Showdown: Tech Billionaires

by Ainsley St Claire

  “…and then Frannie said Nell was mean to her…”

  When I return to my room, the bed’s made and Nate’s laid out jeans and his favorite pink sweater for me. He got out a bra but there aren’t any panties.

  I debate whether that was an accident, and I determine the only way to find out is to go commando beneath the jeans.

  I blow my hair out with minimal styling and head downstairs. Mason and Caroline are already here.

  “There she is,” Caroline announces. She hands me a cup of coffee. “We’ve been up since before five, so we couldn’t wait until lunchtime. We’ll probably face plant in our dinners tonight, so I’m mainlining caffeine.”

  “Thank you,” I say and look over at Amy. “Nate said you had a question about food today?”

  She nods. “How formal do you want to be?”

  I look over at Caroline for guidance. “I think we’re casual,” she says.

  “Do you want to do sandwiches?” I offer.

  “I was thinking we could grill some chicken and burgers,” Amy says. “I can make some fries, and we have several kinds of cheese and other toppings—barbeque sauce, teriyaki sauce, salsa, and of course ketchup, mustard, and mayo.”

  I nod. “I think that sounds perfect.”

  She pulls out the dough for two dozen buns.

  “Do you make your own buns?” I ask.

  She nods. “It’s not hard. I freeze the dough and thaw it whenever I need to bake them.”

  I’m amazed. “What can I do to help?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Mr. Lancaster said you may have to move on soon, so this is my pleasure. I’ll miss you. We love having people here.”

  “We’ve loved being here. I guess our moving-to-Maui plans are going to be the lunch discussion.”

  She smiles. “Just let me know.”

  There’s a commotion in the other room as Jim arrives, and I never quite make it back upstairs to finish my hair.

  In the living room, Nate, Jim, and Mason are having a quiet but intense conversation. I let out a breath of air I didn’t realize I was holding. Sometimes I can’t quite figure out how I got here, and now I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I can’t be Nate’s employee and his love interest forever…and now I’ve lost my career.

  Caroline must sense my confusion, because she opens her arms and smiles at me. She pulls me in for the tightest hug.

  I feel like my brain may explode. I have to confide in someone. “I was only supposed to watch the girls for the weekend,” I tell her softly.

  “What?”

  I pull back. “Cecelia was angel funding my startup with my best friend. She’d asked me to come by to pick up the check, and when I arrived, the weekend babysitter hadn’t showed up. Somehow she talked me into staying with the girls so she could go to Vegas as planned. I was only supposed to watch the girls for the weekend.” I pause, taking a deep breath. Caroline’s eyes are wide. “When Nate returned without her, everything was so broken. I didn’t know what to do. He begged me to stay. I couldn’t leave with their world falling apart. Everything spiraled, and I kind of ended up putting my life on hold. My business partner used the angel funding to hire a small team, and with a first round of funding they’ve made some progress. I’ve been working with them when I can, but then I—.”

  Caroline’s eyes go wide. “That’s what you meant by an accidental nanny.”

  I nod. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever want kids after the way I grew up, but I do adore the girls.”

  Caroline’s mouth quirks. “And they adore you. You’re so wonderful with them.”

  Nate comes up behind me and kisses my neck. “Not only do my girls adore you, but so do I.”

  I nearly choke. He’s chosen now to confirm to everyone we’re together? And I guess I’m not finishing my confession to Caroline. Maybe that’s for the best. What’s she going to do about my problem anyway?

  I turn to look at Nate and he’s all smiles. In my periphery, I see Caroline walk over to Mason with a silly grin on her face.

  Nate cups my cheeks and brings me in for a soulful kiss. “First, I’m tired of sneaking around. I told Jim and Mason, but they’d already guessed. I’m going to meet with the girls and tell them I’m in love with you and want to date you.”

  “What did you just say?” I cannot possibly process all this information.

  He bites his lip. “I love you, Lilly. I hate the sneaking around. I’ll still like hotel-room sex with you, but I hate not being able to hold your hand when I want to. I hate waking up in bed without you.”

  I shake my head. “We can’t sleep in the same room together. Your daughter is dying to lose her virginity. She won’t understand the difference between two consenting adults and her with a boy.”

  Panic flashes in his eyes. “Okay, we can work on the waking up together part. But let me finish. You are not Cecelia. And I don’t want you to be her. I loved her, and I’ll always love her. But I have more than enough room in my heart to love you.”

  I feel dizzy. “I’m overwhelmed.”

  “That’s okay. I’m going to work my hardest to make sure you fall in love with me.”

  I look up, and it’s my turn to cup his face in my hands. “I think I’ve been in love with you since you came home and so carefully explained to the girls what had happened to their mom.”

  Nate pumps his arms in the air. “Yes!”

  Then he comes close again, and looks in my eyes. “Third, I know you’re worried about how hard it will be to bring your mom with us to Maui. I think we can manage a staff of two caregivers from her facility, and we can find two more. Does she have therapists and other needs?”

  “She does. It’s a lot, and I’m not even sure I understand it all. I need to get more information. I can’t expect you to do that, and until I speak to her social worker, I don’t even know whether a change in her routine would be good for her.”

  “Call this afternoon, and let’s find out. There’s a guest house out by the pool where we can set her up so she has a private space.”

  “Nate, that’s so wonderful. But…” I sit down on the couch. I may not have gotten it all out to Caroline, but I definitely need Nate to understand my situation. “I need to tell you something.”

  Chapter 21

  Lilly

  Panic flashes through Nate’s eyes. I reach for his hands as we sit. “I wasn’t the person Cecelia had hired to be the nanny that weekend you went to Vegas.”

  “What?”

  “I’d presented to her earlier in the week, and she’d agreed to be an angel funder to the company I was building with my best friend. I was at your house because she asked me to come by and pick up a check.”

  His brow furrows, and he pulls his hands away.

  “The woman who was supposed to watch the girls that weekend never showed up. When I arrived, Cecelia was stressed about it, and she asked me if I could stay the weekend.”

  Nate looks at me as if he’s never seen me before. “Why would you agree to stay with the girls if you weren’t a nanny?”

  It’s hard to come up with an answer that makes sense, when he puts it like that. “I really liked Cecelia, and I wanted to help her. She’d just handed me a check for twenty-million dollars. It seemed like the least I could do was to hang out with your girls for the weekend. She made it sound like it would be pretty easy.”

  Nate stands. “So, if you hadn’t been so worried about your money, Cecelia would be alive today. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Wow. Fear and hurt slice through me. If I’d told her I couldn’t stay, maybe Cecelia wouldn’t have gone on the trip, and she’d be alive today. But, I also know Cecelia was used to getting her way. I straighten my spine, rather than crumbling to the floor like I want to. “No, I don’t think that’s fair. Cecelia would have called Alicia or a hundred other people if I hadn’t agreed to stay. But I was there, and you know how persuasive she could be.”

  “Why are you just telling me this now?”


  I hang my head. “You were so upset when you returned… I couldn’t leave you and the girls. I had so much fun with them that weekend. At first I thought you knew, but once it became clear you didn’t, I could never find the right time to bring it up. And the three of you seemed to need me, so I decided to stay.”

  Jim walks into the kitchen. “I’m sorry, you said twenty-million dollars? Did Cecelia give you a check for that?”

  I nod. “I’ve been working while the girls are in school and after they go to bed.”

  “Who was the check made out to?”

  “Our startup, Brain Bursts.”

  “Did you cash the check?” he asks.

  I’m not sure where he’s going with this. “Yeeeeees.”

  Jim looks at Nate.

  “If you want your money back, I’m going to have to disappoint you. It’s spent. You can take it up with Mason, because SHN funded the rest.”

  Like magic, Mason appears in the kitchen doorway, and I can tell he and Jim have heard every word of this conversation.

  “We didn’t meet you when we funded Brain Bursts,” Mason says as the three of them line up in front of me. “I had no idea you were part of that company.”

  “No, you didn’t. Your team interviewed us on the first anniversary of Cecelia’s death. The girls were a mess. I couldn’t leave them that day, and Nate was barely treading water at that point.”

  Jim looks at me. “When I was researching Cecelia’s money transfers, I never saw a check made out to Brain Bursts.”

  “I’ll be right back.” I walk up to my room, and in the back of the closet is a box of papers. I walk it downstairs, dropping it on the kitchen table with a thud. Fighting tears because now I have no idea what this is about, and I feel guilty of something, I yank out the file. “Here is the paperwork for Cecelia’s funding and a copy of the check.”

  Jim picks up the papers and steps out of the room. I can hear him talking on the phone. “Can you find out who owns the account, the balance, and if there are any other accounts with the same owners? Call me back.”

  “What else do you have in there?” Nate snaps.

  “Here, let’s go through it together.” My tears are falling. Everyone here is angry at me. Maybe it is my fault she’s dead. I feel like I’m spinning out of control. “Here’s a copy of my birth certificate, copies of my passport, and a list of all my accounts.”

  I yank another file out and toss it to him. “Here is a list of every account I have on the web and the passwords. Go through it all and you’ll see there is nothing behind me giving up my life for the past three years but love for your family.”

  I pull another file out. “Here are my bank statements for the last seven years. Everything I make goes to pay for small luxuries in my mom’s care that Medicare won’t cover. Also here are my mother’s Medicare statements, because my father refuses to help her or pay her alimony she was awarded in the divorce.”

  I thrust a file at him. “Here is my mother’s will. It’s one page. She doesn’t have anything but power of attorney.”

  I’m full-on crying now as everyone watches me melt down. I dump the box over on the table. “You can look through it all. My grades, the nasty letters from my father’s attorney—oh, and my favorite is the letter I got yesterday from my former best friend and business partner. They’ve fired me because I’ve been with you, watching your girls in Italy and now in Canada, and I’ve missed an important deadline.”

  The room is so quiet, all I can hear is my heavy breathing.

  “Daddy, what’s going on?” Katrina asks from the doorway.

  The room is silent. It seems none of them has anything to say.

  The pain of everything hits me at once, and I feel completely empty inside, but I push through and turn to pull her into a hug. “Sweetheart, it’s my fault. I’m sorry I’ve disturbed your studies. There’s so much going on.” I wipe away my tears. My heart is breaking. “I need to go to see my mom for a while. I’m not sure when I’ll be back, but I want you to know that I think you’re amazing. I know you’re going to be strong and incredible, just like your mom.”

  I turn and go upstairs to gather my things. No one comes after me, which is fine because I can’t talk to anyone right now. It doesn’t take long to load my suitcase, and I pull it behind me downstairs. Everyone’s still in the kitchen, talking in low voices, so I scoot out the front door and walk over to the Four Seasons, where I plop my credit card down and get a room for the night. I have to have some space to process all this.

  When I crawl between the sheets, I turn off my phone and finally let everything go, ugly crying until I fall asleep.

  I wake when the housekeeper knocks on the door. She tells me I have an hour until checkout.

  “Thank you.”

  I get on my laptop and make a reservation on the four-thirty flight back to San Francisco. Then I call the front desk to arrange a ride to the airport.

  The shuttle driver takes us past the house as we go, and I start to cry all over again. The drive to the airport takes forever. The ice and snow on the road slow us down, and then as we hit Vancouver, the traffic is slow. If I didn’t have only carry-on luggage, I wouldn’t make it.

  Thankfully, I make it through customs quickly and arrive at the gate just as they call for final boarding. My seat is between an older couple. She likes the window and he likes the aisle, she explains as I sit. I’m sure they were hoping for an empty seat.

  “Did you just love Vancouver?” she asks. “It’s one of my favorite cities.”

  “It is beautiful,” I murmur.

  “We went on a cruise to Alaska. It was stunning. We saw pods of whales, and the snow hasn’t melted there. It was cold, but we loved it. What brought you here?” she asks.

  “Work.”

  “Do you live in San Francisco?”

  “I do.”

  “I love San Francisco. The sourdough bread and the clam chowder are to die for. We live in Houston, so we’ll connect and get home late tonight. I’m always telling my husband that I wish we had a Star Trek thing-a-ma-bob where you can instantly appear at your destination.”

  “That would be nice,” I agree.

  The flight attendant begins her emergency-preparedness speech, and I use the opportunity to put headphones on. I don’t want to listen to anything, I just need to not talk so I can think about what I’m going to do once I land. It seems my life as I knew it is over. If that’s what Nate thinks of me, after all the time we’ve spent together, then there’s nothing more to say, and I can’t be there anymore. Sure, I should have told him sooner, but I deserve more trust than that. Despite what he’s said, he hasn’t moved on from Cecelia’s death at all. My heart aches for the girls, but I can’t change what’s happened.

  I won’t go to my father’s house. I don’t want to see all his students fawning all over how great he is. He’s only great if you’re a student. He gives them everything and has nothing left over for his family—except for what his hag of a wife pulls from him. And I certainly don’t want to see her.

  I want to see my mom, but that will have to wait until tomorrow, as we land during rush hour. After the note I got from Mackenzie yesterday, I can’t go to her. My things are at the Lancasters’ house, but I doubt security would let me in to get them, and I don’t know what I’d do with them anyway.

  I’ll find some place when I land and take BART into the City. There will be a tourist hotel where I can stay the night. Tomorrow I can visit my mom and try to find a place I can afford to stay for a while until I get a plan in place.

  I fall asleep on the flight and wake when we hit the tarmac in San Francisco.

  As I deplane, I’m greeted by Trevor. “What are you doing here?”

  “You just left,” he says. “You didn’t tell anyone what you were doing. Nate is concerned.”

  “What did he expect?” I look at him and hold my hand up. “I can’t do this.”

  Trevor steps in front of me. “Where are you going to stay t
onight? We should at least know where you are. We don’t know what we’re dealing with right now.”

  “I don’t know yet. Someplace cheap. I’ll leave you a message with my forwarding address when I find a place to live.”

  “You just left,” Trevor says again with a crispness that says he’s pissed.

  I’m angry. This situation is not my fault. “What would you have done after being accused of being the reason someone’s wife was dead?”

  I push past him and work through the throngs of people to get in the line for a cab.

  I see Trevor drive up alongside the cab line. There are at least twenty people in front of me. He rolls his window down and yells to me. “Lilly, at least let me take you wherever you need to go.”

  I ignore him as if he’s talking to someone else.

  “Honey, is that man talking to you?” asks a large woman dressed in an impeccable suit.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, he’s mighty cute. Maybe I can be Lilly.”

  That makes me smile…a little.

  He gets out of the car and walks over. “Lilly, please let me take you where you need to go.”

  Cab horns are honking because the car is blocking their line. Everyone is turning to see what’s going on. I can see a police officer approaching. We’re making a scene, and now the cell phones are coming out to start recording. I cross my arms, but I don’t want to be in any tabloid, so I finally agree.

  Trevor grabs my bag, and I hop in the car next to him.

  “I can take you home to the house in Sausalito, or to your family, or Mr. Lancaster has said if you want a suite at the Fairmont, we can bill it to his account.”

  I nod, and Trevor begins driving into San Francisco. “I need to know where I’m going,” he says softly after a few minutes.

  “I suppose the house. I can pack my things and make arrangements for them to be stored…or I don’t know.” I can feel tears threatening again.

  “Alicia is super pissed at Nate right now,” Trevor offers. “I’ve never seen her so angry.”

  I turn to him and blink rapidly. “What happened?”