Billion Dollar Enemy

by Olivia Hayle

  Karli is staring at me, her horror evident in my peripheral view, but I can’t look away from Cole. He’s the only one I need to convince. Not Bryan, not Tyra, not the corporate entity we’re sitting in. I just need him to agree to this.

  Cole’s eyes narrow. “You’re pushing it,” he says, and he’s not just referencing the bookstore.

  I spread my hands wide and try to soften my voice. “Look, if we’re not financially sound in two months’ time, feel free to tear the store down. You’ve run the numbers, and you’re the captain of industry here. I’m sure you’re right. But… on the off chance that we’re right, we get to stay, incorporated into your new building.”

  Bryan is shaking his head at me, like he can’t believe what I’m saying. Karli is a statue next to me. But Cole… he’s staring at me with something unfathomable in his eyes, a challenge that reminds me of the night we’d spent together. Do you like it when I touch you like this?

  “You want to make a bet, Skye? Is that it?”

  “Yes.” My mouth is dry. “What do you have to lose? Either you get a profitable new business as part of your new hotel, or your development goes ahead exactly as planned.”

  His lips twitch at the way I’d said hotel. Maybe I’d emphasized it a little bit too much. And in his eyes, there’s depth and pride and arrogance. And something else, something buried deep. Dark amusement.

  Bryan is the one who finally speaks. “Sir, this is highly unusual.”

  “It is. But then again, as Miss Holland and Mrs. Stiller have reminded us, their bookstore is as well.” Cole’s lips finally give, stretching into a smile just shy of being predatory. In the hotel bar we’d been on equal footing, two strangers meeting. Here, in the company he owns—the company seeking to ruin my life—he’s legions above me. “We accept, Miss Holland. If you can prove that your bookstore is profitable in two months’ time, we will reconsider.”

  “Reconsider?” Adrenaline is pumping through my veins. “I want your word.”

  He arches an eyebrow. “You want me to promise?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes flicker. “You have it. Is this acceptable to you as well, Mrs. Stiller?”

  Karli gives a quick nod. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  “Then I consider the matter settled.” He shoots Bryan and Tyra a professional nod. “Draw up the appropriate paperwork and have it sent to Mrs. Stiller by the end of business tomorrow. Will that be sufficient?” The question is to Karli, but his body is angled towards me.

  God. What have I done?

  “It is.”

  “Then this meeting is concluded. I’ll escort you out.”

  Cole stands, ignoring the looks of incredulity both of his employees shoot him. Karli and I pick up our papers and follow him in silence, down the hall, into the elevators. He strides easily through the office, a king in his kingdom, ignoring the daggers I stare into him. He doesn’t seem remotely impacted, but I persist, hoping he might miraculously buckle under the pressure.

  Cole might have agreed to my challenge, but I knew better than to think he’d honor it. Porter Development doesn’t think we have a chance in hell of succeeding. He’s gone from being my fun one-night stand, the perfect sexual memory, into a mistake. Worse than a mistake—an enemy.

  “Well, ladies,” he says, holding the elevator door open for us. “That was an interesting meeting.”

  Karli hums in agreement. “I appreciate you giving us this opportunity.”

  His eyes slide to mine, but I refuse to meet them. The anger in me is rising, and seeing the smugness on his handsome features would send it blasting. “Well,” he says. “You two made a very convincing argument.”

  Karli’s laughter is half embarrassment, half pride. “Yes. Skye and I practically spent our youths in that place.”

  “I understand.”

  Does he? Somehow I doubt it. Asshole, I think again, hopefully loud enough to send it across the airwaves in his direction.

  Cole walks us through the lobby. He’s more than a head taller than us both, his strides long and sure. The need to tell him off is burning under my skin, warring with embarrassment and anger, but there’s no way I can admit to Karli that the one-night-stand guy I’ve told her so much about is Cole damn Porter. It already feels like a betrayal.

  “Well, ladies,” he says, voice deep and untroubled. “This is where I leave you.”

  I can’t avoid his gaze any longer. It’s heavy with meaning, referencing the things left unsaid between us—no doubt he can see the lashing waiting on the tip of my tongue. I know you’re angry, his gaze says.

  I meet it head-on. He might be used to intimidating employees, developers, servers. Not me, though. For good reason, my gaze replies. Asshole.

  “Thank you for today.” Karli shakes his hand, the picture of manners, and I’m forced to do the same.

  His fingers curl around mine softly.

  I squeeze his back as hard as I can.

  “Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

  Cole doesn’t flinch, though his hand has to be hurting. The only thing in his eyes is amusement. “It was my pleasure, Miss Holland.”

  4

  Cole

  “You’re falling behind.”

  I scowl at Nick and reach for the towel. “I’ll get you in the next set.”

  He rests his tennis racquet against the low bench and shoots me a wolfish grin. “That’s what you said last time. Hell, man, this is your game.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.” I wipe the sweat off my brow. Once a week, for as long as I can remember, Nick and I’ve played tennis in the mornings. And I haven’t lost this badly in about as long.

  “Your head is elsewhere.”

  I don’t protest, because frankly, he’s right. Focusing has been difficult since yesterday, when Skye Holland walked into my office and negotiated her way into a bet I should never have agreed to.

  “It might be, yeah.”

  Nick frowns. “Business? The development on Fourth Street has been giving you a lot of shit, right?”

  “It has, yeah, but that’s not it. I’ve somehow managed to mix business and pleasure. Again.”

  Nick, who remembers the first time I did that, winces. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah.”

  He lobbies a tennis ball at me and I catch it easily, plucking it out of the air. “Does she work for you?”

  “Not exactly. I’m planning to demolish the business she works in.”

  For a moment, Nick just stares at me, before he throws his head back and laughs. “You’re not serious.”

  “Deadly,” I say, tossing the ball back at him.

  “Fucking hell.” He lobbies it hard at my chest but I catch it easily, my skin smarting. “How can she stand to be in the same room as you?”

  “At the moment, I doubt she can. We slept together weeks ago, before I knew who she was.”

  Nick runs a hand through his hair. “How’d you meet?”

  “At Legacy.”

  “You had a one-night stand?”

  I turn my back on him and fit my tennis racquet into the sleeve. My centrally located hotel has an indoor tennis court, conveniently close to work. Nick and I have a standing reservation.

  “Yes,” I say. I can practically hear what Nick isn’t saying, the taunts we’ve both grown out of. Had this been five years ago, he would have flayed me verbally, and I would have given as good as I got. “And it was fucking fantastic. Best sex I’ve had in years. I was rather hoping to repeat it, but then… well.”

  “You became the devil,” he says. I shoot him an evil look, and he grins again. “In her eyes, I mean.”

  “Yes, and with it, any hope of a repeat.”

  “If you want me to tell you to not tear down her building, I won’t.” His smile is gone now. “Business and pleasure don’t mix.”

  “I know that,” I say. Mixing them in the past had been the most expensive mistake I’d ever made.

  “And if your team has run the numbers, drawn up the cont
racts, started planning… don’t stop that. You bring business to Seattle. It’s what you’ve done for years.” He shrugs. “There are more women in the city.”

  I nod, thinking to myself that for so long, none of them had appealed to me, not until Skye.

  Nick’s advice is solid. But as I stand in the shower and warm water cascades around me, memories of her find me again. Her warm body against mine. How she’d tasted. The way she had been entirely herself—not afraid to tease me, to take the lead, but also oddly shy, like she was unsure of how I’d react. She’d whispered things in the dark, things I’m sure she regrets now, when my head had been between her thighs.

  I’ve never come when a man did that before.

  It hadn’t been a lie, I’m sure of that, and I feel just the same as I did then, overcome with the desire to show her more of what I could do. To rise above her and fill her and make her come again and again.

  I close my eyes against the tiles. She’d been seething yesterday. I could see it in her eyes. Why didn’t you tell me?

  And beneath it, a very different kind of anger. She’d had her impulsive one-night stand with a handsome stranger—a part I’d played willingly—and then I’d turned out to be the one person she despised more than any other.

  Yeah. She was right to be fucking furious with me.

  But I also know that what happened between us in that hotel bed hadn’t just been a one-off or a fluke, either. Sex that good never is.

  I’m going to have to convince her of that.

  The car pulls up smoothly outside the little bookstore that evening.

  “Should I wait here for you, sir?”

  I straighten the collar of my jacket. “No. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  Charles doesn’t comment. He’s been with me for years, and despite knowing the ins and outs of my life, he’s never once crossed the line. Business and friendship, never mixing. The way it should be.

  The way I’m ignoring at the moment.

  It’s a complete gamble that she’s still here—I’ll just as likely take Karli Stiller by surprise instead.

  I stop outside the bookstore. Between the Pages has a certain charm, that’s true, but most of it comes from being so clearly loved. The window displays are crafted with care, the sign by the door hand-painted.

  The little bell announces my arrival gayly as I step instead. It might as well be a war drum, because the moment she sees me, there’ll be hell to pay.

  And I can’t wait.

  “I’ll be right with you!” It’s her voice, somewhere from the back. No Karli behind the register. Perfect. I pick up a book by the counter as I wait. Flipping it over, I see it’s a romance novel, two people torn apart over and over again by life and fate. I put it down with a snort. If they’re that good at miscommunication, they’re clearly not soul mates.

  Skye freezes in her tracks when she sees me. Her brown hair is in a ponytail, exposing her slim neck, a golden pendent resting at her throat.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I need another book.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Bullshit.”

  “How would you know? Maybe I’ve already finished the one I bought last week.”

  “Sure you have.” She puts her hands on her hips, a beautiful flush creeping up on her cheeks. The same thing happened in the meeting yesterday, but she hadn’t backed down, not even when my employees tried to silence her. It’s another piece of her puzzle. She’s brave.

  “You should have told me last week,” she says. “Who you were.”

  “And interrupted our banter? Never.” I lean in closer, remembering the shyness she’d displayed when I’d come into the store last week. “You would have never told me all the things I wanted to know if I had.”

  Her color rises. “It wasn’t fair. You let me talk about… that, and all the while you knew that I’d feel differently as soon as I found out. I even called you an asshole to your face!”

  I have to stop myself from smiling. “You did. I haven’t been called that in a long time. It was novel.”

  “I’m so happy to provide you with some entertainment.”

  “You’re misremembering things,” I point out. “You made it very clear that I was your entertainment that night, not the other way around.”

  Her brow furrows. “That’s not fair.”

  “No? I kept the note you left me. Do you want me to find it? I think it’s in my wallet, actually.”

  “No, thank you, and I actually don’t think it’s something we should talk about again. It’s unprofessional.” She takes a deep breath, crossing her arms over her chest, her slim waist and the curve of her breasts accentuated. Being this close to her—knowing what her body feels like against mine—and not being able to reach out is like the sweetest form of torture.

  “You’re right. We’re now in a professional arrangement, thanks to you.”

  “You agreed.”

  “So I did.” I deliberately look away from her, putting on my most contemptuous face, and sweep my gaze across the store. “Making this profitable is going to be quite a task.”

  “You don’t think we’ll succeed? People don’t read as much these days, it’s a dying industry, yada yada yada. I’ve heard it all before. But you know what? You’ll thank me in the end.”

  “I will?”

  “Yes, when you get a perfectly run, highly profitable bookstore to add to your development.”

  I pick up a book from the self-help section. How to Face Your Demons. “I’m not sure how I’d manage to incorporate a bookstore into the lobby of a hotel.”

  “You’d break your word?”

  I look up at the clear fury in her voice. “No. If you manage it in two months, we’ll manage the rest. Somehow.”

  She hums, like she’s not convinced, but it’s a start. I put the book back. “How are you planning on doing it?”

  “Making the store profitable?”

  “Yes.”

  She crosses her arms. She’s wearing a T-shirt with the bookstore logo printed on it. Between the Pages is written right across her chest. “Why do you want to know? So you can sabotage us?”

  “You are terribly paranoid.”

  Something in her shoulders loosens. “Maybe. But this bookstore is too important, and you’re too annoying. I have to be on my guard.”

  My smile is back. “I’m annoying? That’s not what I remember. I distinctly remember being called amazing. Great. Or, my personal favorite, the time you whispered that I was the biggest—”

  “God, Cole!” She reaches over and hits my shoulder. For such a small woman, she’s strong. “What part of let’s-never-speak-of-it-again didn’t you understand?”

  “I didn’t agree to that.”

  “You have to. What were you thinking, anyway? What if Karli was here?”

  I look back at her calmly. “Then I’d be here to see the place in person.”

  Skye is looking at me like she has absolutely no idea what to do with me. If it wasn’t for the fact that I feel the exact same way regarding her, I would have found it funny.

  “That hotel bar was yours. You own it.”

  “I own that hotel, yes.”

  “The hotel room. Was it yours?”

  I put my hands in my pockets. “Technically, they’re all mine.”

  “You weren’t there on business.”

  “I was, I just wasn’t from out of town. That was your assumption.”

  “Why were you there?”

  “I was waiting for someone at the Legacy. Someone who works in the building, but who was late.”

  “You blew them off?”

  “Can you blame me? A gorgeous brunette by the bar kept me pretty occupied.”

  She fiddles with the hem of her T-shirt, as if she feels underdressed. Maybe I should have changed out of my suit. “You can quit with the compliments now. I’ve already climbed into bed with you once, and it’s not going to happen again.”

  There’s a pang of disappointment, but
I don’t let it show. I take a step closer. “Are you sure that’s a promise you’re willing to make?”

  “Yes,” Skye says, but her voice is a bit breathless. It’s so quiet in the bookstore that I could hear a pin drop—not a customer, not background music, nothing.

  “Are you here alone in the evenings?”

  She puts a hand to her forehead, taking a step back. “Most of the time, yes.”

  I look at the flimsy front door, the cash register sitting right by the entrance. It doesn’t seem like a particularly safe situation. Skye sees my gaze and raises her hackles immediately. “We have a panic button. There’s never been any incidents, and I don’t expect they’ll start now.”

  “Mhm.”

  “That is not a strike against the bookshop.” She puts her finger up, like she’s scolding me, but the look in her eyes could kill. “I won’t let you come here and snoop around and try to find reasons to shut us down. We made a bargain.”

  “I don’t intend to—”

  “Skye? I found another one!”

  Her head snaps to the side, to the child’s voice echoing from the back of the store. Then she looks back at me. Indecision is clear in her gaze.

  “Look!” A boy wanders up through one of the aisles, holding a newspaper. He can’t be more than ten, dark brown hair, round glasses perched on his nose.

  He stops when he sees me. “Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Judging by the way his cheeks color, they have to be family.

  “You’re not interrupting, Timmy. What did you find?”

  He sidles up to Skye, opening the newspaper while shooting me a furtive glance. He points at something—an article for a school project?—but I’m not listening.

  Skye has a son?

  I look at her again. The smooth skin, her thick hair, the natural curve to her lips, the pointy chin. She can’t be much older than twenty-five. A son this age?

  The boy is openly staring at me now. “Hello,” I say, dazed from the realization. “I’m Cole.”

  “Timmy. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Good manners on the kid, I’ll give him that. Skye puts a hand on his shoulder. “Cole isn’t a customer. He’s… an acquaintance.”