Page 1 of The Billionaire Is Back

Chapter 1

S’more than a Feeling

Twelve Years Ago

Claire

“Do you have any dark chocolate?”

Grady Barber is at my s’more station, staring at my marshmallows, and he wants to know if I have any dark chocolate. His tea-brown eyes are in shadow, but I can stillfeelthe glint in them. Half of his face is lit by the bonfire, the other half obscured by darkness. That is so Grady Barber—the golden boy of Beacon Harbor. The part of him we can all see is intense, warm and glowing. But part of him is impossible to know, always a mystery, miles away and years ahead. Dreaming big, setting goals, executing plans.

Wanting more.

“Did you really just ask me that? Really? No, I do not have any dark chocolate. I never have dark chocolate. No one should ever have dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is a bitter, snobby asshole, and it has no business minglingwith the likes of marshmallows and graham crackers—on this beach or anywhere.”

I’m still a sophomore, so I shouldn’t even be at this party. But my brother’s graduating, so here I am, in charge of the s’mores because everyone in town knows I do them right. I do all forms of flour confections right as well as chocolate-based sweet treats with crunchy ingredients. Grady knows this because he’s in our kitchen eating my cookies and muffins every weekend before his morning runs.

I’ve set up a table with roasting spears, two different brands of graham crackers, vanilla- and coconut-flavored marshmallows, a now-empty jar of Nutella, a jar of smooth peanut butter, a jar of caramel sauce, bars of Hershey’s milk chocolate, squares of white chocolate, a container of coarse sea salt, raspberries, and exactly no dark chocolate.

But Grady wants more than I have to offer.

Grady wants more than this town has to offer.

And he has no idea that I would give him absolutely everything if he would have me. But I’m just his best friend’s little sister. And nobody in this town has what he’s looking for.

“It was a simple yes-or-no question, Little Sweeney,” he says with a gentle smirk that pierces my soul. “I don’t need the lecture about how you’d rather eat pegboard—I know how you feel about dark chocolate.”

You don’t know how I really feel about anythingis what I want to say.

He’s been calling me Little Sweeney since I was three, I’m told. I just turned sixteen, and I am not little, soevery time he calls me that it’s bittersweet. Like dark chocolate but better—because literally everything is better than dark chocolate. “Any request for that heinous crime against cocoa is an affront to taste buds in general and me in particular.”

“Not a request, just a question.” His voice is so calm in response to my rant, it’s aggravating. “Here’s another: Why is this jar of Nutella empty?”

I roll my eyes at him. I am 100% certain that I am the only person on earth who has ever rolled her eyes at Grady Barber. I am also the only one who calls him Grody Borber because, sadly, that very clever nickname did not catch on. But I am 95% certain that I’m the only victim of his annoying question-asking and advice-giving. It doesn’t make me special, it just makes me his best friend’s little sister. “That’s not a question, that’s a passive-aggressive statement with a question mark at the end of it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because what you’re really saying is that I didn’t bring enough Nutella.”

“Am I wrong?”

I grunt, very ladylike, in response.

“Supply and demand, Sweeney. You know better than anyone that there’s a big demand for Nutella around here. If you’re gonna start a bakery business you have to have the right products in stock at all times.”

“It’s a s’more station at a bonfire, Grody. I’m not catering the mayor’s Christmas party.”

He laughs. “That’syour example of a big-deal event? Why not the White House?”

I shrug. “The White House isn’t in Beacon Harbor.”

He regards me thoughtfully, in the way that only he does. “Well, anyway. Now I’m supposed to have a Nutella-free s’more?” He shakes his head slowly as he drags his fingers through his short, wavy dark brown hair. I swear, he must practice that move in the mirror. “What’s that about?” He’s being good-natured, as always, but as always, it feels like a tiny dagger to the heart every time I can’t provide him with what he’s looking for…a skinny body, worldly experience, gluten-free pastries, eyeballs that always face forward.

“Well,anyway, if you wanted a high-demand ingredient you should have approached the s’more station earlier in the evening. Robbie just got the last Nutella s’more.” I nod in Robbie’s direction.

Robbie is holding the perfect s’more that I made for him because he’s too big of an idiot to roast a marshmallow and assemble it with other ingredients even when he’s sober. Also because, as previously mentioned, I am better at making s’mores than anyone else in this entire county, and that is a known fact. But mostly because Robbie’s a drunken buffoon. A drunken buffoon who is currently telling some dumb story to a group of people and waving his hands around. I swear to God, if he drops that perfect s’more I will kick sand into his face.

Grady follows my gaze, casually turns, and saunters over to Robbie and the group. He’s wearing dark jeans that already hug his perfect boy butt magnificently, but when he shoves his hands into his front pockets and I watch him walk away from me with the long, graceful stride of a runner, my mouth starts watering at the sametime as I get a lump in my throat. Thankfully, a Pink song is blaring from a speaker somewhere, so he doesn’t hear me choking on my feelings. It’s not even the butt in the jeans that gets to me. It’s the back of his neck. The confidence. The way he sees what he wants and goes for it.

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