Billionaires Dollar Series

I let her tug my arm away and turn my head. With her hair loose, in my giant T-shirt and not a stitch of makeup on her fair skin, she’s glowing.

“Definitely too much whiskey,” I confirm.

Maddie stretches out beside me. “You weren’t always like this,” she says, with an insistence that reminds me she hasn’t had no wine tonight, either, even if she skipped the whiskey.

“I worked hard to be who I am,” I protest. The vaulted ceiling above seems to beckon, as if I could touch it if I only stretched out my arm high enough. “I was one of the youngest traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. I worked for two separate hedge funds at the same time, both of them waiving the non-compete clauses because they wanted me.” My smile feels hazy. “I’ve beat the market index every year of my career. And yet I’m working for my big brother.”

Maddie’s voice is soft. “Is it about Ethan, then?”

The words slip out of their own accord. “Even you preferred him, once.”

A beat of surprised silence. “What do you mean?”

“Fuck.” I run a hand over my face. “Now this is a conversation I’ve not had enough whiskey for.”

“Liam…”

I reach for the buttons on my shirt, undoing them one at a time until it hangs off me. “It was ages ago.”

It feels like a century has passed, and yet it’s hovering close, gone but still visible. Being close to Maddie is bringing up memories I haven’t revisited in years.

But they’re there, like they’ve been waiting for me all along.

“What do you mean?” she asks. “Ethan barely spent time with us.”

I push the shirt off, balling it up and tossing it in the general direction of my bag. “I know you two kissed, once.”

“He told you?!”

“He did,” I say. And he didn’t have a thought in the world that I might not be thrilled by the revelation, coming home to let me know that he’d just gone for it behind the hedges, but that kissing was pretty wet and not something he’d recommend.

We’d rough-housed a lot, Ethan and I, but nothing like we did that afternoon, with me intent on committing fratricide.

I don’t look at Maddie, but the silence beside me is flustered. “It was a long time ago,” she murmurs.

“Yes, it sure was.” I undo the zipper of my pants and push them down, not caring that she’s watching. The alcohol runs like fire through my veins. “Still, he was your first kiss.”

“I didn’t know you knew about that,” she murmurs, like this has changed something. A paradigm shift in her thinking.

I can’t for the life of me think why it would matter. Maddie had treated me no differently before than she had after, like she saw me as a brother.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” I say, pulling back the covers. Her eyes drift across my bare chest, my arms, and damn it if I don’t feel a swelling of pride that’s bone-deep and primitive. “I don’t have a T-shirt,” I murmur, inclining my head toward her. “It’s currently in use.”

Her hand fists in the fabric. The action pulls the hem up higher and… wow. “Oh. I’m sorry about that.”

“I’m not, as long as you’re okay with me sleeping in my boxers.”

“I’m okay with it,” Maddie says, nodding. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Smiling, I climb under the covers. A flick of my finger turns the lights off, hiding the giant ode to timber from view. The blanket of intimacy grows heavier, not lighter, under the weight of darkness.

A question rises to the surface of my mind. It’s one I shouldn’t ask, but my inhibitions seem lowered, the gates blown wide open.

“When you told the Walkers how we met, you said you had a crush on me when we were kids, but that I never noticed.”

A faint hum comes from Maddie’s direction, and the soft sound races through my system. She’s so close I can reach her-touch her under the covers.

“Is there a question in there somewhere?”

“It was an excellent piece of adlibbing. Unless…”Property © of NôvelDrama.Org.

The sound of sheets ruffling, of someone turning onto her side. Her voice is closer when she speaks. “Didn’t your mother teach you it’s rude to demand answers to questions you already know the answer to?”

Whatever sweeps through me then, I don’t have the words for. Triumph, warmth, fear.

I hadn’t known.

Hadn’t even suspected.

To think that all those years, when my eyes would track her movements in the school cafeteria like a hawk, when her company turned from friendly to something that made my heart pound, she’d felt the same way.

“I can hear your gloating, Liam,” she says. “It’s loud.”

God help me, but I laugh. “You’ve always been able to read my mind.”

“I’m glad to see it’s mostly intact,” she says, “after all your boozing and schmoozing.”

But her tone isn’t one of reproach, and the warmth in my body rises with her words. My hands ache with the need to reach out underneath the covers and pull her close.

It takes more willpower than I thought I had to resist. She sees too much, Maddie. She sees right through me.

And she’s made her opinion of me clear.

“This is nice,” she murmurs into the darkness of our bedroom.

“Mhm.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve slept in the same bed as someone.”

I close my eyes against the softness of her voice. “Glad to help.”

“I work so much. You work a lot, too. And I want it all-the restaurant, the opportunities… but it gets lonely. Don’t you get lonely, too?”

And perhaps I’ve had just the right amount of whiskey for this question, because the answer feels like it’s dragged from the very depths of my soul, something I’d never admit to anyone else.

“Yes,” I murmur. “But not right now.”

Her breathing is soft in the darkness. “Me neither.”