The Billionaire’s Breakup Bonus Scene

Holland

The yacht glides smoothly through the ocean, the water stretching on forever. The moon spills across the gentle waves, and the scene is so beautiful, it looks like a painting.

I lean against the railing and inhale the wind that stirs my crimson dress around my legs. Instrumental blues music drifts toward me.

Nights like these make me feel so alive. Not because of the beauty I see but because of the man I hear approaching behind me.

His hands slide around my body, and he pulls me back against him.

“I was looking for you,” he says as his lips nuzzle my neck.

I smile, thrilled to hear his voice, my body reacting to his the same way it has over the past five years together. He makes my heart beat faster and my body aches with need.

“I wanted to get some air,” I say.

“It was one phone call,” he answers apologetically.

An attendant approaches with two glasses of champagne in crystal flutes. Theo takes one, then hands me the other. I don’t take a sip.

Once we’re alone again, I say, “I’m not upset. You have a company to run.”

I glance at him. How can it be with each passing year, my fallen god gets handsomer?

Tonight, for our date, he’s wearing black pants and a white dress shirt.  His muscled forearms are on display beneath the rolled-up sleeves, and he has a watch worth over twenty million on his wrist. I only know this because it was a gift from his grandmother and I was with her when she shopped for it.

The air stirs his dark hair and he’s more relaxed than his usual all-business self. He looks more like what I refer to as private Theo rather than the CEO of a company worth billions.

Private Theo makes my body sing. He looks at me like I’m worth more than every cent in the bank. Like I’m more important than the company.

“You like what you see?” His voice is silky. An invitation.

“Don’t I always?”

He smiles. Sexy and tempting. “Careful, my gorgeous wife, or you won’t make it back home untouched.”

I toy with one of his shirt buttons. “That’s my goal.”

Theo’s smile turns knowing before he claims my lips, tasting them like he can’t ever get enough.

All these years later, he still kisses me like it’s the first time. Like he’s never gotten over the thrill of our first kiss. Our first night together.

He brushes his lips across mine then groans. “I taste the champagne when what I really want a taste of is you.”

“I know. I feel the same.” I look up at him. “Have I told you lately how you’ve made me so happy?”

“You always do,” he says quietly.

 There was a time in my life when I didn’t know I could experience anything other than survival.

Happiness felt like it was something for other people. I thought I’d always live in the pouring rain of that night. I thought my lot in life was to always have to handle my scheming, conman father and greedy brother.

But then fate crossed my path with Theo’s, and everything changed. Not because he was incredibly wealthy, and still is, but because he became my shelter. My warrior when battles arose.

I don’t know how he did it, but my father and brother no longer try to manipulate me. They don’t ask for anything.

Because of Theo, the burden and the chaos are gone.

He cups my face. “What are you thinking about?”

“You,” I say.

“With or without clothes?”

I laugh. “You have a one-track mind.”

“Staying focused yields results.”

I shake my head. “Last night I was thinking how thankful I am that our son will never know the kind of father I had. He’s growing up with an amazing father.”

“I made mistakes,” Theo says.

“Forgetting the diaper bag or giving in when he pitched a fit weren’t deliberate mistakes. You were sleep deprived.”

Theo winces. “I realized how sleep deprived I was after putting diaper cream on my toothbrush. And let’s not forget the day I went to the office wearing two different shoes.”

I laugh. “But look at you now. He’s four and you’re a pro. He adores you and tries to copy everything you do.”

“I know. Yesterday, he told the nanny to bring him coffee hot and black. None of that lukewarm juice stuff. He said he had a business to run.” He shakes his head. “He’s full of mischief, but he’s a good kid.”

“Only because he has you to guide him,” I say.

Theo gives me a look. The one that says he’s trying. His father was never a role model. Instead, he was awful to his sons.

There are days when it makes my heart squeeze with pain thinking that Theo once believed he was a mistake. He believed he wasn’t worth loving because that’s what his father had taught him.

Even after we married, Theo still held onto those beliefs.  

It wasn’t until our son was born that those beliefs began to unravel. Because as Theo held our newborn, everything in him shifted. He instantly loved our boy. He was instantly protective. And he realized all the things his father had said and done weren’t about him. They were because of his father’s twisted flaws.

After our son’s birth, I watched my handsome husband lay down emotional burdens he’d carried for too long.

He runs one hand through my hair. I had it pulled up, but the wind and sea made short work of that.

“What are you thinking?” I ask him.

“I was thinking that my fortune and being the CEO of the company were once the two most important things in the world to me. All that mattered was success.”

I wrap an arm around his waist without speaking. I know all that because that was his attitude when I first met him.

“I surrounded myself with expensive things. And I learned that there isn’t enough money in the world to fill a void that only love can fill. I learned that having you love me is what makes me rich.”

I blink away tears.

“I had a beautiful penthouse. Vacation houses. But I learned what makes a true home after you entered my life.”

I put my hands on either side of his face. “I love you as wide and unending as the universe.”

“I know. And I’m thankful every day for that.”

I rise on my toes to press a kiss to his lips.

His arms tighten around me, holding me steady the way he always does.

Here I am standing on a yacht, wearing an expensive dress and decked out in priceless jewels. I never could have imagined a life like this.

But what gets me, what makes my knees go weak, what captives me, is knowing how deeply I’m loved. It’s knowing what this man would do if I was ever in danger like before.

He would shake the world from its axis to rescue me. And he’d tear it apart to avenge me.

“Look up,” he says softly.

A second later, fireworks light up the night.

“How amazing,” I whisper.

“Not as amazing as you are,” he says.

I poke his abdomen with my finger. “You’re just hoping to get lucky.”

“I’m already lucky,” he says. “I have you.”

“So then you weren’t hoping?”

He grins, and I laugh, then I take his hands in mine. “Before we go below, there’s something I need to tell you.”

His grin fades. “Is everything okay?”

“You’re going to have another chance to put diaper cream on your toothbrush.”

It takes him a second to get it, then he laughs and sweeps me up into his arms.

“What a beautiful life I have,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. “What a beautiful, beautiful life.”

Then he kisses me.

“We’re going to be parents again,” I say tearfully.

“Let’s tell my family,” he says.

“Tomorrow,” I say. Because right now, the rest of the night belongs to the two of us.