The Billionaire Bachelor (Billionaire Bad Boys Book 1) Page 28

  “No housekeeping,” he grumbled, unsure why the maid was here. He’d instructed her to come by once a week, and he remembered before he broke the seal on a bottle of sixty-year-old scotch last night that he’d hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign.

  The numbers on the clock blurred, focused, then blurred again: 11:43. He couldn’t remember the last time he’s slept past eight. Well, whatever. He was due a sick day, probably had a hundred of them in queue. Hungover counted as sick. And anyway he was in charge.

  He turned his face into the pillow, his skull aching like someone had split it with an axe. Today’s hangover wasn’t something he felt like dealing with. Neither was yesterday’s. Or the one he’d had the day before. They’d become his new routine.

  He heard more rustling, but rather than deal with it, he pulled another pillow over his head. If she wanted to take the trash out so damn badly, fine.

  * * *

  The next time he opened his eyes, it was to the patter of rain on the windows. The room was dimmer, so that was a plus.

  His head still hurt when he opened his eyes, so it would make sense not much time had passed. Through a glass of water—where had that come from?—he made out the wavy numbers on the clock. The first number was a three. In the afternoon, he presumed.

  Since his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth, he pushed up on one elbow and reached for the glass. Two aspirin sat next to the water, Bobbie’s doing no doubt. He took them both, drank the water, then closed his eyes again to sleep hopefully another four or five hours. Then he could climb out of bed, order a pizza, and start drinking.

  But before he could sink into sleep, the sound of his cell phone pierced the air. A purring ringer he’d turned off three days ago. He reached blindly for the phone and silenced it. Phone calls were the one thing he refused to let interrupt him. If the damn thing started ringing, it would never stop. He didn’t feel like dealing with anything.

  Not people.

  Not work.

  None of it.

  He hadn’t shown up for a single meeting, had delegated most busy work, and Bobbie was handling his e-mails. If the board tried to shit-can him, Reese would deal with it then. Right now only one thing mattered. Getting through the worst heartbreak of his life and coming out the other side.

  There had to be another side.

  God help him, there had to be.

  * * *

  The smell of coffee permeated the air, and this time, his eyes sprang open. Okay, coffee was going too far. Even for Bobbie. Evening time was for drinking. With a groan, he pushed up to sitting and scrubbed his face with his hands. He was disoriented and thirsty, but at least his headache was gone.

  Eight p.m. He’d made it through another day.

  Cell phone in hand, he squinted at the screen, fumbling through the menu to make sure the ringer was off.

  “Click the button on the side,” a woman’s voice cut into the air.

  “Thanks.” He flipped it with his thumb and the screen showed it was on mute.

  Wait. That voice wasn’t Bobbie or the maid. He turned his head to find a slim redhead standing at the window, arms crossed over a pale pink suit.

  “You missed the board of directors meeting today,” Gwyneth said, taking a few steps toward the bed. When she reached his side, she sat on the edge of the mattress. “I told them you had the flu.” Her nose wrinkled. “You smell awful. When is the last time you showered?”

  “I don’t know. What’s today?”

  She gave him a small smile.

  “What are you doing here?” After she’d begged him back post-Twitterpocalypse and he had dropped the F-bomb and made her cry, he’d been certain he’d never see her again.

  “Bobbie called me. She couldn’t reach Tag or Alex,” she said.

  “Remind me to fire her.” He slipped a second pillow behind his back and shoved a hand through his hair. “I was asking why you are here.”

  “I know what you meant. That love of my life thing?” she said, referring to the hashtag heard ’round the world. “That was an exaggeration. I was lonely. I was also mad because Hayes slept with his twenty-two-year-old assistant, Candi with an i. In retrospect, I should’ve taken a little time to myself before I sought you out.”

  “You think?”

  “Then I saw Merina,” she continued. “Everything I should have felt for you was reflected in her eyes.” Her smile faded quickly. “Only my feelings were more about myself.” Gwyneth shook her head softly, but not out of animosity, more like she was having a really late epiphany. Her eyes snapped over to him. “She loves you.”

  “Loved. Past tense.” He pointed to his desk where an unopened envelope sat. “Divorce papers.”

  He hadn’t opened the envelope yet. Why bother? Bobbie had brought them in three days ago…maybe four days at this point. Merina’s lawyer-slash-best-friend had dropped them off. He was glad he didn’t have to face Lorelei. She no doubt had an opinion about what he could do to himself using which body part, and he didn’t want her to demonstrate.

  “You must have really hurt her if she signed them.” Gwyneth stood and moved to the kitchenette. She returned with a mug and Reese frowned.

  “That had better be scotch.” Steam curled from the mug, so probably not.

  “You won’t sleep tonight anyway. Drink it.” Once again, she sat on the edge of the bed.

  It smelled good, which was why he accepted the mug and took a sip.

  “Still waiting to find out why you’re really here,” he said. “You aren’t the most magnanimous person I know.”

  A wry smile lifted half her mouth. Gwyneth had been out of his life so long, everything about her felt foreign. Her face, her voice…that she cared enough about him to intervene so he wasn’t fired.

  “You mean am I here to try and convince you to take me back again?”

  “Are you?”

  “No.” To her credit, she didn’t look the least bit upset about the prospect of being turned down.

  As miserable and heartbroken as he was, he still wouldn’t say yes to Gwyneth. Once a cheater always a cheater. As Hayes had recently proven to her. At that thought, he couldn’t help but offer his condolences.

  “I’m sorry he hurt you. It sucks to be lied to.” He didn’t hate her. He didn’t like her, but he didn’t hate her. He’d take that as progress.

  “Thanks.” She sent a glance around his hotel room. “You know…I could see that Merina loved you when I saw her at your father’s retirement party. What I didn’t know until I arrived here to your pigsty was that you loved her back. This isn’t like you.”

  True. He’d handled heartbreak in the past by staying busy. Losing Merina made his heartbreak over Gwyneth look insignificant. He opted not to be petty and point that out. More progress.

  “The night I met her, I figured the marriage was a stunt. You needed to clean up your reputation to land CEO and she’s such a fantastic businesswoman. The perfect candidate for a wife.”

  “It was a stunt.” No need to hide it now. “Or…it was supposed to be a stunt.”

  “I should have known. You’d never choose someone like her without a purpose. Then you fell for her,” Gwyneth added with a pitying shake of her head. “Since we split, your dates were temporary and easy to blow off. Merina is neither of those things.”

  “She was supposed to be both of those things,” he said, remembering the moment of genius when he’d hatched his plan.

  “Well.” Gwyneth stood. “You’re an idiot.”

  “On that, you and Merina see eye to eye.”

  “Take a shower.” She stood and took his coffee. “I’m leaving.”

  “That’s it? You came here to dole out your unsolicited advice and now you’re leaving?”

  “Make sure you shave. Women don’t like too much scruff.” She gestured to his face and he scowled.

  “Merina does.” He ran his fingers over his bristled jaw, remembering all the times she’d done the same. She once commented how she liked the scrape o
f his chin over the inside of her thighs. He smiled to himself.

  Goddamn. He loved her so much even that smile hurt.

  Gwyneth rinsed his mug in the sink as he stood and half hobbled across the room. She wasn’t kidding. He needed a shower. He paused, hand on the bathroom door. “Hey.”

  She looked up.

  “Hayes is a dick,” he said. And because he would be downing scotch by the mouthful right now if Gwyneth hadn’t barged in, he added, “Thank you.”

  A small nod. “You’re welcome.”

  He took a fast but thorough shower, emerging into his suite with a towel around his waist and scrubbing his hair with another. Gwyneth was gone, his coffee mug upside down, drying on a dishtowel.

  His lips quirked when he saw one of his dress shirts tossed over his desk. A Post-it note stuck to the collar read, “you faced your past, now go get your future.” He slipped the shirt on, his smile falling the moment he spotted what was on his bed. The divorce papers.

  She’d opened the envelope. An envelope containing more than their decree. On top of Merina’s signature was a wedding ring.

  His wife’s ring. Now your ex-wife.

  Panic seized his chest as reality sank in. Finally, and deep enough that his heart cracked right down the middle. He remembered the day he’d given it to her.

  The moment he’d seen her wearing the wedding dress in the shop. The instant he slid the soldered bands onto her hand during the ceremony. And when she kissed him, feeling the coolness of the ring on his cheek. The way the diamond glinted at the Van Heusen when she handed him the business card that read Merina Crane.

  Their shared past flashed in his memory.

  The nights in their bedroom. The mornings in the shower. That day in the kitchen. The evening she’d come here and slapped him in the face.

  His knees threatened to give, and he grabbed the nightstand to keep from dropping. His hands shook. This wasn’t panic. This was devastation.

  Similar to when he lost his mom, a veil of dread cloaked him. He remembered when she died, thinking he’d never hug her again. He’d never hear her voice again, and worst of all, he’d never have the chance to tell her he loved her. Not ever again.

  With Merina, he was a chance to do all of those things. Hug her. Hear her voice. And no matter what she felt for him now, even if she didn’t want to hear it, he’d tell her for the first time that he loved her.

  That he’d been lying, to her and to himself, for too long.

  Even if she didn’t love him any longer, she deserved to know. And he wouldn’t let another minute pass without telling her.

  He snagged a pair of jeans off the floor as lightning streaked the sky. Rain poured down in sheets and he let out a dry laugh.

  Perfect.

  Chapter 20

  Merina didn’t wear heartbreak well. She knew because each and every person who’d seen her recently had told her she looked tired or asked if she was getting sick.

  The UPS guy, the mailman. The linen delivery guy. Her mother. Her father. Arnold, who usually minded his own business, had taken to checking on her regularly. Heather had brought Merina a cup of hot tea every evening without being asked.

  Merina pretty much lived in her office. The more she worked, the easier it would be to forget she was grieving. Right?

  Wrong.

  Lorelei had dropped off the papers to Reese’s secretary three days ago. Merina had told herself she wasn’t expecting a response, but she’d waited to hear from him. No way could he allow this to happen.

  He’d remained distant and silent. Nothing had changed him. Not the moment she put her heart in his hands, or given him her body one final time. Not putting off signing the divorce papers on a marriage she was far more invested in than she should’ve been. Not finally signing them.

  He was gone.

  Merina accepted this horrible fact and felt every painful prick of it like a thousand needles in her skin.

  Heather had shut down the bar and Merina’s parents had gone home hours ago. In her office, door cracked open, no one to witness her misery, Merina decided to feel her feels. Every last miserable one of them. An audible sob left her lips, the sound so lonely, it beckoned more sadness.

  Her last period had been a relief, because the last time she and Reese slept together, neither of them had the presence of mind to use a condom. For a few terrifying days, she was sure she was pregnant. The gods had smiled on her misfortune, deciding it’d be a dick move to add a baby on top of a divorce.

  So. That was good, she guessed.

  She reached for a tissue and dabbed her cheeks, vowing this the last surge of emotion she’d allow to wreck her. One final torrential downpour of a cry. Which, ironically, was what it was doing outside now. The papers were signed. She’d crossed the finish line. Only a little longer and she’d soon begin to heal.

  She hoped.

  Merina swiped her fingers under her eyes and decided to go out to the bar for something stronger than the tepid tea on her desk. She’d been drinking too much wine lately, but she’d read an article that “situational alcoholism” was a thing.

  Tonight, especially, she’d earned a glass of wine. Hell, a bottle.

  Thunder rattled the walls as she slipped by the front desk, relieved to find Arnold waylaid by a late check-in. While his attention was diverted, Merina bolted around the CLOSED sign at the doorway of the bar.

  Yes. A bottle of wine would do fine. Maybe she’d go into the banquet room and drink it in there. She grabbed an open bottle, and a wineglass. Tempting to drink it directly from the source, but she did have some sense of decorum.

  She took two steps and stopped cold when a man wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a suit jacket stepped past the CLOSED sign. Water dripped on the carpet with a soft tap-tap from his soaking clothes.

  Like the first time she’d met him, his posture was straight. In a weird gender flip of that same scenario, his clothes were adhered to his skin. His typically perfect hair was in disarray on his head, water curling the ends and dripping from his forehead down the tip of his nose.

  She tried to speak. Failed.

  The ladder she had been mentally climbing shook, threatening her path to recovery. She imagined herself sliding down a neighboring chute instead. No. No chutes. Only ladders.

  Up, up, and a-fucking-way.

  “Reese.” She squared her shoulders and called up every ounce of strength she possessed, which wasn’t a lot. But fake it till you make it, right? “I assume you received the papers. Later than you wanted them, I’m sure.” So not the issue, but she had to keep the facts in the forefront. “I would have had them to you sooner but I wanted the timing to be right for—”

  “Cut the horseshit, Crane,” he cut in.

  She’d said exactly those words to him once.

  He walked to the bar and plunked a doorknob onto the surface. The same one she’d left on his desk the first time she’d met him. She stared at it, mouth dropped open.

  “You forgot this,” he said.

  Her heart lunged for him and she mentally restrained it. She hated him. Or was trying to.

  “Celebrating?” He dipped his chin at the bottle of wine in her hand.

  She told him the truth. “Coping.”

  “I went with scotch. A lot of it.”

  “Another popular choice.”

  A damn doorknob was not a peace offering. She refused to see it as one.

  “What do you want?” She held up a hand. “You know what? I don’t want to know. I’m going to allow myself to believe you came here to drop off the Van Heusen’s doorknob and be on your way.” She made a shooing motion. “Go on. Swim back to your lair.”

  He didn’t leave, though. Only rested his hands on the bar. She backed up and stood behind it, so afraid if he touched her, she’d let him get away with murder.

  “Merina.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s broken,” she said, her voice hard. “You broke me.”

  His face melted into a mask
of hurt. The exact emotion she’d wanted to see the night she stood in his hotel shower. When she got dressed to leave his suite, the divorce papers in hand. Instead, he’d been stoic and cold, while inside she’d been dying. She couldn’t afford to hear his excuses and reasoning now. She had to keep climbing out of the pit, not sink back into it.

  “If you’re here for closure, I’m not interested,” she said. “You might feel better after you say whatever it is you came here to say, but I’ll only feel worse.” She pointed at him with the wineglass, holding it out like a weapon to keep him from coming closer. “Finish your unfinished business on your own. Or in the company of a bottle of scotch. But…I’m not…I can’t listen while you explain why you couldn’t…”

  Her words faltered as Reese closed the gap between them, one slow step at a time. He took the wine bottle and glass from her hand, and placed them on the bar.

  “I’m not ready to forgive you,” she continued. Desperately. “And…and even if I was, I’m not giving you the satisfaction of—” He placed his palm on her face, brushing her bottom lip with his thumb. “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t answer her, only stared down at her mouth.

  “Reese?”

  “You still love me. I wasn’t sure until I walked in, but I can see it.”

  She shook her head. No. No. She couldn’t accept this. Not after an agonizing month and an even more agonizing last couple of days. She’d made the decision to kill off the part of herself that still loved him… Only it hadn’t died. She would find a way to let it go, though. She would. Because Reese didn’t fall in love and she couldn’t be in love alone.

  “I don’t,” she whispered.

  “Yes, you do,” he said.

  She opened her mouth to argue, but he didn’t give her a chance.

  “You were right. I am a chickenshit. Too terrified to try, so I thought cutting us short would be less painful. But it’s not painful, Merina. It’s worse. I haven’t felt a goddamn thing in weeks.” He rested one hand over her heart. No. Over her tattoo. “Until right now. I feel this.”

  His voice cracked and she lifted her eyes to his. Dampness from his hand seeped through the material of her shirt.