Page 92 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
My buzzer hadn’t sounded, though. I set the stack of T-shirts in the drawer, crossed the room, and stood beside the door. “Yes?”
“Let me in.”
Two guesses. “I don’t want to talk now,” I said, pressing damp hands to my skirt, which was clinging to me in the heat. The shower I’d taken back in the luxury of Hemi’s penthouse was no match for New York in late July. “I’ll call you in a little while. I was always going to call you. You’re busy. Go back to work.”
“Hope. I’m done playing games. Let me in.”
“Well,” I said, “I guess I’m not done, because I’m not ready to let you in. And I’m the one with a key.”
“What the bloody hell is this all about?” He was losing his famous cool, that was obvious even through a couple inches of cheap door. “I told you we’d talk tonight!”
“Hemi,” I said, “youblackballedme. Do you think I can just let that go? I know you want me there, but I can’t be that close, not right now. Ican’t.You said I had this apartment to go to if I needed it. Well, I need it. I need a break.”
“I didn’t mean you to actuallyuseit!” His roar came straight through the door and actually made me step back. “It was a bloodygesture!”
A sharp voice from farther away, now, accented with Chinese. “You wake the baby! Be quiet!” Jessie Lim. And baby, who was indeed wailing.
An elderly voice, then. “I’ve called 911. The police are coming. Get out of here.”
I sighed and opened the door. Hemi, of course, didn’t do anything as obliging as falling inside. He’d had both hands outstretched, clutching the door jamb, and now, he straightened up and glowered at me.
“Hi,” I said to Mr. Rodriguez. “I’m fine. Sorry.”
He peered doubtfully at me and went back into his apartment, shaking his head. Jessie, on the other hand, barely looked at me, because the baby was in full Wail Mode now. She just stepped inside her apartment and shut her own door with a little too much slam.
Which left me with one outraged, deserted Maori multimillionaire, practically breathing fire now, his perfectly cut black suit barely managing to contain his muscles, as if he’d burst out of it at any moment. And, yes, I got that even though he was standing perfectly still, only his rapid breath and the stony set of his features betraying his emotion.
“Come in,” I said. “But we’re sitting on the floor.”
He stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Why,” he asked through set teeth, “are we sitting on the floor?”
“Because it’s by the door.”
“It’s dusty,” he said, and I almost laughed.
It was true. The apartment looked like someplace where nobody had been living for a couple months, and it smelled like it, too. It smelled like old wood and old fabrics and must and faintly like mildew. I’d had the choice of running the air conditioner and attempting to do battle with the humidity, or opening the window. For the moment, I’d settled on opening the window, because the smell was making me sick.
“Well, if you’re going to be a princess about it…” I said, and watched Hemi’s outrage ratchet up another notch.
I didn’t say anything else, just lowered myself to the floor with my back against the wall, grateful to be sitting again in the stultifying heat, and after a second, he did the same. Not right next to me, because there wasn’t room. At right angles, which was better anyway. I put my arm around my knees, the full skirt of my sundress falling around me, and Hemi shoved one knee up, rested a forearm on it, and studied me, still silent.
“If you weren’t so pretty,” I said, “that wouldn’t be nearly as effective.”
I got a Force Ten on the outrage meter for that, all flaring nostrils, burning eyes, and hard-set mouth. He held still, though, as always, and after a minute, he said, his voice at his most controlled, “I could say the same thing.”
“Right,” I said. “So…I left.”
“I noticed.”
“And I’m sorry,” I went on. “I know you’re…very busy, and that you’re under a lot of pressure. And that I left Karen there, and I’m worried about that, because you know how she’s been. She needs supervision. If you don’t want her, please, just tell me. I want her, you know I do, but she didn’t want to come.”
“Of course I want her. And Iamvery busy, and yet I’m here. Aren’t you going to ask me why?”
“All right,” I said cautiously. “Why?”
His expression didn’t change at all. “Because I love you. Because that was apparently more important to me than handling the real crisis I’m facing. Because I need you to come home.”
The real crisis.Which wasn’t me. “And if I do, what changes?”
