New York Billionaires Series

“Don’t,” he says. “I can’t. None of those things. I don’t want to consider them.”

“All right. We won’t, then. But does this mean you hate Ace less now? Because I hate to break it to you, but he really likes you.”

“He does?”

“Are you kidding me? Every time you come into my office his wagging tail gives him away. He’s followed you everywhere this weekend.”

Anthony’s scowl softens, disappears, as he glances to Ace. He’s flipped over onto his back, all four paws up in the air. “He’s a good dog.”

I grin at him. “Praise? From Anthony Winter?”

“I’m capable of it, in small doses.” His hands slide down and grip my ass. “When something really impresses me.”

“Yes. Like you, for example. And this. Not to mention these two. Or here, where I-”

I cut him off with a kiss. His hands return to my waist and tug me close as I lose myself in him and he in me, in the beautiful place where time stops altogether.

We’re both breathing hard when I lean back. Brace my legs against the edge of the pool and push away from him, back out into the deep.

“Running away?”

“Yes,” I say. Look up into the sky with the largest, goofiest smile on my face. My heart feels like it might explode. “You’re welcome to try to catch me.”

“Mmm. I quite like the view from here.”

I swim the length of the pool once, twice. Think about his words and his situation, my mind finds its way back to what he’d shared with me over the weekend.

“Why’d you choose Montauk for this house?” I ask him. “Was it because your family has a summer house nearby?”

He leans back on his forearms and tilts his head back to the sun. Eyes closed again. “It’s close enough to the city. I know the place well. It came onto the market at the right time.”

“Hmm.” I push away from the wall and start on a third lap. “Must be nice to be close to them, too.”

He doesn’t comment on that. Takes a long time to say anything, actually. But when he does, it stops me mid-stroke in the pool.

“I haven’t told them.”

“About the diagnosis?”

“No, and I’m not planning to until I absolutely have to.” The sudden tautness in his form is enough to set me on edge.

I swim toward him. “I imagine it’s difficult news to share.”

“I suppose,” he says with a shrug. “I’ve only really told you.”

The shock that ripples through me doesn’t reach my face. I’m very careful about that. “Thanks for sharing it with me.”

“Mhm.” He reaches for me when I’m close enough and I find myself once again in his lap. Despite his relaxed features, the body beneath mine is rigid. We’re in deep water again.

“Your business partners and friends don’t know either, then?” I ask.

I walk my hands up his chest and wrap them around his neck. The knife’s edge he’s treading feels closer than it has for hours, within sighting distance. So I swallow my questions.

“I’m grateful you trusted me with it, Anthony.”

He reaches up and cups my cheek, eyes inscrutable. It’s not the first time I can’t read him.

I doubt it will be the last.

“Thanks for listening,” he murmurs. Kisses me again, and like so many times before, it derails my thoughts entirely.

I’m breathing hard when I lift my head. “So?” I ask. “What happens when we get back to New York?”

He groans. “Is it crazy that I wish we could just stay here? For the first time ever, I quite like the privacy of this house.”

I push a lock of half-dried hair from his forehead. “I have couples to set up. Matches to make. Love to create and sparks to fly.”

“Right. You have to shoot Cupid’s bow.”

“Exactly. Hey, does this, you and me, mean I technically won the bet? Because you did go on a date with me too, you know. I remember.”

“Mmm, so do I. We saved some rainforest together.”

“You saved it. Well, contributed to saving it.”

“You were valuable moral support,” he says.

“I accept,” I say. “Now, does it or does it not mean that I was right? About Opate Match?”

Anthony grins, and it’s a full-fledged smile, wide and true and dazzling. It takes my breath away. “Don’t gloat, Summer,” he says, but the way he kisses me is a clear yes.

Summer’s small bed is wedged in the corner of her too-small bedroom, and the linens are always rumpled. They smell like her, though. Of shampoo and perfume and warm woman.

The cups in her kitchen are mismatched. Her bowls are handmade, courtesy of a course in ceramics she took with her mother one summer.

And, as I’ve learned over the week since we got back from Montauk, she isn’t all sunshine. No, she’s not human until she has her first cup of coffee in the morning. Discovering that had been a balm to my own inadequacies, despite the mountain they represent next to her speedbump.Nôvel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.

We’re lying on her couch, her back pressed to my front, a discarded pizza box on the floor from her favorite restaurant. I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of her hair.

I’ve never thought I had an addictive personality, but clearly, I’d just never tried the right drug. Because Summer is all I crave. Here, in this small, eclectic apartment, the rest of the world doesn’t exist. All the shit I don’t like to deal with-the shit I ignore-can’t touch us here.

Here, I have fun.

I’m alive.

The bitter contrast to my own dark and empty townhouse was enough to drive me straight to bed yesterday, curtains drawn.

“Oh, listen to this,” Summer says. She’s reading the paper and has been entertaining me over the past half an hour by reading things aloud that she finds interesting.