Page 46 of Acquiring Ainsley
She looked up from the documents. “How could you have let yourself get mixed up with someone so crazy in the first place?”
I shrugged. “That’s a question I’ve asked myself a hundred times. And no, I don’t have a good answer for that.”
Her gaze remained fixated on me. “But she’s gone—gone for good?”
I considered my answer, then reminded myself of the conversation I’d had with Olivia only moments before Ainsley swept through my door. “Yes. It’s the past, and that’s where it’s going to stay.”
It was a small lie, and I knew it, but I didn’t want to up that part of the drama. Not yet.
She swallowed. “Good. And I will accept your explanation.”
“You will?”
She nodded, and I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “At least now, we have that out of the way.”
“Well, you might have convinced me, but you haven’t convinced Ashton. He wants to pull the plug on this entire merger. In fact, if it hadn’t been for me…” She trailed off and looked away. “He doesn’t trust you.”
“I know he doesn’t trust me.” Confident that she wouldn’t pull away this time, I placed a hand on her soft knee. “But do you?”
She looked back at me. “I—I do.”
“Are you sure?”
The hardness in her eyes subsided. “Yes.”
Her answer filled my heart. Blood rushed through my body and made me aware of every cell in my body. She trusted me. For real. And if she did, didn’t that mean we’d have a chance for even more—something lasting?
“I wasn’t a good person in my former life, when I spent all this time chasing things that meant nothing. I thought money and power would keep me warm at night, but the truth is, I didn’t know what it meant to be alive until I met you.”
She gasped. “Really?”
My chest grew tighter as I realized the enormity of what I was saying, and exactly where we were headed. “I want to marry you, Ainsley, and when I say that, I mean that I’d want that no matter what this business outcome would be. I’ve… I’ve never felt with anyone the things that I feel when I’m with you.”
“This is crazy,” she said, but a smile pulled at her lips. “This is insane.”
I moved my hand from her knee and linked my fingers with hers. “I don’t care. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else. It just has to make sense to us.”
“But—”
“But what?” I caught her gaze with mine. “Ainsley give this a chance. Arealchance. You just might be surprised at what you find. Forget the business deal. Forget the merger. Just—just think about us.”
“I am.”
“Good. And no matter what, I’ll wait for you, Ainsley. I’ll wait until you can see it, too.” I dropped her hand, then caught her jaw between my index finger and my thumb. “And in the meantime, I’m going to show you how much I’m starting to care about you. I’m going to prove my feelings to you.”
And I knew, right there, as we sat in my office, that I would.
“Oh, that isrich,” Brooke said later that evening over cocktails at Twenty Club. Instead of making our bridal appointments, we’d gone to the club. We’d already downed one round of bourbon cocktails, and the remains of some sliders, shrimp cocktail, and a cheese plate lay before us on the center of the high-top table we’d commandeered near the bar. “Trevor McNamara at your feet, doing whatever you want, totally infatuated with you. You are so freaking lucky.”
“Am I? I just told you that not only am I in an arranged marriage for the sake of saving my family fortune, but that my ‘fiancé’ comes with a crazy ex-girlfriend who tried to destroy him.” I gave her a long look. “I don’t think I’d call that rich. I’d call that nuts.”
“But it also gave him a chance to tell you how much he cares about you.” She leaned across the table. “And he does. A lot.”
I waved away her words. “It’s complicated, to say the least. Especially in light of what’s going on with the company.”
Brooke snorted. “Listen to yourself, Ainsley. You have New York’s most eligible bachelor at your feet. He doesn’t just want to marry you. It sounds like he’s falling inlovewith you. That’s huge.”
I laughed at her exaggerated enunciation of the word “huge.” She could be so dramatic sometimes. “Whatever you say.”
