Mr. Arrogant: A Billionaire Romance (19 page)

Anthony smiled and nodded. “She’s quite a remarkable young woman. I don’t know how you ever let her go. I certainly wouldn’t have, no matter what.” He said, and Jonathon got the distinct impression that Anthony might not be talking about business.

“She is indeed a remarkable young woman, but sometimes circumstances are beyond our control.” Jonathon said quietly. His mind was on her again, as it was so often day and night.

Anthony shook his hand and left, congratulating him on his upcoming wedding as he walked out of the door. “I hope you find some happiness with the choices you’ve made. You know, we only get to go through this life once, and anytime we can make the right choices for ourselves, we should.” With that parting comment, he walked out of the door and closed it behind him, leaving Jonathon with his thoughts, which Jonathon felt was an utterly cruel thing to do.

He walked to the wall of windows in his office and looked down over the city; teeming with life and chaos and organization and pollution. Everyone in it was living their own life, their paths criss-crossing and intersecting, their lives touching one another’s for years at a time, or sometimes for brief seconds. She stayed on his mind, and Anthony’s parting words haunted Jonathon’s mind, echoing back and forth as though they were waiting for him to pluck them from the space there in his head and hold tight to them.

‘We only get to go through this life once…’ Anthony had said. Jonathon knew that he was right of course, but Jonathon could see no way around the choices he had been making, and he could not get rid of the cold, hard feeling in his core that he had been making all of the wrong choices from the moment he let his father force him into the marriage from hell.

As he stood there, he came to grips with the fact that he may have agreed to the wedding in order to save Naomi, but he had seen the pain that he had caused her in the doing of it, and he had just learned from Anthony that she was doing quite well at Jupiter. It made him realize that his father’s reach might not be as far as he insinuated, and that perhaps she was doing so well that his father could not destroy what she had worked so hard to build.

He clenched his jaw then, determined to begin making the right changes instead of all of the wrong ones, and he knew that the first change he had to make would begin with his father. Jonathon left the window and walked out of his office, heading one floor up to his father’s office. He did not announce himself. He walked straight past his father’s secretary and through the door into Phillip’s office.

Phillip looked up from his desk to his son, his expression calm. “I’m in the middle of something here. You should have asked for an opening in my schedule today.” .

Jonathon walked over to the front of his father’s desk and looked down at him. “I’m not marrying Susan. You do whatever you need to do to me; disinherit me and fire me, but do not go after Naomi. This is my choice. I love her. I want her more than I have ever wanted any woman in my life, and we shared a passion that I’m not sure you could ever understand. I let you take that away from me, and I let you hurt her and me, and I’m not going to let you do that anymore.”

Phillip’s eyes opened wide.

“You and mom had a beautiful marriage. You were in love and you were so happy. In fact, I can’t remember a time when you two weren’t laughing and close. I remember you holding her hand all the time, I remember you kissing her so often. I remember knowing that she was the most important person in the world to you, and when she passed away I thought you were going to die right along with her.” He spoke gently about his mother and his parent’s marriage.

His father’s eyes were wetted with tears.

“I grew up knowing what real love was between a man and a woman, and you showed me that, because you had it. You lived it. You were lucky enough to find that. Well, I found that same kind of deep, real, strong love, and you made me make a choice that took that love away from me, all because you are so hell bent on me marrying your best friend’s daughter to merge families and merge your business.

"Well, I’m not a business transaction. I am your son. I am your only son, and I would think that you would want my happiness above all else. I would think that you would want a love for me like you had.” He shook his head as his heart beat wildly in him. He had never spoken to his father the blunt and honest way that he was at that moment.

Jonathon looked at his father with pained eyes and sighed. “Father, I have worked just as hard at keeping this company successful as you have, ever since I walked in the door on my first day. Building this business up has been my number one priority. You must have missed that if you are willing to give it all to someone else just because I don’t want to marry the woman you have chosen for me. It means that my time here was worth nothing, father; all of my time here was worth nothing to you, if you would take that away from me, especially for something as shallow as an arranged marriage.”

Phillip stood up slowly, his eyes steady on his son.

“Father, I don’t love Susan. I never have. I don’t want her at all. You are condemning us both to a loveless marriage. I am never going to sleep with her. I’m never going to cherish her. I’m never going to make her a priority in my life. She deserves to be loved and cherished by someone who actually wants to be with her, and I am not that man. I never will be. She is going to grow to hate me and she will be lonely for the rest of her life. You and Vincent are forcing that on her and on me. You are sentencing us to a cold and lonely marriage that will probably only last until you and Vincent pass away and I could see Susan and I divorcing then. That’s your idea of success, but it isn’t mine.” Jonathon kept his voice as calm as he could while he was talking, holding in a great deal of emotion so that he would be able to say what he needed to without marring it with anger and pain.

“I am in love with Naomi, father, and there is no woman on this earth for me but her. I can’t believe I let you force me into letting her go. She is no cheap fling. She is the love of my life, and I am going after her. I don’t care what it costs me here; if it costs me my inheritance, if it costs me my job with this company, or if it even costs me my relationship with you.

She is the most important person in my life, and I am going to go find her and fall on my knees in front of her and beg her to marry me. The worst thing in the world isn’t losing money or power or business. The worst thing in the world is losing true love, and I’m going to fight with everything in me to get it back, and when I do, I am never going to let her go.” He turned and walked a few steps toward the door and then looked back at his father who was standing there, speechless.

“I want a love and a marriage like you and mom had, and I am going to have it with her. Goodbye, father. You do whatever you need to do. I’m going to do what I need to do.”  He said solemnly, and then he turned and headed for the door again.

His father called out to him with a barely audible voice. “Jonathon! Wait!”

Jonathon stopped just as his hand touched the doorknob. He looked over his shoulder at his father. “Yes?”

Phillip walked toward him, looking older and more tired than he had in a very long time. “I didn’t realize that Naomi meant so much to you. You never told me that. I thought she was just another one of your flings. I thought I was helping you to grow up and be the kind of man I always hoped you would become, and I was trying to help you become that by making you marry a woman I thought would be a good match for you. I never intended to make you miserable, and I never intended to make Susan miserable. She’s so in love with you that I thought it would be the best match.” He spoke sorrowfully as he walked toward his son, his eyes set on him.

Jonathon shook his head. “Susan isn’t in love with me, she is obsessed with me; or not even with me, but with an ideal fantasy of me that can never be, and that’s good enough for her, but it shouldn’t be.”

Phillip nodded. “I can see now that I have made a terrible mistake and almost cost you more than I ever should have. I’m so horribly sorry. I will not force you to marry Susan. I will not ask her to marry you, though I think it will devastate her for a while to know that she will not be your wife.” His father looked at him intently.

“Does Naomi know that you are in love with her?” he asked quietly.

Jonathon shook his head. “No, I never told her when she was awake. I’m going to go do my best to convince her of it now.”

Phillip nodded and withdrew his hands from his pants pockets, reaching them both up to his tie. Jonathon watched as his father loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt. Jonathon stared in bewilderment at Phillip, and Phillip reached his fingers beneath the collar of his shirt and tugged at a silver chain that was there. He slid it over his head and coiled it in his hand, gazing at it longingly.

Then he stepped toward his son and took Jonathon’s hand in his, carefully turning his hand over Jonathon’s open palm and letting the necklace fall into it. Jonathon was stunned. There in his palm, secured to the necklace, was his mother’s wedding ring. He hadn’t seen it since she had died, and thoughts of her flooded through his mind as he looked at it. He felt tears sting his eyes and he looked up at his father who was unable to hide his own tears.

“What… what are you giving this to me for? I didn’t even know you had it! I thought she was buried with it!” he whispered in amazement.

Phillip shook his head. “I couldn’t let it go. I had to hold on to her and our marriage as long as I could. I’m giving it to you now so that you can give it to Naomi when you ask her to marry you. That is your mother’s blessing and mine on this decision of yours. You stay true to your heart. Your mother and I both wanted that from you.”

He pursed his lips and blinked back tears before he continued. “Somehow you have grown up into exactly the kind of strong, determined, loyal man that I wanted you to be, and I was so busy running this company that I never saw you change and become who you are. I didn’t see it in you at all until today, when you came in here and stood up to me for what you want, for what you believe in, and for who you really love.

I can see now that you are a better man than I ever thought you would be, and you are a better man than me.” He wiped at his eyes. “You take that ring and go find your love. Ask her to marry you. That will be your good luck charm; that ring represents real true love, and it won’t fail you.”

He shook his head. “Don’t you worry about your inheritance or your job. Everything will be waiting for you when you come back, just as it should be. I’ll talk to Vincent and Susan and tell them that the wedding is off. You have much more important things to do right now than worry about that. I just hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me somehow for not seeing any of this sooner.”

Jonathon bit his lip and reached his arms around his father, clutching the necklace and ring in his hand as he embraced his father tightly. “I love you dad. You’re forgiven, though you don’t need to be.”

“I love you too, son. I’m so proud of you.” He sniffed loudly and coughed, letting Jonathon go, and his son saw the fresh tears in his father’s eyes. “Go get your girl, Jonathon.” He said with an emotional voice.

Jonathon nodded and clenched the necklace and ring in his palm. “I’m on my way.” He answered.

***

Though Jupiter Inc. was a large company, it was not housed in a large building. No skyscraper for that innovative company. They had taken over an old red brick building in SoHo, in a trendy neighborhood with shops and cafés, local residents and community gardens.

Jonathon stood outside of the building, looking up at the five floors of windows that glistened in the sunlight over the tree lined street, and he realized that his own company was a far cry from the welcoming and warm feel of Jupiter. He took a deep breath and walked in through the front doors. There was a young man sitting at a desk behind a computer, waiting to greet him. “Good afternoon, Sir! Thank you for coming to visit us at Jupiter! How can I help you?” he gave Jonathon a friendly smile and it boosted Jonathon’s unsteady heart.

His nerves had been on edge, wondering if she would even speak to him, let alone consider taking him back. “I’m here to see Naomi Bradshaw if she isn’t busy.” He said quietly. His heart banged against his chest and his palms grew damp.

The young man brightened. “Certainly! If you want to take that elevator right there at the back of the hall, you’ll go up to the fourth floor, and you’ll find her there. Let me know if I can do anything to help you further!” he said pleasantly, nodding at Jonathon as Jonathon thanked him and walked back to the elevator.

He stepped into it and noticed that the whole back wall and sides of it were glass, and they face a glass wall on the back of the building so the elevator box was filled with natural light. He took a deep breath and soaked it in as the box rose to the fourth floor. He looked out over the city and saw the skyscraper where Cross Corp was housed, and the juxtaposition of the two companies was not lost on him in any way.

The doors slid open and he stepped out onto the fourth floor. He was surprised to see that it was an open office design with desks in various places, none too close together, but not too far away. There were no cubicles. There were no barriers. There was light from windows all over the outer walls and it filled the room with warmth. There were glass walls on the few offices that were separated from the main room, so that it looked as if they were all still connected.