Page 7 of The Billionaire's Cinderella

New guy nods. “What’s it been? Three years?”

“At least that,” Ella says.

By now, I’ve started making a few connections and assembling a mental chart that resembles the one that detectives throw up on walls in crime shows to figure out who the mobsters are. This must be the guy who wounded Ella so badly and inspired her speech about the hateful things that men do. This is the jackass who took a glorious woman like Ella and treated her like garbage. I’d stake money on it. But there’s only one sure way to find out.

I loudly clear my throat and wait, dying to hear how she introduces the guy.

“Sorry,” she says, looking a little flustered. “Ryker Black, this is Liam Wilder. My, ah, older half-brother.”

Wait, what? Brother?

“You sure you don’t want to call me your evil half-brother?” Liam asks Ella after giving me a quick nod and handshake.

“If the shoe fits…” she says before briefly disappearing behind her glass as she takes a healthy swallow of her bourbon, finishing it off. “Anything else?”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat, hesitating under the power of Ella’s glare. I almost feel sorry for the guy now that I no longer want to snap both his arms for breaking Ella’s heart. “Let’s grab coffee sometime. Catch up.”

“Yeah, sure,” she says with the sincerity of a woman who’s run into a barely remembered high school acquaintance while heading for the subway and wants to end the conversation before she makes herself late for work.

We should get together sometime.

Yeah, sure. Let’s do that.

I don’t know Ella well, but both Liam and I know it doesn’t look good for him.

“Great,” he says, working on a smile that never catches on. “I’ll get out of your hair. You two have a good night.”

“And you,” she says coolly, all but planting a foot on his ass to propel him as he walks off.

I stare across the table at Ella and try to regenerate some air in the room, since he seems to have taken it all with him. “Bad blood?”

“It’s not good,” she mutters, giving her empty tumbler a sad swirl.

“So…same mother?”

“Same father. He died a long time ago. When I was seven.”

“Sorry to hear that, Ella. Another drink? Or two?”

She sets her glass down and stares at it for a beat or two. When she looks back up at me, there’s a new smolder in her eyes that wasn’t there a second ago. Nerve endings tingle to life up my nape and across my scalp in response.

“I don’t think so. I’m in the mood for pepperoni pizza. With mushrooms. Maybe Jurassic Park. A summer night like this calls for an action-adventure movie, don’t you think? And you probably have bourbon at your apartment.”

I blink, hamstrung by my warring sides even as everything inside me leaps with uncontrollable excitement.

On the one hand, I want to lunge for her hand and race out of here, flipping tables and elbowing people out of the way in my eagerness to be alone with her.

On the other hand…

“Hang on,” I say, frowning. “Does this sudden turnaround have anything to do with seeing your brother?”

“Do you care?” she says.

That’s the funny thing. I do care. About all of it.

I want to know about her dating life. Her family life. Her education and career. Her philosophies on all the above. Anything that contributes to either her smile or her frown? I want to know about it. Which sounds suspiciously like the birth of an obsession, not that that matters at this moment.

What does matter to me at this moment? Making sure that she wants to be with me for me.

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