The Billionaire's Embrace (The Silver Cross Club) (22 page)

“Well. Maybe not gentle. But—slower.” I shook my head. I couldn’t think about making love with Regan. It was far too distracting, those memories of her body moving against mine. “This isn’t the right venue.”

She grinned at me. “Carter Sutton, embarrassed by talking about sex in public? I can’t believe it.”

“Mm, I wouldn’t say
embarrassed
,” I said. “More like unable to control myself in the face of temptation.”

“Oh,” Regan said, and touched her face the way she always did when she was nervous, her fingers pressed to her cheek. I wondered if she was aware that she did it. “Well. Never mind, then.”

I changed the subject. “Why did you agree to have lunch with me?”

She sighed. “Because—because Sadie told me that I’m an idiot, and that I never should have broken up with you, and that—if I didn’t at least meet with you, she would smack me silly.”

“So it was only that you’re afraid of Sadie,” I said, disappointed.

“No,” Regan said, shaking her head. “I’m—this is coming out all wrong. It’s because I
missed
you, so much, every day, and I—regretted it. Constantly. Breaking up with you, I mean. I don’t know why I did it. I mean, I know why, but it was for stupid reasons, and I shouldn’t have. I really am sorry.”

“Come over for dinner,” I said impulsively. “Tomorrow night. Do you want to? I’ll cook for you, and we can talk more.” That was all I was willing to commit to, at this point: dinner, and some talking. I wasn’t about to jump back in with both feet.

I ignored the inner voice that told me that having Regan in my apartment, mere steps away from the bedroom, was a temptation that I wouldn’t be able to resist.

“Dinner sounds, yeah. Really great,” she said. “What time?”

“7:00,” I said. “Bring some dessert, if you’d like any. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Okay,” she said, smiling at me. She glanced at her watch. “I need to get going. My lunch hour is almost over.”

“Mine, too,” I said, although of course I had no set schedule. We wrapped up our sandwiches and went out to the sidewalk.

“I’m that way,” Regan said, pointing uptown, away from my office.

The urge to take her in my arms was almost overwhelming. I shoved my hands into my pockets, fighting the impulse. “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” I said.

“See you then,” she said, and turned to walk away from me.

I watched her go, admiring the way her body moved, and thinking what an idiot I was to get involved with her again.

I would be a happy idiot, though.

I went back to my office and spent entirely too long gazing out the window, trying to decide how screwed I was. Regan seemed interested, but I couldn’t say how long that would last. If only dating were as straightforward as negotiating mergers.

When it came to business, I considered the available evidence, weighed my options, and made a decision; and once I decided, I never looked back. There was no room for second-guessing. But when it came to relationships, I doubted myself at every turn. I disliked the unpredictability, the margin of error. It was possible to do everything right and still fail to close the deal.

God. I needed a hobby.

I was wasting my time. In lieu of accomplishing anything work-related, I decided to head downstairs to the company gym. A good workout would provide me with a distraction, and maybe I would be able to focus on work for a few hours afterward. It was worth a shot. I grabbed my gym bag and left my office.

Nancy, seated at her desk outside my office door, raised her head from the paperwork in front of her. “Heading out early, Mr. Sutton?”

“Just downstairs for a workout,” I said. “I’ll be back later. I don’t have a meeting that I forgot about, do I?”

“Nothing of the sort,” she said, shaking her head. “Enjoy your workout.”

I shouldered my gym bag, preparing to head for the elevator. Then I hesitated. “Nancy... how long have you and your husband been married?”

She raised her eyebrows at me, reminding me very much of my terrifying sixth grade math teacher. I had hired Nancy in part due to that resemblance. “Nineteen years next month,” she said. “Are you taking a poll?”

“An informal poll of one,” I said. “Feel free to tell me to buzz off if you prefer not to answer. But you seem to be happily married, and I’m wondering how you knew that your husband was the right person for you.”

“Well,” Nancy said. She looked up and to the left, visibly thinking. “You’re right that it isn’t any of your business, but I’ll tell you anyway. We met at a time when I was, for various reasons, very dedicated to the idea of dating around and not getting too serious with any particular man. I had a different boyfriend for every day of the week, and it was delightful. Well, then I got the flu, and Jack came over every day to bring me supplies and check in on me, and none of the rest of them so much as called. So I figured, any man who still wanted to see me when I was feverish and hadn’t showered in three days was a man worth sticking with. And I think I was right.”

“After nineteen years, I would say so,” I said. “Thank you, Nancy.”

“I’m glad I could help,” she said, still looking a bit puzzled.

I took the elevator downstairs, thinking about what Nancy said, and about Regan. I was sure that she would bring me soup and orange juice if I were sick, check on me every day until I felt better. She was endlessly affectionate and attentive—as long as we were alone. In public, she froze up. I’d seen it at the charity ball, and at the museum, and told myself that she was just shy, that she would get over it.

I wasn’t sure that she would, though. Or
could
. My life was inescapably public, lived fully in the limelight. If the only solution was to walk away from my company, to abandon everything and plunge myself into anonymous mediocrity, I wasn’t sure I could do it. I knew myself to be a citizen of the earth, and I felt an obligation to everyone I shared the planet with, from ditch-digger to emperor. The good that I could do, as the head of Sutton Industries—well. It would be incredibly difficult to walk away from that.

I hoped Regan wouldn’t ask me to.

I
slept for ten hours that night, deep and dreamless, and it cleared the dark thoughts from my head. I woke feeling well-rested for the first time in several weeks, and easily banged out a few hours of work, sitting at the table in my bathrobe, coffee mug at my side. Only when I had cleared my inbox did I allow myself to consider the fact that Regan would be arriving for dinner in less than twelve hours.

Shit. I should have scheduled the housekeeper to come that morning, but it hadn’t occurred to me in time. I took a quick inventory of the apartment. Not dirty, certainly, but not as tidy as I would have liked. I spent some time loading the dishwasher and tossing dirty socks in the hamper.

I realized that I was nervous. How absurd. I made grown men cry on a daily basis. Well, not daily. Once a month, perhaps. And it was usually some incompetent executive who more than deserved it.

Disgusted with myself, I put a stop to my ridiculous fussing around and settled into my armchair with a novel I had been meaning to read since the summer. After a few false starts, I was finally able to lose myself in the narrative, to the point that I lost track of time and only realized the afternoon was drawing to a close when the room grew too dark to continue reading.

I set my book aside and looked at my phone. Already after 5:00.
Shit
. I needed to get a start on the kaldereta.

I turned on some music and got to work.

It was a fairly labor-intensive recipe, but I had it simmering on the range by the time my intercom buzzed a few minutes after 7:00.

I checked my reflection in the mirror in the foyer while I waited for the elevator. I had never been able to accurately evaluate my own appearance, but my hair wasn’t sticking out strangely, and I hadn’t dripped any food on my shirt. Good enough.

The elevator doors slid open, and Regan stepped out.

Her face was flushed from the cold, and she had a scarf wrapped around her neck that she began to unwind. “Sorry I’m late,” she said.

“You’re hardly late,” I said. “Let me take your coat.”

She shrugged out of it and handed it to me. She was wearing a low-cut white t-shirt and jeans, the most informal clothing I had ever seen her in, and she looked, frankly, incredible. She had never seemed very comfortable in the clothes she wore to work at the club, but dressed like this, she was relaxed in a way that I didn’t associate with her.

“You look great,” I said, stowing her coat in the closet.

She laughed. “I was going to dress up, but then I decided we’re probably past the stage where I can impress you with fancy clothes. I mean, I already freaked out and dumped you, so it’s not like I can just lure you back in with a nice dress.” She kicked off her shoes and stood on my carpet in her bare feet.

“You can wear anything you want,” I said, oddly charmed. “Shorts, pants, nothing at all...”

She covered her smile with one hand. “Maybe not that.”

“We have to eat first, anyway,” I said, leading her toward the kitchen. “I cooked.”

“It smells incredible,” she said. “It smells sort of like—”

“Kaldereta,” I said. “It is. This is my version of wearing fancy clothes, I guess.”

“Wow,” she said. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen while I checked on the stew. “My mom used to make this all the time. I haven’t eaten it in years.”

“It looks like it still needs to cook a bit more,” I said. “Maybe half an hour. Why don’t we have some wine while we wait?”

“I’d like that,” she said.

We sat on the sofa, Regan with her legs curled beneath her, hair shining in the lamplight. Now that she was here, sitting in my apartment like she had never left, I didn’t know where to begin.

“You’ve made some changes to the apartment,” she said. “I like the houseplants.”

“Sadie,” I said succinctly.

Regan gave me a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”

“She didn’t tell you?” I asked. “She gave me a shopping list. Go look at that picture near the bookshelf.”

Brow furrowed, Regan stood up and went over to the photograph hanging on the wall. She leaned in, and I saw the exact moment she realized what it was. “This is in California,” she said.

“It is indeed,” I said. “Now go into the kitchen and look in the first upper cabinet on the left.”

She vanished into the kitchen. I couldn’t see her from where I sat on the sofa, but I heard the cabinet door open, and then she said, “You got the tea I like? And granola bars...” She came back into the living room, frowning, and stood at the end of the sofa, looking down at me. “And you’re making kaldereta... What did Sadie tell you?”

“Well, in retrospect, I think she was trying to make me prove my honorable intentions,” I said. “My apartment is now Regan-proofed.”

“I’m not a toddler!” she said. She touched my cheek. “Thank you. I feel kind of, um. You did all of these nice things for me, and all I did was dump you over the phone like a jerk. Sadie shouldn’t have made you do anything. Your honorable intentions were never in question. I should be trying to win
you
back.”

“Well, you have a lot to make up to me, then,” I said with a wink.

She smiled and looked down at her feet. “I guess I’ll have to try.”

“Sit down,” I said. “Talk to me. Tell me what happened. You said you got scared. Why aren’t you scared now?”

“Yeah,” she said. She sunk onto the sofa again. “I
was
scared. You’re an important person, Carter, and I’m nobody. I know you don’t think about it in those terms, but other people do. I could see your mother thinking it when we had dinner with her, how I’m not good enough for you, and she’s right.” She held up one hand, staving off my protest. “I can’t support your ambitions in the way you need me to. I just can’t. You were raised from birth to know how to talk to people and say the right thing, and I won’t ever know how to do it. So there was that, a lot. And sometimes I felt like you were pretty oblivious to how weird it was for me, the way you can just waltz in and get a table at any restaurant in the city. It’s
weird.
And it made me think that you wouldn’t ever be able to understand me.”

That stung. I took a sip of my wine and kept my expression carefully neutral. “Maybe you didn’t think so, but I
did
make an effort. Do you remember when we went to the art museum? I could have asked them to keep it open after hours, just for us, and we could have had the entire museum to ourselves. They would have done that for me. But I didn’t ask, because I thought it would make you uncomfortable.”

Regan looked down at her glass. “That didn’t occur to me,” she said quietly. “Anyway, I’m not saying that’s what I think
now
. But that’s what I thought at the time, and that’s why I broke up with you.”

“So what do you think now?” I asked. “What changed?”

“Me,” she said simply. “I did. I was so afraid of changing, but I
had
to. I decided I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being screwed up. My childhood wasn’t the greatest, but it’s over now, you know? I don’t want to be afraid of my father forever. And so—this is embarrassing, but. I started going to therapy.”

Oh, Regan. I wanted to put my arms around her and never let go. “There’s nothing embarrassing about that,” I said. “I spent several months in therapy after my fiancée left me, and I found it to be an incredibly useful experience.”

“You had a fiancée?” she asked.

“Yes, I was engaged to be married,” I said. “About five years ago. A few months before the wedding, I found out that she was sleeping with another man. When I confronted her, she told me that she was only marrying me for my money. That she didn’t love me at all.”

“You never told me,” Regan said.

“You didn’t tell me about your high school boyfriend,” I said.

Regan winced. “Sadie told you about him?” she asked.

I nodded. “Not in any detail. She mentioned that he existed.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then said, “I think there are a lot of things we haven’t told each other.”