Page 91 of Her Billionaire Boss
“Did you come here to insult me?”she demanded, pausing at the doorway to the sitting room.
A doorway that didn’t have a wall around it.Just two tall, black-painted girders to support the second floor.They’d knocked down the wall to give everything an open floor plan, and modernized away all the railroad baron touches that should have put the house on some national register.
God, I hoped Jackson kept the house in the divorce.
“No, it’s a force of habit,” I said, still following her.
Huge moving boxes were piled in pyramids, their dull brown cardboard almost vibrant against the monochromatic decor.Catherine went to a thick roll of bubble wrap and cut a piece off, lifting down a white, abstract ceramic cat from the mantle and started wrapping it.“I’m in the middle of something.What do you want?”
“To bring you this.”I reached into my jacket pocket and produced the black velvet clamshell.
Her eyes skated over the object for a moment, and her breath visibly caught.Then, recovering, she went back to packing.“I don’t know why you’d think I would want it.”
“Because it’s a family heirloom,” I said, opening the lid.“It always goes to the eldest daughter when she gets married.”
“Yes, and now I’m not going to be married anymore,” she reminded me.“Hence mother’s insistence that Ireturn it.”
“You’re going to be married, though.”I dropped onto an oblong ottoman, leaning my cane beside it.“You know, you should have asked your crippled brother if he needed somewhere to sit.”
“Oh yes.Where are my manners.I should see to the comfort of the man who came to my home uninvited, who is set on antagonizing me.”
“You opened the door, didn’t you?”
She regarded me cooly for a long moment, thin lips pursed thinner as she summoned up more anger.I’d seen the expression before.This time, though, the fight in her deflated.She looked down at the ring in my hand.“Why would I want that?I wore it to get married.Look how that turned out.”
“It turned out fine.”My tone was a little firmer than I intended, but Catherine needed tough love now.“You deserve better.”
She held up her hands and turned in a circle, indicating the spacious room.“Better than this?Better than thirty-nine-thousand square feet in Manhattan?Better than my children’s private school, which I can’t afford on my own?Better than membership at the yacht club?Our box seats at the Met?Our vacation home in Rio?Or the one in Venice?”
“Yes.”Maybe it was easy for me to say, since I could still afford to have those things, but just as I would give all of it up for Charlotte, I damn sure would give it up to escape someone like Jackson.
“I’m sure that’s a very romantic and touching sentiment from someone who isn’t facing homelessness,” she snapped.
“Okay, settle down, Victorian urchin.You’re not gonna be homeless.”I couldn’t help myself and added, “You’re better off getting out of this ugly ass interior designmare.”
“Once again, I must ask, before I throw you out of my house, did you come here to insult me?And if so, couldn’t it have waited until Thanksgiving?”She turned away to bubble wrap a textured black vase.
“I don’t think you’re going to be invited to Thanksgiving.”She probably already knew that, but I thought it was better for her to be prepared.“But no, I’m not here to insult you.You’re my sister, Scott is my best friend, and I need to know what’s going on.”
She wrinkled her nose.“Is this the part where I justify my behavior so that you can give me your blessing?”
I put the ring down on the horrible white lacquered coffee table.“You don’t need my blessing.But I need to know that you’re not going to cheat on him.”
She almost dropped the vase.“How dare you—”
“You did before,” I pointed out.“At mother’s birthday party?Charlotte overheard you, and what she overheard made it sound like it wasn’t a one-time thing.”
“Your little girlfriend is awfully fond of eavesdropping.”
Normally, I would chafe at any criticism of Charlotte coming from my sister, but I let it slide because the pain in Catherine’s voice was so evident.“You didn’t try to keep it much of a secret, doing that on a weekend that the house was packed with guests.I think you wanted to get caught.”
She put the vase into a box, and the sound of the bubble wrap squeaking against itself made my teeth grind.
“I didn’t want to get caught,” she said, folding down the box flaps as she reached for a roll of packing tape.“Not by Scott, anyway.”
“By Jackson?”I asked over the crunch of the tape ripping from the roll.
She nodded grimly.“It would have made this whole process so much easier.”
