Tributary: A Billionaire Romance (Oak Creek Book 2)

by Lainey Davis

  The countdown clock on the library starts beeping, and everyone swarms to the amphitheater. Rose Mitchell grabs the microphone and starts shouting excitedly. “Ok, everyone! They’re a block away. I told Abigail to just drive right up to the barricade and they can just leap out of—oh my god! They’re here!”

  A roar goes up as Abigail’s little car comes to a stop at the sawhorses blocking off the town center. Rose drops the microphone on the ground and races across the street as townspeople jump and clap. Even Daniel Crawford picks up the pace as he approaches the car, where Rose is extracting her adult son from the passenger seat. Hunter seems uncharacteristically joyful, lifting up his mother and spinning her around. I squeeze Diana’s knee. She seems in no hurry to rush over to her brother, so I’m in no hurry to leave her side.

  “What’s Abigail doing now?” Diana squints over to the circle of hugging Crawfords, whose dark heads all blend together in a tight circle as the townspeople start to swarm.

  I see Abigail jump up and down and lift her left hand. A glint from a gemstone catches my eye. “Hm,” I say. “Looks like she picked up some frosting along with Hunter at the airport.”

  “Hunter proposed? Get out!” She stands from her seat. Thinking she will head over to her family, I’m surprised when she veers right and cracks open a beer from in the food tent.

  “Aren’t you going to go say hello?”

  “Psh. I’ll give him a hug in awhile after everyone else is done checking him for alien probes.”

  I lean past her and grab a beer and a necklace of circular pretzels from a wooden rack on the table. “What’s the deal with the pretzel jewelry?”

  “So you don’t get too wasted too quickly,” she says, plucking a snack from my neck. I love the familiarity of the gesture and smile when she reaches across my chest for another pretzel. “I just can’t believe Hunter is going to marry Abigail.”

  “Don’t you like her?”

  “What? No! I mean, yes. I love her. But Hunter is…or he’s always just been such a douche.”

  I look across the crowd, to where Hunter is reluctantly accepting hugs from people and stiffly receiving cheek kisses. Diana’s not entirely wrong—her brother is sort of a cyborg unless he’s talking about cell behaviors. But his arm around Abigail’s shoulder is relaxed, and his body seems to shimmer whenever he looks her way. “They seem good for each other,” I tell her.

  Diana’s response is lost to feedback from the microphone as the band starts back up again. I hear the slow, bluesy refrain of “Fly Me to the Moon.” I finish my beer and chuck it in the nearby recycling bin and extend my hand toward Diana. “Dance with me,” I tell her.

  For some reason, she agrees, and I lead her closer to the stage. Not many people are dancing—most are still ogling Abigail’s ring or helping themselves to plates of potato salad. But it doesn’t matter. Nobody else exists for me when Diana’s around, anyway. I tug her close against me, inhaling the scent of witch hazel and other herbs in her hair. She smells like her passion, like her magnificent ability to coax life from tiny seeds. I can smell the faint remnants of the soil she was working with, and I let her scent settle into my shirt.

  We spin slowly around in a circle, my hand rubbing her lower back slowly and her fingers lightly toying with the seam of my shirt at my shoulders. I love the firm feel of her pressed against me, and I can almost feel our hearts synchronized to the strong pulse of the music.

  “Let me invest in your business,” I tell her. “Or just let me lend you the money you need.”

  She doesn’t look up, but presses her cheek against my shirt. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because the world needs what you’re doing, Diana. And because I want your face to always look as happy as it does when you talk about your research.”

  We spin in silence a bit more. She doesn’t answer me. “I can’t be beholden to you, Asa. I’ve been certain before, sure that I was making the right choices. And I lost everything.”

  “Diana,” I stop, putting my hands on her shoulders so I can look her in the eye. “You have not lost anything. Not anything that matters. Do you even know how amazing you are?”

  “Do you know how fucking amazing I was?? You know nothing, Wexler.”

  “Well why don’t you tell me, then, Dr. Crawford. Because I definitely do know business, and you’re sitting on a gold mine over there. You and Moorely could be solving world hunger with that setup. Surely you know that.”

  She sinks into a hay bale as the band stops and a group of girls in ballet tights prances out into the street. As Aneke drags Hunter to the seat of honor in the center, the little girls begin to act out the Big Bang, with red and orange streamers and buckets of water they seem to be throwing at Hunter, who laughs. Somewhere between a kid dressed like an amoeba and a kid dressed like a dinosaur, Diana wanders away.

  I only realize this when her brother Archer plunks down next to me on the hay bale. “Wexler,” he says tilting his beer bottle my direction. We watch the dancers in silence for a bit until he says, “You know you get under my sister’s skin, right?”

  “I’ve noticed, yes.”

  “You should know that everyone’s rooting for you, man.” I turn to look at him, and he’s staring at me, hopefully. “She’s been holed up in her plant store pretending to be busy for years,” he continues. “I don’t know what the hell some guy did to her in grad school, but she hasn’t been properly grouchy since, and she’s been mean as a snake since the blizzard.”

  “Diana grouchy is a…good thing?” In my family, visible irritation is acceptable only when reservations have been cancelled. I have a lot to learn about Crawford family interpersonal dynamics.

  “Diana grouchy is a very good thing,” he says, slapping me on the back. “It means her wheels are churning. And I know you’re trying to help her make sound business choices. Financial stability will really piss her off, which means she’ll channel that anger into brewing beer for me…and possibly clean my house. So you let me know how I can help.”

  “I’ll do that, Archer.”

  He tosses his empty bottle into the recycling. “Hook shot!” He yells. “I’m off. Do not tell her we talked.” With a salute, he crosses the room to harass a group of young women trying to balance eggs on their tip. I sit for a bit, warmed by the idea that Diana’s family has noticed I’m into her and wants to help her get out of her own way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Diana

  “HEY, HUNTER. GOOD to see you, brother.” I waited until the thickest of the crowd thinned and he stopped talking about what it was like to shave in outer space.

  “Diana!” His face lights up and he opens his arms for a hug. I raise a brow at him and lean in, surprised when he pulls me in tight and thumps my back. “I missed you this time,” he says. “Isn’t that remarkable?”

  Hunter has been deployed in space a few times for 6 months each. He was living in Texas with his ex-wife, though, so it’s not like we really saw much of one another. Unsure what to say to him, I respond, “well, last time you weren’t living right down the road and sharing your workout equipment with me.”

  “Accurate.” He takes a sip of his drink. “You have really refined this recipe perfectly, Diana. Did you truly name it after me?”

  I nod. Once I name a flavor, I tend to stop tinkering with it. I’m working on the summer ale from the hops Asa gave me. I’ve been adjusting that recipe late at night, when I can’t sleep and my racing thoughts keep me awake.

  “Hoppy Hunter,” he says, smiling. “I like it. Did you see I’ve asked Abigail to marry me?”

  “I saw she had a ring on. Look at you getting all mainstream.”

  “I called her father from the space station to verify he and her mother are still comfortable with the idea of us marrying.”

  I laugh. “I bet he liked that. Unless you called during a football game?”

  He shakes his head. Abigail, Indigo, and Sara are trying some new dance move encouraged by the town kids,
still in their costumes from their performance. The afternoon sun glints off her new ring and she smiles and waves at Hunter. “We had sex in the airport parking lot,” he blurts, looking at me. “Abigail was quite insistent.”

  “It’s ok to maybe save some secrets to share with Archer,” I tell him, stealing his beer and taking a swig.

  He yanks the beer back from me, sloshing some on his jeans, which still appear to be damp from the dance performance. “Speaking of Archer,” he says, “would you like to borrow some money?”

  “What? Are you fucking kidding me? He told you?”

  Hunter sets the beer bottle on the ground and I kick it at him. He stares daggers at me. “I asked if you’d been making progress on your research, because you hadn’t mentioned it in our last conversation, and Archer simply said you’d hit a financial wall. Which, judging by your response to my question, is accurate and unwelcome news.”

  I slump back down next to him. “It’s complicated,” I mutter.

  “I have a pretty sharp mind for science,” he says, making us both laugh, since we studied in the same PhD program. “And I have more money than I need right now. Can I lend you some?”

  I shake my head. “I appreciate that, Hunter. Save your moldy money and buy Abigail a nice wedding, ok?”

  “Aren’t you always insisting that I need to consider others’ needs? Are you not an ‘other’?”

  “Honestly, Hunter, what I need right now is a breakthrough. I think I’m in a rut.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a bit, and a few friends file by to give him a fist bump. Eventually, he turns to me and scratches the back of his neck. “Did I hear a colleague mention an important botany conference coming up soon?”

  I nod. “That’s true. I haven’t been there for ages. I don’t even think anyone still remembers me.”

  “Why not go to the conference and soak up inspiration?”

  “That’s not a half bad idea, Hunter.” I pat his leg and don’t mention that the conference costs almost $1,000, which I can’t spare right now, and if I mention that he will just try to lend me the admission fee. I spy his friend Digger coming toward us, waggling his eyebrows.

  “Craw-dad!” He hollers. I groan. Digger is perpetually hitting on me. “Craw-dad’s sister!” He holds out his arm. I think he’s looking for a shake, but he takes my hand and pulls me in for a hug. “I’d rather get reacquainted with you than your brother, anyway,” he says.

  “Digger, knock it off.” I shove him back and roll my eyes. “I’m still not interested.”

  “Thought you’d be feeling nostalgic or left out since your bro-bro’s off the market.” One of our nation’s top cyber-security experts, Austin Digby still talks and behaves an awful lot like a frat guy. I see why my brother was glad their time in the space station only overlapped by a week. “Listen.” He leans in close. “If you change your mind about that Digger nookie, I’m just a text away.”

  Before I can open my mouth to swear at him, I feel an arm drape around my shoulders. I look up into Asa’s face, his jaw clenched, cheeks flushed beneath his dark stubble. “I’ll help Diana with all her nookie needs,” he says.

  Digger is unfazed. “Yeah, I bet you will. Nice job, Sister Crawdad.” And just as quickly, he turns back to my brother and pulls him into a hug.

  Asa’s arm tightens around my shoulder. “Who the hell is that?”

  “Would you believe me if I said he was pledging a frat at OCC?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Asa

  SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE fireworks and the town people deciding to throw Hunter into the creek, I lost track of Diana. Each time I try to step away and find her, another Oak Creek resident pulls me into conversations about vacant storefronts on Main Street or the summer tourist season that picks up when all the potential Oak Creek College students and their families flood the town.

  “Ed Hasting, Oak Creek Gazette.” An old man stumbles over to me while I’m trying to scoop up potato salad. I set down my bottle of beer to shake his hand. “And you’re Asa Wexler,” he continues, eyeing me up, not letting go of my hand. “You just bought the old Espenshade house, correct?”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Ed pulls out a digital recorder and shoves it in my face. “What’s your plan here in Oak Creek, Mr. Wexler? You’ve financed Hunter Crawford and other researchers on the Oak Creek faculty.”

  “Ed, mind if we sit down for this interview?” From what I hear, I’ll need to choose my words carefully or I will be peppered across Oak Creek social media all out of context. I try to steer his questions toward Wexler Holdings, but he keeps asking about my personal life. Somewhere between talking about my Bar Mitzvah and my masters project at Wharton, I spy Indigo and Abigail dragging Diana and Hunter out on the dance floor.

  “Ed, can you excuse me? I owe Dr. Crawford a dance.”

  Tipping my head at Hunter as he stiffly dances with a swirling Abigail, I reach for Diana and tap her on the shoulder. “Can I cut in?” I whisper against her neck, savoring the faint scent of her sweat as she shakes her hips.

  Indigo grins and shoves her into my arms. “I need to go put up my feet anyhow.”

  Diana pouts, even as she leans back against my body, like she’s drawn in and afraid all at once. “You’re barely pregnant, Indigo. Your feet aren’t swollen.” But she’s already bobbing over to Sara, who pats the space next to her on a hay bale.

  “Now you’re stuck with me,” I whisper again, pulling her tight enough against my body for her to feel what she does to me. I’m in a constant state of semi- or full arousal when I see, smell or think about Diana Crawford. And I’m enjoying every second of it.

  She shrugs and sways a bit to the music, eventually turning in my arms to study my face. “I don’t want you to want more than sex,” she says.

  “Who says I want more than that?”

  She rolls her eyes. “You tell me that all the time, Wexler.”

  “What’s wrong with admitting you like spending time with me? I’m told I can be quite charming.”

  “We haven’t actually really spent much time together,” she points out. “Mostly we are just having sex. Which is what I’d like to go and do right now.”

  “Fuck me,” I hiss as she reaches between our bodies and rakes her hand along my shaft.

  “Exactly,” she says, tugging my hand and pulling me down the street. We tumble in the door of my house and christen the living room floor, the wall in the hallway, and finally my bed, where I try to convince her to stay and sleep.

  “If you stay,” I tell her, “I can wake you up with my tongue between your legs and you can yell at me until I get my technique just right.”

  Diana seems to ponder that for a moment and lets herself drift off to sleep. When I wake up, she’s gone and the bed is cold.

  I find Moorely and Hunter on campus, waiting for me by a row of forsythia bushes in full bloom. I can see why people are drawn into this town, despite its quirky residents and lack of alcohol or night life. When I walk up to them, the pair is deep in conversation about Moorely’s research. Hunter apparently missed some updates while he was in space. “I’m astonished that my sister reached out to you for help,” Hunter says. Moorely shrugs.

  “She’s the one helping me. I would never have thought of an agricultural application for my sensors. I feel like I have entire new economies open to me now.”

  I clap him on the back. “Opportunity is invigorating. You should thank her.”

  Moorely guffaws. “From what I hear, she’s only accepting specific favors from you these days.”

  I feel my insides clench. “That isn’t what I meant at all.”

  “I know what my sister wants,” Hunter interjects before I launch into full caveman mode. “She wants to go to the botany conference.”

  “Well why doesn’t she just go?”

  Hunter scratches his chin a bit and looks back and forth between us. “Abigail feels Diana has lost her confidence. She has had some…setbacks.
Diana claims she just can’t afford to go.”

  Moorely snaps his fingers. “I’m going to list her as co-investigator when I send my article off for publication. I mean, it’s true, even if she doesn’t currently have affiliation. Should I list her business as her affiliation, do you reckon?”

  While Hunter and Moorely debate the logistics of crediting Diana’s work in some fancy scholarly journal, I whip out my phone to text Andrea. Can we sponsor a botany conference?

  I don’t see why not. But why would we want to?

  Give them however much to get me a ticket and sponsor a researcher.

  I bet I can guess which researcher. You ever going to fill me in on the potential project?

  I send Andrea a quick email with the info and instructions for getting Diana to the conference. I know she won’t accept another gift from me directly. While I go over paperwork at the college, I let my mind wander to the promised thrill of having Diana in New York, of taking her home and into my bed. Of, maybe someday, keeping her there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Diana

  I SHOULD HAVE known this was too good to be true. Nobody invited me as a distinguished guest to this botany conference. And nobody upgraded my hotel room to a luxury suite…nobody but Asa Wexler. I groan as I drop my bag on the marble floor of the room, whose 30-foot tall windows overlook midtown Manhattan.

  He must have been talking to my brothers. That’s the only explanation for this—I saw him cozying up to the entire town at the Equinox Festival. Of course, this is just another reminder that I’m not here as a rising star in my career. I’m not here to discuss an upcoming paper about vertical farming methods. I’m here as Asa Wexler’s fuck buddy, and a great big phony when it comes to the world of botanical research.