An Accidental Date with a Billionaire

Still, he hesitated.

“Schedule a dinner for Monday of next week. Give him some more time to think over all his options,” he said. Even as the words left his mouth, they were the wrong ones.

The longer he waited, the less likely they would be to reach an optimum solution. If he didn’t save the company, and if Sam didn’t come up with a solution, a lot of people might suffer because of his reluctance to piss off his lover.

But what if she was right?

What if she could save Mr. Harper?

“All right,” his secretary said. “I’ll write it down…if I can find a pen. I swear I had one on my desk earlier. Where do they keep going?”

Taylor winced. “I may have grabbed it off your desk earlier. I’m sorry.” The elevator door opened behind him. His heart leapt because it could only be one person. Sam was the only person who had the clearance from security to come directly up without a phone call. “I have to go.”

“Wait. About the benefit Friday night—”

“I have it covered. I’m going with Julie.” He hung up, turning on Sam. “You’re late.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, not removing her coat or purse. “That’s because I almost didn’t come.”

So. Something was up.

His stomach fisted, and he moved toward her, examining her for a hint of what was going on in her mind. Had she found out about his direct role in the dissolution of Harper Enterprises? “Why not?”

“Because…” She bit her lip, adjusting her weight. She was clearly struggling to find the words to say what she needed to say. Well, shit, this was it. She was going to end it with him. “Who is Julie?”

He blinked. Out of all the things he expected her to say, that was not it. “Julie?”

“Yeah. Is she the woman you were with today?”

Just like that, her behavior made perfect sense. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she might be uncertain about his companion, because he never had anyone who gave a damn who he was with or why. But to Sam, it had probably looked a hell of a lot like a date. “Sam—”

“At first, I thought she might be a girlfriend, but she had a ring on her finger, and unless you lied about not being the relationship type, you definitely didn’t put it there.”

He wasn’t sure what to say. Apparently, she didn’t put it past him to cheat on a girlfriend with her, but the ring on her finger was out of the question.

“And I thought maybe she’s your sister, but she didn’t act like a sister. She was too touchy-feely, and to be honest, the way she touched you…it made me jealous. Was she your sister? Am I wrong?”

The fact that she was jealous…he wasn’t going to lie. He liked that she cared enough to succumb to the little green monster. She might not have said the actual words last night, like he had, but if she’d gotten jealous over him, clearly there was something there, right? “She’s not my sister.”

She stopped unbuttoning her jacket. “Oh.”

“But she’s not my fiancée, either.” After a second, he added, “Or my girlfriend. She’s just a friend, a good one.”

She stared.

“Her fiancé is a Marine, and he’s on tour overseas, so we go to social events together. We have a ball Friday night, and if I remember correctly, I’m not allowed to ask you to go to society events with me due to some mysterious reason.”

She swallowed, her hands still frozen on her third button.

He closed the distance between them, gently pushing her hands away to finish the task. She let him, still not speaking. “We’re just friends, Sam. I’m all yours until you don’t want me anymore.”

Cupping his cheeks, she rose on tiptoe, locking eyes with him. He held on to her jacket, his heart thumping against his ribs in a quick staccato. “I…I don’t know what we are, what to call us, because we can never be together, not for real. But the idea of you being with someone else? I don’t like it.”

“Why can’t we ever be together, Sam?” he asked quietly, knowing he was pushing his luck but too damn curious to really care. She kept saying that they couldn’t be together, and he needed to know why. Had she killed someone? Gone to jail? Escaped?

Why couldn’t they be together?

“You don’t want to be with me,” she argued, going paler than the vampires in that movie where instead of being killers, they sparkled in the sun.