Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (136 page)

She turned and looked him in the
eye.
 
“Red Jameson.
 
Tell me what the heck is going on
immediately.”

He just smiled again.
 
“All will be revealed.”

“Fine.”
 
She pretended to be annoyed but inside
she was actually enjoying this.
 
It
was a nice diversion and she wanted to see what he’d come up with.
 
Maybe he wanted to have dinner on the
beach or something fun.

So Nicole took off her sandals and walked
across the street to the beach, down the small path that bridged the street and
the beach itself.
 
Once she felt the
sand between her toes, she knew that Red had somehow picked the right place to
bring her this afternoon.
 
She took
a deep breath, looking out at the ocean as the waves rolled into the shore.

The water was fairly calm, and Nicole
stood at the edge and let the waves come in and bring the water up over her
feet.
 
It was chilly and sent
shivers up her spine.
 
She hugged
herself, smiling and thinking about just how right this all was—the
ocean, the sky—the expansiveness of this place.

Somehow, out here, she knew they weren’t
alone in this.
 
She knew that
something here was taking care of them.
 

Nicole wasn’t religious—her parents
had been casual churchgoers at best, and none of her spotty religious
upbringing had quite stuck.
 
But in
this moment, she could feel some kind of presence out here, on this beach, with
her.
 

“Hey,” Red spoke from behind her.

Nicole turned and saw that he was holding
two large paper lanterns in each hand.
 
They were both bright orange in color, and fairly large.
 

“What are those for?” she asked, but
already a huge sensation was blooming in her chest.
 
She felt afraid but excited all at once.

Red’s eyes were suddenly wet.
 
He swallowed and she saw that he was
having a little trouble getting the words out.
 
Nicole had never seen him like this
before.

“I didn’t go to look at offices
today.
 
Well, I did, but I couldn’t
be bothered to stick around.
 
I felt
like I had to do something—I was practically jumping out of my
skin.”
 
His voice was husky and
rough with emotion.

Nicole nodded and wiped at her eyes.
 
“You found this place instead?”

“I thought we could have a ceremony for
our baby,” he whispered.
 
“I need
something and I thought maybe you do too.”

“Yeah.
 
I do.”
 
She smiled.
 
She thought that looking at him now,
she’d never love him more than she did right this very moment.
 
He was so vulnerable, but also perhaps
the strongest he’d ever been.
 
His
dark eyes were filled with sadness and caring and she felt completely connected
to him.

“Here,” he said, putting the lanterns
down on the sandy beach and kneeling.
 
“I got some candles.
 
When we
light them, the candle heats the air inside the lantern and makes it
lift—“

“Like a hot air balloon,” Nicole said.

“Exactly.”
 
He smiled up at her.

She walked over to where he was kneeling
and Nicole knelt down beside him.
 
“They’re beautiful,” she told him.

“Just like our baby’s spirit,” he managed
to choke out.
  

Red handed her a lighter and a small
candle, which she lit.
 
He then did
the same, and then helped her affix her candle within her lamp.
 
He placed his candle in his own lamp and
then they each stood and held the glowing yellow lanterns, waiting.
 

“You want to say something, Nicole?” he
asked.
 
“Before we send them off?”

She sighed.
 
“I don’t want to cry again.”

“It’s okay to cry.
 
It’s just me and you here.”

“I just want to thank you for being the
most amazing man I’ve ever known, and for doing this for us.
 
And I want to say that we’re never going
to forget our little one who never got a chance.
 
But I wanted to say…” she couldn’t
finish.

“You’ll always be in our hearts,” Red
finished for her.

And then they released their lanterns
into the air.
 
Watching them float
up into the sky, Nicole suddenly felt the burden lifting from her.
 
Maybe it was just a silly ceremony, and
a made up one at that, but somehow it eased her mind.
 

She knew that although they would move on
from this, they wouldn’t ever forget that there had once been a child—a
child that had been conceived by the two of them—who would never get the
chance to experience the life it deserved.
 
No matter that the unborn child had been so tiny and new that it had
barely registered on a sonogram—to Nicole, every moment that she’d known
her baby existed had been a miracle and she never wanted to pretend it hadn’t
happened.

So the two of them stood hand in hand and
watched their lanterns rising and rising and rising, until they were swallowed
up by the deep blue sky.
 

And then Nicole and Red stayed and
watched the sun set, and the sky was on fire with color.

***

The next day, Nicole informed Red that
she did, in fact, want to have a “traditional” wedding.

“That’s what I figured,” he said, as they
walked through the empty floor of an office building in downtown Hartford.
 

The realtor had let them in and told them
to just have a look while he waited by the door.
 
Red disliked pushy realtors and had made
it clear he didn’t want to be followed around and blabbered to while he
assessed the space.

“Are you okay with that?” Nicole asked
him.
 
“With having a normal
wedding?”

“What do you define as normal?” he said,
turning toward the window that looked out over the afternoon traffic.
 
“How many people do you want to invite?”

“I don’t know.
 
Maybe fifty people?”

Red laughed.
 
“I hate to break it to you, but that’s
not a normal wedding.
 
That’s tiny.”

“Well excuse me,” she said.
 
Nicole turned and looked at the
ceiling.
 
“Are those water stains up
there?”

Red glanced upwards.
 
“Yep.”

“This place isn’t very slick—it’s
kind of dumpy.”

“We’re not going for slick anymore.
 
I want an office environment that says
grit, determination and hard work.
 
Did you ever see Rocky III?”

“No.
 
I hate violent movies.”

“Too bad.
 
I could have used that movie to
illustrate more clearly how Rocky became world champion and got soft, so he had
to go back to his gritty roots to regain his eye of the tiger.”

“Sounds really neat,” she said
drily.
 

“My point is, I think what happened to
Jameson International is that I got complacent with all of my success—I
got soft.
 
So I don’t want to start
another slick company with a soft underbelly.
 
I want to be the little guy that punches
the big guy in the nose.”

Nicole shook her head.
 
“Back to the wedding.
 
Are you okay with what I said?”

He took her hand and looked her in the
eye.
 
“Fifty people sounds like a
perfect amount.”

“And I’ll probably want to have the
reception at a nice place, so it might get expensive.”

“I don’t think you could plan a wedding
for fifty people that would be considered expensive.”

“So I’m not on a budget?”

He shrugged slightly.
 
“I really don’t see the point.
 
Just do what you think is right, I trust
you completely.”

“Okay, then,” she said, laughing a little
at how easy it was.
 

They continued walking through the office
and when they circled back around to the realtor, Red said, “It’s perfect.”

***

The next week flew by in a flurry of
activity.
 
Red was starting to hire
employees for the new operation.
 
Not very many—just a skeleton crew of people to form a strong
team.

Nicole was required to be there every
step of the way, mainly because Red liked to discuss every minor detail with
her.
 
She still wasn’t sure exactly
what her role was, so one morning she pressed him on it in the car ride over to
the office.

“So what exactly do I do at this new
company?”

“I was thinking of calling it The Red
Agency.”

“I like it.
 
But what do I do at The Red Agency?”

“I’m not sure if the name sounds too
feminine, though.
 
Like we’re in the
business of manufacturing lipstick or something.”

“Will you please answer me?”

He glanced at her.
 
“Why is it so important to give you a
title?
 
We’re partners.
 
Isn’t that enough?”

“Of course it is.
 
But I don’t have equal say in the
day-to-day operations of the business.
 
You have way more experience than me, and I don’t want that type of
responsibility.
 
Besides, you don’t
really listen to me all that much.”

“That’s so not true.”

“I told you I thought the office was a
dump and you just went and rented it anyway—like two seconds after I gave
you my opinion.”

He made a face.
 
“You’re exaggerating.”

“No I’m not.”

“Well what do you want your title to be?”

Nicole thought about it.
 
“I don’t know.
 
It seems like I’m your executive
assistant.”

“Fine then.”

“Is that what you want me to be?”

“Nicole, I don’t care what your title
is.
 
I just want you by my side.”

She leaned over and kissed his rough
cheek, smelling his cologne.
 
“I
love you when you’re being stubborn.”

“I’m not being stubborn,” he muttered,
with a grin.

***

That night, she called her mother to tell
her about the wedding.

Her mother was ecstatic.
 
“Finally,” she crowed, “we can get down
to brass tacks.”

“I think we’ve settled on a date.
 
It’s just over two months from today,”
Nicole said.
 
“We want to do it
sooner than later, but I also need to give people time to plan.”

“That’s reasonable,” her mother replied,
“especially since most people typically send out a save the date note six
months in advance.”

“Obviously we can’t do that.”

“Obviously.
 
So you’re doing it the best way you know
how.”

Nicole rolled her eyes, switched the
phone to her other ear.
 
Red was in
the media room watching Rocky III.
 
He’d even made her watch part of it yesterday—the scene where
Sylvester Stallone goes back to his old, stinky gym and everyone stares at him
with these mean looks in their eyes—they call it “they eye of the
tiger.”
 
Red had pointed at the
screen and asked her if everything made more sense now, and she’d nodded her
head, pretending that she understood.

“I just thought I’d let you know what we
were planning,” Nicole said, wanting to get off the phone without allowing her
mother to drag her into some needless debate over what was an appropriate
amount of time to give advance notice of her wedding date.

“Speaking of planning,” her mother said
slowly.
 
“Do you remember Marcie
Tilly?”

Nicole wracked her brain.
 
“Hmmmm….”

“She throws those parties that your
father and I go to on New Year’s Eve.
 
I’m sure I mentioned her to you before.”

“I think I remember you talking about
her,” Nicole said, having only the vaguest recollection of her mom saying
something last year about New Year’s Eve plans—and Nicole could have
sworn she’d been complaining that she didn’t want to go because it would be
such a production.