Traveling the world, making bigger bucks than he could ever have dreamed, had produced a lonely, un-tethered life. Sure, he could do whatever he wanted, but running a company on which hundreds of employees relied on you in twenty different countries, including a team of accountants and lawyers watching your every move created stress that was also far greater than he could have imagined.
He relied on the men sitting around the dinner table very much. Not just for business, but for friendship and support, saving him from total loneliness. They’d certainly become his surrogate family, and having the support of his friends meant that he avoided obsessing about the past and his derelict parents—except for one person that had never left his memory.
The girl he’d had a crush on since he was a freshman. English class. Staring at the back of her head like a dunce. Caleb sat two desks behind her, fantasizing about running his hands through the silky strands of her shiny hair that swayed along her shoulders and down her back like a waterfall. Yeah, typical teenage boy stuff.
But that girl was untouchable. Far above his low-class life. She was soft-spoken and gentle with a laugh that used to make him smile. She wasn’t annoying or loud like most girls in high school, vying for attention or queen bee status. She was perfect. The kind of girl you could fall in love with and live happily ever after—if there was such a thing. Unfortunately, he didn’t know many happily ever after’s. None of his friends were married. A few of his international clients were happily divorced or living up the bachelor life.
He must be the most peculiar man out there to crave a traditional marriage and family. A house that smelled of fresh-baked cookies and filled with people who loved each other and didn’t have yelling matches or drunken stupors.
There were a lot of reasons Caleb used to hide out in the computer lab, learning C++. When he created computer games it was like submerging himself under water. He could be immune from the world until the janitor kicked him out.
But that girl topped the list of reasons. Seeing her every day made him drown with a desire like a vice squeezing at his heart. Caleb just made sure he didn’t drool on his desk.
The most bizarre thing was the fact that he still thought about her. More than ten years later. Images would flash through his mind of her standing at her locker spinning the combination lock. In the cafeteria thoughtfully eating French fries. Bent over a class assignment, scribbling furiously while her satin hair draped her arm.
He’d get up to sharpen a pencil just so he could sneak a peek at her touching the tip of her tongue on her top lip in concentration, erasing a line, rummaging in her purse, or drumming her slender fingers on the desk as if practicing piano scales. Everything about her mesmerized him.
So, the question was, would she be at the class reunion?
Caleb gulped down his drink, inwardly shaking his head at his idiocy.
She was probably married and had three kids. Plus, a mortgage and an accountant for a husband in the ritzy suburb of Greenwood Village.
Of course, maybe she’d moved far away, like California, South Dakota, or Florida.
For all he knew, she could be serving as a Red Cross nurse in Africa.
When Caleb discovered the high school reunion notice in his mail a couple of months ago, fresh hope had lodged firmly in his throat.
“Hey, earth to Caleb, earth to Caleb,” Troy said punching him on the arm.
Startled, Caleb knocked over his glass, soda drizzling across the white tablecloth. He grabbed napkins and blotted it out. “Hey, watch it,” he joked in an attempt to hide his daydreaming.
“You alright, Mr. Boss?” Ryan said, motioning to the waitress for more napkins and a fresh drink for Caleb.
“I’m fine,” Caleb said, glancing around the table at his co-workers. “Never better.”
“Jet-lag, I tell you,” Brandon said. “Especially when you’ve been in Hong Kong. It’s the worst. You lose a day, you gain a day. Over and over again.”
Deftly, their waitress served a fresh glass of soda and ice, mopped up the spill, and then scooped up handfuls of soggy napkins.
Adam stared after her retreating figure, obviously wishing he could flirt with her. The guy flirted with every female within ten feet.
“So,” Caleb said, glancing around the table. Most of the food was gone, but he dipped a tortilla chip into the last of the salsa with a nonchalant air. “Everybody going to the reunion, then?”
Adam snorted and Ryan cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, Mr. Boss. Five minutes ago, we decided we were all going together. Stag. It’ll give us a chance to check out the girls who broke our hearts ten years ago. Fourteen years for old Troy here since he’s been dopey about some girl since his freshman year. Now I call that pathetic.”
Caleb gave a forced laugh, hoping the guys hadn’t noticed that he’d missed the last thread of the conversation. He reached for the menu, still hungry. “Where’s our waitress?”
“You just zoned out,” Troy said, staring at him. “We’re leaving The 54 and just waiting for the check. We decided we need real food so we’re going to Rossi’s for dinner. This was just appetizers.”
“Okay.” Caleb wondered if he could stay awake. “Haven’t been to Rossi’s in ages.”
The check came and he stuck his American Express on the plastic plate. The waitress whisked it away and was back again in moments. Caleb scribbled his signature and rose, suddenly needing fresh air.
The other guys filed out noisily, talking, catching up, while Caleb followed, tucking his wallet into his back pocket.
It was only eight o’clock. He’d look like a wimp if he went home without treating the guys to a nice dinner after their ten days of travel. It was a tradition, actually. But man, he was dead tired. What was wrong with him?
A stupid question. It was the class reunion. The thought of it depressed him. He could imagine getting dressed up, making the effort, only to find out she was living in a village in Bulgaria teaching English to eight-year-olds.
The October air was brisk, smacking him in the face while they congregated around the taxi circle in front of The 54. The bar’s sign blared a bright neon blue behind them while they waited for a taxi to come around the block.
Standing just outside the circle of light spilling from the lobby, Caleb surreptitiously reached into his wallet and flipped open the billfold. Tonight’s talk had made him nostalgic.
Inside the leather billfold was a small compartment. For years, he’d kept a secret within the small pouch—a dainty chain of silver with a red garnet dangling from the bottom.
He’d kept the necklace with him for almost eleven years. Ever since she’d accidentally dropped it the middle of their senior year and he’d snatched it up.
Caleb didn’t take it out very often. The necklace was one-part guilty pleasure, the other part pure guilt that he’d never returned it.
While clenching the necklace in his fist, a taxi pulled up and the other four guys piled in, leaving the shot-gun spot free for their CEO.
“Let’s hit the road,” he heard them call while the vehicle’s doors slammed shut and the engine idled, waiting for him.
Caleb slipped the red garnet necklace with its two miniscule diamonds back into the tiny pouch of the billfold, jammed it into his rear pocket, and clenched the handle of his briefcase.
Enough was enough. He had to return it. It was wrong to have kept it. But first he had to find the girl who used to wear it, the red gemstone dangling in the air when she hovered over her math homework in the corner of Algebra class. Far away from him.
Over the years, he’d run into old classmates at the movies, or at restaurants. But never her.
Not that he hadn’t made an attempt. He’d looked all right. Her parents were still in the phone book but on a different street than where she had grown up.
But she wasn’t listed.
And she wasn’t on Facebook.
He was too embarrassed to reach out to her old friends. Or to call her parents.
Even though they’d bee
n in classes together, off and on, she had never given him a second glance. Heck, he would have died and gone to heaven for a first glance, but he’d been a geek in every sense of the word. Frizzy hair. Dorky glasses. Nerdy jeans that never fit properly, bought at second-hand shops, and perpetually hiding his family’s secrets from the world.
Years had become a decade.
Caleb gave a snort of self-derision. Wow, his lack of confidence when it came to women had become a numbing force that froze him into limbo.
“Where to?” the cab driver asked, pulling into traffic.
“Rossi’s,” Caleb said, noticing how the other guys let him answer. Deferring to him as the boss. It was still odd, even after five years.
Her necklace had become a memento of his stupid high school years, but she was lost to time and distance.
How did you get over a girl you never had in the first place?
A small surge of hope rose up his throat. Would she be at the high school reunion? It might be his only—and last—chance.
Chapter 2
Rossi’s was packed that Friday night and Kira Bancroft’s over-time shift was a non-stop killer.
She raced back and forth from her assigned tables to the kitchen, then to the drink serving area, ringing up tickets at the cash register, and finally to the kitchen to pick up dinner orders. Just to start all over again. All with a smile and—hopefully—food that was still hot. At least the plates were. She was nursing a burned finger but refrained from sticking it in her mouth to cool off.
Kira re-tied her white linen apron tighter and threw a conspiratorial eye-roll at Jan, the head server at Rossi’s. “Is the president in town or something? My cheeks are starting to hurt from smiling.”
“Not yet,” Jan quipped. “But we have an envoy of politicians and pundits with reservations coming in an hour that we have to be nice to.”
“Ha! You’re telling me very subtly that I won’t be able to get out of bed tomorrow because I will have pulled every single muscle in my body.”
“You won’t be able to count those sore muscles, girlfriend. Not even crutches will help you. But I’ve got a wheelchair for rent.”
Kira sucked in a breath, the words hitting her like a hockey stick to the chest. Water splashed over the rim of the glasses she was filling. Her co-worker was only joking, of course.
She knew Jan wasn’t trying to remind her of her own father whose trucking accident in his 18-wheeler had put him in a wheelchair two years ago, but she had to take deep breaths to keep the sudden emotion from spilling over. She blinked hard. It was merely fatigue—and worry for next month’s rent—as usual. She’d been helping her parents make their mortgage payments the past few months and now she was stretched tight for her own rent. Maybe her mother was right and she should move back home, but the thought of it was worse than getting a tooth pulled.
Jan’s shoulders slumped, her face stricken. “Oh, Kira, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—your father—that was really stupid.”
Kira put a smile on her face. “Hey, I know we’re joking around. Slip of the tongue.”
“It was thoughtless, please forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive,” Kira said, heading to Table #3 with a tray of sodas and water. “See you later when we bump into each other at the counter grabbing our tickets.”
Jan blew her bangs off her perspiring forehead. “I just hope we get to eat leftovers. I’m starving.”
At the mention of food, Kira’s stomach growled, too. “I think I’ve burned five hundred calories in the last hour. No chance of leftovers, I fear. This place is so packed we may have to start turning people away.”
“Mr. Rossi would never let that happen.”
“Of course not, he’s the epitome of perfection.”
“And he’s staring at us right now,” Jan warned in a low voice.
Kira pressed her lips together and pretended that she and Jan weren’t chatting. Quickly, she scooped up a handful of snowy white cloth napkins rolled with silverware and began to lay out one of her tables that had just been cleared and sanitized.
“Catch you later,” she murmured while Jan went the opposite direction with two water pitchers clinking with ice.
None of the customers would realize they’d been surreptitiously talking, but Mr. Rossi would. The man seemed to know everything. Kira swore he sometimes knew what she was thinking.
The restaurant owner wasn’t unkind. He just ran a tip-top establishment and liked perfection on the tables, grace and manners from his servers, and the best food in Denver from his chefs.
About eight-thirty there was a slight slowing down. A family birthday party from her largest table finally emptied. Most of her other tables were perusing the menu for dessert, and another young couple was sloooowly getting their credit card out to pay while making eyes at each other.
Her smallest table was a lone, older man who came in like clockwork on Friday nights. Mr. Gene Bickels had been dining at Rossi’s since it opened forty years ago. The gentleman had to be going on eighty years old. Widowed for the last decade, Jan had once informed her. All the staff treated him with deference and loving attention.
Kira enjoyed serving him, not only for his sweet personality, but the gentleman always left a generous tip and seemed to prefer sitting at one of Kira’s tables. The tips were so very welcome and helped keep her afloat in rent and groceries.
“May I get you anything else, Mr. Bickels,” Kira said now. “More coffee, tea?”
“A shot of whiskey,” the older man said with a sly grin.
“The bar is closed, I’m afraid,” Kira said, teasing since they both knew Rossi’s served wine and beer only.
“I’ll just have to find a woman to accompany me to a local bar,” he shot back. Which was also a joke since Mr. Bickels still mourned his wife and was never seen with another woman.
Still, people often had secret lives, Kira mused. Except her. Kira was positive she was the most boring person on the planet. At least in Colorado.
“You wouldn’t care for a nightcap, Miss Bancroft?” he said now with a wink, slipping a gold American Express card on the table for Kira to finish off his bill.
“I’m afraid I have the breakfast shift in the morning.”
This was their usual conversation, too.
“I’ll just have to go home and watch the boring news,” Mr. Bickels said with a sigh. “Or read a book. Does anyone still crack open books these days?”
“I do every night. Although, I usually fall asleep over my Kindle. But I know perfectly well that you have a big group of poker friends over every Friday night.”
“True. And I always win.” He grinned while Kira cleared his empty cheesecake plate and went off to slide his credit card, bringing back the slip for Mr. Bickels to autograph.
Just as she returned, Jan hissed in her ear, “Looks like you’ve got incoming, girl.”
Kira’s chin jerked up. Sure enough, Sally, the hostess was seating a group of young men at her large, empty table. So much for this Friday night quieting down. She sighed. Her calf muscles were really starting to ache. If only she could afford a massage. That sounded heavenly. A massage and a hot bath. Unfortunately, those luxuries would have to wait until the afterlife.
She bid Mr. Bickels goodbye and greeted her new group as they shrugged off well-made leather jackets, black overcoats, and cashmere scarves, hanging them on the back of their chairs.
All five of them were talking, rearranging themselves, glancing around the restaurant, oblivious to her as she placed menus at each chair. “Good evening, gentlemen,” she said, straightening a couple of napkins. “Welcome to Rossi’s.”
When she glanced up, one of the young men was staring at her. Pointedly staring. As if he’d seen a ghost. She glanced behind her, but no ghosts were lurking—as far as Kira could tell.
“Can I—I…ahem,” Kira cleared her throat and tried again. “Um, I mean—what can I get you to drink tonight? I understand from the maître ‘d that t
he white wine is terrific. We also have beer on tap.”
She lifted a hand, brushing at her face, wondering if she had whipped cream on her nose. Without meaning to, she glanced down at herself, hoping there wasn’t a mustard stain on her blouse or uniform apron.
Kira tried to cover up her confusion, fumbling with her pencil and order pad. “Tonight’s special is the slow roasted beef and Yorkshire pudding. Our chef’s English cousin is in town and it’s to die for. Served with roasted potatoes, glazed carrots, and lots of homemade gravy. We also have a wonderful baked salmon with asparagus, an herbed baked chicken with broccoli and au gratin potatoes.”
She stopped relaying the specials because she realized that they weren’t paying much attention, still shifting around in their seats, talking to each other as if they were long lost friends who hadn’t seen each other in ages.
Then Kira noted that they were actually mixing a smattering of personal with business. Phrases like “factoring cost” and “Hong Kong markets” and “Rate of Return” interspersed their dialogue.
“Drinks first, sirs?”
“Water all around,” one of them said, a broad-shouldered guy with dark hair. Looked like an ex-football player.
“And we’ll take your best beer on tap,” another added, eyes glued to the menus. She could have been three hundred pounds for all they cared. Kira had never been one to attract wolf whistles, but these guys must be starving.
“Coming up in two minutes. I’ll take your orders when I return.”
She headed straight for the drink serving area, feeling eyes on her.
Glancing back, she noticed it was the same young man, surreptitiously giving her glances. What was up with him? It was odd and Kira felt a little paranoid.
Careful to keep her head down, she filled tall glasses with ice water and a lemon wedge, checking him out in return. Was she supposed to know him? He didn’t look one iota familiar to her.
Before she forgot, she stuck Mr. Bickels’ bill into the register and wiped down the spray of water she’d left near the bar sink.
Placing the ice water on a tray to carry over, she could slyly give him a once over without appearing to gape.
The Executive's Secret: A Secret Billionaire Romance Page 2