Page 22 of Billionaire Devil

“You’re about to hit the curb,” she says helpfully.

“Thanks, co-pilot.” Inch by inch, I ease the colossal machine forward, praying that I don't take out a mailbox—or worse, a pedestrian.

But once we clear the narrow street without causing a neighborhood crisis, it’s not all that much different to driving a Hummer. I catch Lila’s wide-eyed gaze and I give her a cocky wink, like I do this all the time.

“Well, that was nothing short of a miracle,” she announces, as I get us onto a main road with what I hope looks like effortless ease. “I’m sure part of your sales-pitch last night was that you’re a good driver.”

“We’re still alive, aren’t we? Cut me some slack, princess.”

She tilts her chin, like she has no intention of doing any such thing. “So far, yes, but the day is young.”

“Come on, you have to admit this is far more interesting than the alternative.”

“I’d be sleeping, so no.” But I can tell she’s having fun. There’s excitement in her lightning-bright eyes. “So, if you drove a Zamboni, does that mean you played hockey?”

I glance over at her. There’s something almost breathless about her question. “Four years for the Crimson, two as starting center.”

“That’s Harvard?”

I give her a mock-horror frown at the question. “Yes. Everyone in my family has gone to Harvard, for at least three generations. I wasn’t allowed to even look at other schools, I had to maintain a solid A average, and if I so much as missed a single class, my father would—and so often did—threaten me with disinheritance. He barely put up with the fact that I was on the hockey team but overlooked it when I became captain my junior year.”

“You must have been good. Did you ever think about going pro?”

“All the time. But Daddy-o again threatened to disinherit me if I didn’t immediately give all my time, blood and guts to the family business as soon as I finished my degree. I wouldn’t be surprised if he put a hit out on me to make sure he got his way. My knee got slammed between the boards and most of the Cornell defense. It got bent forty-five degrees in the wrong direction.”

“Ouch.” She winces at the thought.

“It took a few surgeries to fix it. And it pretty much guaranteed my hockey career was over. Of course my father was thrilled.”

“How awful. I’m sorry.”

“What, that my father was an overbearing tyrant or that I never went pro?”

“Both.” Lila’s watching me, like she’s genuinely interested. There’s empathy in her expression. And the clear absence of the grasping eagerness I’m so used to. It strikes me that Lila isn’t here with me only—or at all—because I have a lot of money. She’s not trying togetanything from me. It’s sort of stark in the moment how much that detail has been a part ofallthe very-short-term relationships I’ve had.

I find myself craving more of thisrealnessbetween us that’s been a part of our conversation from the very first word.

“Hockey was the one thing I did that was completely mine,” I admit, without really meaning to. “It had nothing to do with my name or any entrenched family legacies. I could take out all my angst and rage and disappointments on the ice. At the time, it helped.”

“So you took your aggression out on the puck.”

“Affirmative.”

Lila laughs and bats my arm and I have never felt such a sense of triumph.I fucking love making her laugh.“Well, Terminator, it’s too bad you couldn’t have made a career out of it,but it looks like you’ve done pretty well for yourself without hockey.”

“I always knew it would have created a war between me and my father if I’d seen it through. When the accident happened, it almost felt like fate had stepped in.” It’s been a while since I thought about all that. The little angel is digging into emotional territory—places I don’t usually go.

“It sounds like there were a lot of heavy expectations on you.”

“You could say that.” She doesn’t know the half of it. “Are you a hockey fan?”

“Not really.” She’s gone cagey, and her gaze lands somewhere out over the scenery, like she’s not really seeing it. She’s clearly got baggage of her own.

So I dig a little further. “A hockeyplayerfan?”

“Definitely not.” Her answers are suddenly blunt and sullen.

“Interesting,” I tease her.

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