Page 4 of Her Billionaire Hero
When our first anniversary rolled around a few months later, he fully expected me to surprise him with news of a pregnancy. When I wasn’t able to tell him the news he sought, he let me know how very disappointed he was with me. Guilt bore down on me like a load of bricks. The one thing he wanted from me I didn’t seem able to give him.
Another year came and went with no baby, and then he gave up on that dream altogether. His dream for me changed. Now he wanted me to go back to school—but I needed to change to a degree that made sense for a woman. Accounting was his grand idea.
Since Preston never paid much attention to the things I did, including my classes, I’d pay the tuition with our joint checking account without him ever knowing that I was well on my way to becoming what I wanted to become—a structural engineer, instead of an accountant.
It wasn’t until graduation, when I was twenty-seven, that he learned of my deceit. And that was the beginning of the end of our five-year marriage. Only a couple of months after I had earned my degree and found a job as an apprentice engineer at a construction company, Preston told me something that shook me to my very core.
He’d had an affair with my mother for two years. I’d been ten years old when it started. It only ended when she went missing a couple of years later. And what was worse, my father had found out about the affair when the authorities told him about Preston Rivers’ role in my mother’s life. Yet, he’d never told me a thing. Not even when he’d brought Preston home that fateful evening years later.
So, of course, I called Dad before I let Preston go on with his story. “Honey, he had no idea that your mother was married or had a child. I saw no reason to doubt his word. And I saw no reason to bring that up to you—even when you began dating him. I figured that was his place to tell you a thing like that. I’m sorry if that hurt you. But the past is the past and there’s nothing we can do about it now. Your mom left us all—even Preston.”
With my father on speaker so Preston could hear what he said, I didn’t know what to say. But Preston managed to come up with something. “Her leaving devastated me too, Sloan. And I had no one to share my grief with like you and your father did. Audrey’s sudden disappearance worried me to no end. And when the cops came to me, after your father reported her missing, my head was on the chopping block for quite a while. I had to deal with that alone. Richard understood the hardships I’d been through and when we ran into each other again, there were no hard feelings. He and I moved past it all. I don’t see why you and I can’t.”
The idea of my husband and my missing mother having had an affair did something to my gut that nothing ever had. And the knot in my stomach felt as if it might never go away. “I need to be alone.” Withdrawing to our bedroom, I found Preston coming in to talk and knew I couldn’t let him do that. So, I moved my things to another bedroom, and we stopped sharing a bed. I couldn’t let him touch me. Not while knowing that those same hands had been all over my mother.
Each time I looked in the mirror after that, I saw remnants of my mother. Her long dark hair, plump cheeks, rosebud lips, and her big brown eyes looked back at me each time I saw my reflection. It made me sick to think that Preston had once loved her and now he claimed to love me. But maybe he only loved me because of who I reminded him of.
She’d left. At first my father and I had thought the absolute worse. But as time went on and the police did a thorough investigation, it became clear that she’d just left us. Even though Dad hadn’t told me about her affair, he had told me that Mom hadn’t been happy for quite some time and she must’ve decided to move on with her life in a direction that didn’t include us. With no sign of foul play, both of us thought she’d simply taken off with another man.
The distance between Preston and I grew and grew until one day I came home to find divorce papers. On the table too had been a short note from Preston telling me to leave the car he’d bought for me and to put the keys to the house and the car into the mailbox before I left. He’d put my things in boxes in the backyard and had made temporary arrangements for me to stay a week in a hotel in downtown Austin. Things just weren’t going to work out for us. He was deeply sorry and couldn’t bear to face me.
Just as I began melting into a puddle of hopelessness, my cell phone rang. Hoping it was Preston telling me he’d reconsidered, I found it was an Uber driver letting me know that she was on her way to pick me up.
Somehow, after all that, I managed to get on my feet without my father’s financial help. He was still in Greece and I told him that I wanted to handle things on my own. I had the internship, which didn’t pay much, but it was enough for me to get a tiny efficiency apartment on the outskirts of Austin. Plus, a bus pass to get back and forth to work.
When Preston and I had to meet to sign the divorce papers at his attorney’s office, guilt got the best of him and he gave the car back to me. I’d always loved the Lincoln MKZ he’d given me as a birthday gift the year before. To have it back made me feel a lot better.
Not long after that, my boss told me that a new resort was about to go up in downtown Austin. He’d gotten a call from the owners about hiring someone new to the construction world. The place was being built by brothers from Houston and they specifically wanted to hire people who needed a chance to get their foot in the door with their new careers. So, with my boss’s recommendation, I got the contract to be the structural engineer for Whispers Resort and Spa.
I hoped like hell that starting this new job would bring great changes to my life. I’d worked hard to get my degree and was willing to work hard to prove I could do the job. I didn’t want my feminine assets winning me any points, so I had on khaki slacks, a white button-down shirt tucked in, a tan belt, and tan loafers. My dark hair was cut into a short bob and I wore no makeup at all. I wanted to be treated like any other engineer.
With another deep breath, I got out of the car, my laptop bag in hand, and headed to meet the man I’d be working under. Baldwyn Nash would be the man in charge of things—my boss until the project was finished.
The worksite was nothing more than an empty lot with one trailer on it that housed the offices of the people who would build this great facility.
Stepping through the door, I smelled coffee but saw no one in what looked like a tiny, makeshift reception area in what would’ve been the living room. “Anyone here?”
“Yeah,” came a man’s deep voice, which got closer as he went on, “the receptionist is late.”
My eyes went wide as he stepped around a partition. “Uh, hello.”
Tall, dark, and extremely handsome, the man had a muscular build that his expensive black suit clung to as if it had been made to show off that exquisite body. Green eyes shone brightly at me as a smile curved his lips. A strong jaw, square and covered in a dark, neatly trimmed beard made him appear powerful. The dark curls on top of his head were unruly. “Baldwyn Nash.” He extended his hand.
I took it, shaking it as I prayed silently that my palm wasn’t sweaty. It wasn’t easy to pretend his appearance hadn’t affected me in a sexual way. He was the hottest man I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. “Sloan Rivers, your structural engineer. Here and ready to serve you in any way you need.” I clamped my mouth shut tightly.You are in idiot!
As our hands slipped apart, his smile made me shiver, a thing I hoped he wouldn’t notice. “The air conditioning was left on last night. It’s like sixty degrees in here. Come on, I’ll turn it up some.”
Well, crap! He did notice.
“Yeah, it is cold in here.” I followed him, my eyes glued to his ass. Ogling men wasn’t a thing I often did. But when a man has a butt that just wouldn’t quit, I couldn’t help but notice. “Is this where my office is going to be?”
“For now, yeah.” He turned up the temperature on the thermostat then turned to look at me. “You and I are going to have to share an office for now. But not for too long. More trailers are scheduled to be delivered next week. You’ll have one of them at your disposal as lead engineer. That way you can give offices to the people who will work directly under you.”
The idea of sharing an office with him, even for a short time, made me happy in a way I couldn’t describe. “Good deal, Mr. Nash.”
“Baldwyn,” he said with a grin. “And may I call you Sloan?”
“Oh yeah, sure, of course you can.” My brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders with him so close to me in the narrow hallway. He smelled like a forest full of evergreens mixed with the ocean. It was intoxicating. “So, where’s this office?”
