Chapter 15

Amelia

"You know, Eleanor should know that you're stuck here," Damian murmurs, running his fingers up and down my bump. He's been almost… protective since that night in the hospital as if his baby was being threatened. "That there were complications."

"She knows," I whisper. "But she thinks I'm at Olivia's."

Damian gets a strange look in his eye and turns back to tracing the veins in my stomach. "Does she know you're having a daughter?"

I smile and follow his fingers with my own. "Not yet."

"You think she'll be okay? I'm sure she thinks the baby is Jackson reincarnated. A baby girl will ruin that illusion."

"I know." It's a thought I'd had several times too. "I'll tell her privately. I'm sure she'll still be thrilled."

He sighs and sits up, studying me in the little nest I've made for myself in the last few weeks. "What are we going to do about Rachel?"

I eye him. "As long as there's nothing for her to find out, then I think we do nothing about Rachel. All she can reveal is that you and I have gotten closer in the last few months, which I'm sure your sister and your mother will be the first to admit, too. Your sister in a fit of anger, your mother as she sulks." I think about it. "Although, if you keep giving me orgasms in your restaurants, people will absolutely notice."

A smile twitches at the corner of Damian's mouth. "You deserve hundreds."

"Yeah! I do! And yet, I'm the one being denied them! I refuse to believe an orgasm is anything but good for mind, body, and soul."

He exhales a laugh as he lounges back in his original position. "Mila… we have gotten closer in the last few months, I can admit it, but… what are you going to do? In a few months, you're having a baby."

I clasp my hands around my bump and try to hold it tight to me as if it was already too separate from me. "I know," I whisper. I gulp. I've thought about it a lot. Why is Damian still here? Why am I on bed rest in his bed? With sex off the table. Wasn't that our only thing? His desire to stay close by must have a reason, and I'm convinced it's purely because of my position at MVM.

"We'll shelve it for now," Damian says softly. "I should go get your work done."

I study him as he gets up from the bed. "Who is running your restaurants while you're filling in for me at MVM?"

"I am," he says tiredly. He stretches his shoulders and walks to the doorway. "Speaking of the restaurants, I'll be back late tonight. I have a function at The Secretary that needs my attention."

"Okay."

There's a weariness to his shoulders that I recognize. I'm immediately taken back to the way Jackson used to close up, bring his shoulders up to his ears, as if it was his physical responsibility to hold the weight off himself. Damian is doing similar, but his tension seems to be in the way his neck is sitting. His shoulders are straighter than they usually are, which forces his neck to sit unevenly on top of his spine. I can't lose another man to this job, no matter how short-term we think it is.

I get my phone and call Robyn. "Give me more work to do from home."

"Amel—"

"I'm sitting here bored out of my brain for the past month while Damian is doing both my work and his. Speaking of, can you get me financials of Damian's restaurants? Any that are still currently in business. It might be tricky to find, as Damian won't hand them over, but try and get someone from Legal to work around it."

"Yes, ma'am," she says softly.

Maybe running the restaurants out of the MVM brand won't be the worst thing to do. At least that way Damian is not running between the two for the next few months.

Settling into bed with my laptop, a variety of snacks and a comfortable pillow behind my back, I finally get back to work.

It works up until the afternoon. Damian's ma?tre d', Gabriela, who he seems to use as a personal assistant, has delivered food to me from The Secretary, but as soon as I eat, I get tired again, so I take a break from work to have a nap. I don't know why I haven't worked like this before now. I'm practically waited on whenever I want it, I take naps in the middle of the day, I'm wearing comfortable pajamas in the most comfortable bed I've ever laid on, and I'm still getting work done.

I'm woken from my nap with alarm bells ringing in my head, although I can't put my finger on what it is until I fumble sleepily for my ringing phone.

"Hello?" I mumble.

"Ah… urgent, but you're not to stress, okay? You're banned from stress. I am trying to handle it," Damian says, and I can't help but hear the panic in his voice. I'm already on full alert.

"What's happened?"

"Oh, fuck, Amelia. This isn't good."

I wake my computer up as I demand more answers from Damian, although I stop mid-sentence when I see the email on my laptop with a link to an article. "Oh, fuck, Damian. What did you do?"

"This isn't from me," he cries. "I'm the one that promised it all in the first place."

According to the article I've been sent, MVM have started construction on the site that was still under contention by the local Native American tribe chiefs and leaders. There are photos, too. One of the land officially cleared, and posts in, marking out a foundation.

"Who gave the go-ahead?" I demand. "Give me names. I gave clear written instructions for the site to be held with no activity for a minimum of six months. So I need names now."

Damian clears his throat weakly. "Amelia, I know you're upset, but I need you to relax and leave it to me."

"Absolutely not," I hiss. "You're the reason we're in this in the first place. Four weeks of you being in charge, and I'm suddenly dealing with a—"

A new email pops up on my computer, and I know Damian is seeing the exact same one as our breath collectively leaves our throats.

"We're being sued," Damian gulps, finding his voice first.

"No shit," I snap. "It's what we were warned of. I want you to go to the site, and if you have to haul men out of fucking excavators, do it. Make sure everything stops. When you get back to the office, there will be several people waiting there for you, and you're going to fire them, you hear? I'm sick of these goddamn men thinking they know better than me."

"Yes, ma'am," he whispers. I can hear the defeat in his voice.

"Oh, and Damian? If I find out you had any input in this for any reason, I'm firing you, too, and there's not a thing that you can do about it. And I will find out."

"Ameli—"

"Go do your job. I will talk to you when you get back to the office. I am trying to stop having a goddamn baby four months early in your bed."

I hang up before he can say anything else and get Robyn back on the line.

"Buckle up, Robyn. We've got a lot of work to get done today."

"I'm ready."

I'm going to keep this baby inside, work out the mess that these men have created for me to clean up, and then I'm going to get straight back to my nap.

I leave the meeting with Hotah Enapay for Damian to deal with, as Hotah won't listen to me anyway. I am on the call when seven of my employees are fired, with one yelling more obscenities than I've ever heard directly into Damian's face.

Damian then heads to The Secretary, where he's forced to kick three men out of the restaurant for inappropriate behavior. A tabloid article is released claiming Damian has fathered twins with a woman and he'd been paying her to keep quiet about it, which led to his mother calling him and demanding the truth. He tells me all this later, but all I know is by the time he gets home, he's defeated. His eyes are half-shut, and his complexion looks awful.

I've moved to the sofa with the intent to yell at him some more, but my anger dies on my lips as he shuffles in.

He holds his hands up weakly. "I know I fucked up," he says, his voice watery. "I should have realized those men were planning to go behind your office's back. I knew they were in communication with the building company, but I thought it was just settling accounts until it started back up in six months."

I give him a smile and pat the couch next to me. "Come here," I whisper.

He drops his bag on the floor and kicks off his shoes, leaving them in the middle of the foyer before trudging over to me and lying with his head on the top of my baby bump. I wrap my arms around him as best as I can and rest my cheek on his temple as we both take a second to breathe out the day.

He speaks first. "Adam and Robert will probably sue for us firing them."

"Let them," I whisper. "We have more than enough against them. I recorded the phone call today, so we have evidence of Adam's explosive speech. And I'm already in the process of hiring their replacements."

Damian breathes out shakily, and I hold him tighter, pressing my lips to his temple, exactly like the many times I did the same to Jackson when he was stressed. Some men just need to be held and told that it's going to be okay.

He shifts so he's facing me, gently pressing his lips to mine before sighing. "Why'd you ask for the restaurants' financials?" he murmurs.

I chuckle softly. "I was thinking it might be time for MVM to acquire a series of restaurants. With no resorts coming out anytime soon, I thought we should upgrade the restaurants attached to our existing ones. The Damian Blake Restaurant Group seemed like the best choice. When I get back to work, I can run the business side of things, leave you to do the details. But until then, it might make it more manageable for you to have everything in one place. Once I'm back, we can assess your idea for a self-sustaining restaurant as part of MVM's future plans."

He sits up and studies me, his expression wary. "Damn, Amelia," he whispers.

"What? You thought that I—"

He speaks slowly, choosing his words. "You know what that means though?"

"That I'm trying to help you?"

"Sweetheart… it means we'll be working together long term. That you're giving me a chance with this." He lowers his gaze ever so slightly to my baby bump before he looks back up at me.

I exhale shakily. "You've said many times before in multiple different formats that you don't want to have children. You messaged me earlier to say that you had to talk Audrey down from throwing you a celebration for those twins that aren't even yours!" I shake my head. "It was simply a way for you to have equal parts in the company as per Victor's will, but in a way that actually works."

"Mila," he whispers. "I… yes, I've never entertained the idea of having children before now. Rachel just about convulsed if the topic was ever brought up, the other two ex-wives were too eager, so I automatically put a stop to it, and anyone else has been in some level of in-between. But, fuck, I don't know… that night in the hospital. When we saw her on the screen. We saw her…" He places his hands on my stomach. "I don't know what happened to me in that moment, but when I saw that baby on the monitor, kicking around… I knew I wanted to do anything to protect you and her for as long as I'm needed. And I know how insane this all sounds." He moves away and breathes out slowly, some of the spark coming back into his eyes. "Okay, look. I… think…"

He looks genuinely nervous to get the words out of his mouth, and I frown. "What?"

"I think we should give this a shot. Properly," he murmurs, keeping his eyes on my face, looking for a hint of an adverse reaction. "I know there will be complications, mostly with family, and age difference,,, and you having someone else's child, but… God." He scratches at his temple before shifting further on the sofa towards me. "After the awful day I had, knowing I had you to come home to made it all worth it. I don't even care that we can't have sex again for months—months—because I honestly just like having you nearby." He closes his eyes. "I don't know. Maybe I just had a bad day, and I'm all over the place."

When he opens his eyes again, I smile at him. "Who knew the great Damian Blake-Garrett had the capacity to get flustered?"

A flash of a smirk crosses his lips before a cute blush rises up his cheeks.

I gesture him closer before taking his face in my hands. "Damian?"

"Yes, Mila?"

"I'd love to give this a shot with you."

He answers it with a kiss. A kiss that settles so nicely in the pit of my stomach. I pull away and bite my grin.

"And she only said no penetrative sex." I playfully pout as I push him backwards and put on my best seductive voice. "My baby had a long, hard day at work today, and I'd better remind him what he's got to come home to, don't I?"

Damian's mouth drops open as I shove him harder back into the couch until he's lying down. "Mila…"

"Shh," I murmur. "I've got you."

His eyes shine bright with excitement, and he doesn't try to stop me from settling in between his legs.