Page 78 of The Billionaire Is Back

“At some point I fell and twisted my ankle, running around the side of the house trying to get away. I fell on the grass, and Grady had me dead to rights. But instead of shooting me, he put his Nerf gun down and carried me into the house, yelling at my brother not to shoot me or he’d kick his ass. Being held in his arms and looking up at him as he carried me into the house—that’s when I knew. That’s when I felt it. Even being seven years old, I knew it was love that I felt for him. And that feeling has never gone away. Even when Grady did.”

There is a long moment of silence after she finishes.

“That’s such a wonderful story, my dear,” Genevieve manages to say, even though she’s all choked up and teary eyed.

And it is. It truly is.

Claire finally looks up at me. That doesn’t make it any easier for me to speak. “Well, it was a pleasure seeing you, Aston, Mrs. Pembroke. Miss Lovejoy. Lynch. I think my girlfriend and I are going to go dance now.” I offer them all a smile.

As I lead Claire to the dance floor, I glance back and see that Lynch and Lovejoy are now engaged in one of their silent-movie conversations again, but this one is clearly an argument. Emma storms off, and Lynch follows after her, calling out her name. He doesn’t even say goodbye to the Pembrokes.

Poor guy.

He didn’t necessarily lose.

But he certainly didn’t win.

And all I needed tonight was to come out with a tie.

I feel like I’ve ended up with much more than that.

So much more.

Now on the dance floor, I snake one arm around Claire’s waist and hold her hand in mine. There are a lot of old couples around us, slow dancing to “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Can I imagine dancing with Claire like this when we’re old and gray? Yeah, I can. But right now, we’re young and vibrant and there is so much we still have to discover about each other.

“You were wonderful,” I tell her. I have never meant anything more in my life, and those words aren’t nearly enough.

She grins. “Did you like my story?”

“It was perfect. I remember that day. And I don’t remember being that chivalrous.”

She rolls her eyes and laughs. “You weren’t. You shot me to pieces.”

“What? I don’t rememberthat.”

“Seriously? You don’t remember what you were like with Nerf guns? You would calculate the rate of fire for every possible weapon and only choose the one that had the highest fire-to-reload ratios.”

“I actually shot Nerf darts at you?”

“Oh, yes. I know you’re disciplined, but you were a nine-year-old boy. You did not have the discipline tonotshoot a person with a Nerf gun as many times as possible. Any person, including a girl.”

“Well. I can’t help it if I like to win. But I do remember carrying you into the house. And telling Jake not to shoot you.”

“Yeah, well, you’d already pummeled me enough times at that point.” She gives a little shrug of her shoulders. “But that part was true.”

I lock eyes with her. I have always loved how honest she is. I can always see it in her eyes. “And the other part?”

She hesitates. The answer that is waiting on her lips is difficult to say out loud, as difficult as it was for me to ask that question.

That day of the Nerf gun war comes back to me. And I do remember shooting her. A lot. And now I remember why. I was becoming strangely protective of her, and to cover for that, as any nine-year-old boy would do, I went in the opposite direction. No way would Jake know, no way would Claire know how much I cared about her if I shot the shit out of her with my Nerf machine gun. Butwhen I saw her hurt, that pretense went away. I had to scoop her up into my arms and carry her to safety. That feeling never went away. It’s only deepened and expanded.

“Claire, I…” I begin to say, but I can’t finish.

Neither one of us can say out loud what we feel, so we let our lips end our unfinished sentences. I cradle her face in my hands, and we kiss. Deeply. A little too intensely for a public dance floor, surrounded by New York’s wealthiest plant lovers, but with the beckoning of her lips and tongue, she’s trying to tell me that she meant what she said. She fell in love with me—and never stopped. And with my lips and tongue, I’m trying to say that I feel the same way.

I’ve never stopped wanting to carry her home.

We break our kiss, and I stare at her, both of us breathing heavily, no longer swaying to the music.

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