Survival of the Richest (The Trust Fund Duet 1)

He doesn’t answer, and I realize he’s fallen asleep. A lightweight, my Christopher. Or maybe he just drank his weight in vodka in that box.

The linen closet looks downright pathetic with only a spare sheet and a mismatched blanket. I take them both because I’m already shivering in the condo. The thermostat looks like it would require an airplane pilot to navigate, so I cover Christopher with both of them.

He snores. Not very loud, but enough that I notice. A rumble in his chest. That’s an intimate piece of knowledge I never had before, not even when we shared a bed that first night. I was too out of it after my dip in the bay to wake up. Or maybe I heard him and just didn’t remember.

It’s possible that I snore, that he heard me do it that night.

This was his fall into the ocean. Not a literal tumble with a splash in the salt water, but a fall nonetheless. The lowest I’ve ever seen him. How could I

not help him back up?

Part of me wants to search his cabinets and drawers to ferret out his secrets. The other part of me realizes that there wouldn’t be any lying around. He’s a man who holds it all behind those dark eyes, locked behind a thousand doors, each as opaque as the next. What would it be like to get behind them? Maybe I’m only now resigned to the idea that I won’t ever know.

His bed is just as modern and impersonal as the rest of the condo, a low-slung floating platform that feels like a boat adrift on the ocean. That’s where I curl up beneath a heavy down comforter. The pillow smells like him, something ineffable I recognize even if I can’t name it, and I drift asleep to the comfort of it.

The shine of the boardroom table reminds me of the flat white of canvas. It’s a place with promise, where something can be made that wasn’t before. Money, usually.

The first time I was here I was too busy being pissed at Christopher to appreciate the room. In the half hour that Sutton makes me wait for him, I have the time to study the cherrywood table that matches the walls. Made from the same trees, I think. I have the sudden sense that they were built by hand—by Sutton’s hand. That he sawed and sanded these boards. Put whatever this glossy stuff is on top so a sheet of paper can fly all the way across, no friction, all inertia.

There’s a kind of romance to that idea, that he would have carved this boardroom himself.

He’s angry at me, something I would know even if he hadn’t given me the message through the receptionist that he would be handling an important phone call before joining me. Even if he didn’t enter the room with his blue eyes flashing and his body vibrating with tension.

I would know he’s angry because of the way I left him. The way I chose Christopher. At least that’s how it would have seemed to him, and maybe that’s how it is.

He drops something on the table, and just like that, it glides a little. Magic. “Our construction permit which has been on hold for two weeks, finally got reviewed. And denied.”

Of course it did. We pissed off some of the most important people in the city last night, as well as each other. So much for diplomacy. “Did you by any chance make this table yourself?”

A frown. “Safety concerns, at least that’s the claim. I figure if we address them, they’ll just come back with something else. The reasoning is just a technicality.”

“Because I have to wonder, if you did make the table, then you must have made the walls. And who does that? Making walls with their bare hands?”

“We had the construction crew on hold while we tried to push through the review, and now we’re going to have to tell them to wait longer. Indefinitely, maybe. Are you going to actually discuss this with me or just talk about the damned walls?”

“The transportation of walls has become something of a personal interest.”

He wants to say something about the construction crew that will no doubt be important, but he looks over at the wall and blinks. “You move walls the same way, whether you make them yourself or not. With a truck.”

And that wraps up Sutton in a single sentence. With a truck. Something idealistic enough in him to want an office built by his own hand. And something practical enough not to wonder how it will be done. The grin on my face, I couldn’t stop it for anything. “You’re amazing.”

He studies me. “Did you and Christopher keep drinking all night?”

“Slept like a baby, even though his mattress is hard.”

As soon as I say the words, Sutton’s blue eyes turn to frost. I wish I could take the words back, or explain that we didn’t do anything, that Christopher wasn’t in bed with me. Except that there’s voices coming from the reception area. And then Christopher stands between us.

“Good morning,” he says, his gaze detached and his suit impeccable.

He was gone when I woke up this morning, leaving me in his apartment. There was a cup of lukewarm coffee on the counter made with sugar and extra cream, exactly the way I drink it, which was the only sign that he knew I was even there. I ordered an Uber to L’Etoile, where it took a very long shower to feel human again.

Somehow Christopher went from melancholy drunk to determined in the space of a few hours. It’s like there’s a magnet between him and this focused businessman. No matter how far away he slides, he can snap back in a second. He drops a finger on the permit and draws it toward him, reading without expression.

Sutton strolls over to the far corner, where he runs a hand over a knot, his touch familiar and almost caressing on the wood. He would touch cherished skin that way. “We’ll need to appeal,” he says.

“Yes,” Christopher says, pushing away the paper, letting it slide. “It won’t work, of course. And we don’t have much time if we want to stay on schedule.”

“Seems unlikely,” Sutton says, but he adds, “There are a lot of men counting on that income. Would be good to come through for them.”