CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Xavier’s POV

I didn’t know what I was thinking as I drove down to her apartment . But I just want to be there.

I just want to apologize to her and tell her, none of those words Ivanna said truly describe her.

When she opened the door, she stood in the doorway with her hand on the frame and looked at me with those eyes I’m starting to fall for but still find it hard to admit too.

Hold on.

She just said my apology was not accepted. Even when I was very sincere about it.

No please.

I know she has every right to be angry but I’m sincerely sorry.

“I’m sincerely sorry,” I said.

“Oh no! The words weren’t for you, Mr Beaumont. I was just answering to a question Bryan asked me earlier.”

Relief surge through me.

“Oh, I’m glad.” I took a glance over her shoulder into her sitting room. “Speaking about Bryan, where is he? I can’t seem to see him around. Is he at grandfather’s estate?”

“Bryan’s asleep,” she replied. “He came back from Arthur’s estate today.

“Oh really? Good.” I looked into the sitting room again. “You won’t keep your boss standing outside the door. Will you?

She smiled and opened the door wide enough for me to enter. “My bad.”

***

This is my first time in her apartment, my previous visit ended outside the apartment.

Her apartment was small in the way she could afford I assume. Each space working harder than their square footage suggested, every corner had something doing, every surface carried its own purpose, no space was wasted.

The air in the room smelled like dinner had just been taken, like the warmth of a home that was actually lived in. My penthouse had never once produced that smell in my years of occupying it. Not even when Ivanna visits.

To her, she’s too posh and classy to cook. We can always do take outs.

Aria led me to the sitting room and offered me tea, but I politely declined. This wasn’t that kind of visit of yet.

We sat; her on the couch, me in the chair across from it, the distance was simultaneously appropriate and entirely insufficient for the conversation that had been building in me since the first day I set my eyes on her on my company’s corridor.

But, can I say this now?

Won’t I look like a boss trying to take advantage of his employee.

I was still in between the ‘should I or should I not’ when Aria spoke again. She has obviously been watching me.

“I’m saying this again, sir, for clearance purpose,” she said. “What Ivanna said today was unpleasant, but I’ve moved past it already. I’m in Beaumont Group to work and I will do just that, diligently, and without distraction. I wasn’t waiting at home for you to come and fix it.”

“I know you weren’t,” I said. “And I didn’t come her thinking like that either.” I looked at her intently.

Honestly, I’ve already ran out of patience for the alternative.

“The second reason I’m her tonight was because I’ve been finding the means to get to be with you privately. There’s something I’ll like to talk to you about, beyond the corporate boss to employee setting.”

I looked at her to see if I’ll see any form of discomfort on her face or countenance, but I saw none, and I took that as a ‘go ahead.’

“Aria. Since the day I set my eyes on you. I’ve been drawn to you. Your hardwork and resilience are one of a kind. I...

“You’re engaged,” she cut in.

I looked at her.

I love women that are fast-paced.

Wait! What? Engaged? I hope she doesn’t mean to Ivanna.

I kow she will probably say that. But, Ivanna is more like engaged to Arthur than me, because he was the one that made me be with that girl.

Ivanna has never being my choice. Not once.

“I know,” I said quietly. “I’m not asking you to ignore it. But I’ll want you to consider my proposal. I’m not doing this to threaten your job or take it as a course of appreciation. Coming here tonight wasn’t about what Ivanna said totally. It’s because I couldn’t hold back from expressing myself to you.” I looked at her again. “Even if you said. No.”

Aria was silent all these while.

The kind of silence that had weight to it, not empty, not uncomfortable, but still full of every words not spoken, words that existed in the space between what had just been said and whatever came next.

She looked at me for a moment.

“Xavier,” she said, and my name in her voice, without the prefix, for the first time, felt like its own kind of answer.

Then she stopped.

I moved closer to her, closing the distance between the chair and the couch in a way that neither of us had made a conscious decision about.

She didn’t move away.

The space between us was less than three inches of charged, quiet air between two people.

Her eyes dropped briefly to my mouth.

I moved closer.

“Mom?”

Bryan’s voice came from down the corridor, sleepy and slightly confused, the pitch of a child who had woken in the night and needed to confirm the coordinates of his world before he could go back to sleep.

Aria pulled back.

The small and immediate withdrawal of a mother whose attention had been completely redirected by a single syllable, the reflex of a mother for whom her child’s voice overrode everything else without requiring a decision.

“Coming baby,” she called, her voice shifting so seamlessly it would have been unnoticeable to anyone who hadn’t been watching her face in the last three seconds before it happened.

She stood up and I sat back on the chair I sat earlier.

She looked at me briefly, a complicated look moved briefly through her expression, like the look of someone returning from somewhere they hadn’t fully decided to be, then she went down the corridor.

I sat in her sitting room and listened to her voice through the wall, low and unhurried, as she pat Bryan back into sleep with the patience of mother who had done this a thousand times.

After a few minutes, his voice stopped. Hers continued for another moment, then went quiet too.

She came back to the doorway.

We looked at each other across the small sitting room.

“You should go,” she said quietly.

“Oh! Right,” I said.

I stood up, picked up my jacket from the chair arm, the one I dropped in the middle of the moment, and moved toward the front door.

She followed and opened the door and I stepped out.

“Xavier,” she said, as I stepped into the corridor.

I turned.

Her expression was free in a way I was beginning to understand she rarely allowed in the presence of other people. “Whatever this is,” she said carefully, “I need you to be sure about it before it goes any further. I can’t afford the version of this that ends badly.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I have a son who has just started to believe that good things don’t always come with a catch. I will not be the reason he learns otherwise.”

The words hits exactly as heavily as she intended it to.

“I’ll be sure,” I said.

But, am I really sure?

That question is what I’m asking myself.