Page 115 of The VIP Doubles Down
“Take a video, because I’d like to watch.”
He gave a pained groan before saying in a subdued tone, “You’re right. I thought if I threw enough money at you, you wouldn’t notice how desperate I was. It was arrogant and selfish.”
That deflated the hot balloon of her anger, but it didn’t change what had happened between them. She told herself not to ask, but ... “Did you figure out who set up Troy for the audition?”
“No. I decided to drink myself into oblivion instead. I didn’t want to feel the terrible things that were tearing me apart, but even the bourbon couldn’t numb me enough for that.”
She was not going to ask what he was feeling. She’d been through this with Troy. Whatever contrition he expressed wouldn’t make him any more concerned about her feelings the next time he had a problem.
“I’m sorry, Allie,” he said, his tone so miserable it nearly undermined her resolution. “I knew the moment I said it to Ben that I was wrong.”
“Yet you made no effort to fix your error.” Exhaustion washed through her, making her shoulders sag. Was it pride or stubbornness that made the men in her life refuse to repair the damage they did?
Gavin was silent, and she realized she would probably never hear his voice again. “I look forward to reading your next Julian Best novel. It’s going to be great.”
She ended the call.
“Allie!” She was gone. Gavin slammed his fist onto the coffee table. That sent a wave of pain through his skull, but he welcomed the hangover as a well-deserved punishment for his many sins. He cradled the phone in his other hand as though Allie were contained in it.
Last night, as he stared at the information that Irene and Troy were acting in the same soap opera, a horrible sense that he had totally, completely, and utterly screwed up had seeped through him like acid. He hadn’t been able to bear it, so he’d left the coffee in his office and gone back to the bottle of bourbon.
Then he’d staggered into his bedroom and seen the dress Allie had left on the bed with the necklace he’d bought for her neatly arranged on top of it. He was going to tell her the jewelry was hers to keep after the ball. He’d picked up the dress and buried his face in it, trying to inhale something of Allie to ward off the sear of his guilt. But the faint scent of her perfume only made the guilt scald even deeper.
He’d thrown the dress across the room and sent the necklace after it before he crawled into the bed that felt too big and empty without her in it. He even missed having the damned cat curled up on one of the pillows.
How had she woven herself into his life so quickly?
After lying awake for an hour with loneliness howling around him, he’d hauled himself into his office to toss and turn on the sofa there.
When he’d seen her name on his phone, every molecule in his body had leaped with the hope that by some miracle she had forgiven him. Instead, she’d discovered what a self-centered ass he truly was.
He winced as he remembered his defense that he was paying her well. What the hell was he thinking? That he should demonstrate just how big a jerk he could be? Stuffing a pillow behind his pain-twisted back, he tried to find a comfortable position, but there was no comfort to be had and no escape from his thoughts.
He stroked the screen of the phone again, his lips curling into a grimace of a smile as he remembered Allie swearing she was going to date a plumber. She could make him laugh even as she berated him. Who else in his life could do that?
He remembered something else she’d said ... that there was a difference between being needed and being loved. She was right. All he’d thought about was how much he needed her, and he wasn’t wrong about that. He did need her. With a desperation that made his gut roll when he thought about her absence.
But when he dug beneath that, to a place he tried never to go, he found a frightening truth. His heart was filled with her.
That took his gut and turned it inside out, upside down, and backward. He forgot to breathe as the feeling blew through him with all the terrifying power of a nor’easter.
He loved her.
When he could draw in oxygen again, he propped his elbows on his knees and held his head between his hands, staring at the patterned carpet between his bare feet. Love was not something he was familiar with. Witness the duplicitous lover he’d chosen for Julian.
But he knew someone who understood love. He let visions of Allie spin through his mind, even as her absence slashed at his chest. He remembered the joy of skating together, her body tucked against his side, moving with him as though they shared a single impulse. She took his happiness, multiplied it, and gave it back to him as a gift.
Then he conjured up the moment when Allie reached into Ruth’s box and pulled out the rainbow-colored envelopes that transformed every idea he’d had about his mother. That day Allie had put herself between his heart and the body blows each revelation had struck. She had taken his pain and softened it because she shared it.
He’d repaid her by doubting the very fabric of her being, her integrity. The memory of the shock and hurt on her face when he’d drawn back from her kiss at the Barefoot Ball haunted him. Self-loathing made him jerk up from the couch, his back muscles shrieking as he paced around the room.
He had told himself he was giving back to Allie when he hired her to work on Julian for him. He had justified his lie to Ben with money. He had thought that his house, his helicopter, his skating rink, would put an acceptable gloss on his selfishness.
But Allie didn’t want any of that. All she asked for was a man who cared about her needs more than his own. When she’d compared him to Troy, he’d felt like she had balled up her fist and punched him in the stomach, but he had earned the slur.
He sat down again and forced himself to look into all the dark corners of his soul, finding that there were too many of them. He wanted to give Allie light and joy, but how could he do that when he had so many shadows inside him? If he wanted a chance to earn Allie’s forgiveness—and, oh dear God, he did!—he would have to face the demons of his past, not run from them. Only then could he offer her a whole man, a man who didn’t simplyneedher, and hope that her generous spirit would find that enough.
Shoving himself off the couch, he stumbled out of the office and into his bathroom to turn on the shower jets full blast, stripping out of the tux pants he hadn’t bothered to change last night. Standing under the steaming-hot water, he was swamped by a wave of longing for Allie that nearly brought him to his knees. He braced his hands against the tile walls until it subsided enough to let him wash.
