The Ten-Day Baby Takeover(34)

Ten

If Sarah seemed apprehensive during the flight, now she was downright agitated—trudging out of her room dressed for the beach in a pretty blue cover-up paired with sandals and a scowl. The hair that had been perfectly in place on the airplane was in a ponytail. Her makeup had been removed. Sarah didn’t wear a lot of it, but there was a difference and he liked the change. It harkened back to the only morning she’d been in his bed, and the way he’d pored over her as she slept, wondering if it was a good idea to pursue any of the ideas ruminating in his head—thoughts of kisses bestowed and returned, and every satisfying thing that it could lead to.

“Ready?” he asked.

“You’re making me do something I am literally terrified to do. So no, I’m not ready.” Clutching her handbag, she plodded toward him as if she’d been banished to the gallows.

He placed his arm around her shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze while unsubtly ushering her to the door. “You’ll feel better after this. I promise.”

“What do I get if I don’t feel better? What if I feel worse? I’m already so worked up about tonight that I feel like I’m going to lose my lunch. We haven’t even had lunch.”

“You’re just going to have to trust me.”

She glared up at him when he opened the door. “You realize it’s not my inclination to trust you, at all.”

Her freckles again teased him, toyed with him. Now that they were completely alone, he wanted nothing more than to bend down and kiss her. Just get it over with so he could stop thinking so damn much and let his instincts take over. There was nothing stopping them—nothing stopping him, except the entirely foreign worry that sex might ruin what was already between them.

“You don’t trust me even a little bit?”

“This is a trick question. If I say I trust you, it’ll make your argument for letting a thin parachute carry me thousands of feet into the air over the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Biscayne Bay. And it’s five hundred feet, and that’s only if they let us go all the way up. Not much more than a football field.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll be right next to you. You can hold my hand.”

“Oh. Okay.” The faintest of smiles crossed her lips. “I guess that makes it a little better.”

“Good. Let’s go before you change your mind.”

They headed down to the lobby. John was waiting outside and swiftly had them on their way to their beach adventure. This excursion was about more than distracting Sarah from her worries. He wanted her to see this side of him. She’d remarked about the photos in his apartment, comments that made him think she didn’t understand why he did risky things. He hadn’t always been the guy who jumped out of airplanes, but once you’ve done something that you could die doing, it takes away fear.

“I want to say one thing. Part of being successful in business is learning to fake fearlessness.”

Sarah removed her sunglasses and shot him a very hot look of admonition. “Fake it? I assumed you were actually fearless. I’ve heard you on the phone. You’re incredibly intimidating.”

“I don’t have to fake it now, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a time when I was scared to forge my own way.”

“But you come from such an influential business family. Surely your dad helped you, even if you didn’t have the best relationship.”

It was Aiden’s natural inclination to steer away from this topic, but Sarah knew his history. “That’s one thing my dad offered, but I didn’t want his help. By the time I graduated from college, I was too bitter to take anything from him anyway. I wanted to prove to my parents that I didn’t need them. Now, granted, I had a trust fund that got me started, that was no small matter, but I did everything else on my own.”

“Refusing your dad’s help couldn’t have made things better with your family.”

“It didn’t. But I also didn’t feel that it was my responsibility to make things better.” If ever there had been an understatement, that was it. “Regardless, I was terrified. I didn’t know how to find the right companies to invest in or how to influence people. When a friend invited me to go skydiving in Peru, that changed my mindset. I realized that I could do anything because I had nothing to lose.”

“Except maybe your life.”

He laughed quietly. “Maybe. But when you give up a little control, you find out what you’re made of. It’s not my intention to scare you. I want to show you that you can do anything. You have no reason to be intimidated by Sylvia Hodge.”