Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (36 page)

“Honey,” she said, “if that meant one single thing, the world would be a
whole
different place.”

“Mm,” I agreed. “Satisfactorily rich parents, though. His dad’s some—I don’t know. Tycoon, though you won’t hear him say much about that. His mom’s Yasmine. You know—80s supermodel? Egyptian, wasn’t that it?”

She widened her eyes and said, “Hmm. I
thought
he was some mix of gorgeous. OK. On the girlfriend…I’m going to the ladies’ room. When I get back, you’ve got my details. And you’ve got my back on this, right?”

“Right.” She’d had mine, after all.

“So,” I said to Nathan when he came back with his and Gabrielle’s drinks. “Time to tell me why you weren’t your usual chipmunk-cheerful self when I showed up tonight.”

“Aw, man,” he complained, “you could tell? Here I’m going out of my way to be charming, now that I have a reason to live again.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Do I detect the shakeup of a breakup?”

“A few weeks in, and we’re all marketing-speak?”

“Nice try. Tell me about it.”

“I hate married people,” he complained, surprising me so much, I laughed out loud. “When did you get all adult like that?”

“I always have been, haven’t you noticed? And I’m not married. I’m engaged.”

“Same thing. Are you and little sister living with him? Because rumor has it that we have a car and driver doing the honors, and that it’s not a car service, it’s Scary Sam the Bodyguard Man.”

I hesitated, then said, “Yes. And don’t spread it around.”

“Hey. Did I tell when you started sleeping with him?”

“No, because you didn’t
know
when I started sleeping with him.” He looked like he was about to point out that he could have made a pretty good guess, and I hurried on to say, “Which is not what we’re talking about. We’re discussing
your
love life, not mine.”

“One word,” he said, losing a little of the chirpiness. “Over.”

“Was this…” I felt my way cautiously. Nathan and I had always been casual, always fun. I wasn’t sure how far to push. “Was this more serious, then? I didn’t get the impression you did that.”

“Well, I’m not doing it anymore,” he said. “Because it sucks. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

He started to say something, then stopped. “Go on,” I urged. Nathan had been a friend to me when I’d needed one. Time for me to step up.

“Is a man like you-know-who what every woman really wants?” he asked. “I know
you
do, obviously. Is that actually the dream, though? Mr. Grimly Dangerous, where you don’t know what he’s going to do next, but it’s so exciting, because you can’t read him, and he takes what he wants? Sounds like nothing but a horror show to me, but, hey, I’m a guy.”

I was stuck. And at that moment, Gabrielle came back.

“What?” she asked at the expression on my face.

“Nothing,” I said, taking another sip of water.

“Am I drinking this?” she asked, looking between her wine glass, me, and Nathan. “Or am I leaving, because things just got awkward?”

Nathan grinned, his good humor making its way out again, or maybe it was Gabrielle doing that. “Nope. I’m just oversharing, that’s all, asking Hope what women like and what the hell they want. One and a half glasses of cheap white wine, one breakup, and one otherwise irresistible straight, single, employed male Manhattanite shooting himself in the foot before he can even get started, because he can’t keep his big mouth shut.”

“You got started,” she said, then picked up her wine and said, “Know what
I
like?”

“No,” Nathan said, “but I sure do want to.”

She smiled, and right then and there, there was one extra person at this table, and it was me. The pheromones were colliding in midair, playing so fast and loose that
I
was getting turned on, and I was just the bystander. “I like a man,” Gabrielle pronounced, looking at him over the rim of her glass, her smile sassy and sweet, her almond-shaped eyes gleaming, “who’s got a sense of humor. I like a man who’s willing to talk to me and knows how to tell a woman the truth. I like a man who listens to me, and who knows how to give me his
full
attention. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Oh, yeah,” Nathan said. “I think so.”

“You know how hard that man is to find?”

“Not hard at all,” he said. “Not tonight.”

They gazed at each other, and the moment stretched out until Gabrielle finally broke eye contact, looked at me, and said, “So. What were we talking about? Your dismal employment prospects as a fully functioning contributor at Te Mana, or Nathan’s fortunate escape?”

“Ah…“ I was sobered by the first part, but cheered by the second. “I’d rather talk about Nathan’s fortunate escape, but first…all right, I’m selfish. Am I doomed?”

Her finely chiseled face was serious, her liquid eyes sympathetic. “Yeah, baby,” she said softly. “If you were thinking this was your chance to get real and get somewhere? You are. Sorry.”

I swallowed and said, “OK. Thanks,” looked down at my water glass, then glanced at Nathan.

He’d sobered as well, and now, he said, “Do you really want to do this? The job? It’s not just a…” He hesitated.

“A what?” I asked.

He waved a hand. “Some kind of statement, some declaration of independence. ‘I am a working woman, not a toy.’”

“No,” I said. “It’s not a statement. But you’re saying that’s how it looks.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, and I saw the agreement on Gabrielle’s face as well.

“And I can’t change that?” I asked. Nathan shrugged, and I tried to laugh and said, “Hey. First world problems. ‘I must be fulfilled in my work’ and all that. I know.”

“No,” Gabrielle said. “Just life. We all care about our life. Everybody wants to be somebody.”

“Thanks.” There I went, getting weepy again. What a day. I’d gone out to forget it, and here it was, back again. “But we weren’t talking about me.”

“Shifting now,” Gabrielle said. “What caused the Serious Face, then?” she asked Nathan. “Not hers. Yours.”

His mouth twisted. “We playing, “What the Ex Said?’ I’m not going there. Guaranteed to send the new interest screaming into the night.”

“No,” she said. “It won’t. Unless it was ‘Is that all you got?’”

They smiled at each other, and Nathan said, “We’ll call that a subject for another moment. But I’m not mysterious enough, apparently, and my ‘dangerous bad boy’ needs some work.”

“Ah,” Gabrielle said with satisfaction.

“Which I might have been fairly pissed off about at the time,” he said, “but I’m feeling oddly better now.”

“So you were asking Hope,” Gabrielle guessed, “if that’s what women want? Wrong person to ask, don’t you think? Ask me instead.
I
don’t. The hunt for the alpha male? No, thanks. Too much work, too much aggravation, and too many
real
bad men to get through while you search for the one with the tough shell hiding the sweet chocolate center. Like I told you—for me? I’ll take sweet all the way up to the outside. Sweet works
every
time.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it, and Nathan noticed and said, “What, he’s so sweet when he’s with you? If it’s true, I don’t want to hear it. I’ll just get depressed again.”

“Ah…” Gabrielle said. “Maybe not.” I looked in the direction of her gaze and saw him. As absolutely upright as always, the crowd around the bar parting for him like magic, no trace of a smile on his face. Headed straight for me.

“Alpha” might not work for Gabrielle, but it sure worked on me, because the tingles were right back again. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him, but maybe that was because his gaze was holding mine as if he had some tractor beam locked on me, pulling me into his orbit.

I was almost dizzy. Something was going to happen tonight. Something special.

“No” had meant “no.” The question was…what was “yes” going to mean?

Hope

By the time Hemi got to the table, Nathan was on his feet, pulled there, it seemed, by whatever force it was that Hemi exerted.

Hemi looked at him, unsmiling, and said, “Hello again.”

“Hi,” Nathan said, and, no, he wasn’t exactly coming off as the Alpha Dog in this encounter. I hoped Gabrielle didn’t mind, because Nathan
was
a wonderful guy. He just wasn’t Hemi.

Hemi looked at Gabrielle, then, said, “Hi. How are you?” and actually smiled, too, like a regular person. He managed to act, in other words, like somebody who could sit down and have a drink with other people without scaring them half to death.

Maybe not tonight, though, because after that, he asked me, “Are you ready to go, sweetheart, or do you need a few more minutes? If you’d like to stay, I’ll phone the restaurant.”

“Please,” Nathan said, “join us.” Points for social grace, but then, Nathan had plenty of that. And Hemi had called me “sweetheart” in front of other people, which was a first. He looked like he didn’t realize he’d done it, either. It seemed to have just slipped out from under his self-control, and wasn’t that a cheering little thought?

“No, thanks,” I said, standing up and gathering my things. “We were just finishing up.” Nathan and Gabrielle would rather be alone, I was fairly sure. Besides, I’d probably pushed Hemi enough for one day, and it
was
exactly seven, and he
had
let me leave without a fuss this afternoon and had showed up in exactly the time and place we’d planned, and acted casual about it, too. I wanted to tell him how I felt about all that.

You’re thinking I wanted to see how
he
felt about it. That could have been part of it as well.

Hemi said, “We’ll be off, then. Nice to see you both.”

“Bye,” Nathan said. “You two kids have fun.” Which got him a sharp look from Hemi and a choked-back laugh from Gabrielle, for whose benefit, I was sure, he’d said it.

I said, “Oh,” fumbled in my bag, pulled out a twenty, and handed it to Nathan.

“I’ve got it,” he said.

“Nope. You’ve spotted me so many times, and I’m not broke anymore.”

“Hey. Friends let friends pay.”

“Ha waka eke noa,”
Hemi said. “A canoe we are all in with no exception,” he explained to a very surprised-looking Nathan. “Maori saying. We’re all in the same boat, so you’ve got to paddle it together, lend a mate a hand.”

“Well, uh, yeah,” Nathan said. “That’s it. Good saying.”

Hemi nodded in farewell, then turned and shepherded me through the crowded bar with his hand on my lower back.

So many firsts today, so many changes, but being walked out by him, destination unknown, his hand practically burning through my dress, was a statement, too, and a promise that one thing between the two of us wasn’t going to change.

I wanted that promise. I was full of mixed messages, even to myself. I knew it.

We stepped from the dark air-conditioned bar into the still sticky-warm July evening, and instantly, the big black car glided smoothly up into the loading zone and Charles climbed out and opened the rear door. When Hemi and I were safely behind the smoked-glass partition and the car had pulled out into traffic again, though, I told him, “I half expected you to take me back up into the conference room so you could make your long-delayed point where it would have the most impact.”

“Did you?” he asked, his face at its most inscrutable. He didn’t say anything else for a long minute, and I started to get nervous. Had I misinterpreted everything? Was he actually furious with me after all? Finally, he said, “Maybe I want to make my point a bit more imaginatively than that.”

Oh, boy.

“You bought a new dress, eh,” he said, throwing me again.

“Uh…yes. I did. Do you like it?”

“Shoes as well.”

“Yes.” I went on, when he didn’t say anything, “You said I should shop, that I should use the cards. Am I supposed to only do it when you tell me, though, or buy what you tell me? If I’m only free to spend what I earned myself, and everything else is a…a present, tell me so. I didn’t have to buy these. I can be independent. I’d been doing it for years.”

I was getting wound up all over again, and his eyes had lightened, as if he were trying to smile but wasn’t letting himself. “Now, did I say that? I don’t think so. I signed an agreement, remember? As I recall, it said that what’s mine is yours, but maybe we should pull it out and have a wee look. I remember you signing one, too, saying you were quite happy to have me tell you what to do under certain circumstances. And what I want you to do right now is to open the front of that dress and show me what else you bought.”