Page 45 of The Billionaire Is Back

“Can you hear me?” Alice yells in my ear.

“Yes. I’m on an island right now. Can you hear me?”

“Yes! I will never understand why people have any interest in visiting places where there’s spotty cell-phone coverage. I may be ancient, but I’m used to Wi-Fi and I’m used to good cell-phone service, and when I croak, I want to be buried in concrete with my iPad and all of my cell phones.”

“That’s why I didn’t bring you, Mrs. Strout. I promise to keep you in cities for as long as you work for me.”

“Bless your heart. I have an update for you. Stand in a spot where you know you’ll hear me so I don’t have to repeat it.”

“Done. Go ahead.”

“I’ve been dialed in with my whisper network all day, and I have it on good authority from a dozen friends and forty friends of friends that Mr. Harrison Lynch is indeed engaged and the woman he’s engaged to…is Emma Lovejoy.”

“His assistant.” God dammit, he means business. I’m standing alone at the edge of the woods on a secluded island in New England, but suddenly I feel like I’m backin the jungle of Manhattan and Lynch has got me by the throat.

I will not lose this deal because of an engagement that is clearly fake.

“You should have let me cast a spell on them.”

“You were just wiggling your nose.”

“It might have worked!”

“So he’s playing hardball. She’s someone he really knows.”

“Someone Aston Pembroke already knows from the office,” she reminds me.

“Someone who filled his office with houseplants. Someone unlike anyone else who’ll be at the METH gala. Someone Pembroke’s wife would probably like.”

Shit.

He’s good.

But I’m better.

I need to fight fire with fire.

“Do you really think Aston and the board would reconsider your acquisition just because Lynch appears to be settling down?”

“Stranger things have happened. The cold hard numbers don’t run the humans, the emotional humans run the numbers. Unfortunately. Yeah, Aston just might get the board to reconsider.”

“Well, that blows,” Alice huffs. “Have you had time to peruse the selections I sent you?”

“Yeah. They won’t work for this. I have someone else in mind,” I say as I look down toward the beach.

I need someone that I have a real connection with. Like Lynch seemed to have with his assistant—onlybetter. I need someone that I care about. Someone who, deep down, underneath all the sass and flour and sugar and frustration with me, cares about me too. Enough to close a deal I’ve been tirelessly working on for months.

“I can’t tell you how surprised and pleased I am to hear this. Anyone I know?”

“No. But she’s perfect.”She just doesn’t know it.

“Well, let me know if there’s anything you need me to do. Send flowers? Cast a love spell?”

I might need all the help I can get.

I end the call with Alice and watch Claire from a distance. Framed by the cove and a stunning pink-and-purple sunset, she’s hugging herself and staring out at the water. I can’t see her face, but I can tell by her rigid posture that I’d be in for a fight if I bring this up right now.

She would never accept a gift of capital from me. I’m fairly certain she wouldn’t agree to come to New York with me to pretend to be my girlfriend. But trading one for the other? I am determined to get her on board with that when the moment is right.

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