The Billionaire's Heart (The Silver Cross Club Book 4) (15 page)

He gave me a startled look. “I don’t think you need to worry about that,” he said. “There will be lots of aid workers there, and former Peace Corps types, and diplomats. They tend to be a liberal and multi-ethnic group.”

“I guess so,” I said, even though I wasn’t totally reassured by his assessment of the situation. “But I don’t have anything to wear, so I can’t go.”

He grinned, and I realized too late that I had misstepped. “Oh, Sadie,” he said. “Is that your only objection? I’ll have a dress delivered to your house tomorrow morning.”

“I’m not going to let you buy me a ball gown,” I said. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Of course not,” he said. “I’ll borrow one. You’re about the same size as one of my sisters. You’re a little shorter, but you can wear heels. I’ll raid her closet.”

“I hope your sister has good taste,” I said, “and if so, please let her pick. I don’t trust a man to dress me.”

“I’ll have you know I have impeccable taste,” he said. “All right. I’ll make a deal with you: if you hate the dress I send over, you don’t have to go to the auction. But if you like it even a little bit, you have to come.”

“I have a feeling I’m going to regret this,” I said, and he laughed at me and turned back to his laptop.

I sighed. I also had a feeling that Elliott would look entirely too appealing in a tuxedo.

FIFTEEN

Elliott

Sadie didn’t keep me waiting on Saturday evening. I texted her when I arrived at her apartment, and she appeared in the doorway mere moments later. She wore a black coat over her dress, but it ended at her knees, and below that her sapphire-blue gown flowed like liquid around her ankles. A narrow headband held her braids away from her face, and her long earrings brushed against the side of her neck as she carefully picked her way down the front steps.

She looked lovely.

I leaned against the car I had hired for the evening, arms folded, watching her come down the sidewalk toward me. “I guess you found the dress acceptable, then.”

She rolled her eyes at me, and then, in an instant, tripped on the sidewalk and fell toward me, her eyes wide and frightened.

I caught her in my arms, the small solid weight of her, and held her until she got her footing again. The scent of a crisp, citrus perfume rose from her skin. I was immediately aroused.

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away from me and raising one hand to touch her hair. “I wear heels all the time; you’d think I would actually know how to walk in them.”

“No need to apologize,” I said. I was intensely grateful for my long coat that covered the front of my trousers. “I know it’s more difficult than it looks.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “You do?”

“Not from experience, of course,” I said. “But I do have three sisters.” I opened the door to the back seat of the car and gestured her inside. “After you.”

“I feel so fancy,” she said, when we were both settled and I had told the driver to head out. She smoothed her gown over her knees. “This nice dress, a hired car driving me around… It’s like being a princess.”

“Your hair looks different,” I said inanely.

“Yeah, I did a French twist. I don’t usually wear it like this. Do you like it?” She turned her head from side to side, holding one hand up behind her neck, posing extravagantly.

“I do like it,” I said. Our eyes met. She looked down and away, her face unreadable.

Damn it.

It seemed that I was always overstepping my bounds with Sadie: saying the wrong thing, being too forward. Sometimes she seemed receptive, almost flirtatious, but then she would shut down unexpectedly. I was terrible at predicting when it would happen, or why.

I never wanted to make her uncomfortable.

We rode in silence for a few minutes, and then she said, “So tell me what to expect at this fundraiser. I’ve never been to one. Is there going to be free food?”

I smiled, relieved that she had broken the awkward silence so that I didn’t have to fumble around for something to say. “Sadie, there will be more free food than you can imagine,” I said, and we spent the rest of the ride discussing social functions past and present and the various finger foods I had encountered over the years.

The fundraiser was taking place at a large converted industrial space in Chelsea. We arrived about half an hour after the event began, and well-dressed party-goers were milling around the sidewalk, laughing and talking. The building’s large glass doors glowed with a warm yellow light, and lanterns shone from each window.

“Fancy,” Sadie said.

“That’s your word for the evening,” I said, taking her hand to help her out of the car.

She smiled up at me. “I think it’s an appropriate word, don’t you?”

We went inside. The coat check was in a small room near the entrance to the building, and from the line stretching out into the hallway, it seemed they were understaffed. There was no helping it; I didn’t want to carry my coat around all evening.

We got in line, and Sadie immediately occupied herself with gawking at the decorations and the well-dressed revelers. I sometimes forgot that she’d had a very normal, middle-class upbringing and wasn’t inoculated to blatant displays of wealth the way I was. The expression on her face was the same as it had been when we first walked into the hotel in Boston: wonder mixed with a bit of skepticism.

The wonder I could understand, although I had never felt it, and the skepticism endeared her to me, maybe more than it should have. She seemed to regard anything she considered
fancy
as being somewhat akin to a tiger: beautiful, deadly, and not at all practical as a part of everyday life. She enjoyed the zoo excursion, but was always happy to go home.

“Elliott? Elliott Sloane?”

The voice came from behind me. I turned, and smiled as I recognized Walter Verhaegen, an old friend of my mother’s. I hadn’t seen him in years, but he and my mother were friends from childhood, and he had always been kind to me.

We shook hands, and he said, “It’s so good to see you. I heard rumors that you were back in New York, but I’m glad to have it confirmed with my own two eyes.”

Sadie tapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll take your coat,” she said, and I gave her a grateful nod, handed over my coat, and stepped out of line.

Walter was just as I remembered him: friendly, engaging, and genuinely interested in what I was up to. He had the knack of asking just the right questions and setting a person at ease. It was a quality I admired and wished I could imitate, but conversation had never come that easily to me.

“Well, I won’t keep you,” he said at last, after he had somehow gotten me to tell him the entire story of my return to New York and attempt to start my own company. “There’s that lovely lady of yours. Enjoy your evening.”

He must have meant Sadie, and I turned to see her coming toward me, empty-handed, shoulders bare and burnished by the yellow light.

Watching her walk across the room was one of those moments that I knew I would remember until the day I died.

Kris had chosen a
good
dress.

Sadie stood beside me, smiling, glowing, and said, “Shall we?”

I held out my arm, and she slid her hand around the crook of my elbow. “Let’s.”

We went out into the large, open room where the auction was being held. The room was lined with tables, each one bearing goods up for bid: handicrafts, gift certificates, vacation packages. Each table doubled as an information booth for the aid organization that had provided the item being auctioned. Guests mingled with the aid workers staffing the event, and waiters circulated with trays of champagne and finger foods. Gauzy white fabric draped from the metal beams criss-crossing the ceiling. It had the effect of making the room seem smaller, cozier. Somewhere to make friends, and ideally agree to donate massive sums of money to an organization.

I paused in the doorway, a bit overwhelmed by the crowd.

“That’s a lot of people,” Sadie said.

“We’ll have to linger on the outskirts,” I said, “snatch whatever food comes our way, and hope nobody notices us.” I tried to keep my voice light, as if I were joking, but the truth was, I would have been very happy to hide in a corner for a few hours and then sneak out unnoticed.

“No way,” Sadie said. “You need to mingle, right? Let’s get us a fat investment tonight. I’m going to make it happen.”

I grinned, amused as always by her bravado. “That’s why I brought you. I’ll find you a nice old man to chat with and he’ll have signed over his estate by the end of the evening.”

“I like nice old men,” she said. “As long as they aren’t the creepy kind.”

I drew in a breath. Once more unto the breach. With Sadie at my side, I waded into the sea of people. There was work to be done.

I made my way for a table on the other side of the room, one staffed by an old friend who had told me he would be here tonight. Along the way, I snagged a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and downed it in one gulp. I would need the fortification.

As I wove my way through the crowd, I scanned the room for Eric’s distinctive red hair, and when I spotted it, I course-corrected toward his table. When he saw me approaching, he broke into a wide grin and came around the side of the table to give me an appropriately manly hug and slap on the back.

“Jesus, Elliott, it’s good to see you,” he said, when we pulled apart. “It’s been years.”

“Hey, I told you to come visit me in Uganda, but you were too lazy,” I said, and drew Sadie forward. “Sadie, this is Eric. We worked together in Kenya for a while.”

“Charmed,” Eric said, taking Sadie’s hand in his own. I rolled my eyes. Eric loved women, and had slept his way through our NGO’s entire roster of female volunteers and employees, even the ones who were married or two decades his senior. I waited for him to make a fawning comment about Sadie’s appearance. Instead, he said, “I didn’t know you’d gotten married, Elliott.”

I nearly choked on my own tongue. Sadie looked up at me with wide eyes, and I smiled at her in a way that I hoped was reassuring rather than panicked. “Sadie is my employee, Eric.”

He raised his eyebrows. “My mistake. Apologies. Does that mean I can ask her out for dinner?”

Sadie laughed. “Absolutely not. I don’t go out for dinner with strange men.”

“But we aren’t strangers now,” he said. “We’ve been introduced. So that makes it perfectly acceptable.”

Sadie gave him a sly look, like she was actually
considering
it, and that was the last straw for me. I wasn’t going to stand there while Eric blatantly hit on my—on Sadie. “Eric, great to see you again,” I said, through clenched teeth. “We need to go do some networking, but maybe we can get a drink later, after you’re done here.” And after Sadie was safely on her way home.

Eric smirked at me like he knew exactly what I was thinking, but for once in his life he kept his mouth shut and simply said, “I’m looking forward to it. Sadie, a pleasure.”

Greatly daring, I put my hand on Sadie’s bare back, right between her shoulder-blades, and guided her away. Her skin was soft as silk, and blood-warm. The thought of Eric touching her, even
looking
at her, made a black rage churn inside my gut. I would never let it happen.

“He seemed nice,” Sadie said, as we moved off into the crowd.

Nice
. For fuck’s sake.

My attraction to her was no revelation. I had been aware of my desire since our very first meeting. But slowly, over the last several weeks, we had become friends. I appreciated Sadie’s shapely body, but I also admired her quick mind and off-beat sense of humor. It wasn’t until Boston that I realized the full weight and meaning of my feelings for her. Sitting together on the bed in her hotel room, watching that awful television show, I was struck by how much I enjoyed her company. Without my awareness or permission, I had come to care for her.

It was a problem. No torrid fling would satisfy me. I wanted the real thing: love, laughter, a life together. But she was my employee, and the power imbalance meant that if I propositioned her, I could never be sure she hadn’t said yes simply out of fear of losing her job. Sexual exploitation was hardly the basis for a meaningful relationship. I never wanted to do anything that would make her uncomfortable.

But I still wanted her.

Behind me, Sadie asked, “Where are we going?”

I didn’t have an answer.

Then, halfway across the room, I spotted one of the people I’d hoped to run into tonight: Gerald Hawthorne, wealthy philanthropist and notorious codger. He hated everyone, but I had a feeling that he might like Sadie—and if he liked her, he might be willing to give me some money. My plan was very simple: toss Sadie in Hawthorne’s direction and hope they hit it off. Sadie would be displeased with me, I was sure, but I had survived worse things than a woman’s wrath.

“We’re going this way,” I said, and steered her toward Hawthorne’s distinctive white hair, thick and bushy as a lion’s mane.

I knew Hawthorne primarily by reputation. He and my mother had traveled in similar circles, and I had been introduced to him a handful of times before I quit Harvard and left the country. I had no expectation that he would recognize or remember me, but as Sadie and I approached, he turned from the woman he was speaking with and boomed, “You’re Clara’s boy, aren’t you?”