Billionaire For Ransom - Layla Valentine Page 0,3

of the thoughts in my head and guaranteed that I didn’t have enough space to create more of them.

The rose garden was going to be even better for that, and as I pulled into the parking lot and parked, I let the tension start to drain out of my body. My shoulders came down a bit, my neck relaxed, and the muscles that had been so clenched in my stomach that it had felt like I might actually throw up began to unclench.

I even started to let myself smile.

Ahead of me, the rose garden was in full bloom, in riots of pinks, oranges, reds, yellows, purples, and whites, and the foliage stood out in every color of green imaginable. It was truly a feast for the eyes, and I turned the car off and let my eyes go hazy on the splashes of color, allowing them to soothe my soul and remind me that there was beauty in the world beyond the walls of my office.

Nature did that. It had always been the place I could come to let my brain stop thinking. Stop trying to locate problems and solve them, break things down into mathematical equations that I could use for other things. Stop trying to rule the world. In nature, I’d always found that you didn’t get to compete. You just had to live.

With that thought, I finished my coffee—which I’d downed at a dangerous speed, considering how hot it was—got out of my car, and started walking.

This was my happy place. The place I could always count on to bring me peace. I’d brought my daughter here when she was a baby, when we first moved to San Jose, and walked the paths with her in her stroller for hours on end, just drinking in the sights and smells of the place. Of course, that had been at a time when she actually wanted to spend that much time with me. These days, as a ten-year-old, she was far too cool for her mother, and preferred to spend time with her friends, more embarrassed about me than anything else.

I smirked at the thought and bent over to smell a particularly beautiful apricot-colored rose that smelled, surprisingly, of lemons.

Then I strolled forward, letting my thoughts roll along, and started to center myself, focusing on the deep-breathing exercises one of my friends had taught me and thinking about nothing more than putting one foot in front of the other. After a moment, I realized that I was already feeling more relaxed than I had in weeks. Months. Maybe a year.

It had been too long since I’d actually felt the tension in my shoulders melting away. Too long since I’d literally stopped to smell the roses. Too long since I’d taken any time for myself.

When, exactly, had my life become all about work? When had I stopped taking the time for anything else? When had I started finding myself thinking only about the office, and nothing more?

And was that really what I wanted from my life? Was this stress, this constant competition, this always-amped-up feeling… all there was?

God, one spat with the board and I’d become absolutely maudlin—without the benefit of even had any wine. Or a margarita. I gave myself a good mental slap at the path of my thoughts.

“Get yourself together, woman,” I breathed.

This was my life. This was the life I had clawed and hissed and fought for, and I was happy. I was. This was everything I’d ever wanted, and I would have been an absolute fool to let it go.

So I was feeling as if there was something missing. So what? Everyone felt like that; it was what made us successful. If I felt like I had everything I wanted, I would stop fighting to move forward, and then where would I be? That feeling of wanting was just my mind’s way of keeping me moving. That was all.

At least, that was all I’d ever let it be.

I needed to stay on top. I had to stay in power. Because I’d been in a position where I was depending on someone else before—when I’d been married, too young and too naïve to know any better—and I was never going back there again.

I was never going back to a situation where a man didn’t have to treat me right if he didn’t want to and could force me to beg for things like money for groceries. I was never going to put myself or my daughter