Page 15 of Always Mine (The Barrington Billionaires 1)
If anyone else had asked, Asher would have changed the subject, but he didn’t. The rest of the drive to the plane flew by as he fielded questions from Emily about his family. He usually kept his private life just that—private, but Emily’s interest was sincere, and he found himself sharing stories with her unlike he’d ever done with others.
He and Emily were settled into their seats on the plane when she started tapping the tips of her fingers and said, “Don’t help me. Let’s see if I can do this. It’s you, then Grant, Ian, Andrew, Lance, and Kenzi. Am I right?”
“You’ve got it.”
“Thank God your mother finally had that girl or you might have been one of a dozen.”
Asher frowned. “Why do you say that?”
Emily shrugged. “Five boys then a girl. I’m just guessing, but it makes sense that she’d stop there.”
“That wasn’t why my parents didn’t have more children.” As soon as he’d said it, he regretted it. He knew why his mother fought depression every year and why his family was quietly dysfunctional, but he preferred not to think about it. There was no avoiding returning to Boston, though, for the week his mother was planning. A week of collectively pretending they didn’t know why they were gathered. Shit.
Sensing his mood change, Emily laid a hand on his arm. He expected her to ask the question he had no intention of answering, but she didn’t. She simply gave him a long steady look, then asked, “What do you call two jalapeños having sex?”
He shrugged. Talking about his family had soured his mood. If he were alone he would have shaken it off by diving into work. For just a moment he felt trapped.
With an absolutely serious expression, Emily finished the joke. “Fucking hot.”
A chuckle started deep in Asher’s chest. How does she know what I need when we barely know each other? He didn’t understand how he and Emily connected as they did, but they did. His mood lifted. He unbuckled her seatbelt and pulled her into his lap. “That’s worse than mine.”
Emily wrapped her arms around his neck. “In your opinion.”
He nuzzled her neck. This is what he’d sought—the sweet escape of her touch. When he was with her, everything else faded in importance and he was just a man spending time with his woman. “Do you always have to have the last word?”
Emily ran her hand through the back of his hair and with an impish smile on her face replied, “Yes. What are you going to do about it?”
That’s all it took for Asher’s cock to leap to full attention. He stood and carried Emily into the plane’s bedroom and tossed her onto the bed. “I know one way to keep you quiet.”
Emily rolled onto her stomach and purred playfully, “Only one? Now that’s disappointing.”
Asher laughed. He stripped off his shirt and crawled onto the bed beside her.
Challenge accepted.
Chapter Eight
‡
Two weeks later, dressed only in one of Asher’s shirts, Emily sipped her morning coffee and tucked her feet beneath her on the linen couch of his 7th Arrondissement apartment with a sigh of contentment. The floor-to-ceiling window across from her was closed due to the chill of the morning air, but it framed a stunning view of the Eiffel tower. She had just finished checking her emails and was enjoying a few moments of quiet.
Asher was in the apartment’s office starting his day as he had every day since they’d arrived—by working until noon. Emily didn’t mind because it gave her time to answer her own business emails as well as cultivate the new connections she’d made in Paris. She paid bills, contacted artists and collection owners to discuss potential donations, and worked with Mr. Riggins to finalize the long list of what needed to be completed before the museum opened. She didn’t want to think about how empty her bank account would be when the project was finished. She preferred to focus on the amount of work she was getting done despite being far away.
Even if it had put her behind schedule, the trip would have been worth it. The trip she’d thought would last a couple days had stretched into two glorious weeks. Asher had brought joy back to her life. Celeste had been right. Her museum was important to her, but she wanted this, too. She wanted to be young, happy, and free.
There was no better way to describe what the trip had meant to her. She hadn’t known what to expect when she and Asher had taken what had started off as a sexual relationship and brought it to the city of love, but he continually amazed her with his attentiveness and thoughtfulness. Their grand tour of the city had begun with the Louvre, where Asher had delighted her by taking her to their tactile exhibit. It was hard not to fall a little bit in love with him because it was obvious he’d planned the trip to please her. They’d spent many afternoons walking through other museums or strolling along the Seine. They ate in restaurants with stunning views and even better food. They ran late to tours and dinner reservations when a simple touch or look had them stripping off each other’s clothing with an urgency that showed no sign of abating.
Emily was tingling and alive, and not just sexually.
Paris was more than living up to its artistic reputation. Emily closed her eyes and basked in the memories of where Asher had taken her. Oh, yes, the Musée National Rodin. The artist himself had lived a troubled life, but his artwork set a standard few had attained. Her knowledge of his works had been mostly through academic study, but photographs of the experience offered little compared to seeing his sculptures in person. Being in the same room as many of the sculptures that had inspired her was indescribably moving. At the Musée Paul-Belmondo, Emily tried and failed to find the words to express her admiration for the neoclassical, smooth lines of the sculptures. Belmondo was one of her idols, and she was brought to tears of happiness when she discovered a room on the first floor of the museum where visitors were encouraged to touch the replicas of his works. The fact that Asher had shared the experience with her made it that much more meaningful. He was a self-proclaimed art novice, but there were times when he would look at a painting and compare it to what he’d seen in her mother’s work or hers, and he would be spot on with his assessment of technique. It was no wonder Asher had become so successful in business. He was brilliant even when taken out of his element.
Just when Emily had thought Asher could not outdo the day before, he had taken her to Le Musée Valentin Haüy, a museum that honored the founder of Europe’s first school for the blind. Haüy had dedicated his life to the idea that the blind could learn to read with raised letters, and his ideas paved the way for Barbier, who created a system of raised dots, and Braille, who modified and perfected the system. Asher had set up a tour by the curator, and Emily was able to examine some of the world’s first devices for communication for the blind. Her time in Paris brought a deeper awareness of the importance of what she was trying to do in her community: highlight possibilities rather than what had once been called disabilities.
Emily felt herself falling for Asher, and it scared her. Although he had spent every day with her, it was impossible not to ask herself what would happen when they returned home. She didn’t doubt that Asher cared for her. He’d filled the last two weeks with immeasurable pleasure, in and out of bed, but there was an invisible wall between them. They avoided discussing the future, the fate of her museum, and how they felt about one another.
No matter how perfect their time together was, they were building a relationship on the uncertain foundation of denial. More than once she’d wanted to ask Asher if he’d canceled his plans for his site in New Hampshire, but she didn’t for the sole reason that she didn’t want to know if he hadn’t. She wasn’t ready for her time in Paris to end, and desp
ite the last two weeks, she knew what she had with Asher was fragile. One word. One wrong step and reality would come stomping in to end it. Thankfully, Celeste seemed to understand that. Emily called her every couple days to update her, and they celebrated the wonder of Paris without Celeste asking the questions Emily had no answers for.
A glance at the clock on the wall revealed it was past noon. She closed the laptop beside her, stood, and stretched. As a rule, she didn’t bother Asher while he was working, but the news had predicted warmer than normal weather, and she was comfortable enough in the city to go for a walk by herself if he had to work longer that day.
Emily hesitated at the door of Asher’s office before knocking. He was speaking to someone and his tone was angry. Emily knew she shouldn’t, but she stood there silently and listened.
Asher’s voice boomed through the closed door. “Not possible this late in the game. We’ve invested too much over there. We have governments all over the region watching to see how we do. I don’t have to tell you what a gamble this kind of expansion is. We succeed now, we cement our place in the global market. We fail, we might as well start looking for a domestic bailout.”
Emily clasped her hands together in front of her. Is he talking about Welchton? How could expanding into New Hampshire help him on the global level? He lowered his voice, and she couldn’t understand most of what he was saying, but she did clearly hear him say, “I’ll handle this myself.”
Handle what?
Emily took a deep breath and told herself not to be paranoid. B&H was a huge company. They were probably expanding into many areas. When Asher had spoken about the possibility of relocating his facility, he had made it sound like an inconvenience rather than something that could threaten financial stability of his company. No, he has to be talking about something else. He would tell me if he was still moving forward with his New Hampshire site. He said he wouldn’t lie to me.
