Page 111 of Most Eligible Billionaire

“I understand that they sprang it on you,” Denny says, stopping in front of me, way too close. “But before long, it’ll be old home week, I promise.” He grabs my hand, making me touch him, making me shake it. I yank it, but he won’t let go.

In a flash, a vicious hand clamps Denny’s arm. Denny’s head rocks forward as Henry yanks him backward, throws him up against the glass wall.

There’s shock in Denny’s eyes in the moment before Henry drives a fist into his face.

Denny staggers sideways. Smuckers barks madly. There’s a crack in the glass like a lopsided star.

Henry turns to me. “You okay?”

“No!” I’m backing away, away from it all. Henry comes to me but I fling up a hand. I don’t know what stops him in his tracks—the wild motion or maybe the look on my face.

I grab my purse and burst out the door, run across to the elevators. Henry calls to me, but I’m stab-stab-stabbing the button. I have to be away from them—all of them.

Henry’s flying toward me just as the doors open. I get in andstab stab stabthe doors shut—who says that doesn’t work? I ride down to the lobby, alone. The ride seems to take forever; the air inside the little box is way too bright.

It seems like forever before I’m out on the street, out in the too-dreary, too-crowded morning that seemed so promising not fifteen minutes ago. I push upstream against the workers and tourists, edge through a line at a bagel breakfast sandwich truck and head around a corner, weaving through the crowd, heading toward the water.

Smuckers is still back there. Shit.

I duck into a dark doorway and text April to ask her to see to Smuckers. I don’t know what to do or what to tell her. She’ll figure it out.

I’m in some kind of a service doorway, a skinny stairway with an unmarked black door at the back of me.

To my right is a brick wall, the soot of a century making the red of the bricks nearly black in places.

To my left is an ornate wall, thick with a hundred coats of paint. Soaring just above that is a bistro window. People up there are cozy with coffee and pastries and papers. If I stood up, I’d be level with their shoes.

But I’m down here. Vonda.

I try to think what to do, glad they can’t see me. Glad nobody can see me. I make myself small, wanting the world to just go away.

They know.

By now Henry knows. Brett probably followed him and told him.

I hug my knees, chin on my right kneecap. Denny’ll blab. People will find out now. I try to think of some way to stay Vicky, to stay in the city, but the danger of Mom taking Carly back is too much. God, she’d find a way to extort the entire company, using Carly as leverage. And all the publicity.

Legs block my view of the street. Slacks. “Vicky.”

My blood races.

“Leave me,” I say.

“Not likely.” He sits on the stoop next to me. “What happened?”

“You don’t know?” I don’t give him a chance to answer. “I just want to be alone.”

“Can I be alone with you?”

I want to cry, because it’s so Henry to say that.

“You know.”

“Know what?”

“They didn’t fill you in?”

“Baby, I just ran halfway down a skyscraper stairwell until I could get an elevator and then down two crowded blocks, pissing off about five dozen bumbling pedestrians trying to find you. I’ve been a little busy.”

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