The Dom: Steamy Boss Romance (Manhattan Records Book 2) Read online

  I wasn’t actually interested in the history of a lighthouse, but I enjoyed the way Ashlee looked when she talked about it. She appreciated things I never would have paid any attention to or even thought to look twice at. I could have driven past that lighthouse a hundred times and not even considered stopping to appreciate the beauty or the history.

  “Have you?”

  I blinked, realizing I’d lost track of what she was saying. “I’m sorry. My mind wandered for a moment there.” I reached out and put my hand over hers. “I’ll pay better attention.”

  “I was just asking if you’d seen Hamilton.” She smiled, as if somehow knowing that I needed that extra reassurance that she wasn’t upset about my slip in concentration.

  I shook my head. “I don’t get to the theater much.”

  “Oh.” The word fell flat between us.

  “What about you?” I asked, trying to hold up my end of a conversation. “Have you and your mom gone to the theater often?”

  “We’ve seen a couple things off-Broadway,” she said. “And we’ve done the lotteries for some of the shows but haven’t won any of them.”

  I made a mental note to get tickets for them both. I’d probably enjoy taking Ashlee with just the two of us too, but if it was something she and her mom wanted to do, I’d make sure they got to do it.

  “What about you?” Ashlee asked. “I feel like I’ve been doing all the talking.”

  She had been, but only because I hadn’t really given her much choice in the matter. Someone had to fill the silence.

  “Honestly, when you take work out of the equation, there isn’t really much more to me.” I didn’t mean to sound brusque, but I wasn’t in the headspace right now to soften my usual edge.

  Ashlee’s expression sobered. “That’s not true.” This time, it was her hand reaching for me, offering encouragement. “You are more than that job.”

  Part of me wished I could believe her, but my mind kept going back to the voicemail I hadn’t listened to. What sort of man was I if I couldn’t even talk to my mom when she called?

  “If you’ll excuse me,” I said abruptly, “I need to step out for a minute.” I stood before she could ask me for details. “I’ll be right back.”

  I didn’t need to ask where I could go for some privacy. I’d frequented this establishment enough to know my way around. Once I was alone, I pulled my phone from my pocket and listened to the voicemail.

  “Nate, sweetheart, it’s Mom. I know it’s been a while since we’ve talked, but I wanted to tell you that your brother’s back.”

  I shook my head. She couldn’t be talking about…

  “Joshua, I mean. He’s moved back to New York, and he wants to see everyone. I need to know what date works for you. She paused, and I could almost see her twisting her fingers together. “Please, Nate. It’d be great to have the whole family together again. Another pause. I love you, Nate. Hope to hear from you soon.”

  I played the message again, even though I didn’t need to hear it. Every word cut into me, reminding me of the type of person I truly was. A person Ashlee didn’t know. One I didn’t want her to know. Ever.

  I deleted the message and put my phone back in my pocket. Now, I didn’t need to wonder what the call had been about. I also didn’t need to wonder what my answer was going to be because there was no way I was going to whatever family get together Mom was planning.

  Besides, even if Joshua had said he wanted our whole family to be there, he didn’t mean me. We’d both burned that bridge a long time ago.

  By the time I made it back to my table, our entrees had arrived. I smiled at Ashlee as I took my seat again.

  “Everything okay?” Concern was clearly written on her face.

  I immediately felt a stab of guilt that I’d left her in an unfamiliar place. I’d been a shitty date tonight so far. Well, except for the orgasm earlier. That I always did well.

  “It’s fine.” I gestured to her plate. “Let’s enjoy our meal.”

  And we did. For a while, anyway. We ate and made small talk about the food we liked, the restaurants where we’d eaten. It was all simple stuff. Typical date topics. Considering we’d already talked safe words and kinks, it was nice to ease back from that.

  Or, at least, it would have been if I could’ve stopped my mind from continuing to chew on my mom’s message. Why had Joshua come back now? Was he planning on staying? Why did he want to see the whole family? Did he actually want to see me too? Or had Mom just assumed he’d meant me too? Maybe wishful thinking on her part?

  “Nate, are you sure you’re okay?”

  I sighed. Apparently, I wasn’t doing as good of a job pretending as I’d thought I was. “I’m sorry, le soleil. This was supposed to be a date, and I just can’t get my head into it.”

  “Did I–”

  “No,” I cut her off before she could blame herself. “It’s not you. You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s on me.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  I shook my head. “You don’t need to worry about it.”

  She pushed her plate aside and leaned toward me. “Nate, I want more than sex with you. This is a relationship, and that means we share things. We talk about what bothers us.”

  I was surprised at how much I wanted to unload everything, share it with her, find out her thoughts, listen to her every word. It’d be nice not to have to do everything myself.

  But if I told her about the voicemail, she’d want to know why meeting with my family was an issue. I could try to lie to her, but I didn’t want to do that. A lie of omission was bad enough. A flat-out lie would come back to bite me in the ass.

  But if I told her the truth, I’d lose her. I had no doubt about that. She’d looked past all of the shit she already knew. I couldn’t ask her to see past that too.

  “It’s just some family stuff,” I said. “I don’t want to get into it.”

  I waited for her to argue, but she didn’t. Instead, she leaned back in her seat. “I hope, one day, you’ll be willing to share even that stuff with me.”

  A part of me hoped so too, but I didn’t say it. I was supposed to take care of her. Not the other way around.

  “In fact,” she said, “maybe you could start by helping me with my own family issue.”

  Eight

  Ashlee

  I wished Nate felt comfortable enough with me to tell me what was bothering him, but if anyone understood wanting to keep some family issues close, it was me. Case in point, the former family secret thing I was bringing up now to change the subject.

  “In fact, maybe you could start by helping me with my own family issue.”

  I hoped it came across more casually than it sounded in my head. I knew what a big ask this was. Nate didn’t let people close, and I was asking him to do something that could possibly screw up his relationship with one of those people.

  Shit.

  “Never mind,” I said quickly. “I shouldn’t ask–”

  “Finley.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even brought it up. You don’t need to get involved in this.”

  “I’ve actually been wondering when you were going to bring him up.”

  He didn’t sound annoyed, which was a good thing.

  “It doesn’t have to be now,” I said. “And you can tell me that you don’t want to get involved. I don’t want to put you in an awkward position. I know Finley’s your friend.”

  “And he’s your father.” His voice was soft, almost gentle. “It’s okay to want to know him.”

  I twisted the cloth napkin on my lap. “I just don’t want to mess things up with you and him.”

  “It won’t. Finley’s not like that.”

  Hope flickered in my chest. “Do you think he’ll want to know me?”

  Nate smiled, and it was a real one. I still saw shadows in his eyes, but he was present right now. “I think he’s going to love you.”

  “Really?”

  I didn’t
actually doubt the veracity of Nate’s answer, but I needed the reassurance. I’d already had one parent walk out on me. It wasn’t unexpected for me to think another might too. Especially since Finley had been making an anonymous…donation. There was a difference between logically knowing that a child could result from it and an actual, real person claiming to be a result of a decision made more than twenty-four years ago.

  Nate reached out and took my hand, lacing his fingers between mine. His expression was serious, and I was grateful that he wasn’t blowing off my concerns. It would be easy for him to want to consider the ways this thing could screw up his company dynamic, but he was completely focused on what I needed from him.

  “I’ve known Finley for a long time,” Nate said. “He’s the best man I know. Hell, he’s the best person I know, second only to you.” He raised my hand and brushed a kiss across my knuckles.

  “There’s a big difference between a man who’s a great business partner and a man who suddenly finds out that a woman who’s been working at his company for a few years is actually his daughter by way of a sperm bank.” My cheeks flushed as I said the last two words, eyes automatically darting around to see if anyone had come into the room in time to overhear something so personal.

  This wasn’t exactly dinner date conversation.

  “Finley and I met during a pretty dark time in my life.” Nate appeared to be choosing his words carefully. “He didn’t have to take a chance on me, either as a business partner or as a friend, but he didn’t even hesitate. He saw things in me that no one else ever had.”

  My stomach did an anxious flip. I’d known Nate and Finley were close, but I’d never heard him talk about anyone like this, not even his family. I didn’t know if I could do this now. What if my telling Finley that I was his daughter drove a wedge between Finley and Nate? While Nate hadn’t been keeping this secret from Finley as long as I had, the fact remained that it was a secret, and a big one at that.

  “I shouldn’t have told you,” I blurted out. “Or at the very least, I shouldn’t have expected you to keep this secret for me.”

  “I’m glad you told me.” Nate tightened his grip on my fingers. “If you hadn’t, I would still think you’d been stalking me, and we wouldn’t be here right now.”

  He had a fair point. Still… “I just hate that you had to lie to your friend.”

  “It’s fine,” he insisted. “This is your secret to tell, not mine.”

  Unfortunately, that didn’t make me feel any less guilty. I wasn’t the sort of person who had tons of friends, but I at least had a great relationship with my mom. From what I could tell, Nate didn’t have that.

  Something had happened between him and his family that had broken things. He never talked about spending time with anyone else or talking to anyone. As far as I knew, Finley was it.

  “Finley doesn’t talk much about his personal life,” Nate said. “He doesn’t hide the fact that he’s gay, but he doesn’t exactly live out in the open either. Any relationships he has are always discreet, and he rarely takes dates out in public. But, on the rare occasions that our talks about the future of Manhattan Records has drifted into personal territory, he’s told me a few things. Like, how even with laws changing, he doesn’t see himself getting married, and he definitely doesn’t see himself raising a child.”

  I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to help me, but I held my tongue. Nate always had a purpose for whatever he said or did.

  “But he still wants a family.”

  When he didn’t offer any further explanation, I asked, “How do you know that? If he doesn’t want to get married or have a kid…I don’t understand.”

  “There was a news story a few years back where this old man had died in his house, and no one realized it for nearly two years because he didn’t have any family or friends, no one to realize that he was gone. If one of his automatic payments hadn’t been rejected due to lack of funds, who knows how long it would’ve been before someone would’ve noticed he was dead.” Nate released my hand and drained the last of his wine. “It hit Finley hard, the idea that this person had been so isolated, so alone, that his death hadn’t caused the slightest disturbance in the lives of others.”

  I knew that feeling. Not the same circumstances, but that sudden realization that it was entirely possible for me to fall off the face of the earth and no one would care. It was what had driven me to find Finley in the first place, to have a connection to someone other than my mom.

  “Trust me, Ashlee. Finley is going to be thrilled that you’re his daughter.”

  Hope bloomed in my chest, and I quickly shut it down. “You don’t think it’s going to freak him out?”

  One side of Nate’s mouth tipped up in a half-smile. “I think he’s going to be shocked, and I’d love to see the look on his face when it happens, but it’ll be a good surprise.”

  The waiter returned to ask if we’d like dessert, and we both declined. The fact that neither of us really wanted to linger made me realize that neither of our heads were as much into this date as they should have been.

  I still had one more question for Nate though.

  “How do you think I should do it? I mean, should I just make an appointment, go into his office and announce ‘hey, remember that time you donated some DNA? Here I am?’ Or should I say it in a letter or card? I don’t think anyone makes those types of cards, do they?”

  “Definitely face-to-face,” Nate said as he leaned back in his chair. “But other than that, I don’t know. Let me think on it.”

  His gaze slid away from me but didn’t latch on to anything else. Nothing specific, anyway. He had this glazed sort of look in his eyes that told me I’d held as much of his attention as he could give for as long as he could manage.

  I appreciated the fact that he’d helped me as much as he had, but I knew that even as he’d been listening to me and answering my questions, a good part of his mind had been elsewhere.

  It hadn’t been a bad date, overall, but I’d have been lying to myself if I said I wasn’t at least a little disappointed that I hadn’t been able to distract him from his problems. Not out of a selfish desire where I wanted him entirely focused on me, but because he’d always managed to give my brain a break from my issues in one way or another, and I hadn’t been able to do that for him.

  Maybe, no matter how much he wanted me, I would never be enough for him.

  Nine

  Nate

  Most of the time when I felt like an ass, it didn’t bother me, but the fact that I’d only been half-present during last night’s first date annoyed the shit out of me. And it wasn’t like I’d done any of it intentionally either. I didn’t know if that made things better or worse.

  One thing I did know that was worse was that I had two issues fighting with each other for dominance, and no matter which one I chose, I was going to feel guilty over the other one.

  I hadn’t called my mom back about her voicemail, and I was tempted to continue to ignore it. If it’d been anyone else but her, I probably would have, but she was my mom. While she hadn’t exactly been okay with the decisions I’d made over the years, she at least hadn’t treated me like a complete pariah, and considering Joshua had always been her favorite, I knew what a big deal that was.

  I put my elbows on my desk and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. I’d had a headache since I’d gotten home last night, and the pills I’d been swallowing every few hours hadn’t done much of anything to put a dent in it. I could’ve blamed the headache for my indecision about what I wanted to do, but that would’ve been a lie.

  Then there was Ashlee. She’d worked yesterday, but it hadn’t exactly been a normal day. And to make last night worse, we hadn’t even gotten around to the real reason we’d gone out in the first place.

  She and I needed to figure out what we were to each other. The longer we went with things undefined, the more we risked misunderstandings. The last thing I wanted was for us to get into some sort of
argument because we didn’t have an understanding. Communication was important, maybe now more than it was before.

  I needed to take her out again, redo that mess of a date, and get the two of us on more solid footing. If I did it now, it’d give me one less thing to worry about too. She was right there, just down the hall. I swore I could almost feel her there. It was beyond tempting to reach out. I wouldn’t even have to go to her. I could just call. It’d be the easiest thing in the world to call her, tell her to come to me.

  I remembered all too well how things had gone between the two of us here in my office. Not yesterday, of course, or when I’d fired her, but before that. My memories of her and me were the only ones I had of having sex in my office. I hadn’t been with anyone else here.

  Except, I knew if I called her, I wouldn’t be able to resist having her again. We had to keep our work lives and our personal lives separate. I hadn’t done a good job of that before, but I hadn’t truly understood what I’d had with her then. I honestly wasn’t sure I understood it any better now, but at least I knew that we wouldn’t last if I kept mixing things up.

  A thought struck me out of the blue. I was coming at this all wrong. Instead of bashing my head against the same hard wall over and over again, I should focus on something else that needed my attention.

  Between all the good and bad that had happened over the last few days, I’d pushed aside the question of the missing flash drive. Even though Ashlee was back, I still needed to find out what’d happened to it. The drive didn’t hold nuclear launch codes, but what it did possess wasn’t anything I wanted available to just anyone.

  I pulled up my email and sent a quick message off to Stu. I could’ve sent it directly to Ashlee, but it was better to go through Stu whenever possible. If anyone wanted to make an issue about Ashlee and me, we’d have a nice paper trail that went from me to Stu to her, with everything clearly documented. No hint of impropriety.