Holt, Her Ruthless Billionaire

by Theodora Taylor

  His lip twists downward, but I can tell he is really giving some thought to what I’ve said. “How did you handle this?” he eventually asks me. “How did you talk to Barron about your sister? About the death of his birth-mother?”

  A sharp knock sounds at the front door before I can say anything.

  Holt calls, “Come in,” over his shoulder.

  Yahto, who arrived in Little Rock a few days before us to prepare the apartment and meet us at the airport, enters rolling our suitcases behind him.

  “Put those in the master,” Holt says.

  If Yahto has any questions about why Holt is sharing a room with the woman he all but forced on a plane to Connecticut back in the August, it doesn’t show on his large, square face. When he returns, he nods and says he will be in the penthouse lobby if we need anything.

  “Give me a minute,” Holt says after Yahto leaves. “I’m going to change out of my suit.”

  He disappears down a hallway that must lead to the bedroom. I almost follow, curious about the rest of the apartment. But then I think about what he said to me in his office. The way his eyes burned. “You’ll be sharing a room and a bed with me.”

  On second thought, I decide to stay right where I am. Next to the beautiful view. Where it’s safe. For now.

  Still, my heart jumps its tracks when Holt reappears a few minutes later. He has changed out of his usual dress suit into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Much like what he wore when we lived together the first time.

  But he is so different now. His messy blond hair and unkempt beard are gone. And his formerly slender arms are roped with bulky muscle, hinting at a work-out schedule that must go well beyond the “wake, bake, drop down and do a few push-ups” one Holt did back in the day. He’s fit and healthy, with focused eyes that, according to him, will forevermore remain clear of the fog I remember so well.

  Tell him, the guilt pleads with me. You have to tell him! All the secrets. Right now.

  “You hungry yet?” he asks.

  I swallow, my heart swinging back and forth like a pendulum before I finally answer with a simple, “Yes.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  My yes sounds choked and wheezy, even to my ears. I clear my throat and try again. “Yes. The risotto on the flight was delicious. But I could definitely eat again.”

  “Good. I had Yahto get us a few things. They’re in the fridge.”

  “Great,” I say, “Give me a few minutes and I’ll see what I can pull together.”

  I head in the direction of the gray-on-silver open plan kitchen at the front of the apartment, grateful to have something to distract me from the guilty mongoose running circles in my head.

  But Holt moves in front of me before I can take another step. “No, not this time.”

  “Wait. What do you mean ‘not this time?’” I ask, scrunching my face.

  “I’m making dinner,” he answers. He guides me over to one of the tall stools on the other side of the kitchen island. “You sit here.”

  “You are going to cook,” I repeat as I watch him take out all sorts of pots and pans and even a skillet from the cabinets.

  “Yes. Yes, I am,” he answers, stepping over to the refrigerator.

  “Do you even know how to cook?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I took a basics course.”

  My mouth falls open because the Holt I used to know would not have even known how to boil water. “When did you do that?” I ask with genuine curiosity.

  He sets a package wrapped in brown butcher paper on the counter beside the electric stove. “Yesterday,” he admits with a sheepish grin.

  “Okaaaay,” I say slowly after several shocked moments. Then I sit down, deciding I need to see this to believe it.

  My mind abruptly changes when he unwraps the brown butcher paper. “Is that…?” I shake my head, barely able to believe what I am looking at. It is something I would have to go all the way to New York or Hartford to get—and only for special occasions, like Thanksgiving or Easter Sunday. “Holt, is that goat?”

  “Yep,” he answers, pulling his phone out of his back pocket and setting it down on the counter beside the stove. “According to all the cooking websites, curried goat is a dish everyone will like.”

  “Hold on. You are making curry goat?!” The question explodes out of my mouth in the same tone I might use if he said he had turned his cell phone into a homemade bomb.

  “I have the recipe right here. Dinner will be ready in an hour…or 90 minutes tops… Hey, what are you doing? Give that back!” he demands when I snatch his phone off the counter.

  “Oh, wow. Now what kind of foolery is this?” I ask, scanning the recipe. “The cook time here is much too short. You want it falling off the bone, mon. And just a tablespoon of olive oil, they’re saying? No, mon. You want vegetable oil and a lot more than that.”

  Holt rolls his eyes but says, “Fine, you tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

  I rush around to his side of the stove before he changes his mind. “Curry goat isn’t a thing that can be properly conveyed with a recipe,” I explain, my voice sounding as stern as my mother’s. “You have to see it. I’ll show you.”

  “You’ll show me,” he repeats with a chuckle.

  A chuckle that makes me go completely still.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks when I freeze. “You don’t think I can do it?”

  “No, I know you can because I’m going to show you how to do it step-by-step,” I reply with an arrogant shake of my head. “It’s just…I haven’t heard you laugh. In a long time.”

  Now it’s his turn to pause, his smile slipping off his face like water. “I guess it’s been a while since I felt like laughing,” he answers.

  And there it is again. The past. Radiating between us like the 50s-era furnace at my parents’ house. Rattling and loud and too dangerous to touch once it has been turned on.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  HOLT

  We prepare the goat together. Sylvie gives me the instructions without consulting my phone recipe once. But we hit a snag after we put the goat on to simmer and I tell Sylvie I’m serving a salad as the side.

  “Oh, Holt! I try to be open minded to other cultures after working so long in hotels,” she tells me, pressing her knuckles into her bottom lip. “I can accept the gays, and the Jewish who don’t know Jesus, and the Midwesterners who ask me if Hedonism is open on Sundays. But what I cannot accept is eating curry goat without a proper side.”

  “Wait, salad isn’t a proper side?” I ask.

  Sylvie looks at me like I have punched a puppy in the face right in front of her. “No, it is most definitely not,” she answers with the gravity of an oncologist giving a patient the bad news.

  I tilt my head.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Because I am not drunk. And I am not high. But here it is again. The same joyous feeling that hit me when I first met her. The conviction that she is an angel. A goddess. Someone I can’t lose. Yet she still thinks this weekend is about saying goodbye, and I can’t show my hand to her. Not yet, anyway.

  Soon, I promise myself, even as I shake my head and tell her to draft a list of everything we need to make a proper side—“Rice and peas,” she says, grabbing my phone to text Yahto herself.

  We spend the next two hours tending to the curried goat, making my salad, and what turns out to be a dirty rice and red beans combo, similar to what they serve in New Orleans.

  It’s funny. We spent hours together that one summer. Nearly every minute on the weekends. Talking and fucking then fucking some more with eating being that thing we did in-between. I couldn’t stop touching her, couldn’t get enough of her. But as it turns out, cooking together feels far more intimate than any of the other stuff we ever did.

  And for the first time since Sylvie re-entered my life, I feel like a grown-up with her. A man. A father. Not just the bitter boy she left behind.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  SYLVIE />
  “This is not too bad, mon!” I tell Holt with a grin after taking my first bite of our jointly prepared goat. “You must have had a pretty good teacher, yeah?”

  “Yeah, I did,” he agrees with another rare chuckle.

  “You should try beef patties next,” I tell him. “Those are easier for people who need recipes. More like baking.”

  “Those are the things you used to make with the dough. Like Jamaican empanadas, right?”

  “Right,” I say, not surprised he remembers. I used to make a batch in the evenings before bed and find them gone by the time I got home from work. Beef patties are perfect for a guy with a semi-permanent case of the munchies. “Though my Aunt Judith calls empanadas ‘Mexican beef patties,’ so…”

  The conversation continues like that. Easy breezy until it is time to clear the dishes. When I rise to gather our plates and take them back into the kitchen, he jumps up and says, “No, let me.”

  “Whoa! Did you take a basic course in loading dishwashers, too?” I ask, craning my head to watch him scrape the dishes and place them in neat rows in the dishwasher.

  “No, I’m sort of winging it,” he answers, glancing over his shoulder at me. “How am I doing?”

  “Fine. But why all this now?”

  Holt stiffens and doesn’t meet my eyes when he says, “I’m embarrassed I didn’t know how to do any of these things before. I let you take care of me ten years ago, and I never once tried to take care of you.”

  I felt relaxed and happy during dinner, but this recent admission of his makes my heart pound with the memory of that night…

  Holt decided to ask his friends over. Supposedly to watch some soccer game, but in reality he plans to tell them about our marriage and invite them to walk to the courthouse with us. It’s down Church, less than a two-minute walk from Holt’s place.

  But I don’t want to spring this on his friends in the middle of the day when they probably haven’t eaten. So though Holt told Javon to make reservations at some fancy restaurant after our courthouse visit, I make jerk chicken drummettes, plantains, beef patties, and set out chips, dip, and cut vegetables on the dining room table. I also clean the apartment and let Holt give me money to buy myself a white dress. Not a fancy wedding one, but a pretty cotton number with eyelet embroidery, a flared, tiered skirt, and sleeveless tie-top shoulders that my mother never would have abided when I lived under her roof.

  I want to impress his friends, but things start to go wrong from the beginning. Holt is four beers in before Javon buzzes up to say Luca and Zahir, who room together in New York, are on the elevator and headed our way.

  I know both of his best friends… sort of.

  Zahir was Asir’s tall, chisel-jawed brother. I clearly remember how he was the target of Prin’s angry rant the night we drove back to Hartford from New Haven.

  As for Luca? Well, he might not have a naked girl bouncing on his lap, but it would difficult to forget a face as gorgeous as his. For his part, he has no recollection of me at all, and greets me with a distracted chin lift and a, “Hey, what’s what?” after Holt introduces me.

  I am surprised to discover these are Holt’s best friends. But I am determined to “be cool” as Prin would say.

  “Hey…” I begin by way of a greeting. Only to trail off in disbelief.

  See, though my parents tried to keep me as cloistered as possible from the corner activity in our neighborhood, I had witnessed enough drug deals go down to recognize what is going on when Luca clasps hands with Holt before bro-hugging him at the door.

  My suspicions are confirmed when Holt vanishes into the back of the apartment without another word, leaving me to awkwardly escort his guests to the table where I’ve set up the food and offer them drinks.

  Things might not have been so bad if Luca showed more interest in the spread I prepared for them and less in me.

  “So, you’re the girl who’s been keeping Holt too busy to throw parties,” he says following me to the kitchen when I fetch him a beer and a Perrier for Zahir.

  I am not sure how to respond so I say nothing. Instead, I reach into the fridge and bring out a cold bottle of Red Stripe and a can of Perrier.

  But Luca doesn’t move, even after I hand him the beer. “Tell me, how much is Holt paying you?”

  I blink, not understanding his question. Luca looks at me quizzically. “Wait. You telling me he’s not paying you?”

  “I am not telling you anything,” I answer honestly. “I’m not a hooker.”

  And that is when it happens. A dark cloud passes over Luca’s affable expression, as if by not charging his friend a fee, I have vexed him more.

  I decide not to wait for a follow-up question. “Excuse me,” I say, pushing past him and into the dining room to hand Zahir his drink.

  Zahir takes the Perrier with a terse, “Thank you.” He doesn’t ask any nosy questions, but his eyes are as suspicious as Luca’s as he looks my inexpensive white dress up and down.

  Normally, I would take the time to pour their drinks into a glass. But I have a very bad feeling about this. About them. And though I spent all afternoon preparing the appetizers, I decide to stay with Holt in the back until it’s time to announce why he really invited his friends here.

  But when I turned to leave, Luca is once again in my path, the beer I gave him casually tucked under one arm.

  “Hey, hold on,” he says, cupping my shoulder like we are old friends. “Don’t let me run you off, sweetheart. Stay here with us until Holt comes back. I want to get to know you. Find out what all the fuss is about.”

  I stop, feeling extremely uncomfortable. Because the only boy who has ever touched me in such a familiar way is Holt. And this boy with his “what’s what” and package of white powder is definitely not Holt.

  But before I can formulate a response, a hard voice says, “Stop flirting with my girlfriend, Luca.”

  A beat of tense silence passes as we both look up to see Holt. He’s dressed in a suit with his hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. Ready to go, one would think. But his feet are bare because he’s forgotten to put on shoes.

  An easy-going grin spreads across Luca’s devilishly handsome face and he says, “Hey man, I was just being nice. You know me.”

  “Yeah, I know you. That’s why I want you to take your hands off her right fucking now,” Holt answers, his tone low and threatening.

  This time the silence lasts even longer. But then, as if making a decision, Luca drops his hand from my shoulder and says, “Sorry, man. I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to be nice, considering you invited us over. Not to party with girls, but to do what, exactly? Watch a soccer game and, like, pretend this isn’t weird? You suddenly swapping out your real friends for some girl you met a few months ago?”

  Holt tilts his head, his eyes vicious as nitrous ice. “This girl has proven herself ten times more loyal than my so-called friends. She’s not here to party, or have random hook-ups with strangers.”

  “Okay, yeah, she’s so much more noble than me, right?” Luca shoots back. “I mean, I’m a real asshole. All I did was bring you the package you been texting me about all day, like you asked. While this martyr here makes chicken wings and fucks you on command. All you have to do is what? Let her live here? Pay her bills? And trust she’s not going to source a story on the batshit crazy Cal-Mart billionaire as soon as you sober up long enough to dump her?”

  My mouth drops open, but before I can defend myself, Holt is across the room. He and Luca fall to the ground, throwing punches, seemingly deaf to Zahir’s yells to, “Stop this. Cut it out. Now!” and my cries of, “Please stop! Don’t!”

  But Holt ignores us, and manages to get the upper hand with Luca. He hauls him to his feet, then shoves so hard, Luca falls against the dining room table I covered with food. The drummetes hit me square in the chest, staining the front of my dress before the plate crashes to the floor. An enraged Holt lays his friend across the table and starts throwing punch after punch into the b
oy’s pretty face.

  That’s when Zahir decides to join the fray in order to break things up. But by the time he pulls Holt off Luca, his friend’s pretty face is mottled and bruised.

  But that isn’t nearly enough punishment for Holt. “You don’t fucking talk about her!” he yells from behind the wall Zahir has made out of his body. “You do not fucking flirt with her! In fact, get the hell out of my house! Now!”

  Luca opens his mouth, looking like he wants to say something else. Then his face sets into a hard expression. “Just like I thought. You are beyond fucked up, man. You need help. More than some random chick can give you.” He turns his baleful hazel gaze on me. “And I am so sorry if I offended you, Sylvie—that’s not my style. Especially with the ladies. But deep down, I think you know I’m right. You’ll figure out he’s going to need more than some Jamaican chicken wings to get straightened out—know what I’m saying?”

  I stare back at Luca. I don’t want him be right, but my heart is beating wildly because he has spoken my most secret fear aloud. The one I sometimes have when I put a babbling Holt to bed. When I run for him the same baths I would for the children I used to babysit. When he asks me to marry him three times, but cannot remember asking me the first two times by the next day.

  That my love for him and his love for me isn’t really beautiful at all, but something ugly and toxic.

  “Come, Luca,” Zahir’s slightly accented voice interrupts our standoff. “Holt has had far too much to drink, and you are not on your best behavior…”

  Somewhere in the distance, I hear Zahir’s poshly-accented English saying all the right things. He thanks me for my hospitality, and apologizes again for Luca before dragging his beautiful and bruised friend out of Holt’s apartment.

  And then it is just me and Holt, several piles of scattered food, my stained white dress, and the broken dishes. Plus, the near overpowering stench of alcohol. I look around to find beer pouring from an open bottle of Red Stripe. I had been so excited for Holt and his friends to try it with food from my country. Now the bottle rests on its side where Luca dropped it during the altercation with Holt.