Billionaires Dollar Series

“No thanks,” I say, hanging up my jacket. “I’m good.”

There’s a chagrined look on her face as she sets her cup back down on the coffee table. “I’m sorry, again.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“No, I do. I… I believed the worst of you.”

“I would have too, in your shoes,” I say quietly. Most people in the city probably do now.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. “The article?”

“Hell, no. I don’t even want to think about it.”

“I can imagine you’ve done quite enough of that,” she says with a smile. “Make yourself comfortable.”

I do, sinking down into her couch and stretching out my legs. For the first time all day, I feel like I can take a deep breath and have it fill my lungs. It feels good.

Skye gets up and heads to one of the flowerpots in the corner. I watch as she snaps off a browning leaf. “Sorry,” she says softly, “but I kill all my plants. I’m determined this one will make it.”

“I have faith in you.”

She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and straightens a pile of books on the coffee table. It’s such a homely thing to do, and in her pajamas, it’s… sweet. This is a proper home. A place to relax and unwind.

I toy with the tassels of a cushion. “That’s why my place is like a museum, you know.”

“Sorry?”Property of Nô)(velDr(a)ma.Org.

I clear my throat. “I bought it just a few weeks after I found out about Elena and Ben. I’d been staying in one of my hotels after I found out, having just walked out of our apartment. I never went back there,” I say. “Couldn’t, actually. Just the idea of it made me sick.”

Skye sinks down onto the sectional in front of me, crossing her legs. “It’s awful, what they did.” Her voice hardens. “And to think she gets to play the supportive wife in that article. Bah!”

The outrage in her voice makes me smile. “I like your anger more than your pity.”

“No pity,” she agrees. “You did the right thing in cutting them off. But why would they write that article?”

I scoff. “I’m guessing the money ran out. Ben is terrible with finances and Elena has expensive tastes.”

“They’re the ones in the wrong, and somehow your name is the one dragged through the mud. Can’t you set the record straight somehow?”

I grab one of the books on her coffee table, flicking through it aimlessly. “That would mean admitting to the world what really happened.”

“Which wasn’t your fault.”

“Maybe not,” I say, “but I still have my pride.”

Skye shakes her head, but there’s a fondness in her eyes that I haven’t seen before. “Men,” she muses.

I snap the book closed. “You love us.”

“Much to our own detriment sometimes, yes.”

“Why does the bookstore mean so much to you?”

Skye’s eyebrows shoot high, but her face remains open, fondness still clear in her eyes. I want to live up to it. “That’s a non-sequitur,” she says.

“Well, you’ve asked me personal questions. My turn now.”

She tucks her legs up beneath her, her gaze on the bookshelf in the corner. Maybe I’ve pushed my luck with this one. It’s not a topic that the name “Cole Porter” is favorably attached to.

But then she starts to speak.

“I spent a lot of time there growing up. My mom is… well, eccentric.”

“You called her bohemian once.”

Skye looks over. “You remembered that?”

“Of course.”

“Well, she certainly is. A new project every week, a new obsession. She’s not a bad mother, but she’s an absentminded one. She gets lost in stories and ideas easily. And she’s very stubborn about it.”

I resist the urge to smile, thinking that Skye shares some of those traits, and admirably so. Stubbornness. Obsession. A love of storytelling.

“So you spent time in the bookstore?”

“Yes. I loved to read and write. And walking home after school, I’d stop at Between the Pages. It felt like the most wonderful place. Eleanor ran it, back then. She started making me tea, even though I didn’t like it yet.” A smile plays at the corners of her mouth, the look in her eyes a million miles away. “She encouraged me to write. To explore. She put new books in my hands every week and would ask me questions about them. ‘And why did Heathcliff act like that?’ she’d challenge. ‘What are the author’s intentions?’ When I chose to major in English Literature, my mother and sister didn’t understand it. Eleanor did.”

“She was Karli’s grandmother?”

“Yes. I started working there part-time, when I was old enough. It’s more like home to me than my childhood house ever was.” She looks down at her palms, as if seeking answers there. “It’s the place I love the most in the world.”

And I was trying to tear it down.

She doesn’t say the words, but the knowledge hangs in the air in between us, tangible and uncomfortable. An unwelcome intruder. For the first time, I want to undo the whole thing. The bargain. The business project. I just want her.

“Skye, I-”

Her phone interrupts me and the cheery theme song fills her apartment. She tracks it down to one of her kitchen counters, the apartment small enough that I can hear the entire conversation.

I settle down on the couch to listen, completely without shame, a hand under my head.

“Hey, Isla,” Skye says. It’s a name I remember-the older sister, Timmy’s mother. This should be interesting.

“No, it’s fine.” A cleared throat. “No, I’m home alone.”

I grin at that.

“Isla, I don’t feel like talking about him any more. It’s all you ask me about!”