Page 52 of Most Eligible Billionaire

He steps back, gaze on my face. “What?”

“What?” I echo. “Just another business problem with a business solution. And the solution is your magic peen? Is that it?”

I don’t wait for an answer. I grab my purse and sweep Smuckers up into my arms. “You’re not going to get your way by fooling me, and you’re sure not going to get it like this. Smuckers and I are so out of here.”

“Vicky—”

I put up a hand for him to talk to. It’s a bit 2003, but everything is relative.

Sixteen

Henry

Brettand I leave a late lunch meeting with some pension fund people. Only the most important people get lunch with the Locke cousins.

I do my best to impersonate a seasoned professional who is fully engaged in the discussion, but deep down, I'm still reliving that kiss, reeling from the way it tore through my body.

I tell myself the kiss was a good thing, that I’m expertly reeling her in. The good-cop charm thing is working, right?

Yeah. Working on me.

I want to explore every part of her. I want to taste her skin, to hear her come with my name on her lips. Fuck her down to her toes.

Know everything about her.

I keep going back over our conversation, wishing I’d learned more about what happened back where she came from.

What happened in that town? How did she survive so young and on her own with a kid in a place like New York? How did she think up the Etsy thing? It was hugely resourceful.

Her Etsy bio suggests she also designs high-end human jewelry. Our PI thinks that’s part of what brought her to the city. Dreams of a fashion career.

After lunch, Brett and I head out to the site of an Olympic-sized ice arena and hotel complex in south Brooklyn that’s an important joint venture with our Canadian partners.

Brett and I still like to walk the sites when we can.

It’ll be a good thing to do. A walk through a massive construction site will center me, get my brain off pink tongue tips and soft sighs.

It goes well for a bit. We talk over plans for making up a rain delay and go over some plumbing issues.

Then I see the griffin on the side of the truck of one of the concrete contractors. I snap a picture of it, imagining texting it to Vicky. Imagining her face when she sees it, wondering where she is.

Is she making dog collars? Where does she make them? Does she listen to music while she works? I want in on her dreams, her keeper bookshelf, her playlists, her comfort TV show, her hated foods. I want in on her.

I turn off the phone and shove it in my pocket.

Kaleb shows up with the Canadians. We put on the blue Locke hard hats and head on in.

Brett’s side of the family was never interested in the Locke business—it was my dad and my grandfather who ran it.

But Brett got bitten by the building bug early, so he spent a lot of time with my dad and grandfather and me out on the sites when we were boys.

After things got busy, it was Renaldo we’d tag along with. Renaldo was the master builder, overseeing the superintendents who oversaw the projects.

We spent a lot of summers with hammers in our hands under the watchful eye of Renaldo.

While we’re out on the site, the partners ask about the Smuckers stunt—that’s the way they put it.

I catch Brett’s eye. “It’s been everything we could’ve imagined,” I say. “A unique way to honor Bernadette’s memory.”

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