Caught Between Two Billionaires - Skye Warren Page 0,99
the Den, for cognac or whiskey or whatever the hell rich men like to drink these days. We work together now. You don’t have an excuse.”
There’s every chance tonight will end the same way.
He stares me down, willing me to look away first. Except I want this too much. I want him too much, in all his conflicted glory, even if he is some kind of consolation prize. Even if that’s what I am for him. He courted me once, and he was damn charming then. But now he’s resisting me, trying to be reserved, and he’s damn near devastating.
I might be the one falling to my knees in front of him tonight.
“Beer,” he says, his voice rough. “At the Den. Nine o’clock.”
I take off the yellow hard hat and hold it out to him. “You need this more than me. I don’t want any wayward pieces of concrete knocking you out. I’m pretty sure they don’t serve beer in the ER.”
He gives me a small smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
I’m still wondering about that look as I step back through the heavy plastic sheeting, as I cross back through the looking glass into the real world of traffic horns and exhaust.
The way you and Christopher were business partners? There was something in his expression when I asked the question. Guilt. Longing?
It makes me wonder if there was more to their relationship than money. It makes me wonder if I broke more than their company when I stood between them.
My mother’s nurse is a stout woman with perpetually pink cheeks and a tendency to call everyone sugar. Freida dutifully prepares the chopped kale salads and wheatgrass smoothies my mother prefers, but I suspect she laces the brownies with pot.
Whatever we’re paying the agency, it isn’t enough.
I like her so much I can almost forget that she isn’t a regular nurse. She’s a hospice nurse, part of a whole hospice team that consulted with my mother for weeks when we moved here.
Daddy died in the middle of my first art gallery show, to the shock of everyone.
What came after, the will and its humiliation, that was a surprise, too.
My mother seems determined to die in exactly the opposite way—slowly, with every stage planned out. I’m sure it comes from a kindness, a wish to prevent the kind of paralysis that gripped us in that New York City hotel room, the air still tinged with the smell of paint.
Freida manages to corner me. I’m usually more careful than this, but I sneaked into the kitchen for a pot brownie and a glass of milk. I could have used a little natural high before seeing Sutton in his natural element. There’s nothing behind me except a walk-in pantry, no possible escape from the conversation I’ve been avoiding for almost a month.
“Harper,” she says. “I’m glad I caught you, sugar.”
I wave the plate with the pot brownie vaguely, as if I’m not panicking inside. “Oh, you know, just getting a midnight snack. It’s something I do when I’m sleepwalking. Like right now.”
She gives me that hospice-nurse smile. “We should talk about your mother.”
“You already told me what she ate today,” I say as if she’s just so silly. As if there’s nothing else to say about a woman determined to die in the most drawn-out possible way.
“We should talk about the Death Plan, Harper.”
And there it is.
I still can’t believe there’s something even called a Death Plan. Who plans for death? It’s the worst possible outcome, and even if it’s inevitable, even if you see it coming, how can you accept it with something as terrible as Times New Roman printed on cheap inkjet paper?
“I really don’t think I need to talk about it, actually. Bad enough that it exists.”
She doesn’t move out of my way. “The purpose is to make the event easier for you.”
“Easier? Death isn’t supposed to be easy.”
“Maybe not easy, but it doesn’t have to be hard. Death is a natural part of life.”
God. Is that what the Death Plan says? Ten thousand percent glad I haven’t read it. “I know Mom was into this whole hospice, kumbaya, circle-of-life thing, and I respect that, but that doesn’t mean I have to join the club. No leather jacket for me, okay?”
“She would really like you to be on the same page.”
No, it’s not respecting her wishes, but I can’t read that sheet of paper any more than I can stab my eyes with a steak knife. That’s actually looking