Chapter Thirteen
The ballroom at the Park Avenue Worthington was just about the last place Brooke wanted to be on a Saturday night—or any night, for that matter—but she had to admit the staff had gone all out. The room was ringed with long, black-skirted tables. More tables formed a square at the center of the room. Each one held an array of items from bottles of wine to Yankees tickets to gift certificates for some of Manhattan’s most exclusive restaurants, all up for bid. Rumor had it a walk-on part in a Broadway play was up for grabs.
Smartly dressed waitstaff circulated among the growing crowd with trays of mouth-watering hors d’oeuvres and glasses of champagne and sparkling water. At the far end of the room, a stage was set up with a podium and microphone. Balloon bouquets and floral arrangements dotted the room, adding pops of color.
“Wow.” She turned to her sister, who looked stunning in a black sleeveless Valentino cocktail dress and matching patent leather Louboutins. Brooke felt dowdy in comparison in the tomato-red fit-and-flare number she’d pulled off the clearance rack at Neiman Marcus. She smoothed down the skirt, wishing she were home in her yoga pants and an extra-large T-shirt. Or better yet, buck naked in bed with Eli. “You’ve really outdone yourself.”
Mallory waved off the compliment with a perfectly manicured hand. “I’m the chef. I’m only responsible for the food.”
“You can’t fool me.” Brooke snagged a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. “This thing has your fingerprints all over it.”
“Well, I did collaborate with the event planner,” Mallory confessed, blushing and taking a sip of her sparkling water. Her sister had never been very good at accepting praise.
Brooke decided to let her off the hook and change the subject. “Dare I ask about the whereabouts of dear old Mom and Dad?”
“They’re around here somewhere.” A man in a white coat flagged Mallory down from across the room. She acknowledged him with a nod and handed Brooke her glass. “That’s my sous chef. Must be some minor emergency in the kitchen. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Brooke spent the next half hour meandering around the ballroom, making small talk with strangers and family friends she barely remembered and checking out all the items up for auction. Signed sports memorabilia. Exotic vacations. Golf lessons. She was scrawling her signature on one of the bid sheets when her mother’s piercing, judgmental voice stopped her pen midstroke.
“A hot air balloon ride, Brooke? Really? Do you think that’s practical?”
“No, Mom, I don’t.” Brooke finished signing with a flourish and turned to face her mother. No surprise, she was decked out to the nines in a floor-length beaded gown, her makeup flawless, not a frosted white-blond hair out of place. “But I think it sounds like fun. And it’s for a good cause.”
She assumed. To be honest, she hadn’t paid much attention to the cause célèbre du jour. If memory served, the signs at the entrance to the ballroom said something about girls and science. A refreshing change from saving whales or building houses or fighting disease. Not that there was anything wrong with saving whales or building houses or fighting disease.
“Where’s your young man?” her mother asked, one plucked eyebrow inching upward.
“Not here.” Brooke didn’t volunteer more.
Her mother’s eyebrow rose higher, disappearing beneath her frosted bangs, but she didn’t press. “Well, at least you made it.”
“Brooke.” Her father joined them, putting an arm around his wife, whether for show or because there was still some real affection between them Brooke was never sure. “You look lovely.”
“Yes.” Her mother looked her up and down, her expression shockingly more supportive than scornful. “That color suits you.”
“Um, thanks.” Compliments were so rare from her parents, Brooke didn’t quite know how to react. Fortunately, a tall, blond-haired man who was a close second to Eli in the heart-stoppingly gorgeous department stepped onto the stage and tapped the microphone, diverting their attention.
“Hello and welcome. I’m Simon Adler, and on behalf of the board of directors of Geek Girls, I’d like to thank each and every one of you for coming out tonight.”
The crowd applauded politely, and he continued. “I hope you brought your checkbooks because we’ve got all sorts of great items up for auction. So remember, bid often and bid high.”
Laughter. When it died down, Simon went on with his speech. “In a few minutes, you’ll be hearing from our board president, who’ll let you in on some exciting things we have planned for this year, but until then eat, drink, and of course, bid.”
The crowd applauded again, a little more enthusiastically this time, and Simon left the stage. Gradually, the hum of conversation and the clinking of glassware resurged, filling the ballroom.
“Richard.” Never Rich. And certainly not Dick. Her mother was nothing if not predictable. She laid a bony, ringed hand on her husband’s arm and with the other gestured to a couple on the other side of the room. “I think I see the Garrisons. We should say hello.”
“Yes.” Her father nodded to Brooke as his wife dragged him away. “We’ll catch up with you later.”
Not if I see you first. “Sure thing.”
Brooke hijacked another waiter, handed off Mallory’s half-full sparkling water and exchanged her now empty champagne glass for a fresh one. She sipped and scanned the ballroom for her sister, coming up empty. The emergency in the kitchen must be proving more major than minor.
Just when she was about to give up hope and hit the bar for something stronger than champagne, Mallory showed up.
“Everything okay?” Brooke asked.
“It is now.” Her sister stopped a waitress, took a canapé from the tray she was bearing, and bit into it. “Tell Hector it needs more mascarpone.”
The waitress nodded and hurried off.
“Did you find Mom and Dad?” Mallory popped the rest of the canapé into her mouth.
“More like they found me,” Brooke grumbled.
“Let me guess. Mom wanted to know why your young man isn’t here,” Mallory said, putting air quotes around “young man.”
Brooke let out an unladylike snort. “How did you know?”
“She grilled me about Hunter.”
“Where is the boy wonder tonight?”
“He’s on call.” Mallory’s ever-present smile slipped a little. “And I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”
A pang of guilt sucker-punched Brooke in the gut. She’d been so busy with Eli and the wedding she’d never had a chance to talk to her sister about Hunter. More like never made the time, she scolded herself, remembering how she’d canceled their lunch date after the wedding.
The guilt doubled, then tripled.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure Hunter’s a great guy.” Brooke tried her hardest to sound convincing. “It’s just…”
The lights flickered, and Mallory put a finger to her lips. “Shh. They’re about to start.”
Simon Adler returned to the stage, this time accompanied by a slightly taller man with cerulean-blue eyes and dark hair that curled over the collar of his tuxedo.
Eyes that had seen every inch of Brooke’s body. Hair her fingers knew the silky feel of almost as well as her own.
Mallory clutched her sister’s arm in a death grip. “Isn’t that…”
“Yes,” Brooke ground out between clenched teeth. “It is.”
“I take it you didn’t know he’d be here.”
“No.” Brooke watched him step up to the podium, a vein pulsing in her temple. “I have no clue what he’s doing here or why.”
“Good evening.” He flashed the crowd a disarming smile she was more than well acquainted with. “I’m Eli Ward, president of the Geek Girls board of directors and co-founder of Momentum Development, the sponsor of this evening’s event.”
What. The actual. Fuck.
Anger warred with heartbreak as Brooke tried to process what she was seeing. Her Eli Ward was the Eli Ward, the one her parents had talked about at brunch. Billionaire real estate developer. One of Fortune’s most influential businesspeople under forty, or some crap like that.
If he’d ever been hers at all.
She considered turning tail and running. Almost as quickly as the thought popped into her head, she rejected it. She’d always been more of a fight than flight kind of gal. And her need to know why Eli had been lying to her all this time trumped her desire to bury her sorrows in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey.
“I don’t have a clue,” Brooke repeated, shaking off her sister’s hand and lowering her voice to a hard, cold whisper. “But I’m sure as hell going to find out.”
…
The night was going perfectly according to plan. Beautiful ballroom. Good food. Free-flowing alcohol. And tons of eager bidders. By Eli’s estimate, Geek Girls should have an additional hundred grand, minimum, in its coffers by the end of the evening.
He’d finished his speech and was barely off the stage when his sister intercepted him, steering him into a corner away from the tables of auction merchandise. “Houston, we have a problem.”
Great. More mess.
Eli glanced around the room. Still nothing but happy campers as far as he could see. “What’s wrong? Seems like everything is going great.”
“Pissed-off brunette at eleven o’clock,” Paige hissed. “Says she needs to talk to you and only you.”
He frowned. “Why me? What does she want?”
“Who knows? She didn’t say.” Paige looked over her shoulder and swore under her breath. “I was hoping to hustle you out of here, but she’s on her way over. I hope you can diffuse this without creating a scene.”
“Trust me. Whatever it is, I’ll take care of…”
The words curled up in his throat and died when he caught site of the woman storming her way across the room. In other circumstances, he’d be admiring her long legs in her open-toed stilettos, the way her fire-engine-red dress clung to her breasts and hugged her tiny waist before flaring out at her hips. Now all he could focus on was the murderous glint in her eyes and the steam practically coming out of her ears.
“Told you she was pissed,” his sister warned as Brooke bore down on them. “Is she one of your exes or something? Are you sure you didn’t break her heart?”
No, he wasn’t. But she might be about to break his.
He acknowledged what he’d been shoving to the back of his brain for weeks. He was in love with Brooke. Why else would he barely bat an eyelash when Simon confessed to having a fling with his PA? Why else would he do a complete one-eighty on his plans for Candy Court?
And now he was going to lose her, unless he could convince her that he wasn’t a complete douchebag for lying to her.
“I’m out of here,” Paige said, turning on her heel and sprinting for the door just as Brooke was about to reach them.
“Good luck, big brother,” she called over her shoulder. “Remember, no ugly scenes. It’s bad for business.”
“Thanks for nothing,” Eli muttered at her retreating back. But Paige was right. He didn’t need her as backup. This was something only he could fix.
“This was what you meant by ‘I’m in finance.’” Brooke stood in front of him, fists on her hips, feet firmly planted at least twelve inches apart. Her Wonder Woman power pose, reserved for when she was really fuming. Like now. “According to my parents, you’re some sort of hotshot real estate mogul. And here I was picturing you bent over a calculator, crunching numbers.”
He scrubbed a hand across his freshly shaven jaw. “We need to talk.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
His eyes flicked around the jam-packed ballroom. Way too many witnesses within earshot. “But not here.”
“What’s wrong with here?” She waved a hand wildly. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“You might not. But I do.” He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she flinched and pulled away. “Please. I promised my sister we wouldn’t make a scene. Geek Girls was our parents’ brainchild. It’s really important to her.”
And to him. But not half as important as Brooke.
She huffed out an exasperated breath. “Fine. But not for you. For your sister. And because it’s for charity.”
He didn’t dare try to touch her again, so he motioned for her to follow him into the hallway. He took a sharp left, heading away from the hotel lobby and the overflow crowd gathered there, and opened the first door he came to, which turned out to be a supply closet.
“In here.” He stood back and held the door for her to precede him.
“Are you serious?” She peered in at the shelves of toilet paper, soaps, and cleaners. “You realize this is a closet, right?”
He leaned against the open door. “Which pretty much guarantees we won’t be interrupted.”
“If it means we can get this over with, then I’ll go.” She pushed past him. “But don’t blame me if it’s a little cramped.”
Get this over with. Didn’t sound promising, but he hadn’t made Fortune magazine by giving up when the going got tough. There was one, big difference, though. This wasn’t some cold, impersonal business transaction. This was his future. This was Brooke.
He wiped his damp hands on his tuxedo pants and followed her into the closet. Brooke stood with her back to him, her shoulders pinched together.
“Let’s have it,” she said without turning around. “I can’t wait to hear your excuse for letting me believe you were a normal guy.”
“I am a normal guy,” he insisted.
She turned to face him. “You know what I mean.”
“I never set out to lie to you.” Lame, he knew. But he had to start somewhere.
“But you did.” She braced herself against one of the shelves, knocking a roll of toilet paper to the floor. “Did you get a kick out of slumming? Seducing the poor, lonely bartender?”
“As I recall, the seduction was mutual. And neither one of us was interested in exchanging personal information.”
“I’ll give you that. But you’ve had almost three months to tell me who you are. Was it some sort of game, seeing how long you could keep me in the dark?”
“No. It wasn’t anything like that. That night at the bar…” He scraped a hand through his hair, debating how much he should reveal. Fuck it. Enough holding back. Time for the truth. The whole truth, no matter how personal or embarrassing. “I’d just found out someone was leaking information to Momentum’s biggest competitor. And the prime suspect was my business partner.”
“The guy on stage with you?”
“One and the same. He also happens—or happened—to be my best friend.”
“Ouch.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Sucks to be you.”
He ignored the dig. Hell, he deserved that and worse. “Which explains why I decided to lay low for a while in Brooklyn. I needed time to gather evidence. Uncover the mole before he—or she—did any more damage.”
“But it doesn’t explain why you had to lie to me.” Was he imagining things, or had her voice lost a little of its harshness? “I would have kept your secret.”
“I know. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you.”
“Then what?”
He loosened his bow tie, struggling to find the right words. “I guess I just liked being Eli Ward, average Joe. Liked knowing you wanted me for me, not…”
“Your money?” she finished for him.
“Who I was—no, who I am—with you, that guy is a thousand times more authentic than the one you saw up on stage tonight. With you, I can let down my guard and just…be. That’s pretty rare for me, almost nonexistent. I didn’t want to lose it.”
She stared at him, silent, so he kept going, hoping against hope that he was making some headway. “Once we got involved, I wanted to tell you the truth, but it never seemed to be the right time.”
“It must be hard never knowing if someone’s with you for you or what you can do for them.” She kicked off one shoe and wiggled her toes, flashing her brightly painted nails. Not fire-engine-red to match her dress, like most women would have chosen, but an electric purple. Totally unexpected. Totally Brooke.
“Yeah.” He let out a short, harsh laugh. “Poor little rich boy.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She slipped her foot back into her shoe and stood tall. “I have something to tell you, too.”
“Wait.” He held up a hand. “I’m not done.”
She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “You don’t understand…”
“Please,” he interrupted, his voice dripping with desperation. “If I don’t say this now, it will be too late.”
“Too late for what?” She looked at him side-eyed. “Don’t tell me. You witnessed a mob hit, and you’re going into the witness protection program.”
“Not exactly.” His fingers curled and uncurled nervously at his sides. Brooke wouldn’t be making wisecracks when she heard what was coming next. “But you might want to ship me off somewhere when you find out what it is.”
“How much worse could it be than hiding your identity?”
Way worse. “You know there’s an offer out on Candy Court.”
“Of course.” She rolled her eyes at him like he was Captain Obvious. “The surveyor was there the other day, remember? We’re having a neighborhood meeting at the end of the month to formulate our response. There’s no way some opportunistic asshole bent on gentrification is going to come in and kick us out of our homes without a fight.”
The vehemence in her last sentence made the knot in his stomach seize up, but he forged on. No turning back now. Come hell or high water, this closet was going to be his confessional. He just hoped Brooke was willing to absolve him from his sins. “The asshole is me.”
Time seemed to freeze, the closet eerily quiet except for the sound of their shallow breaths. It could have been ten seconds or ten hours before she spoke. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m the one buying Candy Court. My company, that is. The Hearthstone Group.”
“No.” She shook her head, distracting him with waves of coconut and citrus from her shampoo. Focus man, focus. “I heard you up there on that stage. Your company is called Momentum Development.”
“One of my companies. Hearthstone is another.”
“Let me get this straight.” Brooke tapped one toe on the tile floor. “You own Hearthstone.”
“Right.”
“And Hearthstone is buying Candy Court.”
“Right.” He folded his arms across his chest then stuffed his hands in his pockets then let them fall to his sides, uncertain of how to stand or what to say. He was fucking this up, damn it, and he didn’t know how to fix it. “But…”
“How long?” she asked, cutting him off sharply.
“What?”
She took a step toward him in their already tight quarters, eyes blazing. The Wonder Woman power pose was back, not that he blamed her. “How long have you been planning this? From the night we met at Flotsam and Jetsam? The day you walked into the tenants’ meeting?”
The guilty-as-charged look on his face must have given her the answer because her eyes went from hot with fury to ice cold and her lips flattened into a hard slash across her face. “You bastard.”
“I…”
“You were one of us. We accepted you, no questions asked. Hell, David and Chris had you in their wedding. Mrs. Feingold treats you like a son. And I…” Her voice caught, and she blinked back tears. “I fell in love with you. And the whole time you’ve not only been lying about who you are, which I could understand and maybe even forgive given the circumstances, you’ve been secretly plotting to buy our building out from under us and throw us out on the street.”
His heart twisted like she’d plunged in a knife. A long, rusty knife with serrated edges that continued to rip and tear with every breath he took.
“It’s not like that.” He reached out a hand to her, but she smacked it away. The knife plunged deeper. “Please. Listen to me. Wait until you hear what I have planned…”
“I don’t care about your plans. There’s not one damn thing you can say that will make any difference.” She pushed past him and jerked open the door. “Fuck you, Eli Ward, and the D-train you rode in on. I’ll see you in court.”
She stormed out, leaving Eli standing among the cleaning supplies and toiletries. Numbly, he bent to pick up the roll of toilet paper she’d knocked over. Only then did it hit him.
She’d said she loved him.