Billionaires Dollar Series

His fingers curl around mine softly.

I squeeze his back as hard as I can.

Cole doesn’t flinch, though his hand has to be hurting. The only thing in his eyes is amusement. “It was my pleasure, Miss Holland.”

Cole

“You’re falling behind.”

I scowl at Nick and reach for the towel. “I’ll get you in the next set.”

He rests his tennis racquet against the low bench and shoots me a wolfish grin. “That’s what you said last time. Hell, man, this is your game.”

“Thanks for reminding me.” I wipe the sweat off my brow. Once a week, for as long as I can remember, Nick and I’ve played tennis in the mornings. And I haven’t lost this badly in about as long.

“Your head is elsewhere.”

I don’t protest, because frankly, he’s right. Focusing has been difficult since yesterday, when Skye Holland walked into my office and negotiated her way into a bet I should never have agreed to.

“It might be, yeah.”

Nick frowns. “Business? The development on Fourth Street has been giving you a lot of shit, right?”Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

“It has, yeah, but that’s not it. I’ve somehow managed to mix business and pleasure. Again.”

Nick, who remembers the first time I did that, winces. “Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

He lobbies a tennis ball at me and I catch it easily, plucking it out of the air. “Does she work for you?”

“Not exactly. I’m planning to demolish the business she works in.”

For a moment, Nick just stares at me, before he throws his head back and laughs. “You’re not serious.”

“Deadly,” I say, tossing the ball back at him.

“Fucking hell.” He lobbies it hard at my chest but I catch it easily, my skin smarting. “How can she stand to be in the same room as you?”

“At the moment, I doubt she can. We slept together weeks ago, before I knew who she was.”

Nick runs a hand through his hair. “How’d you meet?”

“At Legacy.”

“You had a one-night stand?”

I turn my back on him and fit my tennis racquet into the sleeve. My centrally located hotel has an indoor tennis court, conveniently close to work. Nick and I have a standing reservation.

“Yes,” I say. I can practically hear what Nick isn’t saying, the taunts we’ve both grown out of. Had this been five years ago, he would have flayed me verbally, and I would have given as good as I got. “And it was fucking fantastic. Best sex I’ve had in years. I was rather hoping to repeat it, but then… well.”

“You became the devil,” he says. I shoot him an evil look, and he grins again. “In her eyes, I mean.”

“Yes, and with it, any hope of a repeat.”

“If you want me to tell you to not tear down her building, I won’t.” His smile is gone now. “Business and pleasure don’t mix.”

“I know that,” I say. Mixing them in the past had been the most expensive mistake I’d ever made.

“And if your team has run the numbers, drawn up the contracts, started planning… don’t stop that. You bring business to Seattle. It’s what you’ve done for years.” He shrugs. “There are more women in the city.”

I nod, thinking to myself that for so long, none of them had appealed to me, not until Skye.

Nick’s advice is solid. But as I stand in the shower and warm water cascades around me, memories of her find me again. Her warm body against mine. How she’d tasted. The way she had been entirely herself-not afraid to tease me, to take the lead, but also oddly shy, like she was unsure of how I’d react. She’d whispered things in the dark, things I’m sure she regrets now, when my head had been between her thighs.

I’ve never come when a man did that before.

It hadn’t been a lie, I’m sure of that, and I feel just the same as I did then, overcome with the desire to show her more of what I could do. To rise above her and fill her and make her come again and again.

I close my eyes against the tiles. She’d been seething yesterday. I could see it in her eyes. Why didn’t you tell me?

And beneath it, a very different kind of anger. She’d had her impulsive one-night stand with a handsome stranger-a part I’d played willingly-and then I’d turned out to be the one person she despised more than any other.

Yeah. She was right to be fucking furious with me.

But I also know that what happened between us in that hotel bed hadn’t just been a one-off or a fluke, either. Sex that good never is.

I’m going to have to convince her of that.

The car pulls up smoothly outside the little bookstore that evening.

“Should I wait here for you, sir?”

I straighten the collar of my jacket. “No. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

Charles doesn’t comment. He’s been with me for years, and despite knowing the ins and outs of my life, he’s never once crossed the line. Business and friendship, never mixing. The way it should be.

The way I’m ignoring at the moment.

It’s a complete gamble that she’s still here-I’ll just as likely take Karli Stiller by surprise instead.

I stop outside the bookstore. Between the Pages has a certain charm, that’s true, but most of it comes from being so clearly loved. The window displays are crafted with care, the sign by the door hand-painted.

The little bell announces my arrival gayly as I step instead. It might as well be a war drum, because the moment she sees me, there’ll be hell to pay.

And I can’t wait.

“I’ll be right with you!” It’s her voice, somewhere from the back. No Karli behind the register. Perfect. I pick up a book by the counter as I wait. Flipping it over, I see it’s a romance novel, two people torn apart over and over again by life and fate. I put it down with a snort. If they’re that good at miscommunication, they’re clearly not soul mates.