The Billionaire Bachelor (Billionaire Bad Boys Book 1) (22 page)

He couldn’t cower forever. He knew that. What had happened with Gwyneth happened and his wife wanted to know. Half of him wondered if it’d be therapeutic to tell her, the other half warning him not to traipse down Emotional Lane and crack his chest open so she could investigate the scars in there.

“It’s old news,” he said. Hell, it was ancient news. “But if you really want to know…”

“I do.” She shifted on his chest, pillowy breasts on his ribs, her comforting weight against his bare skin. What was it about her that made him able to tell her things he swore never to talk about?

He could do this. He just had to stick to the facts, spit it out, and then it’d be done.

“Gwyneth and I dated when I was younger. She was after money, and not a little amount—she wanted the lifestyle.” All true. The socialite in her wanted to maintain her status, increase her position in the years to come. Her mother had taught her well. In Reese she’d seen opportunity and nothing more. He just hadn’t been privy to her plan until she fucked his best friend.

Loving someone who didn’t love him had hurt like a bitch. He’d attempted to ignore it, to anesthetize the pain by pretending it wasn’t there. But the numbness always wore off.

“The short of it,” he said with forced boredom, “was that Gwyneth was shallow and I was too young to know what to do with my money. I gave her whatever she wanted.”

Money. Jewelry. His heart.

“She took advantage of you.” Merina’s fingers moved soothingly over his skin, grounding him.

“I’m the man, honey. She didn’t take advantage of me. Suckered me maybe.”

She let him have the deflection.

“Did you date long?” she asked.

Four years was a long time. Age twenty-four to twenty-eight for him, and while they weren’t formative years, they were the years he’d started to discover who he was, who he would become.

But that fell under the category of sharing far too much, so he shrugged and said, “Not really.”

“A month? A year?” she pushed.

“A handful of months,” he muttered.
Or fifty of them.
Admitting the truth was embarrassing. He had been blissfully blind to Gwyneth’s intentions. Believing she loved him for him, not for what he could give her. To this day it made him feel foolish. And foolish men did not run successful companies.

He looked to the window rather than at her when he fudged the truth. “I learned a lesson I needed to learn, and she moved on to greener pastures. Hayes was an up-and-comer, or was until he was fired from Crane Hotels.”

“Scandal,” Merina whispered, trying to lighten the mood.

“Not quite.” That was a flat-out lie. He’d felt scandalized. Used. Pissed. Hurt. All at once and in overwhelming equal measures. He moved Merina’s hair from her forehead, admiring her beauty and the honesty brimming in her eyes. Since she’d met him, she’d been lying to everyone she cared about—and to people she didn’t. It didn’t escape him that he’d given her little to no choice in the matter.

It bothered him now more than before.

“Is she the reason you dated all of Chicago one night at a time?” Merina blinked sweetly, teasing him, which he appreciated. She didn’t want to see him hurting. Good thing she couldn’t read his mind because a large part of him was hurting for her; for what he’d done to her.

He wanted Merina to believe that Gwyneth had stung his ego, not demolished his ability to commit to someone. And really, he couldn’t give Gwyneth that much credit. He’d made a series of choices after she left—purposeful decisions with an end goal in mind. Plus, if anyone had kept him from settling down, he could lay that blame at his mother’s feet. Her death had practically inoculated him.

Whatever he had with Merina, he was grateful the end date was on the horizon. The hurt he’d feel letting her go as planned would be easier than learning she’d left him or never loved him or died.

That thought didn’t do much to settle him. No relief came from imagining himself in bed alone, no Merina draped over his body.

“It’s easier to trust a woman for a night,” Reese answered belatedly. He brushed her cheek with the back of his knuckle. She was achingly beautiful, her eyes warm in the moonlight. “Most I could lose was the contents of my wallet. But my 401(k) remains intact.”

She hummed. “Who says I won’t drain your accounts, Crane? Maybe I’m money and power hungry.”

He laughed, and some of that coveted relief came. “You’re in love with a hotel. You inked the theme for the building onto your breast. You worry about your father’s health. You’re concerned about the college girl who more than happily went to bed with my brother tonight. I doubt, even though you ‘don’t like me,’” he added, air quoting the words she’d said to him when he proposed, “that you’d tempt karma by doing something as lowly as robbing me.”

The corner of her mouth curved and he touched her smile with the tip of his finger.

“You’re a good person, Merina.” In the silence of the room, he counted her heartbeats.

“You’re a better person than you give yourself credit for, Reese,” she said, her honesty flooring him. “And I like you more than I used to.”

He liked her more than was healthy. He liked her in his bed. He liked her swathed over his chest. He liked her in the wrapped dress and especially out of it. He liked her way more than he’d anticipated.

Essentially, that was the problem, wasn’t it?

He’d vowed to never take a woman to bed more than once after Gwyneth destroyed everything between them. He’d talked himself into the idea that Merina was just a long one-night stand. But he’d shared things with her he’d never shared with one-night stands.

They were in his childhood home, for God’s sake.

“Hey.” She put her finger on his chin to turn his face to hers. When their eyes locked, he had a premonition. It had claws. Fangs. It was one word with seven letters.

FOREVER.

Forever
was a myth.
Always
wasn’t real. His future was CEO and eighty-hour weeks and living on the same floor of his office at Crane Hotel. What he had with Merina was…

Ah, fuck. He couldn’t categorize it and he wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t want to or because he already knew and didn’t want to admit it.

“I do like you,” she murmured, interrupting his hectic thoughts. “A lot.”

His heart rapped a hectic beat. Try as he might to ignore it, he couldn’t escape the idea that in the last ten seconds things between them had changed irrevocably.

He liked her a lot too. A whole damn lot.

She shifted from his chest to her pillow, and side by side, they looked up at the ceiling.

“Good night, Crane.”

“Good night, Merina.”

They didn’t speak after that, but neither of them slept, either.

Waking in a bed that wasn’t hers, and without Reese next to her, Merina lay on her back for a few minutes and thought through last night.

But instead of enjoying fantastic memories of the shower, followed by more fantastic memories of them in bed, she found herself replaying the tape of her awkward admission.

I like you. A lot.

Because they were in high school.

She wasn’t in love with him, but if she were being honest with herself, it wouldn’t take more than a nudge to get her there.

What started out as a business agreement had morphed into sex as a perk but had since—dare she say it—
grown
. Reese had become more than a one-dimensional character.

He was a dedicated son, a loving brother. He was funny and had moments of kindness. She’d been too blind to see it—too angry to see it.

Reese worked hard and was even harder on himself. There was a boy inside the man who missed his mother, and seeing his sadness had flayed her. Together, they’d built a marriage on a bargain, but the life they’d built around it was starting to look very real.

Was starting to
feel
very real.

After years of living at home—and a brief stint with Corbin in that same house—Merina had never lived on her own. And Reese, a workaholic who lived at his hotel, had never bothered to make a home. But since Merina moved into the mansion, they had turned it into a home. Together.

And last night, in Alex Crane’s home where he’d raised his three boys through their tumultuous teenage years without his wife, Merina saw that this family was more than the headlines gave them credit for. They were, at least for a little while, her family too.

The board was being picky about who would acquire the role of CEO. They were holding it over Reese’s head, which was abhorrent, but on the bright side, their indecision gave her time. Time to show her husband that not all women were like Gwyneth. Merina was after his heart, not what he could give her.

If he gave them a chance, a real one, maybe they’d have a shot at something more. But she was getting ahead of herself. They had a few more months to figure things out. She threw the covers off and climbed out of bed, the thought comforting.

Twenty minutes later, she’d put on the jeans and shirt Magda had packed her, slipped her feet into her tennis shoes, and did a quickie makeup-and-hair session. Because she was reasonably sure no one heard her moans from last night, except for Reese who had earned them, Merina walked downstairs with her head held high. The long staircase led to a living room that opened to the kitchen…where she saw two people.

Tag and Taylor.

Awkward, party of three.

The second to last step she took was to back away, but Taylor already spotted her. So did Tag. Their smiles didn’t waver. Especially Taylor’s, which slipped only briefly to mouth the words “thank you” to Merina.

Tag meandered to the door with his hand on Taylor’s back, his voice low and rumbly and sounding as if he was breaking unpleasant news to her in the gentlest way possible.

Merina hoped she hadn’t caused the girl any kind of undue heartache. The front door shut and before she could decide whether or not to scamper upstairs and avoid a conversation with Tag, Reese came in from outside, an empty coffee mug in his hand.

“Not even going to feed her breakfast?” he asked his brother. Then his eyes landed on her and heated to a distracting degree. “Morning.”

“She’s all right,” Tag answered. He slid a knowing glance first at Reese, then back to her. “Merina, you’re looking…refreshed.”

He grinned and her cheeks grew hot.

Reese didn’t hide his own smile as he crossed the room, rounded the counter, and refilled his mug. He placed the coffee in front of her and she stepped forward to grasp the handle.

“And sharing a mug? You two are adorable,” Tag said, getting himself a glass of water.

“How do you know she’s all right?” Merina asked, desperate for a subject change. She hoped Tag hadn’t overheard her and Reese last night. Then again, how could he have overheard anything but what he and Taylor had been doing? “What if she’s feeling used?”

“Trust me, Sis.” Tag leaned his elbows on the counter in front of her. “She’s going back to Berkeley in a few weeks. She doesn’t want anything more than I gave her.”

“Which was what, an STD?” Merina asked with a sweet smile.

Reese choked on a laugh.

“Hey, I am squeaky clean.” Tag straightened. “Which I assume you would assume given the way you practically threw Taylor into my arms last night.” A hoisted golden-brown eyebrow suggested Tag knew how things had gone down. Which meant Taylor probably,
definitely
did not feel used. “But enough about me. You two seem to be taking your roles as husband and wife seriously.”

“Don’t.” Reese’s single-word command was paired with a murderous glare. One Merina supported. Mainly because what Tag had said was dangerously close to the truth. The “roles” of husband and wife weren’t like roles. They were better at being a couple than she could have imagined.

The front door squeaked and the three of them looked over, the room sinking into silence. Despite her deciding Taylor was a-okay, Merina half expected the younger woman to make a tearful entrance. Instead, it was Alex, in navy shorts and a tight gray T-shirt, huffing and puffing like he’d run a mile. Or ten.

Big Crane was in amazing shape. Merina thought about adding “for an older guy,” but he was in amazing shape for
any
guy. Rounded shoulders that reminded her of Reese’s and thick, muscular thighs that echoed Tag’s build. Her eyes perused the tattoos on the side of his arm, a black pictorial faded because of his tan and likely the age of the ink. Woven in the pattern, she made out the words
semper fi
.

He left the door open and Rhona, his PA, stepped in behind him, dressed in pink pants and a matching pink hoodie. Her blond hair had a natural gray streak running from the front of her ponytail to the back. The look suited her.

“I’m going to grab a shower,” she told Alex, touching his shoulder before slipping her hand away. “Morning, everyone,” she said with a smile before taking the stairs.

Had no one noticed that Alex’s PA had a thing for her employer? Reese and Tag were fascinated with the contents of the refrigerator, paying their father no mind. Alex paced into the room and pulled the earbuds from his ears. He disconnected them from his phone, tapping the screen as his breathing regulated.

Tag offered a green smoothie in a plastic bottle, and Alex accepted, cracking the lid and taking several deep swallows.

“Good run?” Reese asked his father, defecting from his plan to drink something other than coffee and grabbing a fresh mug.

“Yeah. Rhona pushes me.”

That wasn’t all Rhona wanted to do with him.

“I have news,” Alex said, setting his smoothie on the counter.

Her mind caught up in the love story she was currently writing in her head, Merina waited for him to announce that he and Rhona were running off to the Bahamas to tie the knot.

“Bob called me while I was jogging and told me the board is not interested in any new candidates for CEO.”

The room went silent. Reese, in sweats and a T-shirt, leaned one hand against the counter, the other white-knuckling his coffee mug.

“Congratulations, son. They’re naming you next week.”