Tributary: A Billionaire Romance (Oak Creek Book 2)

by Lainey Davis

  “Diana,” he breathes. “You look…unbelievably breathtaking.”

  “Well, thank you,” I say, fidgeting with my phone, not really sure what to do next.

  He grins. “No smart comeback? You’re not going to yell at me about something?”

  I clear my throat and thrust my phone toward him. “I don’t have a bag, so you can hold that in your jacket pocket for me.”

  I pick up the pashmina I got to wrap around my shoulders and my heart skips a beat when he steps behind me to help me with the scarf. He gently lifts my hair and plants the most delicate kiss on my neck. When I shiver, he rubs his big hands down my arms, the heat of his body emanating into my skin. “We’d better eat before you do any more of that,” I tell him, and step into the elevator.

  It doesn’t occur to me to ask where we’re going as he opens the back door of the town car for me to slide inside. He nods at the driver and we pull out into Manhattan traffic. The sky starts turning colors as the sun begins to set along the Hudson River and Asa toys with the skirt of my dress, saying, “I never thought the moon goddess would look so good wearing the colors of the sunset.”

  “Cheeseball!” I swat at his arm, and he snatches my hand, planting a kiss on my knuckles. He’s thoughtful and charming and handsome as hell, and I need to be careful or I’m going to open myself up to something far too vulnerable. I have to remind myself not to get used to this. “Where are we going anyway?”

  The car slows outside a gorgeous stone and brick building with balconies and porches. “This doesn’t look like a restaurant…”

  The driver climbs out and opens the door before Asa can get around the car, so I can’t see his face when he says, “This is my parents’ house.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Asa

  “YOU BROUGHT A date to Seder?” My sister, Esther, is beside herself, nearly as flustered as Diana, who is trying not to murder me in front of my family.

  I’m not sure why I didn’t tell Diana where we were going, to be honest, but I brought her here because I wanted her to see my family. To see where I come from, and how different I am from my relatives.

  Maybe I did it to get a rise out of my mother. All I know is Diana is sitting in the living room of my childhood apartment eating fruit and sipping Kosher wine while my sister starts texting all our cousins. Damn it, Diana’s a woman without a tiny handbag. None of my other moves were getting me anywhere. But the type of angry Diana emits right now feels different. This isn’t just pissed off fire. This is cold, distant, friend-zone attitude. Esther is giving Diana the third degree.

  “Soooo you grow plants? Like for money?”

  I hear Diana trying to summarize her research, watch her roll her eyes and give up, finally saying, “I grow medical marijuana,” to which Esther replies, “I’ve got chronic migraines…did you bring any with you?”

  Uncle Mordy shows up just as Esther really picks up a head of steam. I wait for my mother to walk him into the room and grit my teeth, waiting for the reaction. “Asa! Why didn’t you tell me you’d arrived?” She pulls me in for a kiss and then I watch her notice Diana.

  She places her hand on her chest and steps back, clutching my arm with her other hand. “Asa!” She puts on her polite voice, but I can tell she’s taken aback. And I’m not proud of how good it feels. “Did you bring a guest?”

  Diana swallows her clementine and stands, smoothing her skirt. Her heels add a few inches to her height and she looks tall and lithe. With the fading light shining on her from the living room window, she looks much like her namesake. “Mother,” I say, stepping out of her grasp and putting an arm possessively around Diana’s shoulders. “This is Dr. Diana Crawford. She’s a botanist.”

  “Oh this is going to be good,” Esther says, taking a flask from Mordy.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Wexler,” Diana says, pumping my mother’s hand with a firm grip, even as my mother tries to offer her the typical wet fish hand that shows off her diamond tennis bracelet. “I want to apologize for crashing your dinner party. Asa didn’t tell me where we were going.”

  My mother raises an eyebrow and I pull Diana close against me. When Mom leaves the room, shouting over her shoulder for us to follow and get started, Diana pinches the sensitive skin of my inner arm.

  “Ouch! Shit! That hurt.”

  “You dragged me into a family dinner without warning? Jesus, Asa. I would have at least brought wine.”

  I shrug, rubbing the spot on my arm, and gesture that she should follow me into the dining room. The table is all set for Seder and my father bustles in the door just as my mom is instructing the catering staff about what to do during the candle lighting.

  “What is this?” Diana seems unsure of herself. My father pours the wine and starts singing in Hebrew.

  “This is Seder,” I tell her. “It’s a ritual meal…for Passover.”

  Everyone drinks and I nudge the bottom of Diana’s cup. “You brought me to a religious thing? Without telling me first?”

  I grimace, and dip my parsley into salt water, taking a bite as my father keeps praying. “I have good news for you.” I hand Diana a piece of dunked, salty parsley. “We’re each going to drink 4 glasses of wine tonight!”

  By the time Diana bites my finger when I feed her matzah, I’m over my strange pleasure at her discomfort. I’m past my juvenile joy at seeing my mother’s bulging eyes and Esther laughing at the whole situation. “So,” Esther says as the meal is served. “How long have you and Asa been together?” She smiles wickedly as she bites into her brisket, and Diana chokes on her wine.

  “Oh!” She says. “Well. We’re not really…Asa works with my family.”

  “Her brother’s the astronaut,” I say, looking at my father, who nods appreciatively.

  “That! Was a good investment.” He raises his wine glass to me. He tagged along with me to meet several competing drug companies eager to jump in on Hunter’s research now that the results are coming in from his latest mission to the space station.

  My mother just looks confused. “But how do you come to be here? In New York? In our home?”

  “Diana is here as my guest,” I tell her, as if that settles the matter. The truth is that I want her to be my girlfriend. I want this to be the first time she meets my parents. The story she tells our kids one day—that I tricked her into going on a date with me so I wouldn’t have to spend yet another evening with my mother asking me when the hell I’m going to settle down already.

  Uncle Mordy squints over his green beans. “You’re dating a shiksa?”

  “Mordy!” My father pounds his fist on the table.

  “And she grows weed for a living,” Esther pipes in, making a face at me over her green beans.

  Diana opens her mouth to say something, then closes it again and starts smoothing her cloth napkin in her lap.

  Flustered, my mother asks if Diana and I would open the door for Elijah. I nod and usher Diana to the French doors that open to the balcony, which overlooks Central Park.

  “What the hell is going on?” She hisses at me. “I am furious.”

  I want to tell her about my mother and her matchmaking. Or about my father coming to my apartment at night to lecture me about how he thinks I should be making promotional decisions, despite him handing over the reins of the company. Instead, I just beckon for her to follow me to the balcony.

  “This is my favorite part,” I tell her. “Seder always begins on the full moon, so when we open the door to see if the prophet has come, we’ll see the moon just as it rises over the trees.”

  To demonstrate, I yank open the door, and sure enough, the moon glows brighter than the light pollution. High and round, it shines down on Diana. She gasps. I don’t blame her. The sight is magical.

  We stare at it in silence for a moment, and she turns to me, frowning. “You can’t just do things like this, Asa. You can’t just decide to do things and not discuss it with me. This trip? This dinner? It’s not the same thing as you buyi
ng me a special plant.”

  “Diana, I’m sorry.” I rake my hands through my hair. “I’m not used to this.”

  “To what? Interpersonal relationships? Do you not run a company?”

  “The people who work for me…they do whatever I tell them. And my parents. Well you see my parents…”

  She sinks into a chair on the porch, staring at the moon as it continues to rise before our eyes. I sit in the chair next to hers, desperate to reach out and touch her, but I don’t.

  She sighs. “I don’t know why I’m going to tell you this. I don’t know why I haven’t left yet. But I just keep thinking of you paying attention to me when my brother was being a dick…” She drifts off for a minute, but I resist the urge to respond. “I trusted someone once. And he fucked me every way possible. And he made a fool of me, and then he stole six years of my work and sold it, and now he’s living some slime ball rich life on the tails of my hard work.”

  “You mean Jay Buford? His patent?” When her eyes widen, I say, “I had Andrea look into it, because it was my father who gave him the seed money, and you bet your ass he didn’t cross his t’s or dot his i’s.”

  She looks more furious than I’ve ever seen her, like the mention of his name makes her physically ill and I remember how she stiffened up when I brought him up in Pittsburgh. “What do you mean ‘look in to it?’”

  “Exactly that—I can’t have Wexler Holdings associated with criminal activity, and acquiring a patent through deception and omission is not how we do things in my company. Not on my watch.”

  Her chest rises and falls quickly and she brings a hand to her lips, silent for a moment. “Just let it go, Asa. Please.”

  “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to keep my name associated with someone who stole intellectual property, Diana.”

  I can’t take it anymore and I pull her hand in between mine, squeezing. “And you’re out of your mind if you think I won’t hunt down someone who hurt you.”

  “I just wanted you to understand why you can’t lie to me. Why you can’t deceive me and spring surprise religious dinners on me. I don’t want to talk about…Jesus, Asa. I let him know me,” Diana chokes out. “He made me love him, and I let it happen. He was fucking me, Asa, and stealing my notes after. Taking my slides, my equations. Needling himself into my conversations with collaborators. And I loved him.” She seems to sink into herself, seemingly disgusted that she would ever believe her lover when he said he cared about her.

  “And that makes me want to dismantle him one bone at a time, Diana, and I fucking swear to you, I will find the holes in his paperwork and I will burn him to the ground.” I can feel my nostrils flare. I’m getting heated just thinking about this asshole, thinking he can shit on this goddess like this and shatter her sense of self worth. “And I will hand you his ashes for fertilizer,” I vow.

  I tug her into my lap in the chair, and feel her body relax as she leans back against my chest. I wrap my arms around her, reveling in the magical moment as I do every year—but knowing I never want to spend another full moon without this woman in my arms. I can’t help but lean in for a kiss. I’m thankful that she lets me, despite me dragging her into an awkward family dinner and drudging up all her difficulty with trust. I don’t deserve her giving me another chance, and yet her lips are molded against mine. I savor every taste, swiping my tongue along her lips.

  “What’s a shiksa?” She whispers.

  I kiss her again. “It’s a very rude word for a non-Jewish woman,” I tell her.

  She turns back toward the moon and wraps one arm around my shoulders, curling into my lap in her fancy ass dress that makes me want to do very dirty things. I whisper into her hair. “I am sorry I didn’t prepare you for dinner. I needed you to come because I couldn’t bear another family dinner with my mother setting me up with the Rabbi’s daughter.”

  “She’s trying to do that?”

  I nod.

  “How can I ever compete with the rabbi’s daughter?”

  I reach under her chin and tip her face toward mine with my finger tips. “There is no competition, Diana.”

  She is quiet for the rest of the night. She’s polite in conversation with my parents, and perks up when I tell them about her beer making, but she seems withdrawn in the cab back to her hotel.

  “What did I tell you?” I smile as we pull up to the front door. “I’ve got you home in time for a good night’s rest before your train.”

  She doesn’t smile back.

  “Look,” she says. “I didn’t want to do this in front of your family.”

  “Do what?” I can feel my heart in my throat, like she’s about to crush me, and I’m powerless to stop it.

  “This wasn’t just a funny prank tonight, Asa. You deceived me, and you deceived your family. And I’m just never going to be ok with deception.”

  She moves to get out of the car. “Wait,” I can’t let her go like this, after a zinger like that. “Can we talk about this?”

  “With the meter running, Asa? No. Thank you for the lovely hotel. Thank you for the opportunity to be at this conference. I’ll see you when you’re back in Oak Creek.”

  She walks away from the cab. I shove a handful of bills in the driver’s hand and leap out. “Diana!” She starts rushing into the hotel lobby, but I follow. “Wait, please.”

  Her heels echo across the marble floor in the lobby. The staff looks up and stares at us, her walking swiftly and punching the elevator buttons, me hustling behind. “Please let me come up and just talk with you.” She sighs deeply and doesn’t look up. “Just…I’m sorry. God, I don’t know what I was thinking, taking you to my parents’ house. For a holiday. Please, Diana, let me come up and talk with you and then I’ll leave.”

  The elevator door slides open and she holds up a hand. “Five minutes. In the sitting room. Not the part with the bed.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Diana

  THE ELEVATOR DOOR opens into my suite and I start peeling off the high heeled shoes. I don’t mean to let Asa see the relief when I shed the unfamiliar shell, but I can’t help it. The skin in between my toes is aching, not to mention the balls of my feet. I don’t want to let Asa see any of that—I’ve already given him too much, let him know too much about me. I don’t know how to make sense of anything that’s happening this weekend. Why I didn’t just walk the hell out of his parents’ house. Why I agreed to let him come up to my room at all. And yet, here he is with his tie loosened and his suit jacket slung over one shoulder, looking like Rhett Butler without the mustache.

  “Look,” I tell him. “I’m going to change out of this rig. Help yourself to something from the bar. I know the guy who’s paying for it.”

  He laughs as I hurry from the room. I slither out of the dress and drape it neatly over a chair. My feelings for him, about tonight, are so conflicting. On the one hand my body seems magnetically attracted to him. His touch hypnotizes me, summons some sort of feral response from deep within my marrow.

  But he also was untruthful—twice!—and I’m never going to recover enough to get past that. I slide into jeans and a t-shirt, feeling much more in control in my everyday uniform, and pad back out to the front room, where Asa has rolled his shirt sleeves up and spread out on the couch. Fuck, he’s sexy.

  I fold myself into the corner of the couch opposite him, and he hands me a bottle of water. “The conference and the dinner,” I begin, waving my hand around the room. “The hotel room…these aren’t nice treats or surprises for me. They felt like deceptions, another way to trick me somehow.”

  “Trick you? Diana, I’m giving you everything I’ve got here. I want to hear every idea in that huge brain of yours and I want to shower you with all the gifts I can. There’s no trick. Except darts. I cheated at darts.” He runs his hand through his hair and grins at me, hopefully.

  I wish I were drunk from the wine at his parents’ house, but between the meat and the cab ride, the moon, and the hours of list
ening to Uncle Mordy sing in another language, somewhere along the way I sobered up. I close my eyes. “You lied to me, Asa, and I just can’t overcome that.”

  “I see how you see it that way, Diana, I do. But it wasn’t my intent to mislead you. You have to know that. I just wanted to help you enjoy this conference.”

  His voice drifts off.

  “Did your files reveal that Jay was leading me on the whole time?” I take a swig from the water bottle, remembering how my stomach turned the day I found him copying the files from my computer onto a USB drive. “Our entire relationship was a ruse for him. A deception so he could slowly download all my research, create a history in his own computer so it looked like the ideas were both of ours. That he participated in the medical trials.”

  Asa slides over closer to me as I talk, and I’m not sure why, but I let him. He doesn’t feel like he’s invading my space, especially when he picks up one of my aching feet and begins to rub.

  “I caught him one day, transferring data, and he didn’t even try to lie about what he was doing. God, it must have been such a relief to him to be able to stop lying.” I’ve never told this part of the story to anyone, not even Indigo. My parents don’t know that Jay had his sights on me since the beginning of graduate school—that he pegged me as the unlovable genius who’d sing like a canary for the first guy who said I was beautiful. I start to tell Asa how, in the past few years, I’ve come to doubt every interaction I have with other people. I was so convinced what Jay and I had was real, and now I don’t know how to trust that I’m interpreting anything the right way.

  As I spill all of this to Asa, he sits silently, rubbing my feet.

  Finally, he asks, “How can nobody have told you that before him? You are objectively breathtaking.”

  Ignoring this comment, I go on. “I was also an obnoxious know-it-all in class, with absolutely zero tolerance or patience for anyone who didn’t see what I saw when we worked with plants. Which was basically everyone. Somehow I never noticed that Jay was faking his way into the PhD program as a legacy kid whose dad made some calls.”