Taming The Wild CEO novel Chapter 34

C H A P T E R 3 2 : W A S T E D T I M E A N D A N E A R M I S S

J A V I E R S U M M E R S

After finishing his whiskey, Javier placed the empty crystal glass on the counter and walked towards the balcony. He spent a few hours sitting on the balcony, watching the lights of the houses below and the moving waves far ahead. It was around midnight when he finally got back inside. He prompted himself as he passed the bathroom door. He wondered if she had fallen asleep and furthermore, he wondered if she was okay. Walking through the joint bathroom, he slowly opened her door and went inside her room.

Everything looked exactly like how he had left it a few hours earlier. Carefully, without making any sound, he walked in further into the room. He found her on the bed, curling on its side with one hand beneath her cheek. She looked angelic but he knew she was tired. Today had been a long day with the flights then busy schedule until dinner. And it did not help that he had complicated things with urging her to admit her attraction towards him, he chastised himself and cursed inside. It must have been the worst marriage proposal ever in the history of the world.

She was stubborn as hell but so was he. He did not want to say those three words because those were not true. He did not want to lie. Love was just a word people used to name other things, to make it look prettier that it actually was. His brother Thornton had suffered from it and so had Javier before. Back in college, he had been convinced that he was in love with this girl, Aimee, but it was just a mirage. The second Aimee had met Piers, she jumped right into his bed, leaving Javier devastated and brokenhearted. He did not wish to experience that anymore.

He knelt by her bed and touched her cheek ever so lightly, scared that he might awake her. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed as he leaned forward and planted a kiss on her forehead.

Javier watched her sleep for another hour before his knees started to feel numb. He stood up and walked back towards the bathroom. Right before he closed the door, he threw another look at her then sighed.

With only no more than two hours sleep, he woke up before the alarm even rang and turned it off. Putting on the bathrobe, he walked to the bathroom and took a bath, thinking that it would make less noises than if he went with shower. In his mind, he could only think of Ella and how weary and vulnerable she had looked last night. Twenty minutes later, he went downstairs to the dining room. There were not many people there considering it was just five minutes past seven and most people went there for holiday and relax thus they usually started crowding the dining room at around eight or nine. As soon as he was done with his breakfast meal, he called a waiter and asked for a pen and a piece of paper. While enjoying a cup of black coffee, he wrote on the note application on his phone what he wished to say to her. He spent the next fifteen minutes deleting and rewriting the note, trying to find the correct words to say to her.

Once he was satisfied and had reread it for at least three times, he picked up the pen and began to write.

Miss Stanford, I am going to take a trip to my brother’s place. You look so tired, I did not wish to awake you. I am sure after what happened last night, I am the last person you would like to see in the morning. Enjoy the day. I will not be back until evening. J. S.

He called out the hotel staff and ordered some breakfast sets from the menu. Before the waiter left, he handed him the note. “Do send the breakfast yourself. At around nine thirty, as I suspect she would be up by then. And please make sure she gets this note.” With that, he handed a one hundred dollar bill to the hotel staff and left.

Since he had everything he needed with him, he went straight to the parking lot and soon was on his way to his brother’s place. Javier stared at the white sun dazzled road, his hands tightly on the wheel. The car surged forward, taking a corner at incredible speed. He was passing upwards through rough mountain countryside, the road steep and busy with traffic.

The countryside flattened. Cypress trees made a dark shade at the side of the road. Fields ran on either side. He had been driving for half an hour when the sky began to cloud over and rain began to fall, gently at first, and then in a heavy downpour that forced him to slow his car to a crawl, his wipers clicking to and fro rapidly to clear the rush of the rain from his view. He could see far ahead that the sky was black. Inky clouds hovered low over the horizon, although behind him he could still see the halcyon blue skies of the coast in the distance.

“Oh, great. A storm is coming,” he cursed under his breath.

He turned off the highway a short time later, running along narrow lanes through isolated hamlets until they began to descend a steep road. The storm increased in violence, and on these narrow country roads he had to drive with great care. The roads curved crazily, and the state of their surfaces left a good deal to be desired. The car jerked and bounced over ruts and rough surfaces, the sound of the storm outside growing louder and louder. Lightning tore down the black sky and a flash struck followed by the sonorous toll of the thunder.

Driving carefully, he managed to get to Piers’s place about an hour later.

Unclipping his seatbelt, he opened the car door and got out. Rain ran down his face and soaked through his shirt, making it cling to his body so closely that every muscle was outlined. Ignoring the cold and the downpour, he ran towards the gate and hit the doorbell. There was no answer and he hit it twice then waited. Again, there was no answer. He kept repeating the action again and again and yet the result remained the same. Finally he walked back into his car.

The second he had gotten inside, he turned the heater on and shrugged off his wet shirt. The last thing he wanted was to catch a cold —or worse, pneumonia. Javier fished out his cellphone and for the first time in five years, he dialed Piers’s number.

Just like the doorbell, it did not give him the result he wished for. Instead it informed him that the phone number he dialed was incorrect. His brother clearly had changed his phone number without informing him, which he honestly could not blame given their relationship or how strain it was. Not sure what was left to do, he decided to wait it out. Perhaps soon after the rain ceased, his brother would go outside. If he remembered correctly, Piers loved the nature so much that he wanted to capture its beauty and a long time ago, his brother used to go outside after the rain to see the dark clouds getting swept away and the sun coming out.

While waiting, he decided to ring Declan, his younger brother who had to marry their grandfather’s bestfriend’s granddaughter to fulfill a promise made fifty years ago. It was ridiculous yet his brother had gone through with it regardless and somehow he found happiness and love in his marriage.

Declan answered at the first tone. “Jav?”

“Hi, Dex. How are you?”

“I am good, man. I am good. How are you? How are things over there?”

Javier never really realized how much he missed hearing his little brother’s voice until now. “I am good too. We all are okay. You missed Clara’s birthday, by the way. You are lucky if she lets you live.”

“Oh, damn. Please tell her I am so sorry. I should probably call her after this but I figure she would yell at me and right now I am accompanying my wife to meet her grumpy family so less of Clara yelling at my ear would be good.”

“Don’t worry. I will tell her though you should at least text her. She loves you so eventually you will be forgiven.”

“Highlight underlined and bold that ‘eventually’, man. This is Clarabelle we are talking about.”

Javier could not help but laugh. His younger sister Clarabelle was a little spoilt but everyone loved her. Although he worried if there would be a man who could tame her. (*)

“So, why do you call?” asked Declan curiously, clearly knew better from his brother’s tone that there was something bothering him.

“Why? I can not call you just because I want to? Just because I miss you?” teased Javier, a brotherly smile was forming on his lips.

“Of course you can!” Declan chuckled. “But I have a feeling that there is something more. Come on now, tell me what’s bothering you. What brothers are for!”

Javier looked up at the sky through the glass and watched the sky started to clear out as the rain was more of a drizzle now than a downpour. “I am in front of Piers’s house now.”

“What?!” There was a pause before Declan’s voice came again through the speaker phone. “Are you being the bigger man by coming there and trying to have a talk with him?”