Page 60 of Do It With Me

CHAPTER 26

HOLDEN

Jet engines rumbled beneath my feet the next morning, the cabin quiet and the flight to Key West expected to be completely smooth. Jimmy had nearly blown a gasket when I’d told him I was heading to the beach in Florida for a day, but this was something that actually mattered.

Ellora’s mom, Sara, sat across from us, calm and smiling. One of the plane’s soft blankets was wrapped around her shoulders, a mug of tea cradled in her hands. She looked out the window like she was already searching for the beach.

Back when my financial advisor had first suggested I buy a plane, I’d thought he was nuts. Over the years that had followed, it had come in useful once or twice, but I’d never appreciated having it at my disposal quite as much as I did right now.

Dr. Feldman and Bree were off to the side, chatting about medical stuff—half of which sounded like alien code to me—but they seemed relaxed enough. That alone felt like a small miracle.

I hadn’t been sure what to expect from Sara on this flight, but after the way Dr. Feldman had looked at me when I’d first asked if taking her to the beach was possible, I hadn’t expected everyone and everything to feel so completely calm and normal.

Ellora was tucked against my side, her head resting on my shoulder. She was nervous, though. I could tell, even if she was trying to hide it. Her fingers kept twisting the hem of her sweater and every few minutes she glanced over at her mom, checking to make sure she was okay.

But it was also like I could feel the relief radiating from her. The gratitude. Maybe even a spark of joy she’d been too tired to feel lately.

As she snuggled into me, hell, I would admit it. I felt like a king. Not because it was my jet or because I’d pulled off a last-minute trip across the country, but because I got to do something for her—only because I could.

“I still can’t believe we’re sitting in a plane right now,” she said as if she’d read my mind, tilting her head up at me. “It’s incredible, Holden. Really. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You don’t have to.” I grinned. “It’s not like I’m flying you to the moon.”

“You might as well be,” she murmured. “She hasn’t smiled like this in months.”

I looked over at her mom again. She was laughing at something Bree had said and her whole face was lit up, alive and happy.

Although she’d been relaxed all morning, there had also been a haze in her eyes and a certain slackness to her features, but right now, I could see flashes of the woman Ellora must’ve known before the illness. The woman who had raised her, loved her, and helped her start her business. It didn’t seem like she was quite lucid, even now, but she seemed like less of a shell, a ghost of person, than she had yesterday.

“That smile’s worth the trip,” I said, genuinely meaning it. “Maybe I should fly her to the moon next. I have a buddy who might be able to help us take her to space, if that’s something she might be interested in.”

“Good luck getting that past Dr. Feldman,” she said dryly.

I laughed. “Fair enough. Although he might want to come along for the trip. I’d let him if it meant getting to see your mom smile like this again.”

It was strange how much that woman’s happiness meant to me. I didn’t know her from a bar of soap, but she looked so much like Ellora, sounded so much like her, that my affection for her had grown in leaps and bounds.

In another life, this woman might’ve interrogated me over dinner before she gave me her blessing to date her daughter. She might’ve loved me or hated me, gone wedding dress shopping with Ellora if we ever ended up there, or she might’ve been the one offering her advice now, helping her get Second Story Sundays off the ground.

There was a whole world in which she might’ve been part of my life in an entirely different way, and regardless of the fact that I didn’t know her, I found myself grieving the loss of that possibility.

Meanwhile, Ellora looked at me like she was trying to memorize this moment. “You really didn’t have to do this, you know. I would never have asked or expected it from you.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s part of why I want to do it.”

That much, at least, was also true. Shannon, and every woman I’d been with since, had expected me to serve them the stars on a sparkling silver platter simply because they’d thought it might be pretty.

When I’d married, I’d been young and dumb, and Shannon had been this leggy blonde with a propensity for whispering dirty things in my ear in public. I’d met her shortly before I’d officially become a billionaire, and although a lot of those flirty things she’d whispered had been about what she wanted to do to me, I was pretty sure she’d rather have done them to my bank account.

Ellora didn’t give a shit about that. Unlike most people I met, men and women alike, she’d never really asked me for anything at all. Not favors with her business, money, social clout, or anything else.

She exhaled and leaned her head back against my shoulder again, quiet but smiling. Outside the window, the gray clouds eventually gave way to blinding turquoise water and sunlight.

The flight touched down just after noon, and by the time we taxied to the private hangar, the Florida sun was blazing and a black SUV limo waited on the tarmac. It was ostentatious and probably seemed silly, but it had felt like the right vehicle to rent at the time.

“Of course, you got the biggest car possible,” Ellora said as I helped her inside.

I grinned. “How else would we get to the beach?”