The Billionaire Next Door(37)

Okay, that was not a good topic to get on, Sean thought. Because he couldn’t be civil about the fact that his father had obviously poor-little-old-me ’d her.



“I’m not going to discuss him.”



“Oh, that’s right. Closed-door policy on that.”



“Lizzie, no offense, but you don’t know a thing about my father.”



“Funny, the same could be said of you. I don’t think you knew him very well, either.”



Sean’s hand curled around his BlackBerry. As he fought to rein in his temper, he reminded himself that she had no way of knowing about the past and that people, even his father, could present many different faces to the world.



“Let’s keep this just to us, Lizzie. We’ll get further.”



She exhaled sharply, which he didn’t take as a good sign. “You know what? Let’s forget about us going anywhere, okay? Let me know about the house sale when you can. Goodbye.”



She hung up on him.



Sean let his head fall back against the plush leather seat. Closing his eyes, he tried to tell himself it was for the best. She stirred up too much in him. Went in too deep. Made him feel too much.



It was better to be alone than in chaos.



Taking a deep breath, he put his palm under his tie and rubbed his sternum.



Damn, his chest hurt.



When his BlackBerry went off, he answered it without looking at the caller ID.



Mick Rhodes was in midlaugh. “Twenty-two minutes. I win.”



“What did they come back with?”



“Up twenty-five cents a share and much better financing, at least to my eye. You’re a genius, SOB.”



“Tell them to get the papers to me.”



“Will do.”



Genius? Sean thought as they hung up. What a crock of crap that was. He felt like anything but.





***




After she ended the call, Lizzie just stared at the photograph on her laptop’s screen. It was a picture of Sean looking like a total power player: Black suit. White shirt. Red tie. A hard smile and harder eyes.



A stranger.



Oh, but then he’d been that before, hadn’t he?



She glanced at the date. The photo had been taken at a gala on the night Mr. O’Banyon had died and she thought back to when she’d called Sean with the news. Evidently this fancy party had been the noise she’d heard in the background.



She shut off the computer to get away from the image and let herself sink back into the sofa.



All around her, everything seemed too quiet. The drone of the AC unit. The dulled murmur of a passing car. The soft wind catching a piece of siding and making it whistle.



She wished she had to go to work or had someplace to go. The only thing she had here at home was a whole lot of smothering introspection that she could do without. Trouble was, she wasn’t moonlighting until tomorrow night and she was not the bar-hopping type.



Exhausted and cranky, she headed for bed for lack of a better alternative, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to sleep. Sure enough, as she turned off the light and lay back, the mattress beneath her felt as if it were stuffed with gravel and her sheets were like sandpaper against her skin.#p#分页标题#e#



Man…this thing with Sean was such a mess.



She’d spent the last four days waiting for the phone to ring, if she was home, or checking her message light first thing as she came in the door. Naturally, when she’d decided he was never going to call, he did…only to drop this news flash that he was a big shot.



A big shot who evidently hadn’t had enough cash to spare for his father in spite of being on the Fortune 500 list. Which was just wrong. Granted, Mr. O’Banyon hadn’t starved, but things could have been a lot easier on him if he’d had a visiting nurse and if his medical bills had been covered.



Lizzie pictured the photograph of Sean she’d just seen. How he must have laughed at her. Thinking that he was a construction worker—



The phone started to ring in the living room, the cheerful chirping sound coming down the hall as if the noise were skipping.



The first ring she ignored. The second ring she ignored. On the third, she almost got up, but then she let the call dump into voice mail.



She didn’t care what he had to say.



Crossing her arms over her chest, she closed her eyes.



Three minutes of pulling the mummy routine and she was out in the living room, finding the phone. There was a message so she dialed into the system and held her breath.



Her mother’s voice was excited: “I have had a breakthrough with the clay! My fingers are singing! This is such a revelation, which…”