Page 84 of The Billionaire Invitation

They looked out the window at the clouds a while longer, then he asked a question he had no business asking.

“You were kidding, right? About you and Dad last night?”

Her eyes slid to his. She patted his knee again. Then she went back to looking out the window.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Well, she’d done it.

She’d treated Dante the way he treated her. Like a line item on a yellow legal pad. Cool efficiency disguised as maturity. She felt like absolute shit about it.

She simply wasn’t built that way.

She’d been forced to choose: preserve her heart or her charity. It was a no-brainer which of those was the nobler cause. She’d chosen the veterans. She’d chosen honor.

Now she sounded like Dante—essentially committing the same “crime” of prioritizing business over pleasure. If it was so honorable, then why did it feel horrible?

She was grateful that Gabby was out of the office today. Honesty did not have the energy to have a well-meaning discussion about what had happened last night. Not that she was getting anything done here by herself. Her email inbox kept dinging, and she ignored each new message.

She sat, pen in hand, scribbling doodles on a notepad with a header that read Honest Nutrition.

Honest. Oh, the irony that the only person she’d been lying to was herself.

But. She still had a job to do.

She dropped the pen and picked up her phone. She had yet to meet with her first client for Long Live Food. She would make one last attempt with Michael Tillsbury, and after that, she was moving on.

Onward. Upward.

I wanted to reach out one last time to see if we can work together. If you’re no longer interested, say the word. I will let you go.

She hit send and turned the phone facedown.

I will let you go.

She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. Her mind swirled, her chest ached. She wished she possessed the ability to turn off her heart like a light switch. To turn down the volume in her head that had been so loud. Too loud.

Maybe that was why she didn’t hear the door.

“Hellooo?” came a familiar voice. It belonged to the woman who had plied Honesty with too many margaritas and had made her laugh so hard her belly hurt.

Jaylyn Crane was in the main part of the office, barreling down the long shotgun-style walkway like a woman on a mission.

“I thought I locked the door,” Honesty called out as she crumpled up the paper she’d been doodling on.

“Nope. Wide open.” Jaylyn tilted her head to one side, her hair falling over one shoulder. She was wearing a short black dress and Doc Martens, and a ring on nearly every finger. “I have something for you.”

From behind her back she produced a thick, glossy magazine. She plunked it unceremoniously onto Honesty’s desk. “Hot off the presses.” J sat in a guest chair and crossed her legs. Honesty had half expected her to plop those heavy boots onto her desktop instead.

On the cover of North Shore Style, Honesty and Dante stood beneath a shade tree outside of the estate, the lake sparkling behind them. Dante stood at her back, one hand proprietarily at her waist, his chin touching her hair. She wore an ivory dress selected by the designer, and he wore linen pants and a white shirt. They were laughing at something the photographer said, a throwaway joke she couldn’t recall at the moment.

“Where did you get this?”

“I know people. A courier is delivering a copy to Dante right now at his house in California. I wonder if he’ll see what I see,” Jaylyn said. “Do you see what I see?”

“He’s in California?” Honesty hadn’t known that he’d left Chicago.

“Yeah. He flew out with Simone early this morning. He didn’t tell you?”