Page 32 of The Billionaire's Second Chance
My stomach twisted pleasurably.
When you had something and you wanted to keep it.
Fuck.My cock twitched in my loose pajama pants.SamanthafuckingScott.
Either way,I said,I’m certain I’m not.
I didn’t wait for her to reply before I was typing out my next message, hitting send before I could think better of it.Because if you want a billionaire, now you know just where you can find one.
Good night, Samantha.
I got under my sheets, one hand under my pillow. The queasy feeling from the hotel had gone, and in its place was the kind of satisfied exhaustion I had rarely felt. My phone buzzed again, and I smiled as I read the message before tossing it onto the table and switching off the light.
Good night, Charlie.
CHAPTER17
Samantha
“So,”Tally said, reclining against the back of her leather banquette as if it were a chaise lounge. We’d met for lunch at a new French spot, brightly lit and cheerful with heavy cutlery and an aggressively unassuming menu of classics-with-a-twist. A half-empty bottle ofpét-natsat between our mostly empty plates of duck frites and poulet roti.
It had been too long since we’d done this. Tally was smart, and driven, and had a twelve-year old daughter–shaping up to be as successful as her mom–over whom she and Ryan had split custody as well as a new husband. All of that meant she was kept as busy as I was.
Luckily for me, she was also my closest friend, and the one most likely to dig me out of my office for a slightly tipsy Friday lunch at a trendy restaurant of which I’d never heard and at which I would have needed months to get a reservation without pulling strings I tried very hard not to pull.
“Working with Charlie. Tell me everything.”
I took a slow sip of my wine.Everything?Not likely.
“What do you want to know?” I asked, and she raised an eyebrow at me. “What?”
“You’re blushing.”
“I’m not.”
“It’s okay if you think he’s handsome, you know, even if you two have your little feud,” Tally said, reaching for her glass. “He is handsome. Everyone thinks so.”
“Everyone thinks so,” I repeated, rolling my eyes at her and deflecting. “You mean theNew York Weekthinks that.”
“Sue me,” she said with a smirk.
Tally was a trend forecaster, but her interest in thenewandnextandhotboomeranged past the latest restaurants and next season’s runway silhouettes and right back to the Upper East Side where we’d both grown up. I didn’t know how she always managed to know just what was going on among our social circle, but she did. She wasn’t a gossip, though. She’d never say a word.
Except to me, of course.
“He got snapped talking to Flora’s–you’ve met Flora, right?” she asked, and I nodded, picking at another perfectly crisp fry. Her ex-husband Ryan’s new wife. Edie’s friend.Charlie’s friend, I thought,who shares romance novels with him. “Flora’s sister,” she continued, “at Ryan’s wedding.”
“Did he?” I asked, nibbling the fry. If he had, it hadn’t been past eight o’clock. After that, he’d been at the Sterling, with me. Naked.Get a good look, because you’re never going to see this again, I’d told him.
I could feel the heat on my cheeks now, and reached for my wine glass. Maybe I could blame it on the alcohol at lunchtime.
“Mmm,” she nodded. “First James marrying his student, and now Charlie hooking up with acaterer?” Despite her arched brow and arch smile, despite the way she stressed the word, I knew she didn’t intend any meanness. Either to Flora’s sister–she was the caterer Tally had hired for her very own wedding after all–or to Charlie, who was free, I reminded myself sternly, to talk to whomever he pleased, no matter the uncomfortable twist in my stomach.Jealousy.
Or to me. Tally didn’t know, of course, that although Charlie had been snapped chatting with Flora’s caterer sister, he’d left with me.And you don’t want her to, Samantha Scott. My time with Charlie–wine and sex and sore muscles–was a luxury in which I allowed myself to indulge, but only as long as it remained a secret, hidden away from friends and colleagues alike. “Those two are really something. Good thing the old Martin Senior was a romantic, or he’d be rolling over in his grave.”
“Likeourfathers are, you mean,” I said, and Tally’s mouth quirked. We were both disappointments, both of us groomed to be the perfect trophy wife to an important man someday, both of us more interested in our work lives than our love lives. The only difference between us was that she’d married her important man after a few years of college and dutifully provided her father a grandchild before he died. As far as the late Mr. Talford was concerned, his daughter had executed her role perfectly.
There was one other difference, of course. As an only child, Tally’s father’s dream for her had died with him.Shewas free.
