Billionaires Dollar Series

“I haven’t forgotten,” I say. “It would be difficult to, I admit.”

“You enjoyed yourself?”

Okay, now I have to break eye contact. “You know I did.”

“Good.” His eyes darken. “After I saw that offensive note you left me on the dresser, I wondered if I had underperformed.”

The idea that he could think what he did to me an underperformance feels ridiculous. There’s nothing remotely vulnerable in his voice, nor his face, his jaw set confidently. I narrow my eyes at him.

“You know, fishing for praise is very unbecoming.”

He laughs, and as he does, I catch a hint of a dimple in his left cheek. I hadn’t seen that in the darkness when we first met.

“All right. You might be less confident than you pretended that night in the hotel bar, but you’re just as quick to take me to task.”

“You think it was a pretense?”

He shakes his head at me, still smiling. “I think you wanted to try on a different woman’s clothing for the night. I’m glad I was available for your fantasy.”

My throat feels desert-dry. “Me too,” I say weakly. “And regarding the note…”

This is my chance. My chance to change things, to make amends, to maybe get another shot at seeing him. The things he could do… I haven’t stopped thinking about him for weeks.

There’s a smile on his lips. “Yes?”

“Maybe I was too quick in writing it.”

“Mmm. Maybe you were.” He ambles over to the counter, pushing the book and a twenty lazily over to the other side. “And if you’d had more time, what would you have added?”

Damn it, he’s going to make me say it. “A few digits, perhaps.”

“Ten, I hope.”

“Yes,” I breathe.

“Good.” He leans in over the counter, his face so close to mine, a ghost of his hot breath against my skin. My body tenses, remembering his scent, the nearness, how his lips feel on mine. “I want you to remember that.”

I blink my eyes open to see him smiling crookedly, standing straight once more. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll find out.” He steps back, toward the door, his book in hand. “And, Skye?”

“Yes?”

“I would have called you. I want you to remember that, too.”

And then he’s gone, as swiftly as he came, the handsome suit-clad stranger.

“Tell me again where you guys talked,” Karli demands.

I laugh. “All right, well, he came in through the front door. And then he walked down this aisle… before turning here. We stopped at this section for a bit-he took out The Search for Belle-and then we went to the counter, where he paid. Detailed enough?”

“Yes.” She gives a dramatic sigh. “I can’t believe I missed the chance to see Mystery Man.”

“Bad luck,” I say, though I’m secretly glad she was in the storage room, given our conversation.

“And I can’t even search him, because you still don’t know his last name. Honestly, Skye, do you know anything about getting a date?”

I hop up on the stool behind the counter. “You’ve been happily married to John for eleven years. The landscape has changed. The dating scene is a mess now.”

She gives me a pointed look. “Exchanging last names is still customary. I don’t need to keep up with the trends to know that.”

“I don’t know if I’ll see him again. And look at this-he’s already distracted us from our work! Again!” I pick up my pen and continue filling in the words on the little note. Closing in two months. Twenty percent off your purchase if you buy three books or more!

“Yes,” Karli says dryly. “God forbid you’re distracted while writing.”

“My penmanship could be what saves us.”

“God help us all if that’s what it takes,” she says, but her voice is amused. Since we got the news about demolition, Karli has handled it a lot better than me, despite the bookshop being hers. Growing up, I know it had it been as much her salvation as it had been mine. But Karli has a husband now, two kids, and an interest in baking she dreams of one day transforming into a business.

“I got an email today,” she says. “And before you go ballistic-don’t look at me like that, I know you will, Skye-I didn’t tell you right away because I wanted to think it through.”

I put down my black sharpie. “What did it say?”

“It was from Porter Development. They’ve requested a meeting directly with me.”

“A meeting?”

“Yes.” She pushes her glasses back. “I don’t know what they want. In the email, they only said they wanted to discuss ‘our mutual future.'”

“Our mutual future? But ours is being sacrificed for theirs.”

“It’s odd.” Karli leans against the register, a furrow in her brow. “I wanted to ask if you’ll come with me to the meeting.”

“Of course I will, if you’ll have me. You don’t even have to ask.”

Her smile turns wry. “But we’ll have to be civil.”

I know she’s saying we, but what she’s really saying is that I have to be civil. “I will be on my very best behavior, I promise.”

“Good. Now, these boxes won’t unpack themselves. Why don’t we get this done, and you can tell me what you did this past weekend. Did you babysit Timmy again? Eat dinner with Isla? Go out to a hotel bar and meet a handsome stranger? Tell me anything that’s not related to diapers or books, please. I need to live vicariously through you.”

I smile at her, my co-worker in name but so much more than that, and dive straight into the most entertaining re-telling of my boring weekend that I can manage.

I gloss over the fact that I spent nearly half a day on the internet, sorting through the search results of Cole and Seattle. He was like a needle in a haystack.ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

The day of the meeting with Porter Development, I put on my most professional blouse and a pencil skirt, hidden in the back of my closet. When I arrive at Between the Pages, she’s dressed in a mirrored version.

She snorts. “Our armor, huh?”