New York Billionaires Series

Shame tastes like ash on my tongue.

I’d made her cry. I hadn’t even known her first name or cared enough to learn it, but I’d been able to make her cry all the same.

I am like him, only worse, because he worked for something. For the family legacy and the family name. I’m working to prove him right about me, but he isn’t even here to see it.

“You’re still alive under there?” Cecilia says, lifting the towel from my brow. “You have to let me know if you need an ambulance, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I haven’t said that before, I think. But I’m sorry for not treating you better when you were my assistant.”

She’s quiet. A hand smooths down my cheek, the softest touch, and it feels like forgiveness. We don’t speak for a long time, not until my eyelids feel heavy and my skin cooler.

Cecilia changes channels until she finds a movie. It’s one I’ve seen before, many years ago. A romantic comedy. She puts the remote down and rearranges behind me again. This time, she stretches out too, and her arm ends up draped over my chest. I glance down to see her hand tracing my scar. The ragged line is faint now, the only remaining evidence of the car crash.

I don’t have the energy to protest, and her hand feels cool against my warm skin.

“A long time ago, this,” she murmurs.

I close my eyes. “It’s from a different life.”

She sighs, a soft sound of relaxation. “Maybe you have many in you. That’s what my mother would say.”

Maybe I do, I think. And maybe this is the start of a new one.

I blink my eyes open to sunshine. I turn over in bed and search for the best pillow, the one with the perfect level of firmness, and pull the comforter up below my chin. Why is it sunny? I always draw the curtains.

I yawn and open my eyes, curled on my side, and look out at the view. I’ll never tire of it. Central Park, the trees, the skyscrapers that line the other side. In one of those buildings lives Tristan Conway and his son, the apartment I was in with Victor over a month ago. When we toasted to our marriage.

Victor. We had been on the couch last night.

How did I get up here?

Either my memory has betrayed me, or I was asleep when he brought me upstairs. Did he lead me, half-asleep on my feet? Did he carry me?

I peek beneath the covers. I’m wearing the same clothes as yesterday, minus the cardigan and my slippers.

He put me to bed, then.

I groan, pulling the comforter over my head. He was sick and still he’d done that.

I’m in over my head.

He’d given me something last night I never thought I’d get. An apology and an insight into why he is the way he is.

I think of him traveling alone with his grandfather to cities all around the world, and then left to his own devices while meetings were being held. I think of a man who had no idea how to raise a grieving grandson, but stepped up to do his best. A son who lost everything and learned to play by his grandfather’s rules.

I take a quick shower beneath the rainfall showerhead and wrap my fluffy purple robe around myself. I look in the mirror and see bright eyes, clean skin, and wet, towel-dried hair.

And then I plod out to the hallway in search of my sick, CEO husband.

He’s not in his bedroom. The door is half-open and I peek inside, but it’s empty, the bed made in exact precision.

He’s not downstairs either. Not in his office, not in the gym, not on the balcony. I even check the two spare guest bedrooms. But nothing.

I grab my phone. The last text I’d sent had been the address to Nadine’s gallery for the opening. It feels like ages ago.

We’d been two completely different people then.

Cecilia: Don’t you dare tell me you’re at work. With how sick you were last night, you should be in bed.

I don’t expect a response, but the words need to be said. So I’m surprised when my phone chimes ten minutes later.

Victor: You know, you’re considerably more bossy than I used to think.

It’s easy to imagine the glint in his blue eyes when he wrote those words. He’s flirting back with me.

Cecilia: You’re deflecting. And thank you. Seeing as how I’m now my own boss, I take that as a compliment.

Victor: You should. Yes, I’m at work. I had a number of meetings that couldn’t be changed and I felt better this morning.

Thirty seconds later, my phone chimes again, and this time I chuckle.

Victor: I also don’t know why I’m justifying my actions to you. If you’re your own boss, then so am I. Get to work changing those numbers, Myers.

Cecilia: You sound like you need to pet a cow.

Victor: I can think of much better ways to relieve stress.

My stomach clenches at the innocent string of words. I imagine them in his voice, the dark, low tone that brokers no discussion. The way he’d spoken to me in the backseat of our car.

Cecilia: A shame you didn’t choose to work from home, then. I took a shower before I went looking for you… and I’m only in my robe.

Victor: Great. Now I’m hard, and I have a meeting with Japanese investors in five minutes.

Heat blooms inside. Imagining him, tall and imposing and in a suit, sitting in his office. I’ve seen him like that hundreds of times. Every day I worked for him.

But the mental image of him reaching beneath his desk and readjusting himself because of me…

I do something I’ve never done before.This content © Nôv/elDr(a)m/a.Org.

I shimmy my bathrobe down my shoulders and tighten the tie around my waist. My modest cleavage looks tantalizing in the camera on my phone. No nipples, just the tops of my breasts and the dip of my cleavage disappearing down into my robe.

I take a picture and hit send, heart pounding.

Victor: Fuck.

Moments later, an image of his own appears. The imprint of his hard length against his gray suit trousers, his hand pulling them taut. Every single inch of him is visible through the Italian fabric.

It makes my stomach clench. I know those inches. I need those inches.