New York Billionaires Series

“Oh. There’s a but here, right?”

I spread my hands wide, and I don’t know if it’s the weight of the day or the memory of her panicked voice in my ear, but more words spill through my cracks than I’d planned for.

“It’s me, Summer. I’m not fit for a relationship. I’m not fit for dating. You could find me the goddess of love herself and I wouldn’t ask for a second date.”

“Why?” she asks.

I shake my head. Offer a piece of the truth, but like so often these days, it’s the tip of an iceberg. “My last break-up wasn’t the best either.”

“Ah,” Summer says. She leans back on the couch, the cut-off jeans she’s wearing revealing a sliver of smooth skin at the ankle. “Look at us, then. You own a matchmaking company and I work at one, and neither of us seems capable of dating.”

“Neither of us? What happened with the delivery boy?”

“Dave,” she says. “His name is Dave.”

“Dave,” I repeat.

She looks down at her hands, twisting them over to play with one of her nails. “It was good. He was nice and funny. We went to a Korean barbecue down the street. But I just couldn’t… I don’t know. I couldn’t get into it.”

My gaze zeroes in on her face. Is she blushing, or is the light playing tricks on me again? “But you liked him?”

She shrugs. “Well enough, I suppose. But I don’t think I’ll go out with him again. It doesn’t seem fair, really. To be honest, I haven’t thought about him once since I came home and saw that Ace had eaten all of his chocolate.”

“Poor guy,” I say. By no fault of his own, he’d become associated with poisoning her dog. Perhaps I’m a bastard for it, but I can’t find it in me to feel sorry for him.

She pushes off the couch with a yawn, and damn, I should go. She wants some peace and quiet, and not her boss hanging around, overstaying his welcome.

But she beats me to it, walking barefoot across the oriental rug to the kitchenette. “I’m about to make some tea. Would you like some?” she asks. “You don’t strike me as a tea-drinking kind of man, but you know, I don’t want to assume.”

My hand relaxes on my thigh. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“That means chamomile tea with a drop of honey.”

“Great.” I can’t remember the last time I drank tea, or had someone make me… things.

My gaze snags on the bucket list still pinned to her wall. With her back to me, I cross to it and turn on the flashlight on my phone. Bathed in artificial light, I can make out a number of items.

Learn how to windsurf. Swim naked in the ocean. Learn to speak Spanish. Visit all fifty states. Record a demo in a studio.

I put my phone down just in time. “Oh, you’re back at the list,” she says. “I should take that thing down.”

“No you shouldn’t. I didn’t know you sang?”

Summer puts my mug on the coffee table and curls up on her couch, legs crossed beneath her. A sheath of blonde hair falls forward as she stares into her mug as if she’s trying to read her fortune. “I used to.”

“You used to sing.”

“Yes. I majored in business in college, but with a minor in music. I can’t play an instrument to save my life, but… I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember.”

I raise an eyebrow, but Summer holds up a hand. “I know exactly what you’re going to say. Don’t.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, you were going to ask me to sing something.”

“Maybe, but maybe not. And even if I were, would it be so terrible?”

She gives a mock shiver, but there’s real censure in her eyes. “Yes. I won’t sing on command.”

“All right, little canary,” I say, taking a sip of the tea she’s prepared for me. It’s not half bad. “I’m not surprised, you know.”

“That I sing?”

“You seem like the type.” Golden, glorious, smiling. She should be a cartoon princess, walking through the forest with woodland creatures trailing behind. Hell, I feel like one, sitting here in her apartment for no apparent reason for the second time in a week.

“I don’t know what to make of that,” she says.

“It was a compliment, I think.”

“Then thank you,” she says, smiling. “I think.”ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

We look at each other for a long moment, her smiling, me lost. I’m acutely aware of the fact that it’s past midnight and she’s in a pair of tight jeans and a tank top.

But then she sits up pin straight. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“It’s raining! Damn.”

I watch in astonished silence as she flies up from the couch, grabbing towels that had been stuffed behind the couch. She rolls them up tightly and fits them against the windowsills.

“They leak?” I ask.

“Yes. The caulking is bad, I think. Anyway, every time it rains, without fail, I have wet windowsills.”

“Summer,” I ask, “how long has that been the case?”

“Oh, a few months, at least.”

“You haven’t told your landlord?”

“I have, but she’s busy.”

I narrow my eyes at her, but she gives me a serene smile, sinking down on the couch again. “You’re renting from your aunt?” I guess.

She nods. “Vivi will fix them.”

“You should remind her.”