A hoarse gasp escaped Kira’s lips. The room seemed to explode around her. Her ears began to ring. “That’s my necklace,” she said, her voice ragged. “I lost it during my senior year. Where did you get it?”
“I—you remember your senior Christmas choir program, right?”
“That was the night I lost it!” Kira’s voice was shaking. “But I didn’t realize it until the concert was over and we were cleaning up. When I caught my reflection in the window of Mrs. Olson’s office, my neck was bare. I searched for over an hour. Everyone else joined in, the rest of the madrigal group, our teacher, our parents. But the necklace had disappeared into thin air.”
Kira stared at Caleb, her heart pounding, her legs quivery. “How did you get my necklace? Where has it been all these years?”
Caleb cleared his throat. “After your piano solo, there was an intermission before the other soloists were scheduled to sing—”
Kira nodded. “I think we served refreshments during the break.”
“The clasp of your necklace must have broken. I suspected it fell into the folds of your fancy dress, and when you stood up from the piano, it slipped to the floor.”
A second gasp escaped Kira’s lips. Memories came rushing back. She could picture it so clearly now. Including the heartbreak of the loss for months afterward.
Caleb ran a finger under his collar. “Um, I wasn’t a social cookies-and-punch kind of guy. I didn’t stay after your solo, and I had to go to work anyway.”
Kira tried to recall this man standing in front of her as a scruffy, sullen boy ten years ago at the concert. Leaving to go work a night job. But she couldn’t. She had absolutely no recollection of him.
“When I slipped past the crowd around the refreshment table, I headed for the door. But I saw something on the floor by the pedals of the piano. When I crouched down, I saw that it was your necklace. The necklace you used to wear almost every day.”
“You picked it up?”
Guilt washed over his face. “It was still warm from your neck. It was something that belonged to you. As pretty as you were.”
“You took it?” The shock in Kira’s voice unmistakable.
“I was going to give it to you, but there was a crowd of people around you. Raving about your performance, talking . . . I wasn’t thinking straight. I figured I’d give it to you at school.”
“But you didn’t,” Kira said flatly. She tried not to sound angry, but it was hard to keep the distress from her voice.
“I tried, but I never really got the chance. We didn’t have classes together that semester. Either I didn’t see you, or you were rushing by, or surrounded by other people. Days went by, then weeks. It got more and more awkward. I didn’t want you to think I’d stolen it.”
Kira blinked the emotion from her eyes. “But that’s what happened in the end.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I didn’t take it for that purpose. I tried to contact you after graduation but you’d gone away to school. I hated myself for a long time, but at the same time, I liked having this little piece of you. Like a memento. When I saw the necklace, I was racked with guilt, but it always brought your face to my mind. I had no chance with you, but I hoped to find you and give back something that was yours.”
Kira tried to take in everything Caleb was saying. She was having a hard time reconciling what he’d done. The heartache she’d suffered thinking she’d never see the necklace again.
“Your necklace was so perfect. It fit you so perfectly. It became my good luck charm, too, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” Kira blurted out. “I cried all the way home over losing this necklace. Her fingers shook as she reached out and snatched it up from his palm.
“I’m so sorry, Kira. I knew you’d be upset over its loss and I tried to find you. Guess I should have anonymously mailed it back to you, but I was afraid it might get lost and that would be worse. I knew it belonged to you and needed to go back to you someday. It sounds crazy, but I wanted to keep it safe until I found you again.”
In an effort to steady her voice, Kira swallowed hard. “The necklace is actually an antique, a family heirloom. It belonged to my grandmother. I was very close to her and she had died a few months earlier during my senior year. The necklace had belonged to her mother. She brought it with her from Ireland in the 1800s, the only thing of value her family had. She managed to get it to America where they made a new life. It was like insurance in case the worst happened.”
Caleb attempted a small smile. “So it was your great-grandmother’s lucky charm, too.”
She blinked back the bite of emotion behind her eyes. “I suppose you could say that,” she said grudgingly. “But I wasn’t that hard to find.”
“I admit that I gave up for a few years. I focused on helping a friend’s dad flip houses for a few years while I worked on my computer programming at night. When I started DREAMS, the company has taken all my thought, time and focus for the last several years—which is not an excuse, I know. But a couple of years ago I started trying to find you again. You seemed to have disappeared off the planet. Now I realize it coincided with your father’s accident. I’m so sorry, Kira. How can I make it up to you?”
Kira’s throat was so tight she could hardly speak. “I don’t know if you can. How could I ever trust you?”
Pain flashed across Caleb’s face. “I know that we don’t know each other, but will you give me a chance to earn your trust?” Hesitantly, Caleb tucked the necklace dangling from Kira’s fingers into the middle of her palm, enclosing it tight. “Will you please forgive me?”
Kira felt herself waver, the warmth of his hands holding hers confusing and distracting. “But why me, Caleb? Why did you choose me?”
He shrugged, biting at his lips. “I thought you were the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. The kindest, the most talented. I was in awe of you. And tonight, I am more than ever.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve sacrificed your own life for your parents. For those you love. And you didn’t yell at me just now when you had every right to.”
Kira suppressed a smile. “Only because we’re in a public hotel. If we were anywhere else, I’d be punching you out.”
“You can punch me out any time you’d like, Kira.”
Caleb took a step forward, but Kira took two steps backward away from him. “I need some space to think about all of this. I think it’s time I went home.”
Chapter 13
The following Thursday was a dark and stormy night and Rossi’s was half empty. Patrons examined the windows, predicting the first snow of the season. The venetian blinds were half closed and the muted lights of the interior gave a soft glow, belying the wind and rain blowing through downtown.
Kira mechanically went through the motions of her job while thoughts raged through her mind about the previous Friday night.
Caleb had stolen her great-grandmother’s necklace. How dare he? The nerve. And yet, he didn’t know it was an antique heirloom. He’d tried to give it back. Intended to return it, but fear had overcome his nerve to admit what he’d done. And life had intervened to prevent him from finding her.
For hours, she wrote up tickets, took orders, delivered dinner plates, and made polite small talk, but occasionally Jan would shoot her looks of consternation, brow rising in question. Kira just shook her head and kept on walking.
Caleb had kept the necklace in a slip of tissue in a secret pocket of his wallet all these years. He’d preserved it. The necklace looked exactly as she remembered it. In fact, he’d taken the time and expense to replace the broken clasp and it matched the rest of the necklace’s strand of chain perfectly.
Each morning Kira put it on, and marveled that it was back. It wasn’t lost for good as she’d feared all these years. In some ways, it was like a miracle. She’d stare into the bathroom mirror with an overwhelming sense of relief.
“That’s a gorgeous necklace,” a woman’s voice said, inte
rrupting her thoughts.
Kira glanced down at an older couple she was serving prime rib platters to. She set the au jus on the table, refilled their water glasses and made sure they still had plenty of red wine. “Thank you,” she said.
“I’ve been noticing how you keep touching it.”
“Do I?” Kira gave a self-conscious laugh.
“Is it a gift from someone special?” the woman asked, a twinkle in her eyes. Her frosted white hair glowed under the candlelight on the table. Her husband was busy slicing up his beef, but watched his wife and Kira with deep brown eyes folded into wrinkles.
“Yes, it was a gift from my grandmother before she died. It belonged to her mother.”
“I thought you were going to tell me it came from a handsome admirer.”
That was ironic, considering what had happened to it the last decade. “Actually,” Kira admitted. “It was lost for a long time and recently found.”
The customer gave a nod. “That explains why your hand keeps going to it.”
“I’m a little shocked it’s back, I guess,” Kira said ruefully. Caleb’s words from the night of the high school reunion reverberated in her mind. You were the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.
The way he spoke reminded her of Jane Austen’s Mr. Bingley from Pride and Prejudice. Bingley was besotted with Elizabeth’s older sister but Jane was so reserved in returning any sign of her interest in him that she almost lost him forever.
Elizabeth Bennett, on the other hand, despised Mr. Darcy who was a painfully stoic man without a sense of humor. They spent the entire book misunderstanding each other.
Caleb Davenport reminded her of both Bingley and Darcy, and at the moment she didn’t want anything to do with him. He had caused her heart so much anguish for ten years. At the same time, Caleb was an enigma. A bundle of contradictions. A nobody in high school and now boasting a multi-billion-dollar enterprise to his name. With such handsome looks that made every woman swoon—or stop in their track to stare.
Not her. She was not going to swoon.
“So why am I still thinking about him?” Kira muttered when she strode across the restaurant to her next table.
Because he’d been calling and texting her—and so far, she’d ignored all of them.
She was ignoring him at the moment because she had felt that rush of tingles up her stomach when he danced with her. The admiration in his eyes when he looked at her from across the table made her heart go crazy. The warmth of his hands on her back, or his fingers slipping through hers when he held her hand was enough to turn her entire body into a puddle of longing.
Kira couldn’t get him out of her mind, but how could she reconcile his actions?
A group of teenagers swooped into the restaurant, laughing and chatting. Kira checked the time. It was past the dinner hour, and later than she thought. Perhaps they were here for dessert. A few of the boys wore letterman jackets. Probably coming from the football game. Pretty girls with shiny hair hung on their boyfriend’s arms, teasing, bumping into each other in a youthful courtship dance. They looked so young it made Kira feel old and wistful. She had never been a part of that scene.
A moment of sympathy came over her for the seventeen-year-old Caleb Davenport. He’d been an outsider, too. Looking on from a position of loneliness outside the circle, like an outcast.
Kira laid out dessert menus to the group of kids who barely glanced in her direction. She set out ice water and Cokes. Someone wanted hot chocolate with whipped cream.
So what had Caleb done with his life? He’d created an app called DREAMS. Built an empire to help fulfill other people’s dreams. He’d followed his aspirations and made an incredible life for himself. He certainly wasn’t working at the local gas station for minimum wage.
But what had she done? She’d poured her heart and soul into music, her passion for the piano giving her dreams and goals, but when life crashed down around her she gave up.
On her way home that night, Kira scrolled through Caleb’s text messages and voicemails asking to see her, to let him explain, to apologize and beg her forgiveness. It had been almost a week and she hadn’t responded to a single one yet. She’d been too upset. It wasn’t like her to ignore somebody so completely for so long, but a streak of stubbornness had taken over.
At first, the invitations were for dinner. Tickets to a showing of the Broadway musical, 42nd Street, at the theater. A Broncos Game if she loved football. An indie movie at the plush sixteen screen movie-house. Then it became:
How about meeting for coffee? I won’t take much of your time, I promise.
Later, it was:
How about just a drink after dinner? I’ll come to Rossi’s at the end of your shift if that’s easier.
Interspersed with the invitations were apologies, very sweet apologies actually.
As another week passed with more messages from Caleb, Kira could feel herself softening, but then she’d hold the necklace in her cupped hand at night when she took it off and shake her head, no.
Caleb’s messages had moved from more than just apologizes and invitations. He was telling her silly jokes and blaming them on Troy.
How does an elephant hide in a cherry tree? Paints its toenails red. Brilliant, huh?
The next day:
How do you catch a ‘unique elephant’? U-Neak up on it.
A few minutes passed and then another text:
Gotcha with that one. I know I did!
Kira rolled her eyes while she groaned out loud. The man did not know how to give up!
Perhaps that’s what made him so successful at his business.
Then, finally, an invitation struck a nerve.
Hey, I got tickets to see Celeste Delorios, the world-renowned pianist from Italy, in concert with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. I’d be honored if you were my guest for the evening.
Caleb sounded so formal. It was kind of charming, actually. Caleb was a great combination of both Darcy and Bingley, stiff and formal one moment, gregarious the next.
But Celeste Delorios! Several months ago, Kira had heard she was on a U.S. tour and coming to Denver. What a dream that would be.
Six months ago, she would have given her eye-teeth to see the woman live on stage. Now . . . she feared it would only make her eve more sad to have been away from the piano for so long. Not that her father didn’t beg for a piece or two—but she hadn’t played seriously, and Kira knew she was losing her technique.
She saw herself slipping further away from the abilities she’d developed over the past decade. Soon, she’d only be good enough to play hymns at church for the congregational singing.
Hours passed while Kira did her grocery shopping, got her hair trimmed, paid her bills, and cleaned the house. Caleb texted again that evening.
Come on, Kira, it’s Celeste Delorios! Please say yes. I’d be honored. I’ll merely be a polite, gentlemanly escort so you don’t have to sit alone. I won’t say a word. I’d hate for you to miss out on such a performance.
Her mind whirled—yes, no, yes, no—while Kira unpacked frozen pizza into the freezer and shoved the carton of milk into the empty spot in the fridge.
She popped open a Diet Coke and filled a glass with ice, switching on the TV. Time to do her nails. The polish was badly chipped and they needed to look nice while serving customers. Even her fingernails were longer than she usually kept them when she was actively playing the piano several hours a day.
The weight of what she had lost was often a stone on her chest.
Shoving a cushion behind her head, she sprawled against the couch and tucked her legs underneath her. Miss Pixie came out of hiding, purring as she plopped herself down on Kira’s bare toes.
Kira petted her while a tear dribbled down her nose. The TV blared with a Velveeta cheese commercial.
This is what her life amounted to now. Every day she served beautiful food to beautiful people, visited her needy parents, and cleaned a dumpy apartment. She was only twenty-eight! H
ow pathetic her life had become.
She was even envious of the young mothers wrangling their screaming children in the Albertson’s produce department. At least those frazzled mothers had a purpose, an important job, including a life-time of hugs and kisses watching their children grow into adulthood.
Her phone buzzed again. She snatched it up, curious to see what Caleb had written next.
I’m sure I’m driving you crazy. Maybe you threw your phone into a snow bank, changed your number, and I’m texting into the empty universe.
Kira pictured a smashed, forlorn cell phone lying in a snow bank. Then she pictured Caleb sitting at a computer with the DREAMS logo staring back at him. The guy was full of dreams. At least, he didn’t take no for an answer. He didn’t give up. He kept going for his dream.
Caleb Davenport put her to shame. He’d had an easier life than she’d had. He probably also had wealthy parents. Obviously good genes had turned him from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. Even if she dated him, he’d probably dump her when he began to realize that he could have any gorgeous model in the world. Exotic women probably fell all over him. He could snap his fingers and they’d drape their bodies along his and promise him the moon.
After all, he was a billionaire. What did he want with plain, boring Kira Bancroft?
A fresh text pinged her phone.
Listen, I won’t even attend. We can do a drop-off of your ticket at a location full of people. You can go to the piano concert by yourself. I just hate for you to miss it and want you to have the opportunity.
“Aha,” she said out loud, startling Miss Pixie who was now kneading at her stomach with her paws while sand-papering the inside of Kira’s wrist with her tongue. “I knew it! After ignoring your messages for almost two weeks, you decided I could have the tickets while you went out with the billionaire sheik’s daughter on his thirty-foot yacht in the Arabian Ocean. I’m on to you, Caleb Davenport. You are a fraud.”
The Executive's Secret: A Secret Billionaire Romance Page 10