The Millionaire Affair (Love in the Balance 3)

“Obsession,” Richie said into the phone. Kimber had to laugh.

Angel whispered her next words. “Have a drink with him tonight. You owe yourself a break. Take it. And talk to him. Maybe you’ll have more in common than you imagine.”

She opened her mouth to tell Angel she didn’t think it was a good idea, but then she heard the telltale beeping of the buttons on the microwave.

“I gotta go,” she said, hoofing it down the hallway. No good could come of Lyon operating the microwave.

CHAPTER FIVE

Landon was reading through the e-mail he’d spent the last twenty minutes drafting when his desk phone rang. The button signifying his private line lit. His emergency line.

Lyon.

A myriad of horrific thoughts went through his mind in the nanosecond it took to punch the button and bring the handset to his ear. What if Lyon had broken his arm? Or his leg? Or his neck?

“This is Landon.” The words didn’t come out frantic, but they were stiff.

“This is Angel,” came his sister’s mocking voice.

His panic eased down a notch. If she was joking around, this must not be the emergency he’d feared. He uncurled his clenched fist. “Everything okay?”

“Of course everything’s okay. Why? Is this number hooked to a red phone or something?”

He eased back and leaned an elbow on the arm of his chair. “I assume any call to my direct line is an emergency.”

“Can’t a sister call and talk to her oldest brother for no reason at all?”

“Sure she can. But she doesn’t.” He waited. He was right; he knew it.

An audible sigh confirmed his suspicions. “Fine,” she said. “You got me. I wanted to call and tell you to have a drink with Kimber tonight.”

He straightened his glasses. What was she up to? “A drink.”

“Yeah. Make an effort to talk to her when you get home tonight.”

Had Kimber… said something? He hadn’t been in the greatest of moods last night when he’d come home. He’d been brusque, unintentionally. “Why?” he said, not letting Angel in on any of his thoughts. “She’s a babysitter not an adult-sitter.”

He nearly laughed when she blew out a frustrated grunt. “She’s a nanny. And a professional.”

“I know. Isn’t it best for me to stay out of her way?” he asked, happily needling his only sister. “Let her do her thing?”

“You’re so clueless.” He heard murmuring followed by Angel answering, “Second drawer, Richie!” She addressed Landon again, her voice at normal pitch. “Kimber is marooned in your big, lonely house for the entirety of a week—”

“More like four days at this point,” he interjected.

Angel ignored him. “—and her only company is a six-year-old with a fondness for fart noises. Did you consider she might like to have a conversation that didn’t involve applesauce or Superman?”

She was making her point passionately enough that he began wondering if she had talked to Kimber. Had Kimber filed a grievance with his emotionally unstable sister? “If she’s unhappy with the job—” he started, about to issue an idle threat.

Angel didn’t let him finish. “She likes you, Landon.”

He blinked at his computer, which had gone into hibernation mode. A Downey Design logo winked on and off in varying locations. So this wasn’t a case of Kimber complaining to Angel. It was a case of his love-struck sister trying to set him up. “Listen, Cupid.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Okay. Angel. You have a Cupid complex. You see matchmaking everywhere you look.”

“Kimber never had a crush on Evan,” she blurted. “It was you. All those years ago when she hung around the basketball court, when she sat next to you at dinner, when she helped you with your English paper.”

What? “Creative writing,” he muttered, semi-stunned.

She huffed. “The point is Kimber liked you. Still likes you, if you ask me.”

He sifted through a memory of her on the patio, winding a red curl around her finger and watching him play basketball with Aiden and Evan. No. No way had she been out there for him. “I was too old for her.” Five years was a huge gap between a sixteen-year-old and a college kid.

“You’re not now.”

He wasn’t. Kimber was thirty-two, her womanly curves as far from her gangly teenage years as possible, and as enticing as they came.

“Fine,” Angel replied when he remained silent. “Don’t believe me.”