The Billionaire's Allure (The Silver Cross Club Book 5) (19 page)

One of them glanced over at us, a slender and lovely black boy smoking a cigarette, bored and a little suspicious, and then his face lit up and he said, “Hey, Max!”

“Marcus, we talked about the smoking,” Max said, and actually took the cigarette out of the kid’s hand, threw it to the sidewalk, and stepped on it. “Have you done your homework yet?”

I expected the kid to pitch a fit, but instead he just pulled a face and said, “Awww, man! Come on! That was my last cigarette!”

“Good,” Max said. The other kids were laughing and clapping, obviously amused by Marcus’s distress. “Homework?”

“I did it already,” Marcus said, still pouting.

“He really did,” another kid said, a short white boy wearing a backwards baseball cap like it was still 1998. “I watched him. He helped me with my math homework.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Max said. “Have the cops been by here today?”

“Yeah, but they just told us to quit smoking cigarettes because it’s bad for us,” the white kid said.

Max grinned. “Great. It sounds like my chat with the chief of police went well.”

“Who’s the lady?” Marcus asked, looking me up and down.

I wanted to give him a few stern words about how I was a grown woman and didn’t appreciate being ogled by scrubby teenagers, but Max acted before I could open my mouth. He set his hand on my waist, very possessive, and I saw the kids’ eyebrows raise and their expressions grow more respectful. “This is my very old friend Beth,” Max said. “I wanted to bring her by to meet all of you, so I hope you’ll be on your best behavior.”

“No swearing,” the white kid yelled, and the girl on the front steps finally looked up from her book and said, “
Fuck
you.”

I looked up at Max, who was smiling, seemingly amused by the kids’ shenanigans. “This is what you’ve been doing?” I asked. “You’re volunteering at a community center?”

“Not quite,” he said. He pointed to the lintel above the building’s doorway. Painted in curling white letters was one word:
Haven
.

I frowned at him, still confused. “Max…”

He used his hand at my waist to guide me forward, heading into the building. “If any of you still haven’t done your homework, you need to get started on that,” Max told the assembled kids, who called out a variety of excuses as we climbed the steps. One of them held the door for us, and we passed into the building’s interior.

I had expected a dim industrial space, but it was bright and spacious, with white-painted walls and large windows admitting plenty of sunlight. Immediately inside the door was a small foyer with doors on each wall. Max used a key-card to open one of the doors, and led me down a short hallway to another door, which had his name on it. He used the key-card on that door as well, and we went into a small, cluttered office, papers stacked high on the desk and books overflowing the shelves.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said. He moved a stack of books from the guest chair in front of the desk and motioned for me to sit down. “I’m usually more organized than this, but it’s been a crazy week. The state’s giving me a hard time about licensing. We’re buried in paperwork.”

“Literally, I see,” I said. I took a seat and watched as he crammed the books onto the shelves. “Max, are you running a shelter for these kids?”

“That’s the long and the short of it,” he said. “I bought the building and I turned it into a shelter. I don’t do much of the day-to-day work. I hired a guy to run it. I’ll introduce you to him. He’s great. He tells me when he needs more money and I write him a check.”

“I think there’s more to it than that,” I said. “All of those kids knew you. And not just like they recognized you. They
trust
you. How much time do you spend here?”

He scratched his head, looking a little sheepish. “Well. A fair amount.”

“I’d say so,” I said. “What was that about homework?”

“They’re all in GED classes,” he said. “It’s one of the stipulations. It’s a long-term shelter. Once they’re in, they can stay here until they’re twenty-one. We help them with education, housing, job placements. They have to stay off drugs and stay out of trouble. We have about twenty-five kids right now, and we’re looking to expand soon. We’ve had a pretty good success rate so far, but the shelter’s only been in operation for about a year and a half, so it’s too soon to tell what our long-term success will be.”

“Oh, Max,” I said, so proud of him, so full of admiration that I thought I might burst. “I think it’s wonderful.”

“It’s nothing much,” he said. “I figured I might as well spend some of my money on a worthy cause.”

“It’s wonderful,” I said again, more firmly. “You’re giving these kids a chance that we never had.”

He cleared his throat and looked down at his paperwork. I was making him uncomfortable. He had always been too modest about his accomplishments, and it looked like that hadn’t changed. “Well. Anyway. Let me introduce you to Kwame. He’s the one who runs this place.”

We found Kwame in the kitchen, overseeing lunch cleanup. He was a skinny and stern-looking black man who broke into a big smile when he spotted Max. “Back already? I thought you were going home for the day.”

“I can’t stay away,” Max said. “Kwame, this is Beth, the woman I was telling you about.”

“Of course,” Kwame said, shaking my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Without turning around, he yelled, “Kirkpatrick, no horseplay!”

A kid guiltily put a spatula back into the sink.

“I see you’ve got your hands full,” I said.

Kwame grinned. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. These kids keep me on my toes, but we’ve got a good staff, and Max is here enough that I don’t have to play bad guy
all
the time.”

“We tag-team them,” Max said. “Good cop, bad cop. It’s a lot of fun. I like making them cry when we catch them hanging out with the pot dealers.”

“Max!” I exclaimed, a little shocked. I didn’t think that making teenagers
cry
was generally a good policy.

“He’s joking,” Kwame said. “He doesn’t enjoy it. We
have
made a few of them cry, though. Not on purpose. Their little hearts are so guilty that they can’t help it.”

“They want daddy’s forgiveness,” Max said. “That’s you, by the way. I’m the cool uncle.”

I half-listened to their familiar banter while I looked around the kitchen. The kids had set up a wash-and-dry assembly line and seemed happy enough to be doing the dishes—as happy as teenagers ever were about doing chores. They were elbowing each other, looking at me and whispering, and periodically flinging soap suds at each other. Two boys were stretching cling wrap over serving dishes and sliding them into an enormous refrigerator. I was more than a little surprised that there were actual
leftovers
. The shelter kids I had known would eat until it hurt, because we were never convinced that there would be a next meal. These kids were so secure that they actually left food on the table.

It was wonderful.

Max took me on a tour through the building. He showed me the rooms where the kids slept—small and cozy, with two beds to a room for the most part, and a handful of single rooms for the kids who were over eighteen. We went in the library and computer room, for reading and homework, and the small gym with some free weights. “We’re still expanding,” Max said, apologetic, like I could somehow think that what he was doing wasn’t good enough.

“Max, stop apologizing,” I said. “I think this is so great. You should be really proud of yourself for what you’ve accomplished.”

“There’s still a lot to be done,” Max said, but I could tell that he was pleased.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said impulsively, then looked at my watch. It was only 1:30. We still had time. “Let’s go back to your place.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And do what?”

I smiled. “Use your imagination.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Max

Beth could play her cards pretty close to the chest when she felt like it, but when she suggested that we go back to my place, her eyelashes dipping, very coy, she was showing me her full hand. It thrilled me, and also made me feel incredibly guilty. She wouldn’t look at me like that if she knew the truth.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” I said, even though my body was fully on board with the thought of her naked and in my bed. “Didn’t you say you have to work this evening?”

“That’s not for a few more hours,” she said, her happy, eager expression sliding away into uncertainty.

That look broke my heart. As much as I didn’t want to be the creep who took advantage of her ignorance, I also didn’t want to hurt her feelings by turning her down. Beth was vibrantly sexy, carefully contained outside of the bedroom and wholly uninhibited inside of it, and I never wanted her to lose that sensual abandon, or doubt her ability to call forth a similar response in her partner. In me. I never wanted her to think about herself with another man. I wanted to be the one in her bed, in her heart, the only one, for the rest of her life.

Good luck with that, Langdon, I told myself, with bitter sarcasm. Once Renzo told her what I had written in that letter—

Soon enough. I would cross that proverbial bridge when I arrived.

“Okay,” I said, and then grinned, and slid one hand from her shoulder to her hip, to show that I wasn’t giving in just to make her feel better, that I
did
want her, passionately, and felt lucky to have her. “You’ve convinced me.”

“You didn’t take a whole lot of convincing,” she said, returning my grin with a sly smile of her own.

Good. I shouldn’t need convincing, and she shouldn’t feel like I did. “No man could resist you,” I told her, my voice light and teasing, but I meant it. I knew what she was worth.

We walked back to my apartment, hand in hand, enjoying the spring sunshine and the feeling of being young and alive in New York and the world. I knew it was fleeting. Any day now, Renzo would contact Beth and tell her the truth, and she would leave me forever, dust rising in her tracks as she sped off toward her future without me.

“You seem distracted,” she said.

I squeezed her hand in apology. She was right, and I was a self-pitying dipshit, a pathetic dishrag of a man. So what if certain destruction loomed? I would enjoy the time I had, and quit being such a sad sack. “Just thinking about Marcus’s homework.”

She laughed. “Is he really that much of a slacker?”

“Not at all,” I said. “He wants to go to Columbia. It’s a running joke. I told him I’m not going to pay for his tuition because he’s more than capable of getting a full scholarship. So he told me he’ll have his revenge by getting
two
scholarships.”

“You’re a good man,” she said softly, looking up at me with her dark eyes, deep and mysterious as the deepest parts of the ocean.

How I wished that was true. I tried to be a good man. I wanted to be. I wasn’t convinced I had managed it yet. “They’re good kids,” I said.

“Too much thinking,” she said. “So serious. How can I get you to lighten up?”

“I can think of a few ways,” I said.

We were very proper and decorous all the way to my building and through the lobby, but once we were in the elevator I decided I couldn’t wait any longer, and shoved her against one of the polished stainless steel panels and kissed her breathless. I had missed her, the feel of her, the taste of her mouth, and now that I had her again, the first touch of her lips was enough to make me light-headed, like taking a sip of the finest aged bourbon. She was wearing tight jeans and one of those awful shapeless tops that were in style for some reason, and I took advantage of the easy access and slid my hands underneath her shirt and up her back, skimming my palms against her smooth skin. My cock was rock-hard in my pants. I wanted to fuck her until she knew she was mine.

“Max,” she gasped, as I abandoned her mouth and kissed my way down her neck, sucking and biting, making my mark on her.

“Hmm?” I asked, not really listening, teasing at the clasp of her bra with one hand, trying to decide how she would react to me unhooking it in the elevator.

“
Max
,” she said again, more insistent, and I realized that the elevator had stopped and the doors had opened. We were on my floor.

“Right,” I said. I took my hands out from my beneath her shirt and adjusted myself in my jeans. “Okay. We’re here.”

She rolled her eyes at me and walked out of the elevator.

Christ, I loved that. A woman who rolled her eyes at you during sex was a keeper.

She was waiting for me at the door, and I took the opportunity to kiss her again and grope her ass. She half-heartedly fought me off, laughing, her hands on my chest pushing me away but then sliding up to my shoulders and around my neck, holding me against her, giving in. “Someone will see us,” she said.

“We’re just kissing,” I said, nuzzling at her ear. “It isn’t scandalous.”

“It will be soon,” she said.

I swallowed and pulled back. She had a point. And my bed was far more comfortable than the floor.