Have Baby, Need Billionaire(23)

       
           



       

But when her stint at motherhood was complete, Katherine left. She moved   out of Crystal Bay the morning of her daughter's eighteenth birthday.

Tula still remembered that last hug and brief conversation.

The airport was crowded, of course, with people coming and going.   Excitement simmered in the air alongside sorrow as lovers kissed goodbye   and family members waved and promised to write.

"You'll be fine, Tula," her mother said as she moved toward her gate.   "You're all grown up now, I've done my job and you're entirely capable   of taking care of yourself."

Tula wanted to ask her mother to stay. She wanted to tell Katherine that   she so wasn't ready to be alone. That she was a little scared about   college and the future. But it would have been pointless and she knew   that, too. A part of her mother was already gone. Her mind and heart   were fixed in Italy, just waiting for her body to catch up.

Katherine was renting a villa outside Florence for the summer, then she   would be moving on-to where, Tula had no idea. The only thing she was   absolutely sure of was that her mother wouldn't be back.

"Now, I can't miss boarding, so give me a kiss."

Tula did, and fought the urge to hug her mom and hold on. Sure, her   mother had never been very maternal, but she had been there. Every day.   In the house that would now be empty. That would echo with her own   thoughts rattling around in the suffocating silence.

Her father was in the city and Tula wouldn't be seeing him anytime soon,   so she was truly on her own for the first time ever. And though she   could admit to a certain amount of anticipation, the inherent scariness   of the situation was enough to swamp everything else.

Thank God, Tula thought, she still had Anna Cameron and her family. They   would be there for her when she needed them. They always had been.  That  knowledge made saying goodbye to her mother a bit easier, though  no  less sad.

She'd often dreamed that she and her mother could be closer. She had   wished she had the sense of family that Anna had. Though Anna's mom had   died when she was a girl, her father and stepmother had supported and   loved her. But wishes changed nothing, she told herself firmly, then   pasted a bright smile on her face.

"Enjoy Italy, Mom. I'll be fine."

"I know you will, Tula. You're a good girl."

Then she was gone, not even bothering to glance back to see if her daughter was still watching.

Which Tula was.

She stood alone and watched until the plane pulled away from the gate.   Until it taxied to the runway. Until it took off and became nothing more   than a sun-splashed dot in the sky.

Finally, Tula went home to an empty house and promised herself that one   day she would build a family. She would have what she had always longed   for.

Simon was watching her, waiting for her to answer his question. She   scrubbed her hands up and down her arms and said, "Of course they   influenced me. But not in the way you might think. I didn't want to be   who they were. I didn't want what they wanted. I made a conscious   decision to be myself. Me. Not just a twig on the family tree."

A flash of surprise lit his eyes and she wondered why.

"How's that working out for you?"

"Until today," she admitted, "pretty good."

He walked closer and Tula backed up. She was feeling a little vulnerable   at the moment and the last thing she needed was to be too near Simon.   She kept moving until the backs of her knees hit the ledge of the   cushioned window seat. Abruptly, she sat down and her surprise must have   shown on her face.

He chuckled and asked, "Am I making you nervous, Tula?"

"Of course not," she replied, while her mind was screaming, Yes!   Everything about him was suddenly making her nervous and she wasn't sure   how to handle it. Since she'd met him, he'd irritated her, intrigued   her. But this anxiousness was a new sensation.

Tula knew everyone thought of her as flaky. The crazy artist. But she   wasn't really. She had always known what she wanted. She lived the way   she liked and made no apologies for it. She always knew who was in her   life and what they meant to her.

At least, she had until Simon. But he was a whole different ball game.   He went from insulting her to seducing her. He made her furious one   moment and hot and achy the next. For a man who had so loved his   routine, he was becoming entirely too unpredictable.

She couldn't seem to pin him down. Or guess what he was going to do or   say. She had thought him just another staid businessman, but he was more   than that. She simply wasn't sure what that meant for her. Which made   her a little nervous, though she'd never admit to it. So to keep  herself  steady, she started talking again.                       
       
           



       

"You've heard my story, so tell me, how did wearing a three-piece suit by the age of two affect you?"

He gave her a half smile and sat down beside her on the window seat.   Turning his head, he stared through the glass at the winter afternoon   behind them.

A storm was piling up on the horizon, Tula saw as she followed his gaze.   Thunderclouds huddled together in a dark gray mass that promised rain   by evening. Already, the wind was picking up, sending the naked  branches  of the trees in the park into a frenzied dance. Mothers  gathered up  their children as the sky darkened further and soon the  park was as  empty as Tula felt.

When Simon finally spoke, his voice was so soft, she nearly missed it. "You think you've got me figured out, do you?"

She studied him, trying to read his eyes. But it was as if he'd drawn a shutter over them, locking himself away from her.

"I thought so," she admitted and her confusion must have been evident in   her tone. "When I first met you, you reminded me of … someone I used to   know," she said, picturing her father, fierce gaze locked on some   hapless employee. "But the more I got to know you, the more I realized   that I didn't know you at all. Well, that made no sense," she ended with   a laugh.

"Yeah, it did," Simon said, shifting to look at her again, closing off   the outside world with the intensity of his gaze. Making her feel as if   she were the only thing in the world that mattered at the moment.

"Simon … "

"Nobody is what they look like on the surface," he murmured, features   carefully blank and unreadable as he studied her. "I'm just really   realizing that."





Ten




He was looking at her as if he had never seen her before. As if he were   trying to see into her heart and mind again, searching out her secrets.   Her desires.

"I don't know what you mean," Tula said.

"Maybe I don't, either." He took a breath, blew it out and after a long,   thoughtful moment, changed the subject abruptly. "You know, I grew up   here, in this house. My great-grandfather built it originally."

"It's a lovely house," she said, briefly allowing her gaze to sweep the confines of the room. "It feels warm."

"Yeah, it does." His gaze was still locked on her. "Now, more than ever."

Why was he telling her this? Why was he being … nice? Weren't they at   odds? Didn't their argument still hang in the air between them? Only a   few minutes ago, he had looked at her with cool detachment and now   everything felt different. She just didn't understand why.

"Several years ago, my father almost lost the house," he said, forcing   an offhand attitude that didn't mesh with the sudden stiffness of his   shoulders or the tightness in his jaw. "Bad investments, trusting the   wrong people. My dad didn't have a head for business."

"I can sympathize," she muttered, remembering how many times her own   father had made her feel small and ignorant because she hadn't cared to   learn the intricacies of keeping ledgers and accounts receivable.

He kept talking, as if she hadn't spoken at all. "He was too   unorganized. Couldn't keep anything straight." Shaking his head, he once   more stared out at the gathering storm and focused on the windowpane  as  the first drops of rain plopped against it. But Tula knew he wasn't   looking at the outside world so much as he was staring into his own   past. Just as she had moments ago.

"My dad entered a deal once with a man who was so unscrupulous he damn   near succeeded in taking this house out from under us. This man cheated   and lied and did whatever he had to in his effort to bury my father and   the Bradley family in general." Simon shook his head again. "My father   never saw it coming, either. It was sheer luck that kept this house in   the family. Luck that saved what was left of our business."