Page 4 of Billion-Dollar Dating Game

She’d owed. She still did. Now, years later, she’d made her way onto the HR team, but since the untimely death of the CEO Reed Helberg seven months ago, whispers about a takeover had been growing. The optimists in the office wanted it to be bought by someone who’d restore the conglomerate to its former glory, but Skylar was afraid it would be ripped apart by some ruthless corporate raider.

Someone like Zane deMarco.

The jerk scooped up vulnerable companies, stripped and sold their assets and ditched the rest. He had zero commitment. Which was exactly how he approached women as well—absolutely a ‘one-date wonder,’ he’d accumulated as many notches on his bedpost as he had dollars in the bank. But while he was all fun and charm on the outside, Skylar knew the truth. He didn’t just have the arrogance of the successful—he was asoullessvessel who lived only to make cold, hard cash. He didn’t truly care about anything—other than getting further along an endless path of acquisition and excess. In short, Skylar hated him. She had for years now.

It didn’t help that he could kiss a woman like no one else. That once, so very briefly, almost a decade ago,she’dbeen his target. She’d fallen for his looks, his superficial charm... Fortunately, her father had intervened before she’d foolishly given Zane everything he’d wanted—the way so many others had since.

And of course he’d forgotten her and moved on to his next target—the same way he had with all the companies he’d shredded and the employees he’d left redundant. They couldn’t be more different.

The irony was that they’d come from similar backgrounds. They’d lived in the same run-down apartment building in one of the few affordable housing complexes in Belhaven Bay, a picturesque village in the Hamptons, when they were kids. Sounded fancy, right? Wrong.

Growing up in one of the most famous and wealthiest areas in the world ought to be wonderful, but being a year-rounder was a vastly different experience to being a child of the rich and famous who dropped in only for weekends of the best weather. She and Zane had other things in common too—they’d both been raised by a single parent: Skylar by her dad, a caretaker, and Zane by his mum, a cleaner. They’d even gone to the same school until she’d won that scholarship to that boarding school upstate for her senior years. And unfortunately, she still remembered the quiet boy he’d been so very long ago. He’d found her not long after her mother had run off with another man. A few days later, a disbelieving Skylar had tried to find her—a naïve, heartbroken kid wandering down the road with no direction or plan. Zane had come across her a couple blocks over from their complex. She’d been crying—as pitiful as she’d been hopeful. He’d not said anything. He’d just taken a bit of raspberry candy from a packet in his pocket and handed it to her. He’d waited while she’d eaten it. While she’d calmed down. Then he’d walked her back to their building, up the stairs, and left her at her door. They’d beenchildrenbut he’d been her friend. Just for that moment. Because he’d roamed freely as a kid—some would say wildly—while his mother worked long hours. But from then on, Skylar had stayed inside, obeying her father’s new rules.

Because she’d needed to be safe and he’d needed to know where she was at all times. She’d needed to be good and quiet and study hard. And she had. Because she’d not wanted her dad to disappear on her too.

Then Zane and his mother had been in an accident. He’d had to take a long time off school and hadn’t roamed their block any more, and she’d hardly seen him at all.

It wasn’t until the summer after her first year at that boarding school when everything had changed. She’d been sixteen. Still processing her mother’s absence, still pleasing her father—adhering to his strict lessons on loyalty and work ethic and not succumbing to distractions. She’d watched the world from the balcony as she’d studied. From her bedroom window in the evenings as she’d combed her hair. Late one night, she’d spotted Zane in the darkness across the courtyard. He’d been on the balcony of the two-bedroom unit that was a mirror of her own. He’d become something of a local legend by then—his jaw-droppingly elite academic performance overshadowed by rumours of some online financial success. But that night he’d looked moody and serious and honestly as lonely as she’d felt for years. He’d been wearing nothing but an old pair of shorts and unfortunately for her, in the shadow and gleam of that moonlit night he’d had the beauty of a brooding angel—tousled coal-coloured hair, sharp cheekbones, a sculpted torso. He’d leaned out with his arms wide on the railing and stared down at the courtyard as if he were Atlas himself with the world on his shoulders. Her heart hadn’t just thumped painfully, it had flipped right over. She’d stepped back into the darkness of her own room but kept watching him for the full fifty minutes he was out there, and at one point he’d looked up, staring directly at her window, and even though it’d been dark and she’d known there was no way he could have seen her, she’d flushed.

From that night on she’d ached to see more of him—naively imagining they were kindred spirits, what with all those commonalities—and more of him she had then seen. It had become her habit to go for a run early in the mornings—not that she’d been good at it, but it’d been the one way of getting out that her father had allowed. She’d argued she needed to be fit to study well. To her surprise—and secret pleasure—she’d passed Zane on her way out a couple of times. He’d smiled at her. He had a captivating smile.

Then, on one of her last days home, as she’d come back from her run, she’d all but slammed into him as she’d turned into the stairwell on her side of the building. He’d steadied her and in the cool shade he’d smiled and his pale blue eyes had gleamed, and she’d felt energy emanating from him. Later, she’d learned it was around this time that he’d made his first million. All but overnight, so the story went. As a freaking teenager. Now she realised he’d wanted to celebrate in true playboy fashion—with a female conquest. A notch for his new belt. But back then, she’d thought his piercingly pale blue eyes had seen straight to her soul. Or at least, he’d noticed the movement of her mouth.

‘What are you eating?’ he’d asked.

It had been raspberry candy, of course. Her favourite and always her post-run self-reward.

‘Got any to share?’ he’d asked when she’d told him.

She’d shaken her head as she’d swallowed. ‘That was my last piece.’

‘Yeah?’ he’d muttered huskily. ‘Maybe I can still have a little taste.’

With that, he’d made his move. The kiss had been tentative at first. Soft. Gentle. Then it just changed.She’dchanged. It was like a wildfire had exploded within her. She’d moaned, suddenly all the more breathless. She’d become so hot, so malleable in his arms. She’d have let him do anything. Soeasy. He’d lifted her up, surprising her with his strength as he’d pressed her against the wall with his lean body. Butshe’dbeen the one to curl her leg around his slim hips, welcoming him closer. She’d been the one to hold himsotightly, recklessly racing with him towards the precipice of something she hadn’t understood but innately knew would be profound. She’d lost all track of time. Of everything. All she’d known was that she’d wanted that contact more than anything.

So she hadn’t heard the heavy tread of her father coming down the stairs. She hadn’t stopped kissing Zane back, clutching him closer, letting him touch—

For a time after, she’d tried to reassure herself that it would have looked worse than it actually was—after all, she’d already been flushed and breathless and sweaty from her run—but being caught pinned against the wall by a panting Zane, her father had thought her disarray was because Zane had manhandled her...

The scalding mortification of that moment still overcame her even now, years later. Even though her father was no longer alive.

‘Get off her!’

She’d been paralysed. Her father had pulled Zane back and shoved him from her. She’d slithered to the ground and said nothing to eitherher father or Zane as her father had suggested...assumed...accused.

She’d sunk back against that wall and watched the glittering passion in Zane’s eyes morph into bitterness as she stayed silent in the face of her father’s fury. And then even that bitterness had faded until he’d stood there, coolly and dispassionately enduring the endless onslaught of her father’s rage.

‘I don’t care what money you’ve supposedly made.Don’t you daretouchmydaughter!Don’t you darehelp yourself—you’ll never be good enough for her. You’re a troublemaker, stay away!’ Her father had berated him repeatedly before whirling to her. ‘Andyou, get upstairs.Don’t you daresquander the opportunities you’ve been given!Don’t you dareruin your future!’

He’d gone on and on and on. She’d been too stunned—too scared—too shamed to speak. She’d scuttled upstairs and hadn’t dared leave the apartment again. Fortunately, it was only a few days before she’d had to return to school. She’d done so quietly and dutifully, repeatedly apologising to her still-disappointed father.

When he’d calmed down, when she’d finally summoned the courage, she tried to assure him Zane hadn’t taken liberties, that she’d welcomed that kiss. But she hadn’t said that right at the time.

And then her father had got angrier.‘Don’t you dare let lust control you; don’t you dare waste what you have on a boy who wants only one thing...’It would, he’d lectured her, only lead her off the path into selfishness, into shirking responsibility. Disloyalty. After all, look at her mother—wasn’t she the prime example of that?

Skylar had been devastated. She’d promised not to lose focus. She’d promised to make him proud again. There would be no boys—no lust. Not for years. Not—she hadn’t realised at the time—really ever again.

When she’d returned the next holidays, Zane had left town and so had his mother, and a different family had lived in their apartment. She’d been glad. She’d tried hard not to follow word of Zane’s success but it had been hard to avoid. He was the town’s poster child. She’d seen the write-ups of the ‘wunderkind’ investor, seen the pictures of him at parties over in the UK even—always with a beautiful woman on his arm.

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