Scoring the Billionaire(16)

"Thanks for everything." Her eyes flicked from him to me and back again. "You can go now."

"Him or me?" her brother asked, outraged, and fuck if he was the only  one wondering. Still, I said nothing. I figured silence was my best bet.

She seemed to make a decision then, and I didn't even have to guess if I was going to like the answer-I wasn't.

"Both of you, actually. It's been a long night. I just want to get Lex  to bed and me to bed, and I'd really like to do it not in this costume."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her I'd be happy to assist in  ridding her of any and all apparel when her brother's knowing eyes  jerked to me.

I kept my face carefully blank.

"I'll talk to you tomorrow," she told us, ushering us toward the door. "And before you ask, I mean both of you."

As we stood shoulder to shoulder on her porch, Winnie shut the door with  a smile and a wave. Neither her brother nor I moved an inch for  several, long seconds.

Remy's body seemed to hum with what was coming, the very energy of his  words reaching out in warning before he uttered even the first syllable.

"I own a shotgun, a shovel, and have three very eager helpers for the disposal of your body."

My eyes closed in a mix of everything at once-humor, surprise that the  first threat of this kind was coming to me at such a late age, and  uncertainty about whether or not I could be the man who didn't deserve a  body bag.

"Noted," I replied finally, but he was already on his way down the steps and he didn't look back.

Way to go, Wes, I told myself as I descended the stairs slowly. Years of  sleeping with anything that moves, and you've chosen to become obsessed  with a woman with a child and four brothers.

Goddammit.





"Here, Lex," I said as I handed her a calculator from my desk to fool  around with. "Work some numbers while I finish up a little paperwork,  okay? And then we can go grab something to eat."

Her blond hair shifted off of her shoulders as she moved across the room  and snatched the calculator out of my hands with excitement. My little  Lexi was a numbers girl through and through. Hell, she could probably  teach mathematics to high schoolers at this point. Which was why a  calculator came in handy when I was in the process of trying to occupy  her and finish up some work.

I rarely considered bringing my kid to work, but this actually made the  second time in a week. Her nanny, Melinda, who attended NYU, had fall  break last week and a huge economics exam to study for this week, and I  tried not to rule her like a fucking dictator. She was a young girl,  working her way through school and doing her best to straddle the line  of adolescence and adulthood. I could see her clear as day, her  struggles and determination, and when I looked really closely, I saw a  younger version of myself rather than Melinda.         

     



 

My mom had worked like a dog to support the five of us after my dad  left, but there were only twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a  week, and fifty-two weeks in a year-and a very finite amount of money to  be made.

So I'd been that girl, working my way through college and medical school  with two jobs, fighting to find the light at the end of the tunnel that  would afford me the ability to juggle one life instead of three.

When Nick Raines had shown up with his quick smiles, easy attitude, and  life-lightening humor, I'd grabbed on as tight as I could and ridden the  ride as long as he'd let me.

Of course, as all roller coasters do, the one with Nick had come to an  abrupt end, and when the high wore off-and the pregnancy test read  positive-I'd added responsibility to my life rather than absolved it.

Because being a single mother was a job, probably the hardest one I'd  ever had, and by far the least predictable. I didn't go in at nine or  leave at five, and the expectations of the job were never-not once-the  same.

But if there was one thing that was a constant with my daughter, it was her inquisitive nature and the questions it produced.

Constant, curious, intelligent questions about anything and everything.

That was all well and good on a normal day, but when you were in college  and trying to cram for an exam that would equal fifty percent of your  grade, the questions were a little hard to manage.

As the person trying to work and pass her test simultaneously currently, I knew. I really knew.

Lexi moved over to the small leather chair in front of my desk and  plopped her little butt down, her legs swinging back and forth  underneath it. She scrunched her nose up as she focused, and her  fingertips tip-tapped across the keys.

Silence-thank God. I loved the sound of her voice, had waited tirelessly  to hear the words every mother dreams of when Lexi was struggling the  most with her speech delay, but concentration and chatter, no matter how  adorable, didn't go hand in hand.

Focused again, I carefully described every detail on the report for  Harrison's torn ligament and moved on to the broken vertebrae DeMarcus  Bassy had suffered in practice.

I still marveled at the injuries a sport could produce, the overall very  real physical roughness of football, and the absolute grit most players  displayed when you told them they couldn't play. There was never relief  in their eyes or fear in their hearts-they lived and breathed football,  and being told they couldn't be out there felt like a death of a part  of them.

Five minutes later, the words, "Pen and paper, Mommy?" pulled my  attention from my laptop and back to my daughter, but five minutes were  better than none. Plus, her sweet face was a happy distraction from all  of the gruesome details of the end of a man's dreams-at least for the  season. Bassy's ass would be riding the bench for a good long time.

"Sure, honey." I grabbed a small notepad and pen from my desk drawer and set them on the edge of my desk.

Her Mary Jane-covered feet ran across the hardwood floor, and she  stopped in front my desk, hand already gripping the pen and scribbling  something down on the notepad.

As much as I wanted to savor my time with her, drink in her knowledge  and learn all the things she surely had it in her to teach me, I didn't  have the luxury. Instead, my eyes went straight back to my laptop,  closed out the reports as I typed the final details, and hurriedly tried  to finish a few more emails before the six-year-old standing across  from me would cause any more distractions.

Mom life, right?

Sometimes, it was real fucking tough to get anything done.

And on top of the obvious time constraints, we were constantly fighting  the guilt of feeling bad that we weren't giving our children all of our  time, yet still trying to find the balance of not losing ourselves in  just being Mom all day, every day.

It was a struggle every single day.

"Knock knock."

I glanced up to find Wes standing in the doorway of my office with a  soft smile on his face. Everything inside of me woke up at once.

It'd been just over a week since the Halloween party at Brooks Media,  and everything about that stretch of time said Wes and I were something.

Not defined in the slightest, but well above nothing, we'd managed to  sneak away during work hours for sex four times in the last eight days.  And as much as I expected my desire to die, after we were done, the  flame always burned that much brighter.         

     



 

His smiles came more easily and with much higher frequency, and after  the first time I'd had to bring Lex to work, he'd even seemed to warm up  to her. I'd noticed his discomfort at first, at not knowing how to  interact with her without the manipulation he used on so many adults,  but it hadn't taken him long to find a way to talk to her that seemed to  put them both at ease.

"Are you stopping by the practice tonight before you head out?" he  asked, both hands on the top frame of the door with his body leaning  forward.

Good God.

"Probably not." I motioned toward Lexi and shook my head. "I've got a  lot of work to finish up and, well, let's just say some things are very  distracting." And two of my medical aides were on the field. I'd get a  phone call if anyone seriously needed me.

Wes chuckled softly and walked toward my desk to stand behind my  daughter, peeking over her shoulder. She was still too enthralled in  whatever had her mind busy for the moment and hadn't even noticed his  arrival.

His eyebrows rose dramatically at whatever he saw on her notepad. If I  had a different kid, I might have feared a dirty drawing or limerick  with the way his forehead seemed to disappear, but I didn't, so instead,  I prepared myself to be floored. He must have jerked his head from the  paper to me and back again a full three times before finally settling  his surprised eyes on mine.

I tilted my head to the side with an indulgent smile and asked the  question that was almost always relevant. "What am I missing?"

"Do you see what she's doing?"

I bit my lip in an effort not to laugh, as the answer, thanks to a good  six feet of space and a lack of superhuman eyesight, was blindingly  obvious. Still, I pictured her usual work and ventured a guess. "Writing  numbers?"