At the Billionaire’s Wedding (44 page)

Cali kissed her sister’s cheek. “Night. And thanks for the comfort, little sis. You’re the best.” She closed the door, climbed under the sheets, and cried. Tomorrow she would put her head back on straight. No malingering misery. No dramatic ups and downs while he strung her along. No endless weeping. A clean break now and in no time she’d be fine.

But just for tonight, she let herself cry.

Philadelphia

The next morning at the staff meeting, Dick spoke to everyone professionally, exactly as he always did in a group. Afterward in his office, Cali confirmed with him that since the bookmobile’s funding had been secured again, she would be taking out the van as usual.

He tapped his pen on the desk.

“Since it’s gotten such high-profile press lately,” he said, “Cara is considering assigning it to someone with more experience. Miller, possibly. Or Brown.”

“I’ve been here six years, Dick. I have experience. Cara knows that.”

“Deborah Miller has a master’s degree. She’s a librarian.”

But Cali knew that Dick was finally making her pay.

“Did you recommend this to Cara?”

“She thinks your skills are better suited to the main branch.” He folded his hands around the pen. “But, listen. I’ll do what I can to help you keep the bookmobile, Cali. If you’ll do your best for me.”

She walked to Security to retrieve the van’s keys with a sick stomach.

Everyone on her Monday stops seemed really glad to see her. Some mentioned the press coverage and the Prescott family’s fight. But mostly they just checked out books and chatted cheerfully, and she felt a little better and tried to settle back into the rhythm of her job without thinking about what Piers had said to her while they were making love. He called and left another voice mail message that she deleted without listening to it.

That night as she was washing dinner dishes, the doorbell buzzed. She wiped her hands on a towel and went to look through the peephole. Her heart did a 360. She opened the door.

“How did you get into the building?”

“One of your neighbors let me in,” Piers said without smiling. “And it’s nice to see you too.”

Seeing him here, in the dingy hallway of her apartment building, still looking like he’d just stepped out of a magazine, was unreal.

“What are you doing here?”

“Why are you the only person in the country—and abroad, I’ll add—who doesn’t answer her phone?”

“I do answer my phone.”

“Right. Just not when I call.”

He understood. And he was angry. But if she closed the door on him now, if she ran away without explaining, she’d be just like her father.

“I got your note.” She wouldn’t tell him when. It didn’t matter anyway. “Thank you for not leaving me wondering where you’d disappeared to.”

“Once again offering you a consideration you didn’t think to offer me in return.”

“Piers.” She had to do this now. “I told you it was just a kind of one-night stand. I made that clear.”

“You did.” His jaw looked like rock. “And you were wrong.”

“I wasn’t wrong. Don’t you see? It’s not going to work. This, between us, it’s just not …
there
.”

“It’s not there?” He shook his head. “You, California Blake, are a flat-out liar. I know you want me.”

“Even if I did in England, there’s no way anything will ever come of it here.” She tried to lighten her words with a shrug. “Why can’t we just leave it as a great fling and go our own merry ways now?”

He didn’t laugh. “Didn’t you hear me the other night?”

She couldn’t pretend to not know what he was talking about.

“We were having sex. Men say a lot of things they don’t mean in those circumstances.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“I’m falling in love with you, California. No. Correction: It’s a done deal. We’re not having sex right now—unfortunately. So how are you going to explain it away this time?”

“I don’t know.” Panic was creeping up her throat. “Lust? Infatuation, maybe?”

“Right. Okay. How long do we need to see each other before you’ll believe it’s not just lust or infatuation?”

“What?”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. Six months, maybe.”

“Six months? Are you certain?”

“I don’t know! Piers, come on. Be reasonable. This just isn’t going to work. Why can’t you accept that?”

“What in the hell are you afraid of?”

That she was already in love with him. But the sooner she ended this, the sooner she’d get over the heartbreak. Because whether he believed it now or not, it was going to end. And it wouldn’t end prettily. It would start with her spending every dime she could spare on clothes and makeup so she wouldn’t feel like she was embarrassing him when they went out. She’d struggle to keep up with his glittering lifestyle and she’d get resentful, and he’d get frustrated that she couldn’t afford ski chalet wear or a new sexy dress for every gala. When his lust started to cool, he’d realize that slumming wasn’t so much fun after all. He’d pull away, slowly and gently because he wasn’t a jerk, bit by bit becoming less available. And she’d turn into the pathetic woman her mother had been, begging him to care about her, making scenes while he drifted farther back into his world of wealth and privilege.

She respected herself too much to do that. And she couldn’t afford to descend into emotional ruin. Zoe needed her to be strong and capable.

“What’s going through that brain?” he said. “I know you’re trying to come up with an argument I can’t refute.”

She gripped the door and started to pull it closed. “I’d like you to go now.”

“What if I don’t?”

“I’ll call the police. There’ve got to be one or two officers in this city who aren’t on the Prescott family payroll.”

“Nice. Really nice. Listen, tell yourself whatever you have to. I can’t stop you from doing it. But I know you’re too smart to actually believe it.”

“I’m too smart to be as stupid as you expect me to be.”

“Right.” His hands flexed at his sides and she thought he was about to touch her, but he fisted them. “Okay. Bye, California.” He turned away and went toward the elevator.

Hot, sticky panic swept through her.

“Piers.”

He looked around. “Yeah?” His voice was tight.

“Will you stop funding the bookmobile now?”

“No,” he said tonelessly. “I won’t. But that you thought for even a moment that I might, I guess proves you right. At least on your part, there clearly isn’t anything here.” Without waiting for her response, he bypassed the elevator, pushed open the door to the stairs, and disappeared.

Numb, Cali went into the living room.

“Holy crap,” Zoe said from the hallway, her eyes wide. “He’s even hotter in person than in pictures.”

Cali slumped onto the couch and covered her face with her hands. “Thanks. That really helps right now.”

“Did I just hear you break up with him?”

“In order to break up with someone, you first have to be together with him.”

“It sure sounded like he thinks you’re together. Or were,” Zoe amended.

“Did you listen to the entire conversation?”

“Like the part where he said, ‘What in the hell are you afraid of?’ Yes, I might have heard that.”

Cali sucked back tears. Oh, God, it was happening. Crying again. Pain overtaking the numbness. The urge to run after him and beg him to want her, not just now but forever.

“Cali?”

“What?”

“What in the hell
are
you afraid of?”

She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. “Becoming Mom.”

“But you’re not Mom. You’re strong and independent and much smarter than she was. And here’s an idea: maybe Piers Prescott isn’t Dad.”

“I can’t know that for sure.” He’d said that she could never know for certain if he was playing her.

After a silence, Zoe said, “I’m going back to school. Online. Mrs. Fletcher’s goddaughter gave her a computer and Wi-Fi for her birthday. She never uses it and says she wants me to. I’m starting the fall semester next week.”

Cali sat straight up. “For counseling?”

Zoe nodded. “My PT says I have eighty-five percent mobility in my hands now, and I’m strong everywhere else too. Really strong.”

“I know. But I didn’t know if you knew.”

“I’m so ready to get back to work. You’re my inspiration.” She cracked a grin. “If you can throw yourself into a tumultuous affair with a corporate shark for a week, I can reclaim my life.”

“You’re going to make a great high-school counselor, Zoe.”

“Who better to give advice to screw-ups than somebody who’s got plenty of screw-ups in her family? My sister excepted, of course.”

Not excepted.
“I screwed up this time.” Hugely. She just didn’t know if she’d screwed up worse nine days ago in England, when she’d decided to have a fling with Piers, or a few minutes ago in the hallway.

“Cali, while you were gone, I visited Dad.”

No words. Disbelief.

“A few weeks ago he wrote and asked me to do a program with him for schools and community groups about addiction,” Zoe said. “It’s a special prison outreach project. I met with the organizers when I was there. They say that given how articulate he is, and how successful he once was, he’s the ideal spokesperson—that he and I would be perfect together. And you know him. He thrives on attention, so he’s excited about it.”

“Zoe…”

“I want to do it, Cali.” She took her hand and squeezed it. “I need to do it.”

Cali looked into her sister’s brutally scarred face and understood. Neither of them were their parents. They’d been through the fire. And they were stronger.

Cali considered sending Piers a letter of apology about how she’d asked if he would cancel funding for the bookmobile. But she didn’t. The cleaner the break, the better. If he thought badly of her, so be it.

The next morning she collected the van’s keys from Security and set off. She made all the usual Tuesday stops, and tried not to wonder who exactly were his closest friends, and at which places he bought coffee or the paper.

At the end of the day, in the employee room, Dick mentioned almost casually that he was considering recommending to Cara that they keep Cali on the bookmobile. Then he put his hand on her ass. She kicked him in the shin and ran. But she was through with running, from herself or anyone else, including her mother’s shadow.

Getting to work an hour before everybody else on Wednesday morning, she signed out a handheld video camera from the AV office and set it up in a locker in the employee lounge. After work, alone in the lounge, she swiftly turned on the camera then grabbed her purse, signed the bookmobile log, and tried to slip out quickly. Dick appeared at the door and blocked her exit. Then he jostled her against a locker and grabbed her breast. She pepper-sprayed him. Miraculously, it worked. He howled. Then he called her a nasty word and said he’d do her whether she wanted it or not.

She ran, vomited in a trashcan at the bus stop, and had to shower twice when she got home to get the feeling of him off her.

Early Thursday morning, she retrieved the camera from the locker and took it to the police station. She sat silently as a young woman officer and her older, male partner watched it. They handed her a box of Kleenex and a cup of coffee and took her statement.

By the end of the day, Dick had been arrested. And fired, Cara said the next morning when she called Cali into her office to apologize for not taking serious action against him before. Cara gave her a raise for protecting herself as well as the rest of the library’s female staff, and she recommended that Cali get to work on a master’s degree so she could move up to the position of librarian. Cali almost broke into hysterical laughter. She didn’t. No reason to make a scene when she’d gotten what she wanted: Dick was gone.

But Piers wasn’t.

When she pulled up to Green Park she nearly didn’t get out of the van. She had to, of course. The meeting with Cara had gotten her off to a late start, and the kids from the daycare were already waiting. But her limbs wouldn’t function.

Wearing the same hat, jeans, and half-laced work boots as usual, but without the chamois shirt over a T-shirt that now revealed his arms, Piers sat on his usual bench reading a paper. He didn’t look up or acknowledge in any way that she had arrived.

She climbed out of the driver’s seat on wobbly legs and went through the motions of chatting with the kids and their teachers and exchanging their books. They were extra excited to see her since she’d been gone the week before—in England making love to the multimillionaire sitting nearby, looking like a drug dealer. They gave her tight little hugs around her knees.

When Roy and Maggie appeared, Maggie gave her a cozy squeeze and Roy kissed the back of her hand. Masala showed up a few minutes later.

“Cali girl, did you meet Prince Charming and dance the night away on that trip like I told you to?”

She simply could not answer. She stared at Piers’s hands holding the newspaper and had no rational thoughts. She told them about Jane’s gown, the wedding ceremony, the cake, the band, and even the sumptuous breakfast on Sunday morning. She told them all about the party
after
Piers had flown away in his private jet. She couldn’t manage to tell them anything else while he was within earshot.