Page 20
“Hans.” Jesus.
“The platform whose name shall not be mentioned,” she warns. “Anyway, that’s how rumors start. And how rumors get mentioned in Page Six.”
I groan. Like I’m in pain.
“Let me save you the keystrokes. The caption read, ‘Reclusive Forbes heiress spotted with fintech billionaire.’”
“Great.”
“For the share price, yeah. Then it hit The Mail, and as far as I can tell, that’s when it stopped being gossip and became a market signal. A fat and juicy narrative for the financial influencer folks. They got to sharing, back on that platform, and an armchair hypothesis took flight. Which got the stock moving. And then a mention in a Bloomberg column.”
“All because of a photo?” I rake my hands through my hair. All because I kissed her? Wait—she kissed me. She misread the signals, and then . . . I kissed her back. Fuck.
“All because of a photo. Max says to tell you that if we’d known, we could’ve whored you out to heiresses before the IPO.”
I drag my hands down my face. This is all I need.
“Not that your love life isn’t helping now.”
“It’s bullshit, Han. There’s nothing going on between us, and the price will settle soon enough.” Nothing that relates to Clara Forbes comes free of cost. Without issues and bite and fucking consequences.
“How do you even know her?”
“My mom used to work for her family.” No need to explain in what capacity. Hannah already knows some of my past.
“Ooh. I’m sensing forbidden love. A poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks and a rich uptown girl with a poor-boy fetish.”
“Except I’m not poor anymore.”
“But she’s still interested, by the look of things.”
“That’s never gonna happen.” Not again.
“Say what you like, Troy Boy, but a picture speaks a thousand words. And that was way more than a friendly hug.”
“Shows what you know, which is something between fuck all and fucking nothing.”
“Testy,” she says. “Where’d Mr. Charm go?”
“He doesn’t report in at the weekend. There is nothing going on between me and Clara Forbes. I can’t say it any clearer than that.”
“Well, the market seems to think otherwise,” she retorts. “So I’m off to check my address book to see if I can’t dig up a couple more heiresses to throw Hugo and Max’s way.”
And while that’s where the call ends, it’s also where my thinking begins.
Chapter 6
Clara
Past
It’s late, but not too late, because like a decent sort of guy, Troy is aiming to have me home at a decent time, so he says.
I glance his way, those long fingers of his looped around the steering wheel of my car. What that man can do with his fingers is nobody’s business. A little zing of delight shoots through me, and I catch myself smiling in the darkened car window.
“Cold?” Before I can answer, he’s already adjusting the climate controls. The hum of German engineering adapts immediately. He reaches for my hand again.
We take my car instead of his because, in his own words, his ride is a piece of shit. I love that his masculinity isn’t attached to a piece of metal. How he laughed when the idiot on my friend Hadley’s arm made it sound like it should be. Troy is so comfortable in his own skin that I envy him. When I’m with my friends, I often feel like a donkey among a herd of thoroughbreds. Not that anyone would guess, because I work very hard at hiding it.
