His Absolute Insistence: A Scandalous Billionaire Love Story (Jessika, #2) (11 page)

"I'll make the macaroni and cheese with hot dogs and you can make the chocolate milk," I said.

He smirked.  "I get the important task, I see."

"Chocolate milk is serious business, Asher.  If you mess it up, I won't forgive you."

"Of course not," he said with false formality.  "I wouldn't dare."

"Good," I said.

"Can I tell you something?" he asked.

"Yes, what?"

"I'm starving."

I smiled, sheepish, and looked away from him.  "Can I tell you something, too?"

"What?" he asked.

"I'm starving, too.  Do you want to go eat?  I made a lot of food.  I think the pasta is done.  It might be overdone now.  There's more, though.  I can make more if it's not good."

"I love mushy pasta," Asher said.  "Maybe we should go check on it, though.  I love pasta when it's not mushy, too."

"Alright," I said.  "Thank you for being here.  I feel a lot better now.  Thank you for not being angry about this place, too.  I'm sorry I kept it a secret from you."

Asher smiled and sat up, then he helped me up, too.  "It's not a bad secret, Jessika.  There's a difference there.  Secrets can be good and bad.  This is more of a good one, almost like a surprise, right?"

"Maybe," I said, skeptical.  "Asher, I... I just don't know if I would have told you about this if everything hadn't happened like it did.  I didn't keep my apartment for any particular reason, though, I promise.  I didn't plan on leaving you."

"I know," he said.  "I trust you.  I don't expect you to tell me everything all the time, Jessika.  You told me when you knew it was important.  I think that's what's most important here, too."

"Do you keep secrets from me?" I asked.

"I'm sure I have a few secrets.  I haven't kept them from you specifically, but I'm sure there's things about me that you don't know."

"I don't like that," I said, pretending to pout.  "I want to know everything."

"Everything?" he asked, grinning.  "That's a lot to ask."

"Everything," I repeated.  I jumped on him and squeezed him in a hug and he hugged me back.  "Asher, I love you so much."

"I love you, too," he said, his arms wrapped tightly around me.  "Let's go eat.  We can try and see about talking about everything while we do.  How's that sound?"

"Maybe we can do it in pieces," I said.  "Maybe I can learn more about you every day and you can learn more about me, too.  I think that would be nice."

He smiled.  "I think so, too."

A
sher and I talked during dinner and it was nice.  We always talked during dinner, but usually we ate at the mansion.  The dining room there was more like a large dining hall, and while we only used a small part of the table, it extended much further down the room than I thought was normal.  Part of the dining room in the mansion was for mingling and talking, either before or after dinner.  And, we ran the risk of having people intrude on us every night, too.

They didn't mean to and I understood that, but it didn't make it any less awkward for me sometimes.  How was I supposed to have an intimate conversation with my husband if one of the cooks might come in at any moment and bring us more food?  I asked about that once, though in a slightly less antagonistic way.  I just asked if maybe they could bring all of the food at once so they didn't have to keep bringing it throughout the meal.  I didn't think it was too much to ask, and I asked Asher, not the kitchen staff. 

He asked them later and the head chef balked, stating that to do that would mean leaving the food unattended and cooling on the dining hall table.  The food wouldn't taste nearly as good if they did that.  Perfection, ruined.  And for what?  It wasn't a problem, he reassured Asher, and then me.  Oh, no, they didn't mind doing it at all.  Bringing out platters and trays of food throughout our meal was definitely agreeable to their preferences.

I sort of understood.  They had some sort of obsession with cooking and food, and that was fine.  Before I started writing more, I would read all the time.  I used to have my own book review blog, too.  It wasn't anything special—just a little hole in the wall site on the internet where I talked about the books I'd read—but I enjoyed it and I wanted to make it the best I could.  So maybe it was like that for the kitchen staff, too, except more professional.  That didn't really help me, though.

Here, though, in my apartment with all of the food prepared, with just me and Asher, it was different.  The kitchen stood just off to the right of the front door, if it could even be called that.  More like a hallway than a room.  An island type of counter (or perhaps a peninsula?  I wasn't sure if that was an actual type), connected to the far wall, vaguely separated the kitchen area from the living room.  I owned a cheap couch that split off the majority of the living room from an area I liked to call my dining room.  In actuality, the living room and dining room were one and the same if not for the couch acting as a divider.

And... that was it.  It was just a small circle table and four chairs.  Asher and I sat next to each other, close to the peninsula counter.  I put the prepared food on the counter so we could grab it easily from the table if we needed more.  Then we ate our food.  Quiet, companionable, talking about this or that.  Nothing in particular.  I got to pretend that this was normal, that maybe life was always like this.  Maybe I didn't work for some billion dollar company in the startup literature segment, and maybe Asher wasn't some billionaire CEO tourism tycoon.

I could be a secretary, instead, working in an office.  And Asher might be... I didn't know.  Construction worker?  Possibly too dirty.  Police officer?  Who knew?

I didn't really want to be a secretary, and I loved being a writer.  I didn't want Asher to be anything different, either.  It was just nice to think that maybe we were normal now, instead of excessive or extraordinary.  No one would care if someone found a sex tape between a secretary and a police officer.  No one would light those people's house on fire, or break into the secretary's office and leave crude notes on her computer.  They could just live and be.

That was us right now; Asher and I.  We were ourselves.  We were living and being.

"I almost," he said in between a bite of garlic bread smeared in pasta sauce.  "I almost became a photographer instead of taking over Landseer Enterprises when my father died."

"Really?" I asked.  "Why?  I know you love photography, but..."

He shrugged.  "I don't know.  I can't imagine it now, actually.  It seems stupid to even think about it.  I do believe people should follow their dreams, though.  That's actually why I thought about it, but I changed my mind because I wasn't sure if it was really a dream or just a temporary fascination.  Well, that and it would have been stupid not to take over the company.  I could have inherited shares from the business and lived a great life, but it would have been different."

"Hm?" I asked, inquiring softly.

"I had—"  He paused, both to think and to take a bite of pasta.  "I think I had a revelation, almost.  I enjoyed taking pictures, but a large part of that enjoyment came from setting up the scene.  Sometimes it's intense and exhilarating.  There's a part of me that just wants to create settings all the time.  Taking pictures is an afterthought, almost.  It's the natural progression of creating a scene.  Once you've made it, you don't want to lose it, right?  That's when you take a picture, so you can have it forever and you can share it with everyone.  You can relive the moment."

I smiled, caught up in his excitement.

"Not every picture is for everyone.  Some are private."  He said this while touching my arm lightly, running his fingers from my elbow to my wrist.  "Every picture I've taken is one I want to keep forever, though.  It's almost magical in a way.  They're memories, but more than that, too.  Sometimes they're just ideas of what might exist, or maybe fantasies, but in the picture it all seems real."

I nodded and smiled, then took a bite of my food.  Asher's hand still lay on my arm, so I moved slightly to take his hand in mine.  We sat there, smiling and looking into each other's eyes, warm food and happy thoughts between us.

"Can I ask you something about some of your pictures?" I asked.  "Specific ones.  You might get mad.  I'm just curious, though.  I don't, um..."

He nodded, and then he read my mind.  "It's about the first ones I took of you, isn't it?"

I nodded, too, but said nothing.

He squeezed my hand gently.  "Maybe this is wrong, but I knew that my relationship with Beatrice wasn't exactly good or right.  I think I always knew it deep down, but I wanted it to be different.  I wanted... more?  How can someone say that to his wife, though?  You don't marry someone expecting them to change all of a sudden, you marry them for who they are.  Or, that's what I thought at the time, anyways.  It's still difficult to come to terms with it all."

"You don't have to," I said.  "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"No."  He shook his head.  "I want to.  I've never really been able to talk with anyone about this before, so if you're willing to listen, I'd like that."

I nodded.  I didn't know if I was willing to hear everything, but I wanted to try so that I could understand Asher better.

"Well... I mean, I get it, too," he continued.  "Marriage is supposed to be important, but Beatrice and I never had a relationship to begin with.  We went on dates, sort of, but never alone.  We always went with other people, and I guess we just ended up sitting closer to each other than anyone else.  My mother invited her family over to dinner sometimes, so we spent time together like that, too.  As kids, maybe.  We were teenagers, but then adults, and nothing really changed."

"My father mentioned Beatrice and her family sometimes.  My mother, too.  I didn't really understand why at first.  Then my father passed away and everything changed, because the company was involved and more and more.  It was stressful at the time.  My mother needed stability, and I realize now that everything would have settled on its own eventually, but back then it seemed like every day the problems kept getting bigger and bigger.  So... I agreed.  She mentioned I should settle down and then take control of Landseer Enterprises.  That was her idea of stability, and it makes sense in a way.  That's what my father would have wanted, too.  It was in his will, but I didn't have to do it.  I had other options, but it didn't seem like I had any real choice."

I nodded.  That was life.  That's what everyone did, wasn't it?  Everyone went to college, everyone found a job, everyone met their future wife, they married.  They bought a house, had kids.  It was expected.  It was considered normal, even if maybe not everyone did all of those things, either.  Maybe not even a lot of people did.  Who knew?

"I proposed to Beatrice even though we hadn't really ever dated.  She said yes, of course.  That was kind of expected, too.  Both our families were wealthy, so marriage seemed obvious.  She acted the same as me in a lot of ways, too.  That made a lot of it harder, almost.  We married, did customary marriage things, moved into the family mansion.  My mother decided to move into her own apartment.  Memories, she said, but I don't know how true that was.  She didn't want to be surrounded by memories.  I took over the company and learned about day to day business affairs, but I still loved photography.  I went to college for a business degree, but I took as many art-related electives as I could.  I think because of that, I... I don't know, I just..."

"Since you were shackled into something you weren't sure of, you didn't want her to feel the same?" I offered.

"Something like that," he said with a careful smile.  "I don't really know, honestly.  I thought maybe one of us should find happiness, and the obvious answer, at least to me, was she should.  She didn't have anything holding her back.  She didn't have a company to manage.  Maybe she did the smarter thing.  She traveled the world and did whatever she wanted.  I paid for a lot of it, yes, but she had investments of her own.  She still does.  Once she's out of prison, she'll be fine.  I hope she's fine, at least."

Something scratched at my heart, some tiny little pinch of pain.  "Do you still care about her?" I asked, though I didn't know if I wanted to ask this, and I especially didn't know if I wanted to know the answer.

"I care," Asher admitted.  "I've known Beatrice for a long time, but that's it.  I care, but I don't love her.  I never loved her, Jessika.  It was literally never like that.  We pretended at love and marriage, but it was entirely fake for both of us.  We used to be friends, though.  We used to hang out and have fun.  We never really did much by ourselves, but I did like her.  I don't know how to explain that.  It sounds terrible, doesn't it?"

I shook my head, but I didn't know if I wanted to disagree with him about it sounding terrible or if I wanted to shake away the nagging thoughts of his ex-wife and previous marriage.  He spoke so gently about her, even though she'd tried to ruin him.  Her secret lover, Asher's previous Director of Public Relations before Lucent, even attempted to kill Asher at one point.  Beatrice didn't know; that's what she said and I believed her because of what she did and how she ended up saving Asher by pushing Solomon Royce's arm aside just before he fired the gun.  But, she still involved herself in that situation.  She still planned on siphoning money away from Landseer Enterprises and then wanted to destroy Asher's life.

She didn't now, or that's what she said.  She regretted it, supposedly.

It confused me.  It confused me a lot.

"Let's not talk about this," he said.

"You didn't finish, though."  I needed him to finish.  "You never told me about the photos."

"I don't know if it's important," he said.  "I said too much.  I didn't mean to make it sound like that.  I just..."

"What?" I asked.

He seemed reticent, toying with the handle of his fork in one hand while holding my hand with the other, staring at me as if trying to figure out what to say to make everything perfect.

If the last couple of days taught me anything, not everything was always perfect.  Maybe nothing was ever perfect.  We could try to create perfection, though.  We could make scenes, like Asher mentioned with his photography.  We could set them up, create scenes or ideas or fantasies, and take pictures with memories.  We could love and laugh and smile, but sometimes happiness came after knowing sadness, too.  Sometimes happiness was only possible because of all the sadness we knew beforehand.