Billion Dollar Beast - Olivia Hayle Page 0,77

Funny how this never gets old, having her lips to explore and her warm mouth opening for me.

She sighs softly against me. “You know, I really love you,” she murmurs.

The words are like a detonation. They bounce around in my head, my mind as resistant to them as a damn Teflon pan in a TV advert, refusing to stick.

She can’t love me. Not possibly. Not really.

Blair draws back with a smile. “Knew you’d react like that,” she teases. “So I’ll give you a week or two to think about them before I’ll say it again.”

I capture her lips with mine again. She loves me. And she’s not the least bit concerned about saying it, about me reciprocating, or worried about what this will mean.

If she’s brave enough to say the words, then I’m brave enough to accept them.

She finally pulls away, her cheeks beautifully flushed. “We are still at a party,” she murmurs. “I didn’t expect that, well, that would be your response.”

I tuck her into my side. She loves me. I’ll have to repeat it to myself over and over again until it becomes real. “Blair, I…”

“I know,” she says, putting a hand over my heart. “I know. We have time.”

Those might be the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard.

Epilogue

Blair

“A whole weekend without work,” I say. “I’m still not sure if I can do it.”

There’s a smile in Nick’s voice when he replies. “Yes, you can.”

“But what if there’s an emergency? A server crashes, or an order form gets mixed up, or a newspaper urgently needs an interview?”

“Your assistant knows to call you if there’s an emergency,” he says. It’s not the first time he’s reassured me like this. “And CEOs get to take vacations.”

“Neither you nor Cole took one for your first five years in business.”

He puts down the suitcase and shuts the front door to the chalet with his foot. “Be smarter than us,” he tells me. “Just be here with me for a few days.”

He’s right. I reach up and press a kiss to his cheek, forcing away thoughts of orders and packaging and overhead. “I’m sorry. For the coming few days, I’ll be yours entirely, body, soul and mind.”

“I thought you always were.”

Sticking out my tongue at him, I walk through the beautiful space. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the snow is falling softly. It’s early March and prime season in Whistler. “Hot tub right away?”

Nick chuckles. “Did you just read my mind?”

“Maybe. I’ve been practicing.”

As we get dressed and settled, my mind wanders back to the company by its own accord. The launch was just a month ago—and it’s been nonstop work since then.

And to my surprise… it’s doing really well.

The newspapers I’d spoken to were interested in full-page interviews and that really got the word out. And the young marketing expert I’d hired—straight out of college, no less—was amazing. Ingenious, even. She’d once commented that my relationship with Nick was helping my brand.

He’d had a field day with that comment.

Smiling, I look over at Nick. He’s tugging off his cable-knit sweater on the other side of the master bedroom. He’d been there for the launch party, of course.

And he’d been far tougher than I’d been. “The banner is crooked,” he’d pointed out.

“It is?”

“Yes. And something is off with the lighting.”

I’d caught his arm. “Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s not good enough.” He’d shrugged off my hands casually. “I’ll fix it. You should have the best.”

And he had. In the midst of the preparations he’d been there, barking orders right alongside me in the way that only he could.

And the launch party was better for it.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, pulling on his trunks.

My smile widens. “I don’t know. I think I just kinda like you.”

He smiles at that, too. Funny, how much more often he does that these days. “Flatterer,” he says.

“And I’m thinking that you must have enjoyed the email from the Adams, even if you refuse to admit it.”

He rolls his eyes. “Their approval doesn’t matter.”

“I’m not saying it does,” I say. At the same time, though, the fact that they had finally come around to seeing merit in what Nick had done—that B.C. Adams now has seventy stores operating nationwide and beginning to turn a tentative profit… “But it doesn’t hurt. And saving a company must be a fun change of pace.”

He reaches for me, pulling me into his side as we walk down the hallway. “Fine—it was a nice email. Don’t get your hopes up, though.