The Billionaire's Heart (The Silver Cross Club Book 4) (18 page)

“What a charmer,” Carter said. “You’ll steal my wife away before I know it.”

“Elliott wouldn’t do that because he doesn’t want to have to deal with the baby,” Regan said, smiling at me as she filled the vase with water. “Don’t worry. He’s fast asleep, and I’ll take him upstairs to bed before we eat.”

“My relief can’t be expressed in words,” I said. I didn’t
object
to the baby—I simply didn’t want to hold it or interact with it—but Regan and Carter seemed amused by my ostensible revulsion, and I was happy to play along.

Regan went upstairs to deal with her spawn, and Carter handed me a beer and took dinner off the stove. “Regan’s mother’s recipe,” he said. “Pork adobo. I hope you’re hungry.”

“Always,” I said. Carter had developed a real knack for Filipino cuisine, and everything he cooked rivaled what I had eaten during the month I spent in the Philippines. Years ago, now, but the memories were still vivid enough to make my mouth water.

Carter transferred the adobo into a wide ceramic serving dish and took it into the dining room. I trailed after him, holding my beer bottle. I had been to dinner at Carter and Regan’s often enough to know that any offers to help would be refused. Carter didn’t like other people
doing things
in or around his kitchen. Even Regan’s assistance was barely tolerated.

The doorbell rang, and I raised my eyebrows at Carter and took another sip of beer. “Special delivery?”

“Regan will get it,” he said.

I heard Regan’s footsteps coming down the stairs, and the door opening, and then a woman’s voice, bright, cheerful, berating Regan in a casual, friendly way.

I knew that voice.

They came down the hallway, and I stood there, mute, clutching my beer bottle.

“So then he told me I should smile more, and I was like, what business of that is yours?” Sadie said, coming into the room carrying her coat and a bottle of wine. Regan came in with her, laughing, but Sadie had my full attention. Sadie was all I could see.

She wore her favorite red lipstick, and her braids hung loose, framing her face. She was dressed in jeans and a simple gray knit shirt that draped around her body, and she was beautiful. She was smiling at Regan, and then she turned her head and saw me, and the smile dropped off her face like she had just seen a ghost.

“Surprise,” Regan said, looking a little guilty. “I thought it would be nice for all of us to have dinner together.”

What could I say? I took another sip of beer.

Carter looked back and forth between Sadie and me, smirking, obviously adding two and two and coming up with four.

I hated everyone I knew.

“Sadie, good to see you,” I said, to stave off anything awkward and irrevocable that Carter might be tempted to say.

“I didn’t know you were coming for dinner tonight,” she said, narrow-eyed. As if I had somehow arranged all of this to humiliate her.

I wasn’t that conniving. Our friends were assholes. “Likewise,” I said. “But the more the merrier.”

Sadie scowled at me, so adorably suspicious that I longed to take her in my arms and kiss her until her frown melted away.

Carter clapped his hands together. “So, let’s eat!”

Dinner got off to a slow start, with both Sadie and me picking at our food and making stilted, uncertain conversation, but Sadie was irrepressible, and after she finished her first glass of wine she seemed to make a conscious decision not to let me ruin her evening, and started regaling Regan and Carter with a story about her deranged landlord.

I ate in silence and watched her: her broad smile, the quick, darting movements of her hands. Somehow, this charismatic, bright-eyed creature was the same woman who had cried in my arms the night before. It was hard to reconcile the two. But that was Sadie in a nutshell: complex, changeable.

Not that we had talked about the crying. I had told her to take the day off, but instead of listening to me, she showed up at the office mid-morning, determinedly cheerful, acting like nothing had happened. And I was too cowardly or stupid to press the issue.

Maybe she didn’t remember it. We’d had quite a bit of wine, after all.

Maybe she hoped
I
didn’t remember it.

Sadie wrapped up her story about her landlord, and launched into an anecdote about her father’s ongoing battle against the barking dogs in his neighborhood. “So he went over there, past midnight, wearing nothing but his bathrobe and flip-flops, and he started banging on her door. She came downstairs, peeked through the curtains and saw him, and got real scared, and so she opened the door just a crack and
maced him
—”

“No!” Regan exclaimed, hand to her chest, laughing.

“—except it wasn’t even mace, she had grabbed a can of compressed air, like, the stuff you use to clean your laptop—”

“On
purpose
?” Carter asked.

“No, she definitely wanted to mace him, but it was like, three in the morning, and I guess she wasn’t awake enough to grab the right can,” Sadie said. “So anyway, then my dad called the cops and tried to have her arrested. I think she’s probably going to move soon.”

“Your dad is so awesome,” Regan said.

“Yeah, tell that to my mom,” Sadie said. “She says she’ll divorce him if he keeps terrorizing the neighbors.”

“Your mom is also awesome,” Regan said. “I still need to write her a thank-you note for coming over here the other day when Caleb was sick.”

“Okay, enough about parents and sick babies, and absolutely enough about barking dogs,” Carter said. “Just thinking about it is making me tense. Elliott, how is business going?”

“Well,” I said, and stopped. I had spent all day doing my best to avoid thinking about what had happened, but Carter’s words brought it rushing back, like water through a burst dam. But he had asked, and Sadie would have to know eventually. “You remember those investors I told you about—”

“From Boston,” Carter said.

I nodded. “They backed out.” I couldn’t go on. The shame and disappointment were still too fresh.

Sadie’s fork clattered to her plate. A look of horror spread across her face. “When did this happen?”

“This morning,” I said. I’d gotten the email shortly after Sadie arrived at the office. She was busily ignoring me, and I got up from my desk and put on my coat and went out into the bitter wind blowing north along the avenue. I walked all the way to Central Park, my mind an empty shock of white heat, and stood overlooking the Pond, where a few ducks desultorily paddled around. All of my dreams crumbled around me.

Silence. I looked around the table at Sadie’s expression of shock and dismay, Regan’s sweet concern, Carter’s angry frown. Sadie opened and closed her mouth a few times, and then said, “Did they say why?”

“Not in any meaningful terms,” I said. “It was very polite. Not the right time, taking their investments in a different direction, best wishes to me in the future. I have no idea what happened.”

“Corporate bullshit,” Carter said. “Elliott, I’m sorry.”

“It’s only a minor setback,” I said, lying through my teeth. It was the end. If I didn’t find an investor at the conference, I would be out of money. I would have to give up.

Regan turned to me and set one hand on my forearm. “Please let us give you some money. I need a venture capital project of my very own so that I can—Carter, why do I want to do it?”

“So you can diversify your portfolio,” he said, smiling at her.

“That’s right,” she said. “Elliott, just say the word—”

“No,” I said. “But thank you. We have the conference this weekend, and I have no doubt we’ll be able to raise the capital we need.” Another lie. Carter and Regan cared about me and wanted to help me, but my stupid pride wouldn’t let me accept their aid.

Silence again. Regan and Carter had an intense, wordless conversation with their eyes. Sadie watched me with her fist pressed to her mouth. I couldn’t read her expression. Disappointment, no doubt. Disappointment in me.

“I think we need dessert,” Regan said, “and some more wine.”

She got up and went into the dining room, and Carter leaned toward me and said, “Regan spoke for both of us. If you ever need help, just ask. I mean it, Elliott. I know you’re a stubborn bastard, but there’s more to life than keeping up appearances.”

Sadie muttered something that sounded like
Fat chance.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said. “Thank you.” I sounded stiff and formal even to myself. It was a wonder Carter put up with me. But then, I had known him for most of his life, and I had dirt on him that he didn’t want getting out.

Behind me, the baby monitor emitted a thin, high-pitched wail.

Carter chuckled and stood up. “Duty calls.”

Then we were alone, Sadie and me, and she said, “Elliott, I’m so sorry.”

I looked away. “Don’t be. You should be upset with me, if anything.”

“That’s stupid,” she said. She sipped her wine and looked at me over the rim of her glass. “What are we going to do?”

Her
we
reassured me more than it should have. In a way, I would have felt better if she abandoned me. Less guilty. “There’s still the conference.”

“Right,” she said, and drew in a breath. “Okay. We should start—do you have a list of potential donors?”

The low-level headache I’d had all day throbbed behind my eyeballs. “Let’s just have a nice dinner and not worry about it now, Sadie.”

My voice came out sharper than I intended, and she frowned at me. My fingernails bit into my palm. I realized I had curled my hand into a fist.

I was an ass. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You’ve had a hard day. We won’t talk about it. Let’s just drink more.”

As if on cue, Regan came back into the room, ice cream carton in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. “Who’s ready to party?”

“Not you,” Sadie said.

“Where’s Carter?” Regan asked.

“Upstairs,” I said. “The baby was crying.”

“Oh, he must be hungry,” Regan said. “Let me go see. I put bowls on the counter in the kitchen—so please help yourselves. We’re such bad hosts, aren’t we? Abandoning you to fuss over our baby.”

“Yeah, Elliott and I are really concerned about proper etiquette,” Sadie said, rolling her eyes. “Go take care of the baby. I’m happy to be abandoned because it means I get to eat all the ice cream.”

When Regan was gone, I stood and began clearing plates from the table. I needed a moment alone to clear my head, and doing the dishes was as good an excuse as any.

Alone in the kitchen, I set the stack of plates beside the sink and planted my elbows on the counter, leaning down to rest my forehead against my palms. I was tired: tired of wanting things I couldn’t have, of trying and failing to win my father’s approval, of working my ass off all the time and having nothing to show for it at the end of the day.

Behind me, the door opened.

I didn’t look up. I knew it was Sadie, and I didn’t want to deal with her right now. Couldn’t. My whole heart yearned toward her, but I wasn’t stupid enough to get involved with a woman who was very obviously still mourning her fiancé.

A lie. I was exactly that stupid.

“Are you okay?” she asked softly.

“Just a headache,” I said.

She set her palm at the waistband of my pants, a small, warm touch through the fabric of my sweater. Every muscle in my body tensed at once with a combination of dread and desire. After another moment, I felt a pressure against my upper back, between my shoulder-blades. Her head, I realized. She was resting her face against my back.

“Sadie,” I said, in absolute agony.

“You’ll find an investor,” she said. “I know it.”

How could she possibly think about work when she was touching me like that? The last threads of my self-control frayed away into nothing, and I spun around and seized her and bent my head to claim her mouth with mine.

It was nothing like the gentle, comforting kiss we had shared the night before. Sadie was playing with fire, and I wanted her to know it in her bones. I wasn’t a patient man, and the feeling of her body pressed against mine would have made a saint break every one one of his vows. She tasted like red wine and the spices of Carter’s cooking. All of my concerns melted away. I thrust my tongue into her mouth, claiming her, and she made a soft noise in the back of her throat and wrapped her arms around my neck.

I had never imagined that she could be so sweet, so yielding. I slid one hand down her back to cup her ass and draw her closer to me. My cock was stiff inside my pants just from kissing her, just from having her so near.

She broke away, and I kissed her neck, her ear. “Elliott,” she said.

“Hmm?” I asked, not really listening.

“Elliott, stop,” she said. “We need to—Elliott!” She put her hands on my chest and pushed me away, not hard, but it broke through my lust-induced haze, and I released her.

Had I just—

“They’re coming downstairs,” she said.

Oh. Was that all? I reached down to adjust myself, and saw her gaze follow the motion of my hand. She bit her lip and glanced away, and I grinned, triumphant.