Page 109 of Most Eligible Billionaire

Twenty-Eight

Vicky

We arrive back late.Exhausted. Henry sleeps at my place, because I don’t want to leave Carly.

I feel sheepish about the state of it, but at least it’s clean. He seems to like it just fine. And who cares?

This thing is over, anyway. It’s what I keep telling myself.

His birthday is on Friday. I need to be out of his life before then—that’s the promise I’ve made to myself. And if he’s sad, well, he’ll get the papers to restore his company.

It’s the right thing to do for Carly.

And it’s the only way to keep Vonda’s toxic PR from bringing him down. And the people of Locke who depend on him. It’s the right thing for Vonda.

There’s a board meeting scheduled for the morning—it’s unclear who called it—Henry thinks Kaleb called it, because the agenda is about the timeline for the Ten, and maybe hiring an extra outside team to expedite the redesign, and there’s something about utilities. Because buildings are apparently more complicated than just building a thing—you have to figure out how it hooks up to everything else.

We drop Carly at school and head to the office in the back of a limo with Smuckers in a flowered carrier on the seat beside us.

Henry pulls me onto his lap. “Have I told you how hot you are recently?”

I kiss his lower lip, then his upper lip. They’re little suck-kisses, a technique I pioneered over the sex marathon that was Labor Day weekend. I kiss him again.

“It’s been so long since I was just happy. Stupidly happy,” I say. I pull back to find him watching me with his very serious Henry face, cobalt-blue eyes dark and serious. “Thank you.”

“Does it make you a little sad?” he asks.

Like a wine connoisseur, he hears every note in my voice.

“Did I sound sad?” I tilt my head, like I have no idea why that could be.

“I’m happy, too,” he says softly. “But nothing about my happiness feels stupid.”

Something twists in my belly, spikes of joy and grief, sharp but good.

I’ll always have this feeling to remember,I tell myself.

The car drops us at the front of Locke headquarters under the Locke-blue flags emblazoned with the Cock Worldwide logo.

We link hands and go in through one of the array of highly redundant doors—the double ones this time, held by a doorman. We cross the enchanted five-story-tall lobby dominated by the giant jagged rock with shimmery water cascading down it.

I’m wearing bright colors again—an orange flowered top with blue pants and sparkly heels, more spoils from one of the high-fashion pop-up shops in the Hamptons that Carly and Bess and I hit.

But the clothes weren’t entirely their idea—I realized that, looking in the mirror this morning. The bright colors and sparkles are Vonda’s style. It feels good, like I’ve busted out of some sort of shell. Or maybe like I’m home.

I’ll always have that, too.

Henry cages me in his arms against the elevator wall as we ride up. The elevator has become one of my favorite kissing places, a stolen window of privacy.

And for just this moment, things feel like a fairy tale.

Henry growls when we reach the top floor. He’s in a brown suit and a maroon tie with tiny black owls on it. Carly and Bess bought it for him as a thank-you gift. I knotted it for him this morning.

He grabs Smuckers’s flowered carrier.

“You don’t have to—”

“If you think I’m not man enough to carry a flowered dog carrier that looks like a purse, you haven’t been paying attention, baby.”

---