Serene. There was no other way to describe it. She’d made herself a haven.
And I was going to beg her to give it all up.
“Would you like some water?” she asked.
“Please.”
“Make yourself comfortable.” She waved to the living room, then disappeared into the kitchen and turned on the faucet.
I paced in front of the couch, unable to sit. The flight to Oregon had been brutal enough, trapped in a seat, itching to get out. Not even a fifteen-hour flight to Australia had felt so long.
Clara had been texting me all afternoon. My phone buzzed in my pocket, but I ignored it. I hadn’t told her where I was going when I’d rushed out of the office. We’d been in the middle of a weekly planning meeting when Aria had called. Clara didn’t take many personal calls during our workday unless they came from August’s school or her sister.
When Clara had handed me the phone, I’d thought Aria had finally decided to tell me what a prick I was for leaving after our night together. I’d been expecting it for months. I’d deserved it for months.
But pregnant? No. We’d used condoms. Multiple condoms.
I’d replayed our night together for two months. Never had it occurred to me that one of them had failed. Never. Or maybe I’d been too wrapped up in the woman to notice.
“Here.” Aria came toward me, thrusting a glass of water in my hand.
I took it and gulped it to the bottom. “Thanks.”
She sat down on the couch, her shoulders curling inward. “We used condoms.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.” I sighed, taking the chair across from her. “I didn’t know that one had broken.”
“This is a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“Not what you expected from a one-night stand, huh?”
I’d had one-night stands. My night with Aria didn’t even come close to hitting that bucket. “Sorry. For leaving after the wedding.”
“Why are you sorry? It was just a hookup.”
Was it? Because it sure as hell didn’t feel like a hookup. Definitely not with a baby on the way.
I’d been a coward for leaving without a word. She’d be right to call me on it. But I’d been scared. No woman in my life, not even Heather, had affected me like Aria. One night with her and I’d wanted more.
But this was not the time for a romantic entanglement. Certainly not a long-distance relationship. The company needed my focus if I was going to keep Grandmother from sinking the ship.
So I’d hopped on a plane the morning after Aria had snuck out of my bed—I’d woken up pissed that she’d already left—and flown back to Vegas, where I’d spent two weeks living in a hotel and working from dawn to dusk.
“Why did you come all the way here?” she asked.
“I own a plane. And I just . . . I couldn’t stay in Arizona. I couldn’t do this over the phone.”
She tensed, studying my face. “I’m keeping this baby.”
“Did you think I’d come here and ask you to have an abortion?”
“Yes.”
I flinched. She might as well have slapped me. “I would never do that.”
“I don’t know you, Brody.” Aria’s voice gentled. “Not really. I just don’t know what to expect from you. But I don’t want to fight. I don’t have the energy for it. So please don’t take offense. I honestly don’t know why you’re here.”
That was the thing with Aria, the reason her company was so refreshing. She didn’t want anything from me. She didn’t care about my money. She didn’t care about my business. She was simply honest. Sometimes, brutally so.
Honesty, I could deliver.
“I’m here because I want to be involved. With this—our, my—baby. I won’t forsake my child.”
Aria blinked, her eyebrows coming together. “Seriously?”
“Is that so hard to believe?” Did she really think I was such a cold monster? Probably. And I couldn’t blame her for it.
“I don’t know what to believe,” she whispered.
“Believe that I see how hard Clara works to raise August on her own. Believe that I don’t want my child growing up without me in his or her life. Please . . . don’t shut me out from this.”
Now it was her turn to flinch. An expression of sheer annoyance, distinctly Aria, added fire to those tired eyes. “I would never do that.”
The tension eased from my shoulders. “On the way here, I had some time to think.”
“I can already tell I’m not going to like this.”
A grin tugged at my mouth. “Hear me out.”
She leaned back, sagging into the couch. She yawned and covered it up with her hand. “I’m listening.”
“You live in Oregon.”
“I do?”
“Smart-ass,” I muttered. “I live in Arizona. Traveling back and forth isn’t going to work, for either of us. And I am guessing that you won’t want to be away from the baby for extended stretches of time.”
“No. I won’t.”
“Then one of us has to move.”
“You mean me.” She sat straight, her spine stiffening. “My life is here, Brody. My work. My home. I’m not giving it all up to live in the desert.”
The way she spat the last word made me pause. “What’s wrong with the desert?”
“It’s a desert.”
It was too much like California.
Clara had once told me the reason she suspected Aria had run from Vegas to Oregon hadn’t been the fake people or the city life, but because she’d wanted to get away from anything that reminded her of life at the junkyard in Temecula.
“You move here,” she said.
“I can’t.” I held up my hand when she opened her mouth. “I can’t in the next year.”
“After that?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Why a year?”
I stood from the chair and stripped off my suit coat. If we were going to get into this, we might as well get comfortable. “Are you sure you don’t want dinner?”
“I could eat. How about pizza?”
Pizza. Not exactly something I ate much of. Ron normally prepared all my meals, tailoring them to my personal trainer’s specifications. Ron did not make pizza. And pizza sounded fucking awesome. “That would be great.”
She pulled out her phone, quickly placing an order for delivery. Then she tucked it away and gave me her attention as I resumed my seat.
“In less than a year, I’ll be thirty-five. My family’s company, Carmichael Communications, will become mine.”
“It isn’t now?”
“Only partly. At the moment, the majority of my shares are governed by a trust. My grandmother is the executor and acting owner. But the stipulations on my trust disappear on my birthday in November. Until then, I have to play her game. Otherwise she’ll sell the company from under me. She’ll sell it before I can sell it.”
“Wait.” Aria held up a finger. “She wants to sell your company. But you want to sell your company. Spell it out for me, Carmichael. I’m too tired to read between the lines.”
“It’s complicated.” In a word. “Grandmother likes control. Maybe she’s bluffing but maybe she’s not. Selling the company is her threat. It’s the reason she can demand I show up at a wedding.”