Page 75 of The Boss
Nate
I couldn’t seemto stop fucking things up with Ashlee. I’d kept telling myself that I was only coming down here for work, but as I walked away from her, I had to admit that I’d come for her. Despite everything, I still wanted her. And not just for sex either. I couldn’t – or wouldn’t – give it a name, but it was something I hadn’t had before. Not with anyone. I wouldn’t have come all this way for a little bit of information, no matter how much I’d tried to convince myself otherwise.
I needed more time with her to figure it all out.
I glanced back to where she was sitting with her mom and wondered what they were talking about. Yes, I knew they were talking about her bizarre statement that Finley was her father – and I was still trying to wrap my head around that – but I wondered about the details. Wondered how Finley could have had a child I’d never heard of before.
I didn’t doubt she was telling the truth, or at least what she believed the truth to be. The expression on her face when she’d blurted it out had been nothing but honest. Whatever the proof or story, she whole-heartedly believed that Finley Kordell was her father.
And I now felt more like an asshole than ever.
I hadn’t let her explain. I’d just jumped to the worst conclusion, and that was it. If it’d been anyone else, I didn’t know if I’d care as much. Maybe that made me a dick – okay, it definitely made me a dick – but I didn’t care about people in general. She was different.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been standing there on the beach, hands in my pockets, sand in my shoes, when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned, not daring to hope that it was Ashlee and that she wasn’t coming to tell me off for not going farther away.
I had an apology to make.
“Nate.” Her voice was softer than I’d ever heard it. “We need to talk.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding. “We do. But first, I need to tell you that I’m sorry for how I handled everything. I was wrong. I handled all of this the wrong way.”
“That’s definitely true,” she said with the softest of smiles. “But I did hide things from you, including why I applied for a job at your record label.”
“Finley’s really your dad?”
“I’m as sure as I can be without a paternity test,” she said. “The short version is that my mom used an anonymous sperm donor to have me. A few years back, I decided I wanted to find my father. I had the opportunity to see the name of my donor, and there aren’t a lot of Finley Kordells, not even in New York City.”
It didn’t take much to connect the dots. “And an internet search brought you to the article I found.”
She nodded. “I didn’t know how to approach him or even if I wanted to get to know him.”
“Finley’s a great guy,” I cut in.
“He is,” she agreed. “And I know that now, but I didn’t know that then. How could I? I didn’t know him, and I’m not naïve enough to trust what the media has to say. Who knows what their biases and intentions are?”
My eyebrows went up at that. A lot of people believed what they read in magazines, and I’d naturally assumed she was one of them.
Me and my asinine assumptions.
“Maybe it wasn’t the brightest way to go about it,” she said, “but it’s the path I chose.”
I reached out and took her hand, waiting for her to pull away. When she didn’t, I felt a flicker of hope and didn’t squash it.
“Can we start over again?” I asked. “Go into things with our eyes wide open this time?”
“Does that mean we have to go the traditional route?” she asked, a smile playing on her lips.
“What?”
“Does starting over mean that we have to go on a certain number of regular dates before we have sex again?” She glanced over her shoulder at her mom, who smiled and nodded at us like she knew what we were talking about and approved.
“Ashlee…”
“Do you have a hotel room?”
My eyes met hers, and the confidence in them made me nod.
“Take me there.”
