Warmed me.
When he finished drinking, he said, “I’m not sure what to make of you. Are you a woman who sends provocative texts to strangers and meets people that way? Or did you really make a mistake?”
“Oh, it was a mistake. Don’t you believe me?”
He set down his glass, suddenly serious, his gaze intensifying even more.
I put down my glass, too. “You don’t believe me.”
He rested his hands on the table, leaning toward me, bringing with him that delicious scent that made me dizzy, that warm feeling of having his skin near mine.
Then he whispered, “I haven’t been sure since the other night when we started chatting, Jadyn, when you said you were going to take that shower.”
He said it like he’d been the one who’d texted with me that night, like he’d been in on this the entire time, not Simmons.
And as the seconds clicked by, his gaze never leaving mine, I realized that Simmons hadn’t ever texted me at all.
7
It felt as if I’d slid into another dimension—one in which I was looking at everything from a distance.
You should’ve known all along that Simmons was covering for his boy, Jadyn. Why didn’t you know?
“You were ‘Aidan’?” I asked, reeling, even if I was sitting still. I had to hear Noah admit to everything. That way, I’d have something to steady me.
He stood to his full height, regret in his expression. Or was it just wariness, as if he expected me to bolt at the news?
“I was the one texting you the entire time,” he said softly, holding my gaze.
So I’d been right about how all this had been a joke. I’d been a joke. It just wasn’t the joke I’d been expecting.
Visions of all the mistakes I’d made before now swam in front of my eyes: Micah Wyatt using his wiles on me, Rex dumping me and treating me like crap afterward. I was a walking, talking joke, and in some way, it felt as if Noah had known that all along, piling on.
I had a talent for finding these kinds of guys.
Pushing back my chair, I started to get up. Even if I had to hoof it back to town, I would. But his voice stopped me.
“Jadyn . . .”
“Maybe I should ask you what else you’re not telling me, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to be around long enough to care.”
“I don’t blame you for being angry.”
He merely folded his hands behind his back, his expression going stoic. There was a power about him: the quieter he got, the more intimidating he became, and I wondered if this was the business side of him I hadn’t seen before, the side that had been raised to run a conglomerate and deal with a board who was currently forcing him out.
I found myself not going anywhere. My gaze had rested on that scar on his neck, as white as his casual clothing, as tangled as my life seemed to be.
When he spoke again, his voice almost lulled me. “I’d like to explain the rest of it to you.”
Gradually, I found myself sitting back down, my spine stiff. If I didn’t hear him out, the lack of answers would dog me, and I couldn’t deny that. So I only nodded for him to go ahead.
“I’ll start from the beginning then.” He walked toward me, sending goose bumps all over my skin. It only got worse when he spoke, his voice easing over my shoulders. “You already know that I haven’t been in the limelight recently. A lot of . . . events . . . happened this summer, so I left New York, my home base, after my family business was set upon by what you’d call an activist shareholder. This man purchased equity stakes in our corporation and tried to exert influence on our board to run the business his way. Unfortunately, my two younger brothers and two uncles took this man’s side. Or have you read all about this online?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t gotten that deep into his long story.
“Sometimes,” he said, “it’s better not to know.”
When his fingers brushed over the side of my neck, I bit my lip so hard that I almost drew blood. And when he nonchalantly slipped around to stroke my throat—one testing, seductive caress—I started to go damp again. God, it was so easy.
“My problems aren’t terribly interesting, anyway,” he said, and it sounded as if his jaw was clenched, his comment edged, “so let’s just say that my father buckled under the pressure of this turn of events. It made him sick and . . .”
His words faded as he dropped his hand from me and walked toward the billowing side of the tent. He didn’t seem to be looking anywhere in particular as he lowered his tone to nearly a growl. “My father became even sicker when I was pushed out of the business.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I sensed his buried rage again. It’d come on quickly, leaving me trembling. But maybe that was because I was still feeling him on my skin, wanting him.
As he focused back on me, I recognized a hunger in him for something unidentifiable. Was he imagining how he was going to take over his business again?
Or did I have something to do with it?
But the cold look in his eyes was dangerous, determined, and it did something to me that I shouldn’t have embraced.
“I’m sorry it all had to happen,” he said, “especially to my mother.”
His mom, who was suffering from exhaustion. But what about those online rumors about his own hospitalization? Was he going to say anything about that?
“Is everything okay now?” I asked.
His smile came slowly, once again changing the mood in the tent. It was the first smile I’d seen that I could say was purely happy. “You know, most people wouldn’t care to ask that question. But I could tell during our first conversation there was something to you that I haven’t seen in all the clubs I used to go to, all the hotels I stay in, or the restaurants where I dined.” He pushed aside the filmy material of the tent to peer at the lake again. “Simmons told me you seemed . . .” He laughed a little. “Well, like a breath of fresh air.”
I was still confused by his sudden changes. “I’m no different from anyone else around here.”
“I think you are.”
When he looked at me, it seemed he could see into me, and I felt my layers peeling off one after the other, my protective skins, all the lessons I’d learned from the past about being too open and exposed.
And I couldn’t glance away.
“Simmons is my closest ally,” he said, “and I listen to everything he has to say. I’ve known him since we were kids because his father was my father’s valet. We’re not that official these days about his title, especially since he owns some stock in my family’s . . . the corporation. We were in Miami when your text came through.”
“Were you at a club of some sort?” I asked, thinking about how he’d made the Hellfire into something he owned, like it was his natural habitat.
He paused, and for a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then he said, “I wasn’t clubbing in Miami. Believe it or not, I didn’t go out all that much while I was in seclusion. That might’ve defeated the purpose.” He finally looked away from me. “Besides, sometimes it’s better to stay in.”
Could he be more mysterious, even as he was trying to enlighten me?
The muscles in his jaw tensed, as if he was thinking about a whole lot more than he was saying. But then he came back to the table, sitting in his chair. “When I got your text, it was a quiet afternoon, and Simmons was off enjoying himself in the city.”
“Wait—Simmons enjoys himself?”
“Occasionally.” He laughed, picking up his champagne glass, twirling the stem between his long fingers. “But he had another phone on him while he was away, so that’s why I had access to the one you reached with your text.”
“A burner phone.”
“One of many. I didn’t want contact with anyone but the people whom I specifically gave my temporary numbers to. Simmons d
id the same, and we constantly changed out phones. If my brothers and uncles wanted to reach me, they could do it through an answering service.”
“So if you were in Miami, why did you have a phone with this area code with you?”
“Simmons used some of his personal contacts to order burners from different places in the country in case PIs hired by my relatives tried to find me.”
“Wow,” I said, finally relaxing back into my chair. “You took some effort not to be found.”
“We took every precaution to sustain privacy, because that’s exactly what I needed for a time. Until I was ready to get back home.”
He left it there, taking a swig of champagne. He talked as if he’d been gathering his wits outside of New York, or maybe even collecting forces that would help him return like an outcast prince planning vengeance.
Or it could be that I was getting melodramatic, spinning his story into something it wasn’t. But it sure did sound like something only a billionaire would do.
Heck, I’d never dreamed of meeting someone like this, larger than life, the complete opposite of small-town me. I nearly had to pinch myself to see if I was really awake.
After Noah put down his champagne glass, he smiled. “The day your text came through, I heard one of Simmons’s phones near the bar in my suite, and since I had nothing better to do, I looked at it.”
“And it was the strangest text about humping in a shower, right?” I fidgeted with the linen covering the table. “Yeah, that was me, all right.”
His green eyes gleamed, sending spangles all over me, glimmers of anticipation. What if he reached across the table, brushing my face with his knuckles? Would I rocket through the roof of the tent? Or would I stay put, dissipating like water through his fingers?
He spoke, bringing me back to reality. “Your text was amusing, and it was exactly what I needed that day. As I said, I wasn’t sure if you were someone who called random numbers to see if anyone would be interested in a . . . let’s call it a ‘spicy’ chat, or if you had genuinely mis-texted.”
“Totally accidental.” I crossed my heart and hoped to die.
Something about the goofy gesture entertained him even more, and his smile grew as he watched me. But then his gaze traveled downward, his focus so fiery that I thought he might be wondering what we naughty sext girls wear under our big sweaters.
Whew, the way he could undo me with just a look. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
“Unfortunate about that text,” he said softly. “I was actually hoping it was an invitation.”
I just need to hump in the shower after work. How’s 7pm?
My skin waved with heat, because if the world was different and he wasn’t a bored billionaire and I wasn’t me, there could’ve been some wicked showers between us. There could’ve been . . .
Yeah. I almost fanned myself but my pride wouldn’t allow it.
“Still,” he said, reaching for the champagne in the bucket, “I had the feeling you had made a mistake, so that’s why I contacted you. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for more information about your showers, though.”
“Well, enjoy that one sext, because it’s the first and last I’ll ever do.”
“Because of the way your heart’s been broken in the past?” he asked. “You’ve mentioned that.”
It was my turn to laugh, although somewhat uncomfortably. But he wasn’t joking, and his eyes took me in as if they were pools of warmth, inching up my skin until I felt enclosed.
He must’ve sensed that I wasn’t about to give him any information about ex-boyfriends, because he filled up his glass. “To end the long story you wanted to hear, I continued texting you because you sounded like everything I wasn’t getting in those hotel rooms. A breath of Aidan Falls air, just like Simmons said.”
He glanced at my glass, which was still nearly full. Automatically, I drank some champagne, almost as if he could talk me into doing anything with those eyes.
When I finished my sip, I said, “So you came to Aidan Falls because of the country air?”
“And the fishing and riding.” A grin. “But I also wanted to see this girl who was chatting with me. Why not, right?”
“Yeah, why not?” I held back a sigh. He’d definitely had bigger reasons for coming to town than just me then. But his confession loosened me up a little. Or maybe it was just the champagne. “Can I ask one more thing?”
“Have at it.”
Another glance at my glass, another sip. A long one this time.
I wallowed in the fizziness and said, “You pretended you were Simmons, even after knowing I thought it was him sending those texts. Why?”
“I could see at the café that you had an aversion to me, so I didn’t want to come right out and say who I was.”
Had I been that stiff? Probably.
He added, “I was planning on telling you, though. And I’m being honest with you when I say that Simmons and I don’t have some kind of juvenile game set up where he goes around pulling in women for my pleasure.”
“I suppose I did make it sound a little . . . pimpy.”
That got a real laugh out of him, and not the kind someone puts on for you just because they should. It sounded almost cleansing, like the fresh air he’d talked about. What was funny was that I didn’t think of the air around here that way—to me, it could choke.
But I wasn’t feeling that way right now, with him, in an exotic tent with strawberries and champagne waiting for me to give in to them. “So how long is this stop on your get-out-of-New-York tour going to last?”
“Are you asking me how long it’ll take for me to get out of your hair?”
He sure had a way about him, and I found myself laughing again. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
Maybe we shouldn’t have gotten on the subject of hair, because he was lavishing a gaze on mine as if he’d never seen so many curls, as if he wanted to plunge his fingers into the mess of them and—
Oxygen caught in my lungs, and I stopped my fantasies before he’d be able to read them all over me.
“The women I’ve known would pay a fortune for your kind of hair,” he said, then drank down the contents of his entire flute and emphatically set it on the table, closing the topic down.
I sipped more of my cocktail, too, not knowing what to say. Luckily, he took up the slack.
“In answer to your question about how long I’ll be here, it might be for longer than I first thought. I invested in property after I knew there’d be fishing and riding to be had.”
“You . . . what?”
He lowered his voice. “If I told you the details, then I’d have to kill you.”
I pressed my lips together, on the cusp of laughing because of that champagne in me. On the brink of wondering if tycoons did kill people, just for the fun of it.
Laughing, he said, “Or I’d have you sign a non-disclosure agreement. Simmons has been on my case about that.”
“A non-disclosure agreement?”
“Just a brief legal document saying that you won’t talk about my personal details. There’s already enough about me on the Internet to last for years.” He shrugged. “But that’s my life. That’s how it goes.”
I’d been called a cheater this summer, a liar, and I didn’t like the insinuation that the only thing that would keep me honest was some document.
“I wouldn’t ever talk to the press or whatever they call themselves these days,” I said.
Noah took a few seconds to survey me, as if he had truth radar in his head and knew how to use it to its full extent. He probably also knew that, if it came right down to it, he could sic a lawyer on me so fast that my head would spin.
“I believe you,” he finally said. “Even if Simmons does throttle me for talking too much without an NDA.”
A glow circled inside me.
He believed in me. So many people in this town hadn’t, and this meant something. I would never betray his trust.
I must’ve passed his test, because he went on. “If you’re wondering how I bought a house in secret, it’s all about cash transactions through an offshore account, very quick and efficient. Having my own place is a lot more appealing than staying in a hotel—if Aidan Falls even had an adequate one. The sellers weren’t interested in an offer at first, but they were persuaded.”
By the amount he’d quoted them, no doubt.
I remembered how Simmons had said “housing” wasn’t an issue on this trip. “You must’ve decided to buy a mansion right after you planned to come here.”
“I don’t sit on issues very long. That’s not how my father taught me to run business. Besides, property is always a good investment.”
The relative lightness that had just been in this tent seemed to dim at the mention of his dad, and I wanted Noah back the way he had been. “So you did buy a mansion. I’m not wrong about that?”
He shrugged, and it was almost a humble gesture.
For some reason, I found that funny, and a laugh bubbled up in me. It grew and grew until I had to shake my head to level myself out. All the while, he grinned at me, as if he enjoyed the sounds I was making.
When I was done he lifted his eyebrows in question.
“You,” I said. “A mansion. There aren’t many in Aidan Falls. Just McMansions, really.”
“True, it’s not the biggest place I’ve ever seen, but it’ll do.”
“And listen to that!” I laughed some more. “I feel lucky to have a roof over my head.”
He sobered. “I must sound like a snob.”
“You’re just not used to mingling with the little people.”
“Jadyn,” he said, “you don’t come off as little in the slightest. I’ve never met anyone more self-possessed.”
Really? He made me shine with that from the inside out until I had to bite back an overwhelming smile.
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