The Billionaire's Allure (The Silver Cross Club Book 5)

by Bec Linder

  “But I didn’t, and you’re not going to.”

  “Or what?” I snapped. “How are you going to stop me?”

  “She’ll be mad at you, too,” he said. “And you don’t want to lose her either, do you? I saw the way you looked at her. You’re still in love with her. If you tell her now, she’ll run.”

  “If I don’t tell her now, she’ll find out eventually, and she’ll never forgive me,” I said. “The original lie was bad enough. Compounding it now with a lie of omission—”

  “But she doesn’t know that you know that she doesn’t know,” Renzo said, which took me a moment to untangle. “You tried to tell her. And I fucked up and hid it from her.” He shrugged. “Don’t tell her yet.”

  “What a God-awful idea,” I said. “If not now, when? The longer it goes—”

  “That’s not my problem,” Renzo said. “If she hates you forever—so what? It’s no skin off my back.”

  “You’re a coward,” I said. He didn’t look triumphant. He looked tired, and older than he was. “You love her, don’t you?”

  He looked over his shoulder toward the house. Head turned away from me, he said, “Yes.” Then he looked at me once more, so much sorrow and buried longing in his eyes that my rage ebbed immediately. This man deserved my pity, not my anger. “But she never thought of me like that, not with you around. I always knew I didn’t have a chance.”

  I blew out a lungful of air. “Fine. I won’t tell her right away. I’ll give you a little bit of time. But not a lot. If you don’t tell her soon, I’m going to tell her myself. She deserves to know the truth. From both of us.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I’m going to send her the letter.”

  “For the record, I think this is a terrible idea,” I said, “and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But I’m here because I wanted to apologize to you and try to make amends, and if this is what you want, I’ll go along with it. At least for a little while.”

  He grunted his agreement. A handshake was too much to hope for, I supposed.

  We walked back to the house. After a few moments of silence, Renzo grinned and said, “You know, I was really looking forward to blackmailing you.”

  “Am I less of a dishonest creep than you anticipated?” I asked. “My apologies.”

  “Integrity is expensive,” he said. “Especially when you’re in prison.”

  It was a tacit apology, and I took it as such. I couldn’t hate Renzo. I couldn’t even be angry with him. His life was a sad ruin, and—I was sure—a daily reminder to him of what he could have done, could have been, had things turned out a little differently.

  Maybe I would send his wife a large, anonymous check.

  Beth was in the front yard with the little boy, holding the handlebars of his bike and encouraging him to balance. Renzo and I stopped at the end of the driveway and watched her. I couldn’t say what was going through Renzo’s mind, but I suspected his thoughts were similar to my own. Beth had originally, and very understandably, been cold and distant with me when I first appeared at her club. Only yesterday had the ice thawed and the old Beth, the Bee I had known, reappeared. She was bright, warm, maternal. Watching her with Renzo’s son brought forth a sharp yearning in my chest. I wanted to start a family with her. I wanted her to laugh in the front yard with our own children.

  If she ever forgave me.

  Christ. How was I going to tell her?

  Her laughter stopped when she noticed us watching. “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine,” Renzo said.

  “Uncle Renzo, look what I can do!” the boy said.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Uncle?”

  “My sister’s kid,” Renzo said. “I’m living with them for now.”

  I quickly rewrote my mental narrative. Sister, not wife. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  He grunted in response.

  Beth helped the boy down from his bike and approached us with a look on her face like she still thought punches might fly. Renzo smiled at her, and I fought back a surge of jealousy. Renzo had been, at one time, as close as a brother. I had hoped, probably foolishly, that we might become close again. I knew now that there was no chance of that happening, but it still pained me to see him respond to Beth so warmly when he didn’t even want me in his house.

  “Stay for lunch,” Renzo said, and then, with a glance in my direction, “Not you.”

  “I’m not going to leave him sitting in the car while I eat with you,” Beth said.

  Her loyalty was like a blade through my heart. “I don’t mind,” I said. I would be the bigger man. “This is why we flew out here. Take as much time as you want.”

  She protested a few more times, but we wore her down, and she followed Renzo and the boy back into the house, glancing back at me over her shoulder with her eyebrows furrowed.

  I wondered what Renzo was going to tell her.

  I sat in the car and checked my email on my phone, hoping for an urgent crisis of some sort that would take all of my attention. There were none. I was alone with my thoughts, and they were black, black.

  Everything I had done since reuniting with Beth, every word, every touch, was predicated on the idea that she knew my true identity and knew that I had lied to her. I thought we had dealt with the past; I thought she had forgiven me. But instead, I was back where I had started, a beleaguered supplicant with my heart in my hands.

  I wondered what she thought about my unexplained disappearance. Did she really believe that I would have abandoned her like that, without a word? I understood, now, why she had told me that she thought I was dead. In her position, I probably would have thought the same.

  Ah, fuck. What was I going to do?

  Wait for Renzo. Hope he didn’t take too long. Tell Beth myself if he dragged his feet for more than a week or two.

  And in the meantime—what? Carry on with Beth like nothing had happened? It wasn’t right. It was a slimy, underhanded thing to do. But if I changed my behavior, she would get suspicious, and I had promised Renzo I would give him the time he needed.

  I didn’t have a choice. I would have to act like nothing had changed.

  By the time Beth finally reemerged from the house, I was in a state of total emotional agony. I couldn’t set things right with her without breaking my word to Renzo; all I could do was wait and see, and hope she didn’t hate me too much after the truth finally came out.

  I watched as Renzo walked her to the curb and drew her into an embrace. She pressed her face against his chest, and he held her tightly, his arms wrapped around her. He said something, and her shoulders shook—with laughter, or maybe with tears. And then he kissed the top of her head and released her, and she turned away from him and opened the door of the car.

  “Everything okay?” I asked her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  She buckled her seatbelt, and I started the engine. Renzo stood on the sidewalk, watching us, impassive. Beth lifted one hand in farewell. After a moment, Renzo raised his own hand.

  I pulled away from the curb.

  Beth was silent in the passenger seat beside me as I turned left at the corner and headed back toward the freeway and San Francisco. As I merged again onto the main road, with the car dealerships and the gas stations, she said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked, dull panic gripping at my chest. Had Renzo said something to her that made her think—

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Just a feeling. He seemed like he was saying goodbye. I think he’s still—I don’t know. He’s had a hard life. I think he wants us to stay in the past, you know? It seems like he’s sort of glorified the time we spent together, like it was the best time of his life. And it’s hard to idolize real people. He wants us to stay distant, and perfect.”

  “I guess I can understand that,” I said.

  “Can you?” Beth gave me a sideways look. “I don’t think it’s any way to live, stuck in the pas
t like that.”

  I turned on the freeway, and we rode several miles in silence. Then Beth said, “Are you hungry? We can stop somewhere for lunch. You didn’t have anything to eat.”

  “I can wait until we’re back,” I said. “It’s sweet of you to think of me, though.”

  She drummed her fingers against the arm rest. “Max, why didn’t Renzo want to talk to you?”

  And now the lying began. I drew in a deep breath. What was that line from Emily Dickinson? Tell the truth, but tell it slant. “I’m not really sure,” I said. Not a lie: he hadn’t told me in so many words why he had kicked me out of the house. I thought I knew, but I could have been wrong. “Did he say anything about it?”

  “We didn’t talk about it,” she said. “I won’t pry, but I hope you’ll both get over it. I know how you men are.”

  I grinned. Bullet dodged. “How we are? And what way is that, my sweet Beth?”

  “You know,” she said. “Proud. Conceited. Totally full of yourselves—”

  “Forget I asked,” I said. “I wonder if my fellow men know about our unfortunate reputation.”

  “Probably,” she said. “That’s why God made women.”

  We made good time back into the city. I dropped the car keys off at the rental counter, and we went up to our suite. Beth tossed her purse on the coffee table and sank onto the sofa with a sigh.

  “What next?” she asked.

  “We’ll leave tomorrow,” I said. “Assuming they can find me a plane.”

  “So soon?” She frowned at me. “I thought…”

  “There’s no reason to stay,” I said. “I didn’t get the impression that Renzo would welcome a second visit.”

  “No,” she said. “I guess not.” She gave me a searching look. “Are you okay? I know you were hoping that he would be glad to see us.”

  “He was glad to see you,” I said.

  “But you wanted him to be glad to see you.” She stood and came to me, and put her arms around me. “I’m sorry. I wish it hadn’t turned out that way.”

  “Now you can tell me ‘I told you so,’” I said.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” she said. “That would be mean. Even though it’s true.” She pushed up onto her tiptoes and kissed my cheek. “I’m still sorry, even though I told you so.”

  I closed my eyes and held her against me, her small, soft body a warm anchor, reminding me of my place in the world.

  I was terrified of losing her.

  There was nothing I could do. It was out of my hands now.

  In the morning, we boarded a plane and flew back to New York.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Beth

  You would think that nobody at the club had ever taken a vacation before.

  “Where did you go?” Binh asked me. “Was it somewhere fancy? Did you go with that guy who kept showing up here? Did you go somewhere with a tropical island?”

  “You go to a tropical island, you don’t go somewhere with a tropical island,” Tubs said. “Jeez, Binh.”

  “Don’t correct me,” Binh snapped at her, and then turned back to me, eyes wide. “Did you fly on a private plane? Did you take a yacht? That guy looked like the sort of person who owns a yacht.”

  “He doesn’t own a yacht,” I said, even though he very well could, for all I knew. “We didn’t take a yacht.”

  “That means they took a private plane,” Monica said. “What was it like? Was it like in the movies?”

  “You’re all making me lose count,” I said, giving up and setting my tips down on the bar. “Work is over. Go home.”

  “But we want to hear all about it,” Tubs said. “You never go on vacation. You’re like Germaine. I don’t even remember the last time you took two days off in a row.”

  “You’ve only been working here for six months,” I said. “That’s not enough of a sample.”

  “Yeah, but Amy said, and she’s been working here for a long time,” Tubs said. “Isn’t that right, Amy?”

  Amy, on her way out the door with her purse slung over her shoulder, said, “Whatever you say, kid,” and kept moving.

  “See!” Tubs said triumphantly.

  “Tubs, she didn’t even know what you were talking about,” Padma said, rolling her eyes. “You can’t act like she just agreed with you for real.”

  “Anyway,” Binh said, raising her voice to be heard over the other waitresses, “as I was saying! All of you need to shut up, I’m still trying to talk to Beth about her vacation.”

  I sighed. The only way out was through. “I went to San Francisco.”

  “Oooooh,” the waitresses chorused in unison.

  “It was fine,” I said. “I flew on an airplane. It’s a big metal thing that goes through the sky, like a bird.”

  “Now you’re just being sarcastic,” Tubs said, like I was hurting her feelings.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I am. I’d like to finish counting my tips in peace and go home to my warm bed. Is that too much to ask?”

  “We just wanted to hear about your trip,” Binh said, shoulders slumping.

  I sighed again. Now their feelings were hurt. Fine. “It was very nice. You were right, I did go with that man who kept coming here. His name is Max. We went to look for an old friend.”

  They all had identical expressions, like kids who had just been told that Christmas was coming early that year. Even annoyed as I was by their prying, I had to admit it was pretty comical.

  Padma asked, “Did you find her?”

  “Him,” I said. “We did. It was very nice to see him again.”

  “What else?” Binh asked. “Did you go to that—what’s that place, the island—”

  “Alcatraz,” I said. “No, we didn’t have time.”

  “Did you go see those houses from that show?” Tubs asked. “With those girls who are twins.”

  “Are you talking about Full House?” Monica asked, her voice dripping with scorn and disbelief.

  Tubs, oblivious, beamed. “That’s the one!”

  I’d had enough. I gathered my pile of tips and stuffed the bills in my purse. I would count later, at home. Time to go.

  I had been back in New York for a couple of days and hadn’t heard a peep out of Max the entire time. He’d been withdrawn on our flight back, staring out the window most of the time and and making only a few paltry attempts at conversation, and although he’d given me a long, heated kiss when we parted on the tarmac, his heart hadn’t seemed to be in it. It was enough to make a girl think she’d done something wrong.

  I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, though. It was probably residual sorrow about Renzo. I didn’t know for sure what had passed between them, but I had a good imagination, and neither of them was particularly subtle. The looks on their faces when they came back from their mysterious consultation had told me everything I needed to know.

  I understood grief. I’d had my fair share of it. I was more than willing to give Max some time to process his emotions in private.

  Partly because, as a side benefit, it gave me some time to process.

  Having sex with Max again had been… intense. I was a little unsettled by my body’s powerful response to his touch. We had always had good chemistry, even as clueless teenagers, but I certainly hadn’t expected the fireworks. I smiled to myself, slumped there in my seat on the subway. If Binh were telling me this story, she would have said literal fireworks, and I would nod and imagine colorful eruptions of sparks rising from the bedspread.

  The woman across the aisle from me gave me A Look. She was no doubt worried that smiling to myself would soon be followed by talking to myself, and then maybe by singing or yelling or, worst of all, panhandling. I settled my face back into a carefully neutral expression.

  I was sure I would hear from Max soon.

  And if not—well, I could always be a modern, independent woman and contact him. But part of me wanted him to make the effort.

  The next day I got up and wrote for an hour before I did anyt
hing else. I still wasn’t making any worthwhile progress on my book, but it didn’t bother me as much now. Love was a pain in the butt, but at least it provided a good distraction.

  After my hour was up, I went into the kitchen to make coffee and check my phone.

  Max had texted me.

  Sorry for radio silence, I read. Can I see you today? Lunch and a surprise. Sorry also for short notice.

  He had sent the text message earlier that morning, when I was still asleep. It was after noon now. I replied, Sorry, just saw this. Probably too late for lunch but we can hang out. I have to be at work at 4 though.

  My phone vibrated with a reply a few seconds later. It’s never too late for lunch. Come over to my place. We can have hot dogs and take a walk.

  I smiled. And why should I go all the way to Brooklyn?

  I washed some dishes while I waited for him to respond. When I checked my phone again, he had written: I’ll make it worth your while.

  There was an erotic promise in that sentence that gave me a warm, melting feeling in the pit of my belly. It had been too long since I’d had Max’s hands on me. Days.

  I intended to finish the afternoon in his bed.

  I took the subway to High Street and walked the few blocks to Max’s place along the waterfront. It was a gorgeous, sunny day. The daffodils were in full bloom, and the tulips were just beginning to open. People were out walking their dogs, and I watched two very happy labs romping with each other in the park, tongues dangling from their mouths. Their owner threw a stick, and they both raced off.

  Max was waiting for me outside his building, dressed in faded jeans and a well-worn T-shirt that clung to his chest and biceps. I felt incredibly smug as I walked toward him: this good-looking man was all mine.

  He greeted me with a kiss and his hand at my waist: a very polite kiss, appropriate for public, but the way his hand slid down to cup my ass wasn’t polite at all.

  Fine with me. I didn’t want polite.

  He released me and took a step back. “Beth, I’m really sorry that I didn’t get in touch with you sooner.”

  I shrugged. “It’s only been a few days. I figured you were busy with work, or kind of licking your wounds after what happened with Renzo.”