Because Of Love

When she paused in her steps to let him cut in front of her so that she could walk towards the driver’s side, he tugged her forward and led her to the passenger side. Wide eyed, she gaped at him in surprise. He opened the door and ushered her in. He went as far as fastening her seat belt before shutting the door. As he rounded the hood of the car on his way to the driver’s side, Talia watched him, wide eyed and jaw slacked, wondering what the hell had gotten into him. He never drove!

The other part of the trade in compromise was that she would do the driving, in fact, just to drive the point in, everything about the car was in her name. She protested but the threat of the Ferrari staying made her cave.Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

“What if I run off with it?” she’d asked once the contracts were signed and he just shrugged his shoulders. Only then did she discover, when she asked if he wanted to drive, that he had every intention to be chauffeured around.

“Get Joe to drive you around,” she’d snapped, to which he responded with a raised brow and the KO; “So that everyone in the office building knows where I now live?”

The current argument score stood at three-one, with this being his first and if she had anything to say about it, only win.

“What?” he asked as he got in behind the wheel.

Talia just stared at him with a slight shake of her head, blinking long and hard to see if just maybe he was a figment of her imagination.

“How long are you going to stare?” he asked, staring back at her.

“Not staring,” she murmured after she turned to face forward. It must be all the Korean dramas he was watching, she told herself. All of a sudden, he was being very considerate. The way the men are portrayed there was swoon worthy.

He started the car and the engine quietly rumbled to life, the heating in the seat immediately turning on.

“Enter the address on the GPS,” he instructed as he backed out of the parking space.

Silently, she did as instructed and just as she was pulling her hand back to her lap, he grabbed it in his and drew it to his own lap. Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline as she stared dumbfounded. Their clasped hands on his thick blue jeans clad thigh, his wrapped around her open hand. A ticklish feeling crept up her chest and despite the heated seat, a slight chill wrapped around her. This was too strange, too normal. First the work hours rule which for a workaholic would have-should have been difficult for him to agree to. Yes, they had some slip ups, two to be exact but he’d caved into that by the third night. The he traded in his beloved Ferrari-she wasn’t so stupid as to not realize how not difficult it was to convince him into doing so, and now this. Couples held hands when they drove. Girlfriend’s sat shotgun in their boyfriend’s cars-technically it was her car that he paid for-arrgh, not the point! With her free hand, she touched her right temple at the slight twinge there. Rafe was being too tender and caring. Too couple-ish. Yes, they had slept together but they weren’t in a relationship. Yes, he lived with her, shared a bed with her to sleep and just sleep but they weren’t together-together, just… friendly. They were friends, right?

She groaned quietly, pressing a little harder at the twinge in her temple that was growing to an irritating ache.

“Stop that,” he said quietly, squeezing her hand slightly.

She dropped her hand to her lap and turned to look at his profile, his eyes fixed to the road.

“I can hear what you’re thinking.”

“And what would that be?” she asked, trying to keep the disturbed feeling she was currently drowning in from her voice.

“Not yet,” he said, turning slightly to his left to look out at the side view mirror.

Ha?

“You’re not ready for that conversation.”

She immediately turned back to look at the moving traffic ahead of her, internally drawing into herself when she suddenly understood what he meant.

“You know, you haven’t taken me touring yet,” he said with an easy light tone, changing the subject.

She turned to look at him, not missing the effort he was making to not burst their comfortable bubble. He was right, she wasn’t ready for that conversation, because it would lead to questions like ‘When are you going back to Italy’, ‘What do you want to do for Christmas’, ‘Are you in love with me yet’. She wasn’t ready to hear the answer to the first question and he wasn’t ready to answer the last.

He turned to her for a moment and met her gaze with an easy smile, which she returned with a shaky one.

“Tour?” she said quickly, a rasp in her voice. She quietly cleared her throat of the confused emotions bubbling inside her and added, “It’s not your first time in Boston.”

“And yet it is.” He chuckled lightly as if he could see the confused look on her face. “When I travel for work, it’s to the office, hotel then airport,” he confessed, a sad tone to his voice. “I’ve never once taken a moment to even look out the window.”

Talia finally closed her hand around his with a gentle squeeze. “Not even the Louvre, Eiffel Tower… or the Colosseum?” She turned slightly towards him in her seat. “Surely you have been to the Colosseum?”

He chuckled, bringing their joined hands up as he bent his head to kiss her fingers. Her heart skipped as she gasped at the warm and yet heating contact.

“Yes, I’ve been to the sites in Italy. It was part of our education. But,” his voice dropped an octave, “unless it was necessary for a business deal or to get to know clients or prospective business partners better, no.”

Know clients better… heavens, unless it was to get usable information for work, the man didn’t live. Work wasn’t living, work was labor. Looking around and noticing the little things like the weather was how people breathed. This man had never taken a single breath of fresh air. No wonder he was suffering from anxiety and panic disorder.

“Why?” she blurted out unconsciously but genuinely curious to know.

The man was a billionaire, he had enough money to go anywhere he wanted on the globe. Work? He was annoyingly specific; it was like OCD. She refused to believe this perfectionist didn’t have the kind of staff that could keep the office running if he decided to take a week off.

After a drawn silence, he finally answered, “Pressure to live up to expectation. To be who I was required to be, I needed to be.”

“And now?” she asked softly.

“Now,” he exhaled loudly. “Now I want to live one day at a time.”

She smiled as he curved another notch in her heart. That, she could help with. “I’ll make an itinerary.”