Page 90 of Her Billionaire Boss
I pretended that I hadn’t.I would pretend I hadn’t until the day I died, if I had to.
“Where did you run off to?”I asked.If his answer was,“Fighting with my mother over a ring,”I wouldn’t have to pretend, and it might save me time.
But he lied.“The kitchen.I was pecking around.Are you hungry?”
“No.”I wouldn’t hold his lie against him.If someone in my family had said such hurtful things about him, I never would pass them on.Like I wouldn’t tell Scott what Elizabeth had said about him.Matt’s lie was meant to protect me.“I am tired, though.I’m thinking of turning in.”
He checked his watch.“It’s nine-thirty.”
“Yeah, well.Stressful day,” I offered pathetically.
“I feel you.Will you mind if I come back to the room and watch television?Or will that keep you up?”he asked.
The gnawing worry in the pit of my stomach was what would keep me up.I gave him a tight-lipped smile.“You won’t bother me at all.”
We walked back to the room in silence.It sucked that I couldn’t ask him specifically about what was bothering him; we were supposed to be there for each other.
He needed to hear that I didn’t want some ugly old ring he practically had to steal from his mother.
I would have to wait and tell him when he actually proposed, and I could chuck the ring in that old bitch’s face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
(Matthew)
My sister’s Manhattan palace perfectly matched her public-facing image: classic beauty and grace on the outside, sterile and cold on the inside.A resplendent mansion on a corner lot smack in the middle of the lower East Side, the house was a relic that had somehow survived, its facade untouched, since the gilded age.I pressed the buzzer at the gate in the tall granite fence and waited for the butler to admit me.
“Matthew Ashe,” I said, and added, “Catherine’s brother?”
The gate clicked and I stepped into the exquisitely manicured garden.The place retained the overall feel of the family estate in Connecticut, despite the latter being built much later.The vibe was “too fancy to survive in the modern world.”
I’d been inside the house all of seven times, but it was as unwelcoming as I remembered.Even if my sister had always been thrilled to see me—she was not—, I would have been put off by the changes she and her soon-to-be-ex had made to the interior.The sheer amount of modern black metal, stark white walls, and glass anywhere one could stick it reminded me of a modern art museum.No place for children to grow up.
Then again, we used to roller skate in halls lined with priceless antiques, so what did my sister or I know about normal childhoods?
The first shock I got upon entering was the fact that the butler didn’t open the door.My sister did.
“Wow, I would never have guessed that you knew how to do that,” I said, before I remembered that I was here to make nice.
She rolled her eyes.“Do what?”
Damn, I couldn’t help it.“Open the door for yourself.”
“I’m a little busy at the moment,” she snapped.“Why are you here?”
“I come in peace, I promise.”I took a few steps so she couldn’t shove me out.“To talk.”
“I’m tired of talking to people.I’m sick to death of it.”But she looked too exhausted to fight me.
“I went to see mom.I know you two had a falling out.I thought you could use...”
“A shoulder to cry on?”She scoffed.“When have you ever known me to cry?”
“When Chester broke his knee and dad had to put him down.”Maybe invoking the memory of her cherished dead horse wasn’t the best move.Her lip quivered and tears did rise in her eyes.But they didn’t fall.Out of sheer force of her iron will, they defied gravity and biology and seemed to recede back into her tear ducts.
“I cared about Chester.I don’t give a flying fuck about Jackson.”She turned and walked past the open-backed, glass-railed stairs to the second floor.“Come in, if you must.”
“Oh, I must,” I taunted her cheerfully.As we walked, I noted that she was wearing blue jeans.And her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, not a twist.“What’s up with the costume?You look almost like a real person.”
