Just To Be With You

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

By Monday morning, the skies that had been so clear all weekend had turned a dark purple-gray. Just as dark as Ian’s mood.

All weekend long, he had firmed his resolve to keep his distance from Tatiana. Again and again, when she crept into his mind, he pushed thoughts of her away. Discipline. Determination. Focus. Work. That was all he’d ever needed to get himself back on track, he reminded himself as his driver pulled up on the tarmac behind his private plane. Surely, if he just kept his eye on the ball, he’d eventually be able to forget her. Especially now that he wouldn’t be seeing her every single day anymore. By the time they met again at a family dinner or party, he would have his head back on straight...and his life back on track with no emotional or romantic entanglements screwing with things.

And if he missed her, if the week already felt too empty, too dark, too wrong without her, well, that was just too damned bad, because—

What the hell?

He blinked hard to clear his vision, but when he looked again, Tatiana was still standing beside his plane chatting with his pilots, David and Linda. She had a medium-sized canvas bag slung over her shoulder and was wearing dark jeans, a blue and white striped sweater, and flat-heeled black boots that ended just below the knee.

Clearly, she was planning on making the trip to Alaska with him.

As soon as he stepped out of the town car, Tatiana turned to greet him. “Good morning, Ian.”

She looked truly happy to see him, her expression as bright and sunny as ever. Just as happy as the sudden leap of his heart in his chest proved he was to see her.

He’d told her to go shadow someone else, but she hadn’t listened. Talk about determination. He could learn something from her.

“Good morning, Tatiana.”

Knowing he couldn’t ask her what she was doing there in front of his pilots without embarrassing her, he turned to greet them, as well. They’d come with him to England years ago and then had followed him back to Seattle, but he hadn’t seen them since their return to the States.

“Are you both settling back in to life in Seattle all right?”

“Everything’s great,” David said.

“Thanks again for the maternity hospital recommendation you got from your mother.” Holding her husband’s hand, Linda was radiant. “We just did the tour yesterday and it looks amazing.”

“Oh, how lovely that you’re pregnant!” Tatiana exclaimed. “When are you due?”

“In five months. We’ve been trying for a while, so we’re very excited.”

“Do you know yet if you’re having a boy or a girl?”

David drew Linda closer as she said, “We want to be surprised.”

“I would, too,” Tatiana agreed. “I love surprises, and that would be one of the very best.”

Knowing Linda had had some trouble with morning sickness in her first trimester, Ian asked, “Are you feeling back to your normal self yet?”

“Pretty much. Thanks for asking, Ian.” With a look at her watch, she said, “David and I have a few final pre-flight preparations to take care of, and then we should be on our way to Alaska before the storm rolls in.”

As soon as his pilots disappeared into the cockpit, Tatiana told him, “I know you sent me a list of other CEOs to shadow this week, but I’m not here to shadow you anymore.” Before he could respond, she added, “And I’m not here to talk about Thursday or Friday night, either, I promise. You see, the character I’ll be playing next week was born and bred in Alaska, and I was hoping you’d consider letting me catch a ride with you so that I can do my final bit of research for it. Getting a feel for where my character grew up will really help me.”

In the week he’d spent with her, Tatiana had never shied away from confronting him. So then, why wasn’t she bringing up their conversation from Friday night? And why wasn’t she trying to pin him down, trying to get him to change his mind about being with her? She’d planned to give him some time to change his mind, but had hers been the feelings that ended up changing instead? Had she realized he was right when he’d told her that she was simply so overwhelmed by finally making love that she’d wrongly assumed that meant she was in love with him?

Or, was it simply that she knew him better than anyone else ever had...and understood that it was killing him to try to stay away when the very best moments of his life had been with her in his arms?

“I’m happy to give you a lift to Alaska if it will help you with your research.” Hell, he was miles beyond happy about the chance to spend more time with her when he’d missed her more with every hour that had passed since she walked away from him Friday night.

When she was buckled into the seat across from him, he let David and Linda know that they were ready for takeoff. Just as the plane began to taxi down the runway, Tatiana pulled out her script and scowled at it.

Though he had planned to get some work done on the flight, instead of taking out his laptop, he asked her, “How’s your work on your part going?”

Though her scowl deepened, it did nothing whatsoever to detract from her incredible beauty. “Not well. And I’m supposed to do a read-through of a couple of scenes with my male co-star on Thursday so that we can see where we are and feel each other out a bit.” She shook her head as the plane lifted into the air. “I can already tell you how he’s going to feel. He’s going to beg the producer for a new leading lady.”

She looked so upset that Ian didn’t think twice before offering, “Would it help if I read through it with you now?”

Her eyes widened with surprise. “That would be amazing.”

Ian had to move to the seat beside her so that they could share her script. Lord, he thought as he breathed in her scent, it was good to be close to her again. So damned good.

“I’m Rose, and you’ll be reading the part of Aiden, the man who’s...” She lifted her gaze to meet his. “He’s in love with her.”

Her eyes were so green and so beautiful that he nearly forgot that he couldn’t kiss her.

“This is the scene where he finally tells her exactly how he feels, and she reacts badly.” Tatiana’s voice was a little breathless now as she told him, “Aiden leads off the scene when he barges into Rose’s office.”

“Rose.”

“Aiden? What are you doing here? Didn’t you get my message?”

“Did you think I’d just let you leave like that, with a note that said you were sorry, but you couldn’t be with me anymore?”

“I’m already late to my next meeting. I can’t do this now.”

“What about after your meeting, Rose? Will you finally admit that what we have is rare and beautiful and that you love me? Or will I have to come back again tomorrow and the day after that for you to admit it?”

“I do love you! But that doesn’t change anything. I can’t be that girl I used to be, the one you fell in love with. Not now that I have to manage all this. Not when so many people are depending on me to make sure they don’t lose everything if I screw this up. And not when, for the first time in my life I finally feel like I’ve found the place I’m supposed to be.”

“Do you think I’d ever want any less for you? Do you think I can’t see how well the suit, the office, even the pressure of it all, suits you? And do you think I’d ever ask you to give it all up for me? That I won’t love you anymore because you’re not the girl I first fell for?”

“You say that now, that you’ll love me no matter what, but just because it’s easy to say the words doesn’t mean it will be anywhere near easy to actually pull it off. People make promises all the time, but they rarely keep them. And I can’t risk everything here on a promise, on a hope that love will actually last. I just can’t. So, please, I have a meeting now, and I need you to leave. And I won’t change my mind after it. Not today or tomorrow.”

After they read through a couple more pages, Tatiana laid the script down with a sigh on the table in front of them.

“It sounds good. Why are you so frustrated?”

“Good. Not great. I swear, I know the script backward and forward, but I can’t get to the heart of Rose at all. If I can’t root for her, then how is the audience going to be on her side?”

In the same way that Ian analyzed every angle of a potential investment for a business deal, he figured it couldn’t hurt to try the same thing with this character she was so stuck on. “What’s your biggest issue with Rose?”

“Who would choose money over love?”

“Someone who knows just how hard it is not to have money. Someone who knows just how unpredictable love is, that it isn’t all roses and sunsets. Someone who can see the rhyme and reason to making money, but knows there isn’t any whatsoever to love. Someone who’s willing to believe in what she can count and add up, but who has only ever known chaos when it came to her heart.”

“Okay, I can see that makes sense, but this hero, he’s laying it all on the line. He wants to love her. And he’s a good guy. A really good guy. I still don’t see how I can play her so that it makes sense that she’d keep holding back.”

“From the part we read, it sounds to me like she knows the damage love can do. And she also knows that the sacrifice and compromise needed to make it last are bigger than a quick flash of lust and the promises some guy is making to her.”

“He’s not promising her just a quick flash of lust, though. He’s promising her all of him, everything, forever and ever. She’s got to see that.”

“No, I think all she can see is what she’s learned from her own life, her own previous experience with people who made promises they never kept. And now it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than some guy saying he loves her to make her take that risk again. Whereas if she keeps her focus on money and business and how hard and risky it is to take on such a big company with so little experience, she figures she can at least minimize that part of the risk in her life.”

“She’s already a billionaire, though, now that she’s inherited the company. I get that she wants to prove herself, but I don’t understand where the risk is.”

“Even when you’re at a point where money will never be an issue again, it’s impossible to forget that helplessness. That’s why I’ve set up trusts for my family that they don’t know about, but that will kick in for each of them if they ever need it, just in case something goes wrong down the line. For any of them, for any reason, I need to know they’ll be taken care of.”

He didn’t realize just how much he’d shared with her until he saw her expression, but just then, the plane dipped and pitched from side to side. Ian had never been a nervous flier, but though he wasn’t too bothered by the turbulence, Tatiana had tightly crumpled the corner of the script in her hands.

Wanting to soothe her flight nerves, he told her, “I’m sure we’ve just hit a little rough patch and will be through it soon.”

He watched as she deliberately loosened her grip on the pages. “After all the flying I’ve done the past few years, you’d think I’d be better at it.” Turning away from the window as if by doing so she could forget that she was in a little tube shooting through the sky, she said, “Thank you for reading through this with me and talking it over. It helped a lot. More than anything else has so far, actually.”

Just then, the plane did another couple of hard bounces, and her face went white before she plastered on a smile. “I had a really nice chat with my sister this weekend. It sounds like she and Smith are having fun scouting locations in Ireland. Evidently, they closed down the local pub.”

Just hearing Valentina’s and Smith’s names had Ian’s gut twisting with so much guilt that even though Tatiana had told him she wasn’t going to bring anything that had happened on Thursday or Friday night up again—and he should have been glad for the reprieve—he had to know, “Have you told her about us?”

“I promised that what happens while I’m shadowing you stays between us.”

Ian wasn’t sure if it was the rough flight—or the difficult conversation they were having—that was the reason for the quick rise and fall of her chest as she answered his question. All he knew was that what she’d just said had pissed him off.

“Damn it, Tatiana, don’t try to act like having sex with me is the same as sitting in on a business meeting. I might be an asshole, but even I wouldn’t stoop so low that I’d ask you to sign an NDA before we slept together.”

“You’re not an asshole.”

“I swore to you that I wasn’t going to treat you badly. I promised myself I would stay away. I blew both of those promises, big time.”

As if the tension between them was directly connected to the weather patterns, just then the plane banked sharply to one side, and then a few seconds later, to the other even more sharply. Tatiana screamed and every thought flew from his head but protecting her as he put his arms around her and pulled her close. She was ice-cold and trembling as he held her.

“Ian, Tatiana,” David’s voice came to them over the on-board speakers, “it looks like we’re going to have to make an unexpected landing on Vancouver Island. Please make sure you’re buckled in. We’ll be safely on the ground soon.”

When he looked down at Tatiana, her eyes had dilated with full-on panic.

“Tatiana, we’re going to be fine.” When it was clear that his words hadn’t registered, he tucked his hand beneath her chin so that she had to focus on him. “David and Linda are the best in the business. I wouldn’t trust anyone else more to get us down safely.”

But when the plane hit more turbulence, Ian knew he needed to do something more to get her mind off the rough flight.

“When we were kids, our parents gave all of us really heavy-duty umbrellas. But we didn’t really use them much, because it wasn’t cool to be seen walking to school carrying one. Looking back, I don’t know how we sat through class every day soaking wet, but I guess when you’re a kid, stuff like that doesn’t bother you much.”

He could see that she was a little surprised by the way he’d just up and started talking about his childhood, and was glad that he’d managed to capture her attention, given the way the plane was wildly rocking back and forth.

“One day, I suppose my mother got sick of dealing with our soggy clothes and made us bring the umbrellas to school. The other kids snickered at us behind our backs, but Adam, Rafe, and I decided we’d make all of them wish they had brought their umbrellas to school, too.”

“How’d you do that?”

He smiled at her, running the back of his hand down her cheek. “We holstered our umbrellas through our belts and climbed up the rain spouts to the roof of the school. Our mom was a big Mary Poppins fan, so we’d all seen the character fly through the air holding her umbrella plenty of times.”

“You guys didn’t actually jump off the roof, did you? Someone stopped you before you could, right?”

“Nope.” He grinned at Tatiana’s wide-eyed expression. “We were quicker than any of the adults. Besides, they already called us the Wild Sullivans, so I’m pretty sure they knew no threats or punishments were going to reform us. Odds are they were less surprised that we were planning to jump off the roof with our umbrella parachutes than they were that we hadn’t thought of it sooner.”

“So what happened?”

She had, it seemed, forgotten entirely about the lurching plane, and he’d never been so thankful for his childhood idiocy as he was now. If he’d played it straight when he was kid, he wouldn’t have had this story to tell her now.

“Half the school was out on the blacktop waiting for us to make our move.” He shook his head, laughing at the memory. “On the count of three, we opened our umbrellas, walked to the edge of the roof, and jumped.”

She gasped. “Were you all okay?”

“Sure.” He said the word easily, throwing in a shrug as he added, “Rafe knocked his arm up pretty good and Adam lost a tooth, but the real damage didn’t come until the principal expelled us and Mom had to come pick us up.”

“How mad was she?”

He grinned again. “Mad. But later, when I caught her holding the open umbrella on the driveway, looking up at the sky, I knew why we’d only been grounded for a month as opposed to forever.” He could tell that they were getting close to making their landing, so he pressed a kiss to Tatiana’s hands to make sure she didn’t lose focus on him. “Part of the reason she loved watching Mary Poppins so much was because she always wished she could fly like that, too.”

A moment later, they made as smooth a landing as he could have hoped for. Ian wrapped his arms around Tatiana and held her tightly against him, giving silent thanks that everything was okay. If anything had happened to her, he would have been destroyed. Completely destroyed.

And as the plane finally came to a shuddering—and safe—stop, she whispered, “Thank you for making me forget how scary this was.”