A Clandestine Corporate Affair(49)

“Jordan is younger than me, and up until college he was small for his age. Real quiet and shy. I was tougher, and a lot bigger, so I took the knocks for him.”

She was staring at him, mouth open in awe. “You let your father hit you instead?”

He wasn’t sure why that came as such a surprise to her. Maybe because she was an only child. “I was the oldest. It was my responsibility to watch out for Jordan.”

“It seems like it should have been your father’s responsibility to find a more constructive way to discipline his children. Or your mother’s responsibility to protect you both. Why didn’t she stop him?”

“She probably didn’t want to risk losing her meal ticket.”

“So she let her husband abuse her children? That’s just wrong. They put people in jail for that sort of thing. I believe it’s called depraved indifference.” She wasn’t just mildly disturbed, she was furious. Maybe because she was looking at it from the point of view of a parent.

“It’s not worth getting this upset, Ana. It was a long time ago.”

“It’s just not fair,” she said, reaching up to touch his cheek. “You should have had a better childhood. It’s not right that your parents failed you so badly.”

“Maybe, but the world doesn’t always work the way it should.”

“And look at all you’ve done with your life, despite it. You’re the CBO of a billion-dollar company. That’s a huge accomplishment.”

“You want to hear something weird? Your dad sort of offered me a job.”

She laughed. “Seriously?”

“He said he didn’t like the idea of his son-in-law working for a competing company.”

“Did you remind him that you’re not his son-in-law?”

“Well, not yet. He was talking about the not-so-distant future.”

Her brow crinkled. “Are we planning to get married in the not-so-distant future? Because I think I missed the memo.”

“Unless you don’t want to marry me,” he said.

She sat up and set her cup on the coffee table. “I didn’t say that. I just didn’t know that you wanted to. We’ve never actually talked about it.”

Of course they had. “I told you I wanted to make this work, that I wanted to be with you. Eventual marriage seemed like a foregone conclusion.”

“A single woman never takes that for granted. And when she does, she tends to get her heart filleted and handed back to her in little pieces.”

It took him several seconds to connect the dots, and when he did, he understood why she wouldn’t take anything he said for granted. “You’re talking about me, right? When we were seeing each other before Max.”

She shrugged. “I thought everything was going great, that we had a future. You kept telling me how happy you were. Then pow, out of the blue you dumped me.”

“I guess I did, didn’t I?” He pulled her into his arms and held her. She snuggled up against him, soft and warm. She was so tough all the time, so direct and resolute, he sometimes forgot that she had a sensitive and vulnerable side. She’d gone through life probably feeling abandoned by her mother then rejected by her father. Then Nathan came along and made her feel wanted, and he let her down, too. He wasn’t going to let that happen again. Besides, he needed her as much as she needed him. He needed to show her that he meant what he said. That this time it was different.

“I have an idea that I wanted to run past you,” he said.

She tilted her head back and looked up at him. “I’m listening.”

“I’ve been thinking that eventually we’re going to need a bigger place. Something single-family, with a big yard for Max. Because of work, I thought it would be best to wait, but it is a buyer’s market. It couldn’t hurt to start searching now.”

She sat up a little straighter, looking as though she wanted to let herself be excited, but she was still wary. “Are you sure? What if we find something right away?”

“Worst case, we could move in and I can keep my apartment as my formal mailing address. Although I doubt anyone would question me buying a house. Emilio, our CFO, owns investment properties all over.”

She still looked unsure.

“If you don’t want to, we can wait,” he said.

“It’s not that at all. I want this. I really do. It’s just…everything is happening so fast.”