need a babysitter. Go back to your hotel and we can talk about this tomorrow.”

“Don’t make me come up there, Cece.”

My answer came laden with dry humor. “I’d like to see you try. I’d be willing to bet Cecil isn’t too happy with you jamming up his intercom.”

Cecil being the doorman. He wasn’t your ordinary run of the mill, elderly man who opened doors and made children smile. Rhett owned the building, and he had hired Cecil with the express intent of keeping out non-tenants and anyone he didn’t want inside. The dark-skinned man was over six and a half feet tall, with a booming voice and an imposing demeanor. Of course, beneath it all, he was a softie, but no one had to know that.

“Cece, this-”

“I’ll call you tomorrow, Jeb.” With that, I walked away from the intercom without looking back. It was, the first time in my life I’d managed to avoid Jeb’s influence completely. Usually, I let him guilt trip me into doing some semblance of what he wanted, just because I didn’t want him to feel neglected. Since our parents had gone abroad, all we had was each other - and Jeb had used that fact to exploit me for so long I had almost forgotten what my life was like before that guilt.

There was a two or three minute period, after I returned to my room, that I regretted my actions. I couldn’t remember the last time I had told Jeb no, but I remember being wary of him for the entirety of my early adulthood. There was a part of me that wanted to run back and apologize...and there was another part of me that could give two flying fucks. Owing to my newfound confidence and security in the fact that Jeb couldn’t get to me in the penthouse, I afforded myself the luxury of a breath of relief.

I could talk to Jeb and get this entire thing straightened out tomorrow. For now, there was only one person I wanted to talk to.

I did my best to make myself presentable. For some inexplicable reason, I found myself nervous. With as much time as I’d been spending with Rhett - as intimate as we’d been - there was no need for me to worry about seeing him when it had only been a couple of hours.

But in those few hours, something had changed. I admitted to myself that I didn’t want what was between us to end. I told myself that Nepal was the last hurrah - that I would do what I had to do for the sake of my article and then get the hell out of dodge.

It was no small wonder that things had blown up in my face.

I had been so ready for the new Rhett Wilder to disappoint me. I turned my nose up at his money and his success, telling myself that funds didn’t make a man...but Rhett was far more than just funds. He was adventure - kindness and empathy. He was still the sweet boy I had known as a child...and so much more.

So, the question was: where did we go from here? I didn’t know if he’d be able to answer it any better than I could…. but I hoped so.

I did the best I could to make myself presentable. Truth be told, a trip back to my apartment across town would be welcome at this point. I needed to do laundry and wished I had my entire plethora of beauty products at my disposal - but for now, I’d make do with what I had.

I slipped into the sundress Rhett had fawned over during our first interview before pinning my hair atop my head loosely and putting on my favorite lipstick. I was in the process of spritzing myself with perfume when I heard the front door unlock - and my heart leapt into my throat.

“Cece?” He called my name the moment he closed the door behind him, the low baritone echoing through the entryway of the apartment. “Are you awake?”

“I’m here.” I hurried from the bedroom out into the hallway and stopped, my tongue suddenly stuck to the roof of my mouth.

I had never had any difficulties giving Rhett a piece of my mind, and suddenly, all at once, I was tongue-tied.  He was quite the sight to behold in his three-piece suit, hair smoothed back from his brow, a few days’ worth of stubble dotting his jaw. I remembered how that stubble felt scraping across my chin when he kissed me - the raised red flesh it left on other parts of me when he was so desperate for me that we lost ourselves in each other.

“Hi.” I finally managed, my fingers curling around the edge of a nearby doorway for purchase. I realized, in that moment, that there was a panicked look about him. Almost as if he’d come through the door expecting to find me gone. The moment his eyes landed on me, that panic melted away and the corner of his mouth kicked up in the handsome smile I knew so well.

“Hey.” He tossed his briefcase onto a couch in the living room. “Sorry I’m so late. I know you probably want to finish up the interviews so I tried to get back as early as I-”

I ran to him. I couldn’t help it. Rhett’s expression turned surprised a moment before he enclosed me in his arms and I molded my mouth hungrily to his. He tasted like coffee and booze...a flavor I could easily get addicted to. The kiss was lazy and indulgent, and I gripped him so hard I had to be hurting him, but Rhett uttered not one word of complaint. When I finally released him, he gazed down at me for a long moment, his eyes full of some emotion that made my heart oddly soft. “Whoa. What a greeting. Not that I’m complaining.”

“Can we…” I hesitated for a moment, wondering how to proceed. I’d played the fool so many times that, deep down, I wasn’t sure if I could express myself properly. And even if I could, how would Rhett respond? “Can we worry about the interviews later?”

He arched a brow in surprise. “Taking a break from work?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?” The wry response spilled from me automatically and the man holding me smirked.

“Fair point. Alright, we’ll worry about the interviews later. Though I do worry about your deadline.”

And there the prospect hung, heavy with the weight of possibility.  Technically, I needed to wrap the project up in a week or two, and that would be the end of things. Funnily enough, however, in the past few weeks, impulse had gotten into the habit of trumping technicality on my end. Rhett had that effect on me. “Well...I was thinking...maybe we could talk more after the deadline.” I don’t think I’d sounded so tentative since giving a report in the fifth grade. “Off the record, you know. Just us.”

It was the best I could do. I just hoped he understood.

Looking back, I was foolish to doubt him. Rhett couldn’t have gotten to where he was in the world without a keen sense of business intuition.

“Cecily Warner...are you asking me out on a date?” His tone was just teasing enough so that I glowered at him, even as my heart swelled in my chest.

“You should be so lucky.” I managed, before rising onto my toes to kiss him again. This time, Rhett lifted me into his arms, stemming all my protests with deft strokes of his tongue as he carried me down the hall towards his bedroom.

I’d been in bed all day, but, somehow, I didn’t mind the direction the evening was taking. After all, with deadlines out of the equation, we had all the time in the world.