The Billionaire's Best Friend (The Sherbrookes of Newport)

by Tetreault, Christina

  “Can you wait until later to leave so we can talk tonight? I’ll come home early as planned.” Nate never pleaded. Right now his voice bordered on it.

  Some of her anger faded. He really didn’t realize he’d been in the wrong. “It’s not about talking.” She let her arms fall by her sides. “It’s about what I need, Nate.”

  “Lauren . . . “ His voice trailed off as he nodded and walked into the room. “This is yours.” He dropped the ring on her bureau. “Have a safe trip.” He placed a kiss on her cheek. “I love you.”

  Lauren’s heart cracked open, and words failed her as he walked back out of the bedroom. Then she heard the kitchen door open. Alone at last, she sank onto the bed. Dropping her head into her hands, she let the tears come. God, she’d come so close to having her dream come true. Now, thanks to his arrogance, it was in jeopardy. Maybe Kevin and his family had the right idea about marriage after all. Maybe it shouldn’t be about love. A marriage formed like a business kept your heart safe.

  “Enough crying for now.” She raised her head and wiped the tears from her face. She had too much to do before she left, including a call to Callie to tell her the wedding was off.

  Chapter 14

  Cliff House sprawled out before her. Designed to resemble Alexander Palace in Russia during the late 19th century, the mansion amazed her every time she saw it. The amount of time and money that went into constructing and maintaining the building boggled the mind. Just a few years earlier, she and Callie toured mansions like this one, awestruck by their beauty and the people who had once owned them. Now she got to sleep in places like this on a regular basis, and her best friend and her family owned them. How quickly life changed. Too bad it didn’t always change for the better, as it had in Callie’s case. She’d gone from thinking her father was dead, to meeting a family she didn’t know she had, and meeting the love of her life. Now she and Dylan were starting a family of their own.

  Lauren parked in front of the mammoth garage, a building bigger than her house. Time to put on a happy face. Tomorrow when Callie arrived, she could spill her heart, but for now she needed to keep it together.

  The Sherbrookes’ butler opened the door and, as usual, greeted her in his monotone voice. Someday she’d love to see the guy get angry. He always appeared so calm. Almost to the point of being bored.

  “Great. You’re here.” Sara appeared behind the butler. “Charlie and Allison are here, too.”

  Sara gave her a welcoming hug. Once again, Lauren thought of how much things had changed. Not that long ago Sara would have said hello and kept on walking. Now, though, she treated Lauren as a friend.

  “Allison called me and asked if she could help,” Sara explained, referring to Allison Sherbrooke, her and Callie’s cousin. “They’re outside.”

  Sara led her out onto the veranda where Charlie and Allison sat, the remnants of lunch still on the table. Immediately, Lauren took a deep breath and enjoyed the smell of the ocean. Off in the distance she saw the sailboat Jake kept moored at the estate, bobbing up and down as the waves crashed against its side.

  “Are you hungry? We just finished lunch, but I can have something prepared for you.” Sara took a seat next to her cousin. The two women looked so much alike they could be sisters.

  “I’m good.” Lauren hadn’t eaten since the night before, but even still she had no appetite.

  With a nod, Sara pulled the tablet computer from the case by her feet. “Now that Lauren’s here we can start.” Her fingers flew across the screen, causing the light glittering off the large diamond ring to hit Lauren square in the eye.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she asked, all thoughts of Callie’s baby shower pushed aside for the moment.

  A giddy smile formed, and Sara nodded.

  “Why haven’t I read about it?” The media loved the Sherbrooke family. How had they missed that Sara Sherbrooke and Christopher Hall were engaged?

  “After our trip to Connecticut, we stopped at Martha’s Vineyard for a few days, and he asked me then. We haven’t told anyone except family yet.”

  “Congratulations. Can I see?”

  The ring on Sara’s hand was breathtaking. She couldn’t even imagine how many karats the thing was. Actually, in a way it reminded her of the ring Kevin had proposed with, although that one hadn’t been quite as large. Despite the beauty of Sara’s ring and the one Kevin had offered, she preferred Nate’s. She glanced down at her own hand. She hadn’t worn the engagement ring long, but her hand looked strange without it now.

  “It’s beautiful. I won’t tell anyone.” She released Sara’s hand.

  “I know. I trust you, Lauren. Congrats, yourself. Callie told me about your wedding next month.”

  “You and . . .” Charlie paused, her forehead creased as she thought. “Kevin, right? Callie thought you two weren’t that serious.”

  “Who’s Kevin? Callie said your fiancé’s name was Nate. Someone you grew up with.”

  Obviously Callie talked about her with her family. But then again, Lauren sometimes did the same. Still, this time she wished her friend had kept her mouth closed.

  “Kevin asked me, but I said no. And as of right now, I’m not marrying anyone. I canceled the wedding.” Or at least she planned to. She still needed to drop the news on Callie.

  Three identical expressions of shock stared back at her.

  Sara put down the tablet in her hands, a clear sign that thoughts of the baby shower were gone. “Why? Callie told me the whole story. It sounded as if you were meant for each other.”

  “When he asked me to marry him, he left out a few details, including that we’d have to move to Virginia if he makes the FBI’s HRT.”

  “What exactly is that?” Allison asked.

  “According to Nate, it’s the FBI equivalent to the military’s special forces,” Lauren answered. “Anyway, he made all these decisions before he asked me and now expects me to just go along with them. I can’t be with someone who calls all the shots without considering how it will affect me. He did it once before. I’m not letting him do it again.”

  Sara slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Men are idiots sometimes.”

  “I heard that.” Jake walked out onto the veranda, followed by his best friend and future brother-in-law Christopher.

  “It’s the truth,” Charlie added when Jake placed a kiss on her cheek.

  “If women were in charge, the world would run much smoother,” Allison said, adding her two cents to the discussion.

  Christopher held up his hands in mock surrender. “Jake, I think that’s our cue to leave.” He leaned toward Sara and kissed her. “Your brother says his golf game has improved. I’ll be back after I prove him wrong.”

  Lauren watched with envy. Both couples exhibited utter love and happiness. Sure, they probably had disagreements. What couple didn’t? But they loved each other. Worked together to keep their relationship on track. At least from where she sat, neither Jake nor Christopher called all the shots, and from what she knew of Sara and Charlie, they’d never let their partners make all the decisions. Was it too much to ask for the same thing with Nate?

  “Christopher’s in for a big surprise. Jake’s game really has improved,” Charlie said once the two men departed. “He hired some former PGA golfer to coach him.”

  “Couldn’t take losing to Christopher anymore?” Sara asked.

  “Nope. You know your brother.”

  Sara laughed. “At least they’re gone for now.” Her smile faded. “Are you sure about canceling the wedding? Maybe you can work things out. And moving might be fun. I worried about moving to California, but now I love it.”

  “Virginia is beautiful, very similar to Massachusetts, and Quantico isn’t that far from us,” Charlie added.

  Lauren traced a path through the condensation on her water glass. The other women’s concern touched her, but weren’t they supposed to be planning a baby shower? “It’s not only the move. He never once mentioned his plans to me. He a
ssumed I’d just go along with them. That he knew best.” She took a sip of water, hoping the lump in her throat would disappear. “When we broke up after high school he did the same thing. He assumed life as a military wife would be too hard on me.”

  “On that one, I think he was thinking of how hard it would be on him, too. Trust me, I’ve seen it firsthand. It’s just as hard on the husbands and boyfriends when they get deployed as the woman they leave behind,” Charlie said.

  As a former doctor in the Navy, Lauren trusted Charlie’s insight, but that didn’t change the past. Before he left for Annapolis all those years ago, they could have discussed it. He could have shared his worries with her.

  “From what Callie told me about you two, it sounds like he’s the one. Okay, he left after high school. Everyone does stupid things when they’re eighteen. He came back to fix his mistake. And if he didn’t mention the possibility of a move, he probably just forgot about it. Or assumed you expected a move at some point. Doesn’t the FBI move agents all the time?”

  Sara’s words held at least some truth. Everyone did make mistakes at eighteen. Still, she couldn’t dismiss what he’d done when it came to their current situation. “According to Nate, they don’t move agents as much as you think. Regardless, when I gave him back the ring, I told him I needed time to think,” she said, finally able to get a word in. “He’s leaving on July 15th. So no matter what I decide, I need to cancel the wedding.”

  “Just one more thing, and I promise I won’t say anything else. I almost lost Christopher because I let something from my past influence me. Sometimes you need to let go of the past, to forget about it,” Sara said.

  As promised, after Sara’s final comment no one mentioned anything else about Lauren’s romantic problems. Instead, the four of them dove into preparations for an end-of-summer baby shower. Even with the conversation centered on perfect locations and color schemes for the shower, part of Lauren remained detached. Even before their conversation, she wondered how she should handle Nate. With him back in her life she felt complete again. Before he’d walked into her mom’s retirement party, she hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed him. The years had dulled the pain caused by his departure. And looking back, she could admit that over the years she had compared all the men she dated to him. No matter who they were or what they did, none had made her feel the same way Nathaniel Callahan did.

  Even with all that, though, could she ignore his insistence on calling all the shots? She wanted a partner, not a guardian. If she married Nate, what kind of future would she have? Would he eventually try to control every aspect of their life? Some men were like that. They didn’t allow their wives to make any decisions on their own. She didn’t think Nate would ever go that far, but what if this most recent action turned out to be just the beginning? She would never stand for behavior like that, and if they had children she didn’t want her children raised in that kind of environment.

  ***

  How had his week gone down the crapper so fast? Monday he’d been on the top of the world. He’d been about to marry the one woman he’d always loved. Then HRT announced tryouts down in Quantico. Since he first applied for a position with the FBI, he’d wanted a spot on the Hostage Rescue Team.

  Now just a day later, and he was stuck in traffic with his wedding called off and Lauren expecting him to move out by the time she returned from Newport. Part of him said she’d come to her senses. That she would change her mind and still marry him. What if she didn’t, though? Deep down, in a place he avoided, he knew it was possible.

  The car in front of him moved, and Nate took his foot off the brake. Why had he scheduled this last minute interview in Natick at four-thirty in the afternoon? Traffic on Route 9 sucked in the middle of the week, but on a Friday the nightmare only intensified. Nate made it to the traffic light just as it turned red.

  “Won’t miss traffic like this when I move to Maine,” Joe said. In his fifties, Joe Perkins had been with the agency for twenty-five years and planned to retire in the fall. Since Nate had arrived in Boston, he’d acted as a mentor of sorts to him. “Heard I’m not the only one moving on. When do you leave?”

  “Next month.” Nate tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. There had to be a better way around this section of town. Next time he came through here he needed to find it.

  “Word of advice. Make sure your fiancée is on board with this. I spent fifteen years with the team, and I saw a lot of marriages end. Even those that looked rock solid from the outside. Heather and I did fine, but not all women can handle the stress.”

  Nate tucked away Joe’s words for later. He hadn’t considered how the day-to-day stress of the job would affect Lauren.

  “Would’ve had more kids if I stayed an agent in a field office rather than join the team. But after Nadine was born, Heather said she didn’t want to have any more children. In a lot of ways, she was a single parent and she couldn’t handle more than Jessie and Nadine.”

  In the months they’d worked together, Joe rarely divulged any information about his family. In fact before now, Nate hadn’t even known the name of Joe’s children. For him to do so now spoke volumes. From where he sat, it sounded as if Joe believed only single agents with no ties belonged with HRT.

  “Trying to talk me out of it, Joe?” Nate pulled into the parking lot of an office complex.

  “Never. Just preparing you. Life in a field office can’t prepare you for life with HRT. So before you take the plunge, make sure you think it through.”

  ***

  The entire house was dark when he pulled into the driveway. Not even an outside light remained on, a reminder that Lauren wasn’t home. Since he’d moved in, she’d gotten into the habit of leaving the driveway light on for him on those nights he got home late. He’d started to think of it as a welcoming beacon. The absence of that light tonight only drove home how close he was to losing her again.

  When Nate walked inside the kitchen Maggie and JoJo immediately greeted him, their tails wagging. The two dogs had become inseparable. Tomorrow when he moved back to his apartment, Maggie wasn’t going to like it. And the dog wasn’t the only one. No place he’d lived since joining the Marines had felt like home until now, and all because Lauren was there.

  Is it worth it? He replayed Joe’s words from the afternoon. Yeah, he wanted this, but was it worth risking his and Lauren’s future for it? If he spent the rest of his career working cases in Boston, he’d be satisfied. Would it be as thrilling? Would there be the same adrenaline rushes? Hell, no. But he did have other options. An email had gone out yesterday about the SWAT team tryouts. A spot on that would allow him to stay in Boston and still fulfill his desire for a bit more excitement. Not only that, but from the sound of it, it would put far less stress on their relationship. Not that Lauren couldn’t handle it, but was it fair for him to do that to her? Especially without preparing her for it? Maybe if he’d told her about it from the start. If he’d done that rather than making his own assumptions, they could have discussed it. If he’d done that she would’ve had a chance to digest the idea before he uprooted her life.

  What he should have done, no longer mattered. The mistake was made. Now he needed to find a way to fix it.

  Pulling a beer out of the refrigerator, Nate headed for the living room. With Lauren gone, the house felt like a tomb. He needed some background noise, anything on television would do tonight. He knew the Sox had another game tonight against the Yankees. It was the third game in a four-game series. Only that past Wednesday night they’d cuddled together on the couch watching the Sox beat the Yankees. They’d talked about catching a few games at Fenway that summer. Maybe even asking Callie and Dylan to join them.

  Now, that whole night seemed like another lifetime. Nice job fucking things up. Tipping back the bottle, he took a swig as the dogs jumped up on the couch next to him. What if he stayed put? Passed on HRT. He reached out and scratched Maggie under her collar. In response, the dog dropped her head on his
lap, her eyes closed. “Too bad I can’t make Lauren happy this easily.” He glanced down at the dog and then turned up the volume on the television as the announcer rattled off the starting lineup for the game.

  The voice from the TV became little more than white noise as he sorted out the questions in his head. Would she stay with him if he didn’t report to Quantico next month? Only one way to find out. She asked for time and space. He’d give her until Sunday night—then he’d make his offer. If she wanted, he’d pass on HRT. A life with her meant a hell of a lot more to him. In the meantime he had no intention of moving out. When she returned from Newport he’d be right here waiting for her, ready to fight for her. Because the truth was, he had no life without her. He’d already tried that, and the thought of going back to it left him numb.

  ***

  She stared into the empty mug, her mind on the conversation from lunch. Both Charlie and Sara had given her a lot to think about. Before Charlie’s comment, she’d never considered that Nate broke up with her because he would have found a relationship too difficult while in the Marines. Now though, she saw there may have been multiple reasons for what he did. Sara’s warning also resonated with her. If she let her anger from the past influence her decision now, she may regret it later. If she sent him away now, she’d likely never get another chance with him. Was that really what she wanted?

  “Hey, I thought I was the only one up.” Allison walked into the kitchen and went straight to the refrigerator.

  Lauren shot her a weak smile. “Couldn’t sleep, so I came down for some warm milk with cinnamon.”

  “Does that work?”

  “Sometimes. Not so much tonight.”

  “I wanted to tell you this earlier but you seemed done with the conversation.” Allison dropped into the seat next to her. “Guys don’t think the same way we do. Trust me, I have four brothers. Sometimes I wonder if they think at all.”