The Girlfriend (The Boss) (30 page)

He paled further, though I wouldn’t have thought it possible. When he spoke, he was wounded. “Sophie... I’m in a real crisis here.”

“I know you are.” I tried to sound sympathetic and firm at the same time. “That’s why I want you to get help.”

He broke down then. I was getting strangely used to his tears. But there was a divide between us that seemed to grow wider with every passing day. So, when I held onto him, I wasn’t just comforting him. I was trying to keep him with me, against the internal tide that would inevitably pull him away.

* * * *

It only took one threat, and Neil called his therapist.

“You have a therapist?” I asked him, surprised. Neil always seemed so pulled together, I couldn’t imagine him needing therapy.

Scratch that: I couldn’t imagine him
thinking
he needed therapy.

“You go through a divorce and see if you don’t need someone to keep you sane,” he cracked mildly. We were in the kitchen, making protein shakes while prep went on in anticipation of dinner. We’d found that giving Neil protein a couple hours before a meal kept him from getting queasy at dinner time, and he could hold down more food.

“I would really rather not,” I replied, smiling sweetly at him over the top of the blender. I had to raise my voice to be heard, so I waited until the blades stop to say, “I like you too much to kick you to the curb.”

“Even when I’m being a self-pitying jackass?” He was embarrassed about his meltdown the night before.
 

I wanted to reassure him and tell him that it was nothing to be ashamed of, but I wasn’t going to do that until he actually saw his shrink. I didn’t want to give him an excuse not to go. “Not even then.”

“It might help for you to see someone,” he suggested. “You’ve been horribly isolated here, away from your friends and... because of me.”

“I don’t mind.” I didn’t mind not thinking about it, either. Because that was way more comfortable than confronting it head on.

So, maybe I did need to see someone.

I sighed. “You’re probably right. I hate to ask you for anything right now, but I have no idea how to find someone like that. It was a big enough hassle looking for a gynecologist.”

“I can ask Terry if he can recommend someone. We should keep couples’ counseling in mind, as well.”

“Ah, togetherness,” I said with a dreamy sigh, and at least that got a laugh out of Neil.

He looked over his shoulder at the kitchen prep going on around us, and lowered his voice. Although, to be perfectly frank, I don’t think anyone who worked in his house really cared what we did, so long as they got paid and we left them alone to do their jobs. “I wanted to apologize for what happened last night. My denial of my condition put you in an uncomfortable position. I shouldn’t have behaved as though I resented you, or you were at fault.”

“I didn’t perceive it that way at all,” I said, hitting the pulse button on the blender a few times around my words. “I know you imagine yourself as this cool, composed guy no one can figure out, but for an enigma, you can be super obvious some times.”

“Let that wait a moment,” he said, taking me by the hand and pulling me toward the kitchen door with another glance at the staff around us.

When we stepped into the hallway, he said, low so he wouldn’t be overheard, “I’m not just sorry about the way I behaved. I’m also...” He sighed in annoyance.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, and I reached up to touch his face, because he looked so frustrated and lost.

“I’m upset because I’m not able to meet your needs, sexually. I was fully prepared for the fact that my sex drive would be affected by chemotherapy, but I hadn’t thought as much about how this must affect you.” His brow furrowed. “How long has it been since you’ve even masturbated?”

“I’ve masturbated!” I hissed in outrage. I was embarrassed by the question, but not because I was ashamed to admit these things to Neil. I just didn’t want to have to own up to the fact that my solo sex life hadn’t exactly been wild lately. I didn’t want him to feel guilty over that, too. But while he was sick, I didn’t feel all that sexy.

“Really? When have you had the time in the past month? You worry over me like a mother bird in her nest.” He wasn’t scolding, just concerned.

“Maybe I’m not in the mood.” I shrugged. “It’s this whole thing where my boyfriend has cancer.”

“I’m aware that you’re under an enormous amount of stress due to my condition. But you can’t spend so much time fretting over me that you don’t take care of yourself.

“Come on, I need to sit down,” Neil told me. We went into the sitting room and he dropped onto the sofa. I recognized the look on his face, the questioning, like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. He’d done this a lot in creative meetings at
Porteras
. “I’ve been thinking about this for a few days, and I’ve come up with a plan, but I’m not sure how you’ll react to it.”

“You’ve come up with a plan about my masturbation habits?” I laughed. “I would love to hear it.”

“Don’t get cute with me, Sophie.” His tone was warning, but he smiled. “I’m serious. I don’t want to imply that our relationship is solely sexual, because we both know that it isn’t. But sex is a very large part of our emotional intimacy right now. Because our relationship is so new, and partially because we’re so damned good at sex.”

I held my hand up. “High-five.”

He slapped his palm against mine and continued without missing a beat. “I don’t want you to feel neglected. Just because I’m too tired and ill to have sex most of the time doesn’t mean you need to become celibate. I would like, with your permission, to contact the man we met at my club. See if he would be willing to come for a visit.”

“Um...” I tilted my head to the side. “Do you mean...”

“I wondered if you’d be interested in sleeping with him, yes. Assuming he would find such an arrangement palatable. Although I don’t see why he wouldn’t.”

I looked down at my tank top and yoga pants. No makeup had touched my face in a month, and my manicure was... yikes.

“I’ll be starting this hideous treatment over again in a few days. Perhaps we could set something up for a couple of weeks from now?” He leveled an accusing gaze at me. “I’m sure you could look through the notes you’ve tried to be inconspicuous about keeping with regards to my care and determine the best possible date.”

“Is that something people just do? Call each other up and have threesomes?” I’d heard the odd rumor in my circle of friends back in New York. Holli had been in three ways before. In college, a ménage-a-trios had been the Holy Grail of party hook-ups. I had nothing against people who did them, but it always seemed like something that was just on the outside of my comfort level.

Then again, Emir had been really hot, and I was in a monogamous relationship with a guy who didn’t mind watching another dude finger me. If Neil was offering me the chance to have sex with someone else, and he was completely okay with it, who was I to argue?

The only problem was me, and my lack of sex drive. It was very difficult to feel any sort of desire when I was watching Neil go through all of this pain. Any naughty tingle that got past those particular gates was immediately cut down by my anxiety over our future.

“It’s why he gave us his card. Either he’s interested in me or you, or both of us. The only way we find out is if we contact him.” Neil hesitated a moment. “If this isn’t something that would make you happy, we needn’t do it.”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “It’s not you. Or this. It sounds like a lot of fun. Or, it’s something I would have thought was a lot of fun several months ago. Now I feel like I could do without it.”

“At the risk of sounding crude in an important conversation... last night, you didn’t seem like someone who could do without it. I believe the words, ‘oh fuck’ and ‘oh yes’ were uttered with some urgency.” For a moment, I thought he was being funny, but the gentle sadness in his gaze never wavered. “It’s all right to miss sex, Sophie. I do. Terribly. And I’m afraid that this is something that will just go on and on. I Googled sexual dysfunction after chemotherapy, you know, and there was some very bleak—”
 

I reached for his hands, interrupting him. “You have to stop Googling, baby. It’s bad for you.”

“My point,” he began again, an impatient tilt to his head, “is that if I were, god forbid, rendered incapable by some rare complication, I wouldn’t want your enjoyment of sex to suffer from it. And I’m afraid that’s what’s happening right now.”

Okay, he did have a point. Since Neil had come back into my life, I hadn’t been interested in sex if I wasn’t having it with him. That went for my self-powered ventures, as well. That was super sad. “That is... uncomfortably true. But if it makes you feel any better, I’m just so satisfied by you, solo work doesn’t interest me.”

“Emir interested you,” he reminded me. Stroking his thumb along mine, he gave my hand a squeeze. “It doesn’t matter to me who gets you off, be it you or me or Emir, or even someone else who catches your eye. But I want someone to do it.”

I considered. “How about you contact him, then. And in the meantime, maybe I’ll get reacquainted with myself.”

He grinned. “Perhaps I can be of assistance in that endeavor.”

A rush of heat spread down my belly, and I stood up to keep from squirming where I sat. There was that desire I’d thought I didn’t feel anymore. “Come on. Your smoothie is getting all ruined.”

“There is one other thing I wanted to discuss with you,” he said as we walked back to the kitchen.

“If it can be discussed in front of the staff, shoot.” I pushed the door open and made an “after you” gesture before following him in.

“When we came to London, you said you were planning to do a bit of freelance writing. Have you had a chance to explore that yet?”

My stomach dropped. The very last thing I wanted was for Neil to think I wasn’t pulling my weight. I’d made such a big deal about not needing his money and wanting to work, and all of that was true, I really did want to work and not spend his money. But it seemed like I’d been so focused on Neil, either caring for him or sitting around and waiting to care for him, that I hadn’t even thought about what I would do next.

“I haven’t,” I admitted guiltily. “I’m sorry.”

“What on earth should you be sorry for?” he asked, grabbing a tumbler from one of the cupboards. He went to the blender. “It isn’t as though I’ve been a workaholic these days.”

“But it’s different. You’re sick. I’m just... in a holding pattern.”

“Do you think that’s healthy for you?” he asked, and I almost snapped at him not to analyze me before he even saw his damn shrink.

Okay, if I was that defensive about it, obviously I wasn’t in a healthy place.

But god forbid I admit I was wrong. “Everything has been kind of go, go, go since we came here. So there hasn’t been a lot of time.”

“And your concerns about me take up a lot of mental energy, I know.” He carefully poured the contents of the blender into his cup. “I’m not trying to push you, but I am worried that if you lose your focus in your career, you won’t be happy. And I do want you to be happy.”

He made a pained face as he sipped his shake.

“Do you need me to get you a refill on the magic mouthwash?” I asked, lapsing directly back into my caregiver role. One of the nasty side effects of the chemo was that Neil got painful sores in his mouth and on his gums that made it difficult to eat or drink most things.

He nodded. “I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you.”

I looked around, opening and closing my hands. “Pen... I need a pen.”

“No.” He set his shake down and put his arms around my waist. “Stop driving yourself crazy. I have a very competent, very expensive nurse to care for me. From now on, just be my girlfriend.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.” His treatment and getting him through it as comfortably as possible had become the extremely narrow focus of my entire world. “You’re kind of my project right now.”

“I don’t want to be your project. I want to be your boyfriend. Get another project. Or...” He stopped, his gaze drifting off into that dead-eyed stare of deep thought. “You know, you
could
make me your project. Just not in the way you have been.”

“Yeah? How’s that?” I grabbed the pitcher from the blender and moved to take it to the sink, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm.

“You’ve been keeping notes on me. I know you try to hide it, but I’ve seen you doing it. Why not take all of the things you’ve journaled and start writing about them?”

It was a nice thought, but I couldn’t see how it would work. “I’m journaling stuff like your symptoms and your blood cell counts. Not that you aren’t absolutely fascinating, but I can’t see anyone wanting to read about that.”

“You’d be surprised. Remember the
Daily Mail
?” he reminded me dryly. They had made a disgusting offer for an “exclusive” story about Neil’s condition already. “But I don’t think you should write about me, per se; you should write about living as a partner with someone who has cancer.”

I considered. “It would probably be difficult to write about our situation without people figuring out who you are. I mean, are any other British billionaires with twenty-four year old girlfriends going through chemotherapy for leukemia right now?”

“Yes. We have a club.” He took another sip from his glass. “We go rowing on the weekends.”

“Don’t get cute,” I admonished him, the same way he would have me. “You didn’t want that paper to run a story about you. It’s a legitimate concern on my end. I don’t want to expose any information you don’t want me to make public.”

“Just don’t use my name or identifying information,” he suggested. “If someone figures out who your mysterious, rich boyfriend is, then so be it. I didn’t make you sign a non-disclosure agreement when we started dating. You own the details of your life, and certain details of mine that get mixed in with yours. So long as you’re not printing out my banking information, I don’t see the trouble.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, avoiding his eyes. “I really will. You’re absolutely right, I need to get back out there and start taking care of my career. And I probably also need to speak to a therapist.”