The Ex (The Boss 4)

I stumbled to the dressing room. I was nearly at the door when the phone rang, and I paused. “Who would be calling us this early?”

“I’ll answer it. You should get changed,” he advised with a smirk as he reached for the cordless handset. “Tight yoga pants, maybe. And that pink sports bra you’re always complaining doesn’t have enough support.”

“Perv.” I laughed and left him to deal with whoever was calling at—I checked the time on one of Neil’s dinner-plate-sized watches and groaned—seven in the freaking morning.

When Neil and I had first started dating, my closet situation had involved a pipe my landlord had expressly warned us not to hang stuff on. I’d had a lot less space back then, and a lot less clothing. One of the perks of being engaged to a billionaire—and there were, well, billions of perks—was the ridiculous amount of clothing a fashion-obsessed girl could buy, and the lavish space to hang it in. The dressing room in the master bedroom was bigger than some Manhattan boutiques I’d been in, with similar features. The overhead lighting was bright, but soft, and twin trifold mirrors on either side of the room cut back on our “getting ready” arguments.

I loved my fiancé, but he was vain as hell and a total mirror hog. And there was only room for one of those per closet.

Down the center of the room were two huge, glass-topped consoles to hold his watches and cufflinks and my jewelry, except for my diamond collar, which stayed locked in a safe. Our shoes were lined up neatly on a wall of custom shelves, and I plucked my sneakers from the bottom row. I grabbed the yoga pants Neil had suggested—my ass is pretty fantastic, and giving him a treat wouldn’t hurt—but passed up the weak sports bra for something with a little less jiggle. I don’t have the biggest rack in the world, but unsecured boobs are no fun on a treadmill.

I dressed, tied my shoes, pulled my hair up in a ponytail and headed back out to the bedroom. Since he wasn’t talking anymore, I figured he was off the phone.

“Who was it?” I asked.

Neil was on the edge of the bed, leaning forward with his hands over his face. It wasn’t until he sat up and I saw how red and wet his eyes were that I realized he was crying. He hiccupped back a breath, and his face crumpled as he said, “My mum’s died.”

CHAPTER TWO

We flew to London that evening.

Emma and Michael joined us in our private jet, despite Neil’s protest that his daughter was far too pregnant to travel.

“Daddy, I’m going. Besides the second trimester is the perfect time to travel, it says so on all the websites,” she’d pleaded. “Please, I can’t miss Gran’s funeral. I’ll never feel right about it.”

Michael had even dared to challenge his father-in-law, something he’d rarely done in the past. “Sorry, Mr. Elwood, but I’m afraid I have to overrule you on this one. We can either come with you, or I can get us on a commercial flight, where the pilot isn’t from the charter company you’ve carefully selected based on safety rating.”

Neil might have been tough in the boardroom, but he was nothing when up against the only man who loved Emma as much as he did.

“How are you doing, Daddy?” she asked as she returned to her seat across the aisle from him. She’d been drinking ginger ale on the flight to battle nausea, and she swirled the ice in her glass. Her nose was stuffy from the occasional cry she’d been having. Between motion sickness and grief, she looked thoroughly miserable.

“As well as can be expected, under the circumstances.” Neil tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “As well as the Valium tells me I am.”

I took his hand and squeezed it.

We landed at Heathrow at seven A.M. local time, where the car service picked us up to drive us to our house in Belgravia. We hadn’t been to London in a long time, over a year for me. Neil had flown back for business once, but I wondered if the house would feel weird to me now.

When we arrived, though, it was just like coming home. Neil staggered through the door—I wasn’t sure how much Valium he’d taken, but he’d been pretty out of it since we’d landed—and I had to practically hold him up.

“Whoa,” Michael said, catching Neil as I slumped under his weight.

“Yeah, um, Daddy doesn’t take grief well,” Emma said, loud enough to be heard over our struggle to keep Neil from weaving into the wall. “Let’s get him upstairs.”

The three of us steered him into the elevator and miraculously got him into the bedroom. Michael helped him to the bed, where Neil sprawled across the duvet.

“Make sure he sleeps on his side,” Michael advised grimly.

“You guys go ahead. I’ve got him from here,” I assured them, though Emma still looked worried. Her gaze darted to her father one last time before she closed

the door.

When they’d left the room, I sat beside Neil on the bed and stroked his hair back from his forehead. “You’re not just on Valium.”

His eyebrows rose, but his eyes didn’t open, and he slurred from the corner of his mouth, “No, I’m not.”

A feeling of foreboding prickled over my skin. When he’d been going through chemotherapy, Neil had struggled with suicidal thoughts. The PTSD that lingered after his agonizing stay in isolation in the intensive care unit was always a threat in the back of my mind; I wondered if I should call an ambulance. “Neil, what did you take?”

“Holli gave me some special candy.”