She looked at him. “You aren’t?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because that wouldn’t be accurate.”
She stared at him. Her heart was waiting.
“I’m going to introduce you as my girlfriend,” he said. Then he looked at her. “If that’s alright with you.”
Joy smiled a smile that made her entire being come to life. She threw her arms around him in unbridled joy and he held her tightly. Tears were in her eyes when they stopped embracing. Even Max was touched.
“Well?” William said as he removed his handkerchief from his suit coat pocket and handed it to her. “Is it okay for me to tell them you’re my girlfriend?”
She smiled and nodded. “Yes sir.”
He smiled too. He was certain she didn’t realize she had called him sir. “When we get to Indiana tomorrow,” he said, “what will you call me in front of Gramps and your friends?”
“Exactly what you are,” Joy said without hesitation. “My sugar daddy.”
William looked alarmed. Then Joy burst into such a hearty laughter that Max burst into laughter too.
Even Wiiliam, once he realized it was a Joy joke, couldn’t keep a straight face. “Very funny,” he said, and pulled her into his arms again.
She looked up at him. “He’s my man,” she said. “That’s what I’ll tell them. How’s that?”
“Much better,” he said, and they looked at each other and laughed.
But their looks changed to a seriousness that reminded them of the weight of their declarations. But their feelings were their feelings and they couldn’t see a way around them.
William kissed her, long and hard. Then he held her, refused to let her go, all the way home.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
After William prepared them a light salad for lunch, they retired on the balcony off from his bedroom and watched his groundskeepers work busily around his vast estate. And the security guards all over the place, all of them armed with long rifles, reminded Joy of just what manner of man she was latching her wagon to. And for the most part it felt wonderful. She believed William to be a good, kind, decent man. A man that treated her better than she’d ever been treated before. And she believed, over time, that he could very well become the best man she’d ever known. Right up there with Gramps. But it felt daunting, too, because he was no ordinary man. He was a billionaire, according to Google, when she’d only known men with barely two pennies to rub together. But being with William it felt daunting, also, because of what happened earlier.
She stood against the rail looking out across the property. Wiliam was in a chair, his legs crossed as he sipped wine and looked at her. He was still stunned that he had claimed her as his own, ashisgirlfriend, when no one else had ever carried that title. His wife didn’t even carry it. She got pregnant. They got married. No love story there.
But Joy filled his heart with nothing but love and gladness and a kind of giddy hopefulness he’d never felt before. And even when he kept going back to her age, which he kept going back to often, he recalled what Bobby said to him. Because it was true. It didn’t matter about an age. He didn’t need a woman of a particular age to make him feel complete. He needed Joy.
“How many acres?” she asked him.
William had to think about that. “A couple hundred acres if I’m recalling correctly.”
Joy inwardly smiled. Leave to William to not even recall how many acres of land he owned!
But she had another, far more pressing question, on her mind. “Is this where you lived when you were married?” She asked this question softly, as if it was mere small-talk, and then she turned around to look at him. To see his reaction.
William knew what she was really asking:Was this house once another woman’s home? That was the question. But he wondered if it would matter to an unpretentious person like Joy.
“No,” he was pleased to say. “I lived in Westchester County, in New York, during my marriage. She got the house in the divorce, but I remained in the area for my daughter’s sake. I purchased this home afterwards. After Kaitlyn,” he said to clarify.
But Joy was the only person he felt comfortable saying her name around. Because he knew she wouldn’t ask stupid questions, or try to heal him in a way that fit her needs and desires as so many other women had tried. Joy knew when to say when.
Joy didn’t force a conversation about Kaitlyn, or even his decision to leave the city where she died. She knew what it felt like to want to make a new life for yourself. Or to at least try to rebuild something out of the ashes. She decided, after he told her about Katie, that she would never be the one to bring her up. At least not until he was able to talk about her freely and happily, which he wasn’t ready yet. That was why she turned back around and stared out at the landscape again. She moved on. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
What’s beautiful is what I’m looking at right now, William wanted to say. But he didn’t go there. It was all too new. It was all too soon. And time would tell if it would last. Aftertheir declarations of affection one toward the other, he’d already decided to slow it down. For both their sakes. “How are you feeling?” he asked instead.
