Page 46 of Never To Be Mine

I resorted to the million-dollar smile. That made her laugh.

“Okay,” she said finally. “But nowhere fancy.”

I grinned. “Deal. Nowhere fancy. I know a place.”

“I’m sure you do.”

I stepped to the curb to hail a cab. She could pretend to be a Debbie Downer but I saw the way her eyes lit up. Maybe a mimosa was all she needed to loosen up.

15

JUNO

Iwatched him pull out his phone and dial a number. He murmured something into it, too low for me to catch, then hung up with a satisfied smile.

“We’re all set,” he said.

“Set for what?”

“Lunch.”

The cab dropped us off in front of a restaurant with valet service. I glanced at Hollis. “Nothing fancy, huh?” I asked.

He grinned at me. “It’s chill. You’re going to love it.”

Hollis held the door open for me, and we stepped into a space that was somehow both intimate and grand. Exposed brick walls, warm lighting with tables spaced far enough apart that you could actually have a private conversation.

My eyes widened when I spotted a very famous celebrity casually eating a salad. And holy shit, was that a senator?

The host greeted Hollis by name. Of course he did.

“Mr. Blackwell, wonderful to see you again. Your table is ready.”

I followed them through the dining room, very aware that my nice dress suddenly felt inadequate. Everyone here looked like they belonged. Like they ate at places like this every day. It wasn’t that they were dressed to the nines. Hell, one lady had on yoga pants. It was their aura. Wealth and power radiated off them.

This was Hollis’s scene.

We were seated at a corner table with a view of the street. The host handed us menus and disappeared. I opened mine and tried not to wince at the prices. Forty-five dollars for a salad. Sixty for pasta.

“Order whatever you want,” Hollis said, not even looking at his menu. “It’s on me.”

“I know it’s on you. You invited me.” I studied the options, my stomach growling despite my irritation. “It must be nice to have the whole world handed to you at birth.”

I cringed. That had sounded bitter. I looked up, worried I’d crossed a line.

But Hollis didn’t look offended. He looked thoughtful.

“You know, you would think so,” he said slowly, setting his menu aside. “And maybe for some people it’s great. But for me? I’ve hated it. All my brothers do.”

I blinked at him. That wasn’t the response I’d expected.

“When you grow up with a name like Blackwell, everyone assumes you’ve never worked for anything. That everything you touch turns to gold because of who your parents are, not because of anything you’ve done.” He leaned back in his chair. “People look at me and they see the money, the connections, the opportunities. They don’t see the pressure. The expectations. The constant need to prove you’re not just coasting on someone else’s success.”

I set my own menu down, suddenly more interested in this conversation than food.

“That’s one of the reasons I started B Well,” he continued. “I needed to build something that was mine. Something I could point to and say, I did that. I earned that.”

I understood and respected his position. This wasn’t the cocky playboy I’d written him off as. This was someone who’d been fighting the same battles I had, just from the opposite direction.