Chapter 27
Emma
Dressed in my hiking clothes, I sat in the kitchen as Ryan packed us lunch.
"I still want to show you the downstairs. Let's go out through the basement," he said, motioning for me to follow him.
"Are you kidding me?" My jaw dropped at the sight of the Olympic-size heated lap pool, not to mention the sauna and full-size gym. "I see how you keep that body so well maintained," I said, eyeing him seductively.
"Insatiable," he said, pinning me against the wall, adeptly parting my lips with his tongue. "But it's time for our hike. I'm excited about showing you the land."
The acreage had several manmade trails. I might as well have been in a state park.
"This is unbelievable … and this is all your property? Are you sure what you do is legal?" I couldn't keep myself from asking.
"Yes, it is legal, and I thought we had a deal that we would discuss all that tonight? I would love to take a short break from everything and just enjoy ourselves and our surroundings." I could tell he was annoyed and hoped his good mood would bounce back.
"Sorry, you're right. Deal." I reached for his hand.
We came to an opening in the path, and I stopped to listen, hearing the rumble and splashing of rushing water. I stared in awe at the whitewater cascading over the rocks below, creating a lively commotion as it flowed into the surrounding lake. It was exhilarating. Breathing in the fresh, crisp air, I turned to Ryan, astonished. "You own your own waterfall?"
"Only a small one." His smile was genuine and boyish. He was relaxed and content. I could tell how much he loved this place. Who wouldn't?
"Time for lunch," he announced as his eyes crinkled. I could see his appreciation of my obvious amazement.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" He removed his backpack, and we sat down on a massive rock.
I was drawn in, mesmerized by the sound of the gushing water thrashing against the rocks. Ryan unpacked our lunch. He poured me a glass of lemonade and handed me a chicken sandwich.
"Thanks, this is incredible. So beautiful."
"Like you," he said, gazing at me. "Incredible and beautiful."
We finished eating lunch. Ryan leaned over, pinning my arms to the ground, his face so close I could feel his warm breath caressing my cheeks.
"Do you use that line on all the girls you bring here?"
"Except for my daughter, you are the only other person that has been here. And they're not lines if they're true," he said, dusting his lips over my neck. "But I think I am going to make you pay for that comment later."
"And how do you propose to do that?"
"Let's see, I may put your naked body over my knee and spank you then tie you up and tickle you mercilessly with my tongue."
I squirmed out from underneath him and packed our empty lunch dishes back in his backpack.
"I think we had better finish the trail before I find more reasons to make you want to punish me." The vision of him torturing me with his tongue was already tormenting me. Judging from the bulge in his pants, it had the same effect on him.
Back at the house, I took a shower. His master bathroom was large and the walk-in shower had four heads. I turned them all on, letting the water massage and relax me as it pulsated and beat against my skin, soothing my tired muscles.
When I returned to the kitchen, Ryan was working away, chopping vegetables. Smart, sexy, gorgeous, fantastic in bed, rich, and liked to cook! Crap, did I hit the jackpot! I smiled, watching him slice the tomatoes for a salad.
"You hungry? I threw a couple of steaks and some shrimp on the grill. Should be another fifteen minutes till dinner."
"Starving." I popped an olive into my mouth. "I was disappointed you didn't join me in the shower."
Ryan stopped slicing the avocado he had moved on to after the tomatoes and looked at me guiltily. "I confess, I showered in the guest bath. Don't be upset, but I figured if I joined you, we wouldn't eat till midnight."
"Avoiding sex with me already, Mr. Smith?" I said, pretending to pout. "Perhaps I should make you pay later?"
He shook his head. "We will see who makes who pay later." I could tell by the confidence in his voice, I would be the one happily giving in to him.
The food was excellent. We sat on the deck watching the sunset and ate. Taking a sip of the cabernet Ryan had chosen to go with our steaks, I wondered if he was ready to share his remaining secrets.
"Dinner was perfect. Thank you for cooking."
"I love cooking for you. Which is a good thing because I've tasted your cooking." He grinned. "Let me clear the dishes and then, as promised, we can talk." He kissed my forehead and brought our dishes into the kitchen.
Back on the deck and looking relaxed, Ryan stretched his long legs out in front of him and began the rest of his story.
"My parents did well for themselves. We lived a very comfortable life. Dad was a cardiac surgeon and Mom was a nurse practitioner. Their estate was worth two million dollars when they died. The accident that killed them was caused by the driver of a semi for a large company. He had been driving far past the allowed amount of hours when he dozed off and crossed the yellow line, hitting my parents head-on and killing them instantly. The settlement was considerable. Dad's attorney did an excellent job. Half went to me and half was put in a trust fund for my sister until she turned nineteen. Money wasn't going to be an issue."
As he talked, I could hear the resignation and sadness in his voice. My heart broke for him. I couldn't imagine the pain of losing your parents so young. My parents may be divorced, but at least I was able to pick up the phone and call them. A twinge of guilt hit me when I remembered how long it had been since I spoke to either one of them.
"I didn't care about the money, so for fun I invested as a day trader and got very lucky. I tripled my share of the settlement. It was all kind of surreal." He twisted in his chair a little uncomfortable. "Then I bought a few construction companies since I was always interested in building. They are turning out to be very profitable. I still dabble in the stock market and have been incredibly lucky in my choices. I am on the board of a few charities, most of them for animals and children. I'm fortunate at least finances are not a problem.
"Oh, and while I'm confessing everything, I should tell you that I know Bob, Char's fiancé. We both went to CU in Boulder and have partied together a few times. His firm also does some work for my companies.”
"Construction companies. Are you Hayes Construction?" I asked.
"That's my company, yes. Have you heard of it?"
"Not really, but the night Bob met Char, he was celebrating a new client, which I’m now guessing was you."
"See, it was destiny that we meet." He winked at me. "I hated asking Bob not to say anything, but I had no idea where we were going, and I promised him I would tell you everything if we kept seeing each other." He ran his fingers through his thick dark brown hair.
"Bob told Charlotte yesterday that he knew you, but he wouldn't tell her how or anything else. All he said was for her to tell me I should trust you."
"And do you? Trust me? Despite all my lies?"
"Strangely, yes. Even without Bob's reassurance. I did have my doubts when Char saw you and your daughter while we were here in Evergreen."
Ryan took my hand in his. "Good, it's important to me that you trust me. Bob and his firm do a lot of work for my companies. He is my attorney for business-related contracts. Don't misunderstand, I think the reason he agreed not to tell Charlotte sooner is that he saw something in us when we were together, and he believed we could be an 'us.' We can, can't we, Em? We can be an 'us,' right?"
For the first time, Ryan seemed vulnerable. Like he thought I might leave, and more importantly, he didn't want me to.
"Ryan, were you afraid that your money would influence me. Is that why you didn't tell me sooner?"
"No, I believe you love me. I didn't want to tell you about my money until we got here because after all the bad stuff I shared with you yesterday, I needed to be able to show you something good. To share with you at least one thing that isn't screwed-up. Well, still messed-up since both my parents died, but that was a long time ago. They would have loved you," he said, smiling as he caressed my cheek. "Just like I do."
Much like him, his answer was perfect.
I sat on Ryan's lap. "I do love you, and I would love you if you were poor, Mr. Smith."
"Well, as you just guessed, my last name is Hayes. And if you haven't heard of me, then you need to Google me."
"If I haven't heard of you? That's quite an ego, Mr. Smith," I laughed. Other than Bob's firm doing some work for your company, no, I haven't heard of you. Should I have? And what am I going to learn from Googling you that is so bad?"
"Well…" he took me off of his lap and set me down "…let me go get my laptop, and we can search the internet together. Please don't believe everything you read."
Looking very nervous, he came back with his laptop and fired it up. A few seconds later, Google was waiting for us to request a search topic.
He bent over and typed, "Ryan Hayes." Pages jammed with headlines and pictures of Ryan rapidly filled the screen.
"Oh. My. God!" I pulled the computer closer to me.
There were stories about his parents’ tragic accident. Some pictures had captions of him donating to charities, ribbon ceremonies and that sort of thing. But the stories about his personal life were ruthless. The first three on Google's list: "Playboy? Businesses Man? Philanthropist?" "World's Most Eligible Married Bachelor?" and one headline even lead with "Mr. One-Night Stand?" There were countless pictures of him with beautiful women.
"Ryan, what is all this?"
"There’s some work I need to do, so I'm going to leave you here to read. We can talk about it in an hour when I come back."
He went into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of chilled chardonnay, poured me a glass, and left the bottle sitting next to me.
"I'll be in my office." He turned and walked back into the house.
I stared at the screen, half of me wanted to shut it down and the other half was compelled to read on. I took a sip of wine and clicked on the first headline.
"Multi-Billionaire, Ryan Hayes," the article began. Multi-Billionaire? My mouth went dry, holy shit! I imagine this is the secret that Char couldn't tell me. I read through several articles and realized how little I knew about him. Did I know this man at all? After about an hour, he came back out to the porch.
"Now do you see why I didn't want you to Google me? Not to sound like a narcissist, but I was a little surprised and grateful that you didn't know who I was. As you can see, I make the headlines a lot."
"Most of my computer time is spent on the backend. I don't really spend much time with the search engines, except to test my code. Ryan, how much of this is true? Are you 'Mr. One-Night Stand?’ These stories make you sound pretty cold and uncaring when it comes to women. And all these women that you've got your arm around, they're fucking gorgeous."
"None of them are you." He gave me a reassuring kiss.
"You said you had an occasional one-night stand. I think our definition of occasional might be different. How many women have you been with?"
"Does it matter?"
"I don't know, I guess not. Looks like you made up for not losing your virginity until your senior year. No wonder you're so good in bed."
Ryan laughed. "You think I'm good in bed?” He puffed up like a proud rooster. "And I still want to know when you lost your virginity." He smiled.
"Like I said yesterday, Lindsey did not or does not want me to fall in love with anyone. And with as bad as Lindsey and my marriage turned out, I had no desire to commit to anyone. So yes, I've known my fair share of women.”
"More like a few men's fair share." Insecurity crept over me.
He took my hand in his. "But I've only ever cared about one, Em. I care about you. I am so much more alive when I'm with you. You bring out a part of me that I didn't know existed. Without you, I would never have known how much more was possible. Without you, I wouldn't have ever wanted more." His hand traced my face as he ran his thumb over my lips. "Don't forget, having the kind of money I do keeps me in the headlines. The press would snap a picture of me out with a woman, but never the same woman. Some columnist named me 'Mr. One-Night Stand,' and it stuck. It didn't matter to me. The only thing I cared about was Melissa. In hindsight, if I had been a little more discerning, it would have given Lindsey less ammunition to use against me. And Melissa wouldn't have to read about her father's bullshit online.”
"What if you told Lindsey you are in love and want a divorce? What would she do? And besides, if the courts didn't side with you, with your money couldn't you buy her off or something?"
"Lindsey has plenty of money. She had me sign an agreement after my felony that half of everything in our estate was hers. Which by law, since we've been married close to fifteen years now, half would be hers anyway. If Lindsey were to divorce me, she would still never have to worry about money. Give me a little time. Talking to the attorney didn't help. As soon as I can figure out the best way to approach her, I'll try and talk to Lindsey. If Lindsey is developing a life of her own, she might be more reasonable."
"Isn't Lindsey concerned about what this is doing to Melissa?"
"She is never going to win any awards for mother of the year. She is distant and cold. She's gotten a little better now that Melissa is older, but not much."
"Em, I hate to bring this up, but for now we need to keep our relationship off the grid until we come up with a solution. If Lindsey finds out about you, I'm afraid of what she will do. She would make me choose between you and my daughter."
I understood, but it still didn't stop the sting of his words. "I get it. What about Melissa? Can we tell her?"
Ryan bit his lower lip. "I don't think it is wise. She's fourteen and to ask her to keep something this big a secret wouldn't be fair. What if she slips up? I know I'm asking a lot, but please don't give up on me. There's a solution, we just have to find it." He took my hand and held it. I studied his hand for a moment, his long fingers rubbing the top of my hand while his thumb caressed my palm.
"I'm not, Ryan. I'm not giving up." It was after midnight when we went to bed. "Would you mind if we just slept? I am exhausted."
"Deal." He gathered me up in his arms and put me on the bed. I snuggled up against his back, my arm wrapped around his body, and drifted off. Too tired to even think.