Leo's Chance(47)

"If I only knew what?"

"If you only knew how ridiculous it is for you to think that I would ever betray you, much less with Gwen. Really, if you could get inside my brain, you'd be laughing too."

"Jake–"

"Please, just trust me. Please don't go."

She continues to search my face, finally giving a very small nod of her head. I release my breath and lead her away from the door, throwing her coat back on the bench in my foyer.





CHAPTER 21


Evie works a catering job the next night and tells me she’s going to get a ride home afterwards. I want her to come home to me, but I’m trying to balance making her feel comfortable in our "new" relationship. This is the hard part for me because I’m so far beyond her emotionally, I think, but sometimes I see a look on her face that tells me her feelings for me are more intense than would make sense for a new relationship. I wonder if she finds it strange. I wonder if she’s been questioning it at all. Then again, she doesn’t have a lot of experience with relationships, so maybe she’s not.

After a meeting at work that day, Preston takes me aside, a look of concern on his face.

"What’s up? Everything okay?" I ask.

"Well, yeah, but I think you should know that Lauren has been making calls to the board. She’s been asking to set up a meeting but she won’t say why."

Ah, shit.

I pause for a minute, considering what she could want with the board and wondering if this is simply because I kicked her out of my hotel room a few nights ago. Is this her new tactic to get at me? I hold the majority of shares, so realistically, there’s not much she’d be able to do. But because I’m the director of the board, I won’t be part of the meeting and I won’t know what she wants until after she’s met with them.

"Okay, well thanks for letting me know, Preston. I’m sorry that family drama is affecting the company."

"It’s doing no such thing. The company is doing great. It’s you I’m worried about."

He pauses for a minute, looking at me, seeming to consider whether to go on.

"You know, I worked very closely with your father. When I visited him in the hospital after his heart attack, he obviously didn’t know that you would be taking over the company as soon as you did, but he made it very, very clear to me that when that time came, he didn’t want Lauren to have anything to do with this company. He asked that if there came a time when I was still here but he wasn’t, that I look out for you. I hope that doesn’t sound condescending. He didn’t mean it that way. I just think that he felt like he had failed you in some way and he wanted to make sure that you knew you had someone on your side under any future circumstances."

Damn. I feel the emotion welling up in me and I push it back down for later. "Thanks, Preston. I appreciate–"

"No need to thank me. Just wanted you to know that I’m dealing with the board situation, okay?" And with that, he gives me a pat on the back and walks off.

**********

I ask Evie to stay with me on Friday night. I have an idea that I hope will make her happy. Not only did we never get a chance to do the normal stuff kids do, but we never got a chance to do the things young couples do – all the things we might have done just for fun if we had actually gotten a chance to date when we were young and carefree. If we had ever been young and carefree. I’m also going to satisfy something in me from a long, long time ago. I’m going to buy her a dress and take her dancing. It still won’t top dancing with her under the stars in an empty park, which, despite shaking with nerves and stepping on her feet, was the best dance of my life so far. Two foster kids dancing together in the park because they didn’t have the right clothes to wear to a dance. Completely pitiful. But completely magical.

My mind goes back to that dance so many years ago and I can’t help smiling. It had been so awkward, yet so intense, one of those memories that seems to be scalded into the very fiber of my being. Funny, I don’t remember the songs that were playing, my head was so filled with static at her closeness, how good she smelled, how she moved against me. If I asked her, I wonder if she’d remember the songs. Those are the types of things I long to ask her, to reminisce about. Our memories. Some of the only good ones I have.

When I open my door for her on Friday, she looks beautiful but tired. That won’t do. I scoop her up and tell her I’m going to run a bath for her so she gets a second wind because I’m taking her dancing.

She fights me a little bit on the dancing plan and gives me an exasperated look when I tell her I bought her an outfit. But she marches toward the bedroom to see what I picked out for her so I think that’s a good sign.

I follow her back to the bedroom and watch her as she fingers the silky material of the dress and checks out the Jimmy Choo shoes. The saleswoman at the department store had put several in front of me that she suggested for the dress I chose, and I had noticed that one of the pairs was more than the fourteen hundred dollar price tag that Gwen had shrieked about after Evie spilled caviar on them. I had automatically chosen those. It was petty and superficial, I knew, but it made me smile to know that Evie would be wearing better shoes than that snotty bitch.

Finally, she turns to me with a smile. "I love it. Thank you. Did you really pick this out?"