Had he been so busy trying to be extraordinary that he’d forgotten how lovely a normal life could be? Was he chasing something that didn’t matter? What if she was the only thing that mattered?
He took a long drink of coffee. It had been a week since he’d taken her into the aftercare room and gotten his mouth on her. And what had he done? He fucking offered her a club contract for sex. Way to go, Church. So fucking romantic.
She would barely speak to him. She smiled at everyone else, but she was all business when it came to him. It rankled. It made him want to roar when she sat down at a table with a bunch of Doms and flirted.
And it was nothing less than he deserved.
This meeting. It was all that mattered. Getting back to the place where he belonged, that was what was important. Maybe in a couple of years if she was still free, they could try again.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” a familiar voice said as the door to the lobby opened. “Tell the partners I’ll be right there. Thanks so much, Ginny.”
“Keith?” Ryan stood up. Was his whole past just coming back to haunt him?
Keith’s jaw dropped open. “Holy shit. I should have read past the financials on this thing. Ryan Church. Wow. It’s been a while. Well, I’ll see you in the meeting then. Very interesting idea you have here.”
He strode off after giving Ryan a once-over and shaking his head.
Maybe Adam wasn’t the only person whose head he wanted to take off.
“They’ll see you now,” the receptionist said.
Ryan touched his left eyebrow. It was always throbbing. God, he wished it would quit.
Three hours later, Ryan waited in the building lobby, his eyes watching for the minute Keith came off the elevator. If he was anything like he’d used to be, he would go to lunch at 12:30 on the nose. Keith liked to keep a proper schedule. He was always organized and, despite the morning’s tardiness, always kept to his schedule. It was one of the reasons he’d picked him to care for Jillian.
Ding. The elevator doors opened, and there he was like clockwork. It was Friday so the bastard was probably going out for Mexican food.
Keith was walking out with the pretty blonde receptionist and an equally lovely brunette. Had Jillian lied? Maybe Keith had put her out because he wanted his own harem.
His former friend stopped, holding a hand up. “Ryan, I can’t tell you anything yet. We haven’t voted, but it was an excellent presentation. You’ve always been very inventive, and this is no different. We’re all on board with the idea.”
Then why did they have to vote? The truth was staring him in the face when he really thought about it. “They don’t want me running the company.” It hit him like a ton of bricks, but then he realized he didn’t give a shit about it. Not now. He needed answers. “You’ll get back to me about that. I want to know about Jillian.”
Keith’s eyes flared, and he turned back to talk to his companions. In a few seconds they were walking away and Keith turned back. “Fine. There’s a bar around the corner.”
Within minutes, they settled in. Keith ordered lunch and a whiskey neat, but Ryan couldn’t touch a thing. He waited until the waitress left before pouncing.
“Why didn’t you call me? What are you doing back in Dallas?”
Keith sighed. “I didn’t call you because Jill asked me not to. I spent a year in New York before I got the offer to come down here as a partner. I’m surprised you didn’t know. Jill told me she was working for you.”
He’d been in touch with Jillian? “She is. What are you doing talking to her?”
“Calm down, Neanderthal. Have you never heard of being friends with a woman? Look, Jill wasn’t on board with me taking over her contract.”
“She didn’t say anything to me.” Now that he thought about it, she hadn’t even cried. She’d just gone and gotten her things and waited for Keith to pick her up, her gorgeous face placid. He remembered he’d been a little upset that she didn’t even seem to care.
Keith snorted. “Hell, man, she had a shitload to say to me.”
“She said she asked you to take her to the bus stop.”
“She did. She explained very quietly and very calmly that she wasn’t going anywhere with me and if I tried to take her anywhere but the bus station, she would call the cops. So I took her to the bus station and I waited with her.”
“I gave her a thousand dollars.”
Keith’s lips ticked up. “She bought her ticket and then gave the rest to the panhandlers at the station.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because that money made her feel like a whore.”
Ryan felt his fists clench. “I was trying to look out for her. I gave her the last bit of my cash. Everything else went into the lawsuit. I’ve just now started to recover. I’ve saved almost a hundred grand, and every bit of it is going into this company.”
Keith shrugged. “Or you could sell the idea and make half a million.”
Chump change. “The company from that idea will be worth billions.”
“Could be. If you can convince someone to give you the start-up capital, and you are willing to slave for the next ten years of your life, and if no one else has the idea and gets it to market faster than you. And if you manage to avoid lawsuits. How old are you? Almost forty?”
“I’m thirty-eight.” And Keith was right about all of it. There were countless pitfalls when it came to starting up a business.
“Are you just never going to have a family?”
Where the hell was this coming from? “You’re not much younger than me.”
“Yeah, but I never met the right woman. I don’t know. Maybe you haven’t either. I’ve gotten close with Jill since that day. Don’t get your back up, man. I was doing what you asked me to do. I was watching out for her as much as she would let me. We talked over the phone and after the baby came and she moved to Dallas, I was the one who found out Taggart was hiring.”
His heart nearly stopped. “Baby? She had a baby?”
Oh, fuck. He had a kid. She’d had a baby and she hadn’t said anything to him. That changed everything. He had a kid. He had a family. He didn’t have to make any choices.
His stomach had taken a nosedive, but now the truth shocked through his system. He had a connection to her. They had a kid, and she couldn’t turn him away. This was his way in. He would take the deal for the idea and set Jill and the baby up in a nice house and eventually, after he’d made everything up to her, she would let him live there.