One Last Time Read online

  My father was not the kind of man who put family before the good of the company. He never had been and he probably never would be. Shit, I remembered more than one anniversary date he and my mother had planned together that he blew off for last-minute business meetings. I remembered numerous times where my mother would be crying but trying to play it off whenever he’d come home late after having blown off another one of their dates for a work client.

  I remembered so clearly all the pain that my dad’s choices had clearly caused my mother and I did not want to cause Emma that kind of emotional pain—especially with her being the first woman I actually cared about more than myself and my own carnal desires.

  I was pretty certain that Emma was feeling the same way about me that I was feeling toward her but she was just allowing way too many of her insecurities get in the way of her emotions. I might have been an alpha playboy in the past, but I certainly wasn’t a heartless fucking prick. I knew when a woman was having deeper feelings for me than she wanted to admit, and Emma definitely fell into that category.

  She had actually opened up to me and had told me that she’d been having thoughts about changing her mind about leaving. But she’d already given the school her termination notice and they had already found another teacher to take her place.

  Emma was a career-minded woman, as well, which was another thing I admired about her. She wasn’t happy if she wasn’t working. I knew that she wouldn’t be content with just sitting around the house and not feeling like she was being productive in some way.

  For the very first time in my adult life, I was far more interested in a woman for who she was rather than merely how hot or sexy she looked who how good she was in bed—and for a man like me, that was saying a lot, quite a lot. I hadn’t had a serious relationship with any woman since I was back in my college years.

  I decided to take her out someplace where we could talk. I wanted to make sure that my feelings were being reciprocated. I found Emma’s number in my contacts list and called her.

  She answered almost immediately. “Hello, Declan! Hey, how’s it going?”

  “Good, thanks. How have you been, lovely?”

  “Not too bad. It’s nice to hear from you,” she replied.

  “It’s good to hear your voice, as well. I was wondering, are you available sometime this week? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  “Um, sure. How about tomorrow night?” she suggested. “Around seven?”

  “Works for me,” I told her. “I’ll send a car at seven.”

  * * * * *

  The following night, I sent a car to her house and we met up at Central Park.

  “You look beautiful,” I told her as she climbed out of the backseat of the BMW I had sent to pick her up.

  “Thanks,” she said, looking up at me with those doe-like eyes of hers.

  “You wanna go for a walk?” I asked.

  “Sure.” She smiled and allowed me to take her hand as we stepped onto one of the paved trails.

  “So, I wanted to talk to you about something that’s been on my mind,” I said.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about us, and everything we’ve been doing over the past few weeks. I wanted to know how you felt about us,” I explained. “And I also wanted to tell you that I’m not going to sign a contract with Josh Davis.”

  “Oh,” she replied, seemingly at a loss for words.

  I figured that either my question or my statement must have taken her somewhat by surprise.

  “I, uh, I’m not sure what you want me to say,” she said as she looked at the ground as we walked. It was like she was refusing to look me in the eye.

  “I don’t want you to say anything. I just want to know how you feel—about me—about us, in general,” I elaborated.

  “Oh,” she said again, growing quiet as we walked through Central Park hand in hand.

  “Oh?” I repeated, looking directly over at her.

  “I guess I haven’t really given it a lot of thought,” she said softly. I knew she was holding back how she really felt. The truth was evident in her eyes—those beautiful brown eyes…

  “Well, even if you’re not ready to admit how you feel, Emma, I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that I am having very strong feelings for you. I haven’t felt this way about a woman in quite a long time. I’m falling in love with you,” I confessed, stopping to look deep into her eyes as I let the words flow freely.

  She paused for a moment, looking as if she was in shock, and then looked back into my eyes. “You know, after everything that went down with my ex, I just thought that true love wasn’t meant for me, you know? I mean, to be honest, I have a lot of insecurities that I don’t like to talk about and that I try to keep hidden deep down inside. But when I’m with you, Declan, I feel like true love is actually possible. You make me feel like you could very well be the man I’ve been waiting for,” she confessed.

  “Believe it or not, Emma, I can relate,” I told her softly. “I’ve never said this to any other woman, but I feel like you should know, especially if we’re considering taking things to the next level.”

  Though I hated to admit it, as I thought back about my college years, a young lady by the name of Summer Rawlings popped into my head. Summer just happened to be the first and the last young woman I’d had a serious relationship with.

  I said, “I was in my senior year of high school, and Summer and I had gotten very close over the past several months. She was older than I was by three months, and her birthday was coming up. I was head over heels for this girl; she was definitely my very first love. We had both gotten accepted to the same college and were planning to get married after we graduated with our degrees. I was going for business management, of course, and she was taking up law. She wanted to be a business lawyer and eventually start her own law firm.

  “I had planned on making her my wife and personal business lawyer, and she knew that my family had the money to help her start her own law firm—especially if we got married. Well, everything seemed to be going according to plan. I graduated with my business degree and she eventually graduated from law school. I helped her study for her bar exam and she passed it with flying colors. I proposed to her after we graduated.”

  Emma nodded while she listened.

  Encouraged, I continued, “While planning our extravagant wedding, because I had wanted to give her the wedding of her dreams, she took me with her to show me the building she wanted to purchase to start her law firm. It was a nice little red brick building with three floors and offices on each floor. I asked her why she needed such a big building if she just wanted to have one law office inside of it.”

  Emma watched me intently as I continued my story—a story I had never shared with another woman before. For some reason, though, I felt comfortable sharing it with her. It felt—natural.

  “She told me that she wanted to start her own law office on one floor and rent out the other two floors to other businesses. To me, a young, ambitious businessman who was also totally and completely in love with her, it sounded like a reasonable plan. She could live off the money she was charging to rent the other floors out until she built up her law firm and had a steady flow of clients coming in and out.”

  Emma listened silently, watching me with those brown eyes as I spoke. She took my hand.

  “Well, to my surprise,” I said with a bitter laugh, “it turned out that as soon as I’d invested my parents’ hard-earned money into purchasing that building, and the building was completely paid for, and the deed was in her name, she broke things off with me. A month before our wedding. She told me that I had been distant and she no longer felt close to me. She accused me of cheating on her and said some bullshit that her friends had seen me with other women. I still remember that day as if it had just happened last week. She wouldn’t even look me in my face as she spoke.”

  Emma gave my hand a squeeze and we looked into each
other’s eyes. I felt closer to her at that moment than I had ever felt before.

  “It was mainly because she was lying to my fucking face,” I said. “Not even a month after the wedding was supposed to have taken place, she had some guy named David Markovich renting out the second floor of the building that my family’s money had paid for. I may have been head over heels in love but I certainly wasn’t fucking stupid idiot. Even the blindest, dumbest fool could have two and two together in that particular situation.”

  Emma looked at me lovingly and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for sharing that with me,” she said tenderly.

  We shared a sweet, intimate kiss right there in the middle of Central Park.

  * * * * *

  I’d had to wait until I was twenty-five before I could collect the $500,000 savings bond that my parents had put back for me for after I’d completed college and was ready to start out on my own.

  The worst part about the entire situation was that I honestly had never even suspected the conniving, underhanded move that Summer had made. I had been completely blinded by my love and adoration for her, and I had developed an unconditional trust in her. So, after having been played for a fucking fool like that, I had made a vow to never let my feelings get involved in any relationship I ever had with any other woman after her.

  After that shit that went down with Summer, I’d also made a promise to myself that I’d never let my guard down again. And so, for the next decade, all my relationships, if you’d even want to call them that, had been merely superficial, lust-driven flings.

  I would meet a gorgeous, sexy woman and immediately put on the irresistible Erikson charm. But those flings never lasted more than a few weeks or so—a few months at the most. I would either become bored with the woman, or I would meet someone else and give my current “friend-with-benefits” that same lame break-up speech that I gave the rest of them.

  But I had always been up front and honest with each and every one of my flings. I never led any of them on or made them think that things were more serious than they actually were. I made it a point to always tell them right away that I was not looking for anything serious, and that I was just looking to have a little bit of no-strings-attached fun. Believe it or not, most of the time, those women were absolutely fine with it. They would literally tell me that they weren’t looking for anything serious, either—and that they just wanted to have some fun while they were in between serious relationships or focusing on their career or schooling.

  Anyway, on my thirty-fifth birthday, my parents approached me and came right out and asked how much more time I was planning to waste in frivolous, meaningless flings before I found a woman with some character, depth, and trustworthiness. Basically, someone who I could settle down with and officially make a permanent part of the family business. Apparently, they had grown tired and impatient with me as far as far as my bachelor playboy lifestyle was concerned.

  Now, at first, my initial attitude toward their seemingly new viewpoint regarding my carefree, unattached personal lifestyle was a somewhat rebellious one. I originally became a little bit upset about the fact that they seemed to be, out of the fucking blue, totally against my lifestyle—after nearly a goddamned decade of them never having shit to say about it. At first, I didn’t quite understand what their problem was and I’d acted out in a rebellious manner.

  But, finally, my father sat me down and explained to me that eventually I was going to need to carry on our company’s legacy and that meant settling down with a woman of depth and character—a woman I could completely and thoroughly trust—and getting married and continuing the Erikson name and company legacy.

  Before I met Emma, I’d never really understood exactly what my parents had meant. But ever since meeting her, I had become convinced that she and I could have something amazing. We could have something I never got a chance to have before.

  Chapter 12

  Emma

  “Chloe, I don’t know what to do,” I said with a sigh of exasperation. I had been stressing out over things ever since I’d talked to Declan at Central Park.

  “What’s wrong?” Chloe asked, looking at me in concern.

  She was wearing one of her bright yellow sundresses and the brilliant red roses in the flowery pattern really brought out the fiery red color of her hair.

  “Chloe, I think I’m falling in love with Declan,” I confessed as I plopped down on her sofa and folded my arms across my chest.

  “Okay, this sounds like the kind of convo we’re gonna need a drink to finish,” she said half-teasingly as she opened one of her kitchen cupboards and took out a bottle and two small glasses. From the fridge, she took out a jug of cranberry juice.

  Honestly, Chloe never really needed a reason to drink. In fact, I was pretty sure she was only saying that to try and convince me that I needed a drink so that she wouldn’t have to drink alone.

  She came over and sat down next to me on her sofa, placing the glasses down on the coffee table in front of us. She filled them with clear liquor, added a few drops of cranberry juice, and then set the liquor bottle down right beside them.

  “Thanks,” I said as she handed me my freshly-made drink.

  “So, now, what’s all this about Richy Rich Long Schlong, then?” she asked jokingly.

  “Seriously,” I said as I laughed, “you’re gonna make me spill this drink if you don’t stop it.”

  “Stop what?” she said with a straight-faced expression, bringing her glass up to her lips and taking a long, slow sip.

  “Chloe, come on! I’m serious. I really need to talk to you about this,” I pleaded, taking another swig of my own strong drink.

  “Okay, okay, all jokes aside, what’s going on?”

  “Well, I really am falling for Declan, and I don’t know what to do about it,” I explained. “He just—he just seems so different from what I was expecting, you know?”

  “Well, what the hell were you expecting?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, I guess, I assumed that we were just gonna be—well, you know, maybe friends with benefits or something,” I replied. “I mean, at first I had just thought it was gonna be like a one-night fling. But then he tracked me down and wanted to see me again. And he’s absolutely amazing in bed, of course, but he’s also really cool and easy to talk to. He’s sweet, romantic, and extremely thoughtful. It’s like everything he does, he does with me in mind. I never felt like this when I was with Josh.”

  “Okay, go on,” Chloe said as she refilled her glass.

  “Well, he did the most incredible thing. Last week, I told him that Josh was my ex, and he confided in me how important Josh’s contract was to his company. Then, last night, he actually confessed his feelings for me and told me that he was terminating his endorsement deal with Josh. This is the first time a man has ever put me before his career.”

  I sighed and shook my head, feeling slightly woozy from the way my thoughts were spinning around inside my mind.

  “Emma, this is a good thing! Shit, it’s actually a great thing,” Chloe said excitedly. “Listen to yourself. You’re stressing over this like it’s bad.”

  “Chloe, it is a bad thing—at least to me. I’m moving, remember? I feel so guilty now, because he made this decision to put me and my feelings before his billion-dollar company, but I’m leaving.”

  I felt like a total ass. To be completely honest, I hadn’t actually expected Declan to make his decision about his prospective endorsement deal with Josh based on the information I had given him. No man had ever put me before his career and it certainly hadn’t ever crossed my mind that Declan Erikson, a rich, sophisticated, and incredibly handsome playboy, president of his family’s billion-dollar company, would ever be the one to finally do so.

  I sucked in my breath and shook my head in a useless attempt to try and clear it.

  “Emma, you don’t have to leave. You do know that, right?” Chloe pointed out, looking directly into my face as she spoke.

&nb
sp; “But I’ve already given my notice to the school, and they’ve already found another teacher to fill my position. There’s no way I could go back and tell them that I changed my mind and ask them to fire that person just so they can give me my job back,” I explained. I ran my hand over my face, hoping to calm my racing thoughts.

  Chloe took the small glass from my hand, refilled my drink, and handed it back to me.

  “Seems like you need this more than I do,” she said half-joking and half-serious.

  She looked over at me and winked, allowing a slight smile to form at the corners of her mouth. It was just enough to send me into a fit of giggles. We both started laughing.

  “You always make me laugh—even at the most inappropriate times,” I said, punching her playfully in the arm.

  “What the hell are you talking about? It’s never an inappropriate time for a good hard…laugh,” she teased.

  “Anyway, what do you think I should I do? I mean, I was so gung ho about moving back down to my hometown but now, with everything that has happened…”

  “You’re starting to have second thoughts, aren’t you?” Chloe said, interrupting me. She knew me so well that sometimes it was almost creepy.

  “Isn’t life crazy that way, though?” I asked. “Here I am, finally giving up on the idea of finding true love here in the city, and then the seemingly perfect man falls right into my lap when I’m not even looking—just when I’ve already decided to leave this place behind and head back home.”

  Chapter 13

  Declan

  “Perfect,” I said, clasping my hands together with a proud nod.

  I had just finished turning my large, spacious condo into a romantic, candlelit date-night atmosphere. I wanted tonight to be especially grand because it was the night I was planning to ask Emma to make things between us official.

  Honestly, I had never felt so pumped about a romantic interlude in my entire life. For the first time, I finally understood what my parents had been trying to relay to me over the past few years. I finally realized what they meant about finding myself a woman with depth and sincerity. Emma was everything I had never had in a woman before, and I was ready to ask her to be mine. Also, I was going to ask her to stay here in New York—and I would give her a reason to want to stay.