Page 9 of Old Money

“Do you want to be alone?” I ask her.

She cocks an eyebrow. “As opposed to…?”

“As opposed to not being alone,” I say with a half-smile.

She fights a smile and clears her throat. “I mean…don’t you have, like…a few hundred businesses to run?”

I laugh. I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial Natasha.

“Hey, Nat,” I say when she picks up. “Do me a favor. Can you rearrange some things today? Uh, actually, all of it. I need the day. Yep. That’s fine. Thank you,” I say, hanging up. Then I look over at her. “The few hundred businesses can wait.”

JULIAN

“Julian, I know what you told my mom, but you…you don’t owe us—me—anything. You have already done so much more in the last few days than anyone would ever be expected to do for a complete stranger. Please, I can’t handle feeling like there’s this list of things I’ll never be able to repay you for.”

I lean closer to her and cover her hand with mine.

“If you hadn't stopped me from walking onto that campus, I might be dead. I think you keep forgetting that little piece of the puzzle. I’m not a man who needs to be repaid. But I am a man who sticks to his word. Okay?”

She swallows and thinks for a moment. Then she nods slowly.

“Okay,” she whispers. I squeeze her hand before I look to Tyler.

“Ty, can you take us out to Bendmere?”

“You got it, boss,” he says.

We ride quietly but not in an uncomfortable kind of way. I replay some of her words as we go. “Complete stranger” keeps ringing in my ears. It’s true I’ve only known her for a total of about ninety-six hours. But “strangers” don’t go through what we’ve already been through together. Strangers don’t hold each other, share tears. I don’t know what we are, but “strangers” doesn’t quite cover it.

I’ve done a little of my own research on her, but I know there’s more than what’s going to show up in a quick internet search. And I want to know it all.

After about an hour, we’re pulling into the tiny coastal town of Bendmere, which my family has made famous over the last century. Bendmere is where my great-grandfather built our family’s estate, Bedell House, after the oil boom. Rivaling only the Rockefellers, Enzo Everett was the second richest man in the entire country. And as the bloodline went down, those fortunes only grew exponentially.

The thing I love about Bendmere is that because my family frequents it so much, the people who live here are largely unfazed by us when we do make our way into town.

“Bedell House?” Tyler asks through the rearview. I think about it for a moment, but I don’t know who from my family may be at the property today. I didn’t reserve it, and the last thing Sawyer needs is a run-in with any of the eccentric billionaires I call my family.

“Not today,” I say. “You can just drop us off at the boardwalk.” Tyler nods in the mirror. Bendmere is the only place my family doesn’t require a major security detail. Tyler will be close by, but we can have some privacy.

When he lets us out of the car, I lead her up onto the boardwalk. I have on a button-down and slacks, and I throw on a pair of sunglasses to at least play up some sort of disguise. She’s wearing an oversized sweatshirt and leggings, and she looks fucking adorable.

We walk a little ways, letting the chilly salt air blow around us. The boardwalk is fairly empty because it’s the off-season, so we have it largely to ourselves. We walk in and out of a few stores, and I watch her intently as she looks at things: some clothes, a bracelet, a candle, some coffee.

We get to a little Christmas shop, and she’s turning a gold-plated ornament in her hand that readsBendmere.

“You want that?” I ask. She scoffs and shakes her head.

“No, Julian,” she says. “You’re not helping much with the whole not-making-me-feel-like I-owe-you thing.” She smiles as she walks out of the store, and I follow behind but not before I snag one of the ornaments and hand the shop owner a hundred-dollar bill.

I tuck it into my pocket. I’ll figure out how to slip it to her later.

We walk around for a few more hours, eating pretzels, cotton candy, and a few other things that would make my trainer’s head explode before we make our way to a bench. The sun is starting to go down, and she shivers as she wraps her sweatshirt around herself tighter.

“Can I take you to dinner?” I ask. She turns to me and bites her lip.

“Okay,” she says.

A few minutes later, Tyler is dropping us off at one of my favorite spots here in town, a little Italian place called Mama Tilly’s.

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