One Night With The Billionaire Too

by Cross, Cassie

  Amber and Sasha leave two days in. Amber has a long-standing meeting at work that she couldn’t reschedule. Everyone else here is in the bridal party, and they have some last-minute things they need to take care of, so it all works out well.

  Chase wanted to send the jet to get the two of them back to the city, but Amber didn’t feel right about it. Of course, once she and Sasha get to the airport to catch their flight back home, they find out they’ve mysteriously been upgraded to first class.

  She sends Chase a text thanking him.

  * * *

  You’re welcome. You can’t fly back from a bachelorette weekend in coach.

  * * *

  She laughs, shaking her head. She asks him how the golfing’s going.

  * * *

  Like any best man, I’m letting Jason win.

  * * *

  She writes:

  * * *

  I’m proud of you.

  * * *

  As they sit in two plush seats in the first class lounge, waiting for their flight to board, Amber looks over at her sister.

  “How are you doing?” she asks.

  Sasha holds up the glass of free champagne she snagged from the bartender. “Pretty damn good.”

  “You seemed like you had a good time this weekend.”

  She sighs, leaning back against the chair. “I did. Not that I’m going to get used to how the other side lives or anything, but it’s been nice being pampered. First the champagne and strawberries, now a couple of days worth of massages and being out in the sun? All the stress just melted right out of me. I’m starting to feel like myself again.”

  “Good. You deserve to be pampered.”

  She gives her sister the side-eye. “I don’t know how true that is, but I appreciate it either way. Thanks for having amazing friends who care about your sister’s well-being. That’s special, don’t let go of that.”

  The people in her life are pretty special, she thinks. These past couple of weeks have been a great reminder.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Since Chase is in the wedding party, Amber doesn’t see him before she arrives at the church on Saturday evening. She’s wearing a black, v-neck chiffon gown that she spent half a paycheck on. She splurged on an updo from a swanky hairdresser on the Upper East Side, and spent close to an hour perfecting her makeup.

  In the years that she’s been attending society events with Chase, her appearance has become her armor. A good pair of heels and a killer dress is an equalizer in these situations, and tonight Amber feels gorgeous.

  An usher walks her to her seat, which is somewhere in the middle of the church on the bride’s side. She’s right on the aisle.

  Chase is already standing at the altar, talking to Jason. They both seem relaxed and happy, not a trace of nerves to be found.

  Chase, of course, looks gorgeous. His tuxedo fits spectacularly, and he’s always looked amazing dressed up. Amber isn’t the only one who notices this; a woman behind her mentions how gorgeous he is to her companion, assuring her that she’s going to search him out at the reception. She sounds like she thinks she’s guaranteed a dance.

  That sets Amber’s skin tingling, makes her stomach do a nervous flip. She knows that he can’t help what other people say about him. When you go through life looking like that, people are bound to notice. It just plays at her insecurities, and she hates that.

  She forgets about all that when Chase looks for her in the crowd. She can see his eyes scanning the pews looking for her. When he sees her, he grins and gives her a cute little wave.

  It makes her feel special in this room full of people.

  His eyes are only on her. He mouths, Everything okay?

  She nods with a smile. Yes. Do your job, she reminds him, making sure he’s not so distracted that he forgets his best friend.

  He taps on his pocket and points at it. I’ve got the ring.

  Amber laughs. You better!

  When the music starts playing, everyone stands and watches the bride walk down the aisle.

  The wedding reception is being held at the New York Public Library, so the guests wait outside the church to be packed into shuttle buses while the wedding party is inside taking pictures. Because she’s here by herself and most of the other attendees are paired up or in groups, Amber’s mind has time to wander as she waits. She scans the crowd, finding quite a few familiar faces.

  There’s Caroline. Chase took her to a benefit gala to fund a new wing at the Children’s Hospital. And Irina, whom he dated rather publicly and messily for about a month a couple of years ago. Yvette is chatting with an usher by the doors. Chase took her out on one date, and she’d had a hard time accepting that there wouldn’t be a second.

  At the office, none of these women really exist to her. They’re just names in Chase’s little black book. When she comes to events like these, she remembers their faces and their places in his life. She’s like a human catalog of every event of Chase’s life over the past five years, and she remembers which part these people played. They all run in the same circle, elite society’s social butterflies.

  If she were to date Chase, she’d run into these women everywhere. The whole city is splashed with his exes.

  So, of course some of them are here, and of course they’re beautiful.

  They’re rich women in their own right, all have their own social standing. Chase has never made Amber feel like that’s something that’s important to him at all, but it’s important to the people around him. Like she was reminded at the Pearson retreat, secretaries are the women the men with Chase’s kind of social status have affairs with, not the ones they marry.

  At the Library, she and the other guests are ushered into a grand room with marbled floors and sweeping columns for cocktail hour as the wedding party takes more photos. Amber gets a glass of champagne from the bar and wanders through the room, saying hello and chatting briefly with the very few familiar faces she sees. The area is completely breathtaking. Sasha would die. Amber wishes she’d thought to name her as her plus one, just so she wouldn’t be alone.

  She thinks about taking her phone out of her clutch and trying to discreetly snap a photo to send to her, but with her luck, she’d get caught. She doesn’t want to develop a reputation for being tacky.

  Apart from the way it would reflect on her, Chase would never stop teasing her about it.

  Chase finds her in the crowd after pictures, but before they head in for a sit-down dinner. He walks up behind her, his hand resting at the small of her bare back. He gently guides her into a corner for a little privacy.

  “Hey,” he says softly as he runs his hand across her skin. She absently wonders if he can feel the goosebumps there. It’s the most contact they’ve had since they were in Connecticut weekend before last. “How did I do?”

  “You were amazing,” she says. “Best man I’ve ever seen. The ring handoff was perfection. It was a true masterclass.”

  He laughs, and the lighting in the room highlights the sparkle in his eyes when he smiles at her.

  This feels like vintage Amber and Chase, like they’re back to their old selves again. She wants to compliment him on his tux, but feels like it might be better not to go down that road right now.

  Chase has other plans. “You look beautiful,” he tells her as his gaze roams her body. “I couldn’t keep my eyes off of you during the ceremony.”

  Yeah, she’d noticed. He glanced over at her a few times during the vows, and it shot her concentration all to hell.

  “You look handsome too,” she says, reaching up and running her fingers along the lapel of his jacket.

  Just as she removes her hand, dinner is announced.

  “I asked Kaia if she could move things around so we could sit together.”

  She lightly smacks him on the arm. “You did that on her wedding day?”

  “Please,” he says, playfully rolling his eyes as he offers her his arm to escort her into the reception hall. “I have better manners than
that; I asked her a couple of weeks ago. Her wedding planner made it happen, which is why she gets paid all that money.”

  They walk into the Bartos Forum, which is romantically lit with twinkling lights decorating the glass-paned dome ceiling. Fresh flowers decorate every table, and Amber is awestruck as Chase leads her toward the table that’s set on the dais. As Chase pulls out her seat for her, she’s struck by the fact that Caroline, Irina, Yvette and countless other former dates of Chase’s will see her—his assistant—sitting up here next to him like she’s his date.

  Amber whispers, “I don’t know if this is a good idea; people will think we’re here together.”

  He looks over at her, expression deadly serious. “I don’t give a shit what people think. I want you up there with me, as long as you want to be.”

  She thinks of the alternative; a dinner at a table full of strangers, when she could be somewhere with him. Regardless of whatever’s going on between them at the moment, she knows which option she’d pick every time.

  “I want to be up there with you.”

  “Good,” he says as he leads her onto the dais. “Let’s go.”

  Dinner is amazing. Seared scallops, caprese, roasted lamb. Amber feels slightly awkward sitting up on the dais with the wedding party when she’s not part of the wedding party, but she gets over that quickly. She knows for as awkward as this is, making small talk with New York City’s elite would be at least twice as awkward.

  Kaia is an absolutely beautiful bride. Her dress is delicate and lacy, traditional with a more modern cut. She and Jason just exude love. Weddings are always a double-edged sword for Amber. She’s such a pessimist where relationships are concerned that she doesn’t quite understand how people can jump into lifelong commitment with both feet in front of hundreds of people without even thinking about the fact that the divorce rate is fifty percent.

  She doesn’t know how people can shell out the kind of money a wedding like this takes without having a breakdown over the likelihood that in ten years’ time all they’ll have is a divorce and some lovely memories of a party celebrating a marriage that didn’t work out.

  But they do. Jason looks like the happiest man in the world. He absolutely beams whenever he looks at his bride; she hasn’t seen him without that blinding smile all evening. If she’s honest with herself, sometimes she sees a hint of that kind of happiness on Chase’s face when he looks at her. She saw it often during their weekend together in Connecticut, and sometimes she catches it in the office when she glances up from her screen and sees him looking her way.

  It’s a thrilling, scary realization. She wonders what he sees when she looks at him.

  Melissa, one of Kaia’s friends that she met at the bachelorette party, leans over during the main course and tells Amber, “I’m so glad to see you up here tonight.” She was super sweet in Vegas, and it’s nice to see that demeanor carried over cross country. “You and Chase are the cutest couple.”

  Amber doesn’t know what to say to that. She’s found that denying it just leads to a complicated explanation of what they really are that people don’t believe anyway. She saves time and just goes with it. “Thank you,” she replies.

  It’s easy to make the mistake, she supposes.

  When the time comes for toasts, Kaia’s best friend Janine makes a lovely one that ends with Amber having to dab at her eyes with her napkin. Chase follows her, standing up and taking the microphone.

  He looks down at her and winks before he starts speaking.

  “If anyone had told me when I was younger that Jason would be getting married and having the reception in a library, I wouldn’t have believed them,” he says, making the crowd laugh. “He’s been my best friend for as long as I can remember, my partner in crime. We got in all kinds of trouble together, and always had each other’s backs when the time came to answer for that trouble. Jason’s older than I am,” he says.

  Jason yells out, “Six months!” with a laugh.

  “He started to get his life together before I did. Started his business before I did…for years he’s been showing me how it’s done, and I’ve been following in his footsteps.” He starts to get choked up, and Amber reaches out and places her hand on the small of his back, wanting to offer him some kind of support. “He showed me how to be a good man, taught me how to be a good friend, and when he fell in love with Kaia, I learned what a man my age in love looked like. Jason’s the brother I never had, and I had impossibly high standards for the person I thought could possibly deserve him. The night I met Kaia for the first time, I told Jason not to mess it up.”

  “Using more colorful language,” Jason adds, laughing with wet eyes.

  “That’s true, it was colorful. But I meant it, and for once I’m glad that I gave him some good advice and he took it. I’m so happy to be here celebrating the start of your marriage, and I wish you both a lifetime of love and laughter.”

  Chase puts the microphone down as everyone clinks glasses. Jason and Kaia kiss as Chase sits down. Amber wipes away the lone tear that makes its way down his cheek, leaning in and whispering, “You did great.”

  When the band starts playing, Kaia and Jason start making their way around the room, going from table to table to greet their guests. Everyone gets up to mingle, and the games begin. Amber’s only been to a few society weddings, and they’re like a high-stakes game of who can score a dance with the most eligible bachelor in the room.

  It’s like Regency England where everyone is trying to find the most advantageous match.

  Jason used to be one of the targets. Hell, some of these people are shameless enough that he might still be one. Since Chase has never settled down, he’s one too. Amber knows that it doesn’t matter in what capacity she’s actually here with Chase, as a friend or as a date, most of these women will not be dissuaded by him having a woman on his arm.

  Not that she thinks of Chase as an object, but it’s kind of like she has a 10-karat diamond on her finger and there’s a large percentage of people in this room who would like to be the one wearing it at the end of the night.

  It’s enough to make even the most secure women insecure, and for Amber it’s enough to make her spiral.

  On their way to the dance floor, a woman who Amber doesn’t recognize but Chase does asks him to save her a dance. He says he’s sorry, but no…he has a date. The woman gives Amber a snide once-over and says, “Well, if you change your mind…”

  “I won’t,” Chase says, dismissing her. The scandalized look on her face is satisfying, but Amber wishes she hadn’t seen her at all.

  She and Chase stand along the edge of the dance floor. “Would you like to dance?” he asks, offering her his hand.

  It is, like most things where Chase is concerned, something she wants to do even though she knows she shouldn’t. Still, she laces her fingers through his.

  “I have to warn you,” he says as he leads her out, “I might be a little rusty.”

  “I thought all you rich boys came out of the womb knowing how to box step.”

  “You know when I was born. It’s been a long time since I exited the womb,” he teases.

  “I might step on your feet,” she says.

  “There’s no one I’d rather have stepping on me. C’mon.”

  She wraps her arms around his neck and they start dancing.

  It’s nice, this closeness. She rests her head on his chest at the perfect spot. He smells like sandalwood and soap, warm and clean and safe. He holds her close to his body, his hands resting low on her back.

  He tucks his head against hers; his warm breath softly fans across her neck.

  This is what she imagines heaven feels like; just the two of them in each other’s arms, the rest of the world disappearing.

  “I think you should save every dance for me tonight,” he whispers, his lips brushing the shell of her ear and sending a shiver down her spine.

  She lifts her head up and looks in his eyes. “It seems like there might be a line formin
g behind me,” she teases halfheartedly.

  Chase caresses her cheekbone with the back of his finger, his eyes full of love. “There is no line. There’s only you.”

  Well, when he says it like that, how can she resist? Every shred of hesitation crumbles. “Looks like my dance card is full, then. And we haven’t stepped on each other’s toes, so I’d say this is a great bargain.”

  Chase laughs, her favorite sound. “I promise my feet will be on their best behavior.”

  She accidentally knocks her foot against his. “Mine too. Starting now.”

  “You should put your head back on my shoulder,” he says, looking down. “I think it helped your balance.”

  She narrows her eyes at him. “My balance, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  She does as he asks. She finds her favorite spot, rests her head there and breathes deep. She closes her eyes and gets lost in him.

  Just for tonight.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Amber stays true to her word; she does save every dance for him. They break every once to spend some time with Kaia and Jason. Occasionally they chat with other partygoers, moving together from group to group for some light conversation. Even though Amber’s not Chase’s date, she might as well be. It certainly would’ve made things easier for him when he was introducing her to his old friends and acquaintances.

  He’d felt the way her body tensed up every time he introduced her as his assistant. He moved on to friend, but that still didn’t feel totally right.

  He wants to introduce her as his girlfriend, and eventually his wife.