The Billionaire's Heart (The Silver Cross Club Book 4) (24 page)

And what could I say in response to his accusations? What reply could I make that wasn’t a pathetic excuse?

Everything he would say to me would be true.

TWENTY-TWO

Sadie

I woke up on Saturday feeling like a little kid on Christmas morning. The conference started today, and it would go
great
. It had to. We had worked so hard, and if we weren’t able to secure an investor, I knew it would break Elliott’s heart. It would break mine. We were doing good work. We
deserved
funding.

Too bad the universe didn’t give a shit about justice.

The conference was being held in the Javits Center, in Hell’s Kitchen. I took the subway into Manhattan and bought myself a shitty cup of coffee in the labyrinthine bowels of Penn Station, and then fought up to the street through the crowds of tourists and commuters. The weather was overcast and drizzling, and the sidewalk outside the station bristled with umbrellas. I should have taken a cab.

The crowds cleared out a few blocks west of Penn Station, though, and I quickly made my way to the convention center. It was still early, not even 8:00, and the conference wasn’t set to start until 9, but the broad plaza in front of the center was already swarming with people. I hadn’t realized until that moment how much of a big deal this conference really was. I knew that it was important, and that Elliott was taking it very seriously, but seeing the size of the center and the number of people bustling around really drove home the fact that this was happening, now, today, and all of our hopes were on the line.

I went inside and checked in at the registration desk. The woman I spoke with gave me a name tag, a cheap canvas totebag filled with all sorts of crap that I didn’t bother sorting through, and a map. Elliott would be in the vendor room, setting up. I located it on the map and headed that way.

Elliott had arranged for all of our promotional materials to be delivered to the center, but we still needed to get everything set up and organized. The vendor room was a massive, high-ceiling exhibition hall, cold as a mausoleum and buzzing with activity. Even half-full—the conference wasn’t all that large—it was still impressive. I wandered through the endless aisles of tables and posters and banners, feeling a little overwhelmed, until I finally spotted Elliott’s blond head above the crowd. Thank God he was so tall.

His face lit up as he saw me approaching, and my stomach flipped over in response to the honest, uncomplicated pleasure I saw there. He was so happy to see me, and I hadn’t even done anything. I was just walking toward him. I wasn’t even wearing a particularly nice dress.

“This is it,” he said, as I came within earshot. “The big day.”

I smiled at him, charmed by his enthusiasm. He was usually so stoic that it was nice to see him excited about something for a change. “It’ll go great,” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “I just have to survive giving this talk.”

He was speaking in a session that afternoon. “What time is it?” I asked.

“Oh no,” he said. “You don’t get to watch. You have to stay here and man the booth.”

“I think I can leave for fifteen minutes,” I said. “You just don’t want me to watch your talk.”

“I plead the Fifth,” he said, and then, very blatantly changing the subject, “Help me set up this banner.”

I rolled my eyes and helped him.

By 9:00, our booth was plastered with posters, and our table was covered with neatly organized stacks of pamphlets and business cards. We had spent entirely too long wrestling with the banner stand, but it was up, finally, and as glossy and eye-catching and well-designed as anyone could have hoped. There was a box beneath the table filled with water bottles and snacks.

We were ready.

“Just leave it to me,” I told Elliott, as we stood there surveying our work. “I’m going to sweet-talk some nice old man into leaving us his entire estate.”

To my surprise, he leaned down and hugged me: very chaste, his hands on my mid-back and no lower, and then he kissed my cheek and said, “Sadie, I couldn’t have done this without you.”

I patted his back, feeling awkward but touched. I was just a graphic designer, and anyone competent could have done the same work for him; but it was sweet of him to say. “It’ll go great,” I said. “You don’t have to worry.”

He released me and stepped back, running one hand over his hair like he was a little embarrassed. “I’ll worry no matter what,” he said, “but thanks for the vote of confidence.”

And then the first conference attendees wandered into the vendor room.

We spent the next couple of hours talking to people. Or, well, mostly Elliott talked. I handed out pamphlets and answered basic questions for the people who were just wandering through, and beside me, Elliott lectured the true believers, the ones who had come to our booth because they were interested in his work. It was a marvel. I had seen flashes of his charisma, but now he was so earnest and charming and impassioned that it was like he had been body-snatched. The people listening to him nodded thoughtfully and flipped through the pamphlets and asked pointed questions. Business cards were exchanged. Hands were shaken.

During a brief lull when there wasn’t anybody at our booth, Elliott turned to me and slumped his shoulders, miming exhaustion.

“You’re doing great,” I said. “I didn’t even think you knew that many words.”

He grinned at me, unruffled. “My father made me take speech lessons for years,” he said. “I was a very timid child. Shy. I still can’t make small talk worth a damn, but I’m very good at performing like a trained monkey.”

“Your father sounds horrible,” I said passionately. “I hope I meet him so I can tell him what an enormous jerk he is.”

He took a sip from his water bottle and raised his eyebrows at me. “I’ll arrange a meeting.”

Shortly before 11, the room emptied out like someone had pulled the stopper from a drain. I looked at Elliott, confused, and he said, “Plenary session at 11. It’s one of the conference’s headline speakers, so everyone wants to go.”

“Don’t you want to go?” I asked. “You should. I can hold down the fort here.”

“I—actually, yes,” he said. “I’d like to go. Thanks. It’s just an hour. I’ll bring you some lunch.”

“No pickles,” I said.

Even with the plenary session, there were still enough people milling around the vendor room that I kept very busy. I talked to an older white lady wearing an actual mink stole and, ludicrously, opera gloves. She paused by the booth and looked down her nose at me, and I braced myself for whatever thinly veiled racist bullshit was about to come out of her mouth, but she only said, “You don’t look like your name is Elliott Sloane.”

“You’ve got me there,” I said, “but I’m happy to talk to you about the company, if you have questions. We’re doing some very exciting work with ceramic water filters.”

“Very well,” she said, so regal that she was basically a parody of herself—surely they didn’t let people like this wander out of the Upper East Side without a chaperone. “I would be delighted to listen to your sales pitch.”

What a condescending hag. I plastered a fake smile on my face and launched into an explanation of the company’s mission. But despite her pinched look and haughty attitude, the woman listened intently and asked surprisingly insightful questions, and I found myself relaxing and even enjoying our conversation.

We talked for half an hour, and when at last she glanced at her watch and announced that she needed to go, she gave me an appraising look and said, “Kindly give me one of those business cards. I’ll need to speak with my husband before making any decisions, but I’m sure he’ll agree with me that your company is a worthy investment.”

“I hope he will,” I said, giddy beyond words and trying to hide it. I scribbled my phone number on the back of a business card and handed it to her. “That’s Mr. Sloane’s contact information, and if you’d like to talk with me again, I put my cell number on there too.”

“A pleasure,” she said, and sailed off.

I shook my head to myself, bemused. Rich people were
so
strange. Lord, and so was my life. Before I met Elliott, I never in a million years would have envisioned spending half an hour chatting casually with a blue-blood heiress.

When Elliott returned, bearing two boxed lunches, I said, “I think I landed us an investor.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Already?”

“I told you I was going to do it,” I said, a little annoyed that he wasn’t more excited. “She said she’s going to talk to her husband and get in touch.”

“Well, let’s not celebrate until we get a firm commitment,” he said, “but that’s great. I knew bringing you to this conference was a good idea.”

“Bringing me a sandwich was also a good idea,” I said, stupidly pleased by his faint praise. Was I really that desperate for his approval? Let’s be real: yes.

While Elliott was in the plenary session, I had looked up the time of his talk. It was at 3:00, and as the afternoon wore on, I watched him become progressively more nervous and withdrawn. By an hour out, he had stopped interacting with the people who came by the booth, and was sitting bent over his notes and looking pale and a little clammy. Finally, I said, “You’re making people nervous sitting there like grim death. Go take a walk or something. I’ve got this.”

“Okay,” he said, and rubbed his face with both hands. “You’re right.”

“You’re going to be fine,” I said. “Lots of people are afraid of public speaking. It’s totally normal.”

He cracked a weak grin. “What makes you think I’m nervous?”

“My keen observational skills,” I said. “Just go.”

The afternoon was quieter than the morning had been. Most people were in talks, and when only a handful stopped to speak with me in the hour before Elliott’s session, I didn’t feel so guilty about abandoning the booth. I set out some more pamphlets, made an impromptu sign that read “BACK IN 20,” and made my way to the room where Elliott was scheduled to speak.

I slipped into the back of the room just as the previous speaker left the stage. A short, balding man stood up from a table on the stage and said, “Our next talk is by Elliott Sloane of One Drop, LLC, titled ‘Differential advantages of mediums for water filtration.’”

What a terrible title. Boring. He should have asked me for advice. Men always thought they could handle everything themselves. Elliott mounted the stage to a polite but unenthusiastic smattering of applause. It didn’t seem to bother him, though. He looked crisp and confident in his suit. He adjusted the microphone to point upward, paused, made a skeptical face, and tilted it a little higher. The audience laughed. “Good afternoon, everyone,” he said, warm and amused, inviting the audience to share the humor of the situation. “Today I’d like to speak with you about a common problem in clean water interventions…”

The man on stage was a totally different creature from the nervous wreck I’d sent out for a walk. He was funny and relaxed, using his slides to bolster his point but not relying on them to convey his message for him, gesturing for emphasis, moving confidently around the podium. I tried to be an objective observer, to watch him the way I would watch a stranger, and I thought it was clear to everyone in the audience that he cared very deeply about subject. Here was a man who wanted to transform the world. Elliott’s fire was no secret to me, and now it was on display for everyone in the room. I knew that he would find investors after this.

I was so proud of him that I felt like I might burst.

When his talk ended, the session chair asked if there were any questions, and so many hands went up that I saw Elliott blink and jerk his chin slightly in surprise.

I stayed for the questions—thoughtful, probing—and then slipped out of the room. Elliott would probably stay until the end of the session, and I needed to get back to the booth. I could congratulate him later.

He didn’t return until past 6:00. I was sitting at the booth, bored, waiting for someone to come talk to me. “Sorry,” he said, taking the chair beside me. “A couple of people wanted to talk to me after the session ended. I didn’t meant to abandon you here for so long.”

“No problem,” I said. “I watched your talk.”

He groaned and covered his face with one hand. “How bad was it?”

“Elliott, are you kidding me?” I asked. “It was incredible. You did a wonderful job. I don’t know how, because you were so messed up beforehand that I really thought you were going to throw up or something—”

“I did,” he said, and grinned. “In the bathroom, right before my session started. Glamorous, huh?”

“Well, you pulled it off,” I said. “I never would have known.”

“I’m just glad it’s over,” he said. “Christ. I hate giving talks.”

“Let’s go celebrate,” I said impulsively. “We can go out for dinner. Nobody’s going to come to the booth this late. They can just take a pamphlet and come back tomorrow.”

He laughed. “Okay. You’ve convinced me.”

We walked a few blocks east to have our pick of the restaurants along 9th Avenue. “Nothing fancy,” Elliott told me as we walked. “I want a burger. A huge, juicy burger. With onion rings.”

“You got it,” I said. “Whatever you want. You’re the boss.”