Crushed (Crystal Brook Billionaires) (6 page)

Leaving the gift where it was, I worked on rearranging the muscles of my face into something resembling a smile and headed for the kitchen.

“Good morning,” I chirped the second I entered the doorway.

Four heads snapped my way, two from the table and two from the kitchen counter. Seated next to Mom, Danny brushed hair from his face and peered up at me. Out of all my family members, he was certainly the one who was the least certain about my current life circumstances. Danny was over a decade younger than me, which meant we had existed in two separate spheres for most of his life. I loved him as much as anyone could probably love their little brother, but when it came down to it, we really fell short when it came to the whole mutual understanding stuff.

“Sup?” he asked.

I tried not to smirk at his strained effort to be nonchalant. “Nothing,” I replied. “What’s up with you?”

Next to him, my mother shifted in her chair. She was busy flipping through some images on her tablet. “We’re looking at options for Gwen’s wedding invitations,” she explained.

“Oh. Nice.”

She shook her head slightly. “Jason just doesn’t seem to care. Anything we email him, he’s just like ‘that’s nice.’ He says it over and over again.”

Busy with something at the counter, Gwen spoke up. “Men don’t care as much, Mom. At least, he doesn’t.”

She tsked. “I don’t know why.”

Something clattered on the stove, and Gwen grabbed the pan full of scrambled eggs from my dad and dumped its contents onto the waiting platter.

“Hungry?” Dad asked.

“Yeah, thanks.” I eased down onto the nearest chair. “So I’m going back to New York today.”

A long silence followed my announcement. In an effort to prove just what a good decision it was, I plastered a toothy grin on my face.

“Cool,” Danny finally said.

My mother put her tablet down and gazed evenly at me from across the table. “It’s Sunday.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Which is why today is a good day for me to go. I can be back at work at the regular time tomorrow.”

She started to do that thing where she pursed her lips like she was tasting something sour. Just the idea of her arguing against my decision made me slightly irritated, if not all out angry. It was my life, after all. I was the one who knew what was best for me.

“Jason is working beyond over-time,” I said. “It’s not fair to him.”

Gwen immediately spoke up. “It’s all right. He works over-time anyway.”

“No, it’s not all right.” I turned and gave her a steely look. “And besides, that’s not just it. I’m fine. I need to go back to work.” I put as much finality in my words as I could. No matter what my family said, I’d made my decision. I just didn’t need the added strain of their trying to convince me to do otherwise.

“Did you see your flowers?” Mom asked.

“Yeah. I saw them.”

She smiled. “Aren’t they pretty? Who is this Owen? A friend from high school?”

“Just someone we met yesterday,” Gwen intercepted, placing the scrambled eggs in the middle of the table.

I looked at my sister, who was avoiding my gaze. Gwen hadn’t tried to set me and Owen up after I left the pub, had she?

No. Surely not. We’d already discussed that. She knew that was the last thing I needed, and that didn’t sound like Gwen at all. Her question last night about the wife thing had been an uncharacteristic slip-up. She wasn’t a meddler. If anything, that girl knows when to just let shit be.

“Can someone give me a ride to the airport later? Around three?”

“I’ll do it,” Gwen offered.

“What about work?”

She shrugged. “It’s fine. Really.”

I studied her face. There was a sparkle in her eye that wasn’t there when I first walked into the kitchen. She didn’t want me to see it, but it couldn’t be hidden. With me gone, her fiancée was coming home, and she couldn’t be more thrilled about it.

I didn’t know just what waited for me in New York, other than a big gaping hole. The hollow nights and weekends stretched ahead of me, taunting from even five hundred miles away.

But not for Gwen and not for the rest of my family. For them, things would continue on in their same old wonderful fashion.

Remembering that helped at least the tiniest bit.

Owen

End of May…

I
fingered the little slip of paper, running my thumb over the name at the top of it. Outside the window, the sunlight glinted off the wings of the plane parked next to mine. For the hundredth time, I wondered if I was doing the right thing.

With a sigh, I unbuckled my seatbelt. The small private jet had come to a stop minutes ago with the pilot, James, announcing it was safe to stand up, but I had needed that extra minute to sit there in meditation.

There were plenty of reasons for me to be in New York City. My family’s loft on the eastern edge of Central Park, for one. And there were multiple friends to visit there. In addition, the Met Gala was in two days.

And then there was Claire…

Claire. The real reason I’d flown to New York spur of the moment. Claire. A woman I hadn’t spent more than a sum total of thirty minutes with. A woman I knew next to nothing about, save for the bit her sister told me.

A woman who was grieving, who was in anything but the right place to be courted by men. A woman who, no doubt, was in anything but her best form. She’s really funny, Gwen had told me. She’s just going through a hard time.

If I were to step back and really evaluate them, nothing about our two short interactions had been appealing. Truly. It wasn’t that she had been cold… but she was distant, for sure. After Claire fleeing the bar and then Gwen filling me in on how her boyfriend had just died, I should have gone to her parents’ house, offered a, “Sorry for your loss,” and then run for the hills.

Instead, I sent flowers and then spent almost every minute of the last four weeks practically obsessing over her.

It was unexplainable. And yet it was what it was. I couldn’t stop thinking about Claire’s deep brown eyes and soft, Cupid’s bow lips.

But it was more than her looks. It was the way the air changed when she was around, almost like it became charged with electricity. And even more, how the electricity had sparked and jumped into me, making my fingers twitch and my heart beat faster.

I was inexplicably drawn to Claire Lawrence. I was shamefully obsessed with her. I was, quite possibly, in love.

With an idea of love,
I told myself yet again.

Because you couldn’t be in love with someone you barely knew — especially when that person hadn’t even been open and friendly. Right?

Such a case would be proof that the romantic theory of true love was legit. We all had someone — or maybe a few — special people out there for us. If we were to meet one of those people, then we would know automatically that gold had been struck.

I snorted and stood. This was all too ridiculous. I believed in love, yes. I’d been in it myself maybe once or twice.

But love at first sight? A feeling that was a guidepost pointing right to your destined soul mate?

I didn’t know anyone who had experienced that. Love at first sight was reserved for eighties movies and Nicholas Sparks novels — I’m assuming, since I’ve never actually read a Nicholas Sparks novel.

“How was the flight, sir?”

I started and looked towards the cockpit. Shirley, the middle aged flight attendant who had been with my family for fifteen years, smiled down the aisle at me.

I licked my lips. Had I been muttering to myself? I knew I could do that sometimes when really involved in thoughts.

I forced myself to cough up an answer. “Great. Thank you.”

Shirley smiled and stepped forward to hand me my one bag.

“Anything else, sir?”

“No, thank you. I don’t know how long I’ll be staying, so don’t wait around for me.”

She nodded. “Wonderful. We’ll return to California. Have a good weekend, Mr. Burke.”

“Thank you. You too.”

Sliding my sunglasses on, I headed for the exit. The doubts were already growing, making me even less certain about my reasons for being in New York.

Then again, what were my reasons for being anywhere?

New York. Crystal Brook. The Montreal house. The Southern California house. The villa in Spain. My family had more homes than anyone needed, and I could run off to them whenever I wanted. If the family jet wasn’t available, all I had to do was book another private one for the day.

Everywhere I went, it was all the same. I was looking for some way to fill my time. For a good year or so, Habitat for Humanity had seemed to be the answer. I did work with them all across the United States, donating materials and showing up to sites to build.

At some point with that, I hit a plateau. I could give away as much of the inheritance my grandfather had left me as I wanted, and I could put in sixty hours a week sawing lumber and pounding nails, but there was still something missing. There was still a big, gaping chasm inside of me. Sooner or later, black hole style, it sucked in all the things I had previously thought gave my life meaning. Always, I ended up in the same place, with the same realization — nothing inherently held the value I looked for.

Maybe it was because the best thing I had to give was money. To write a check took no real effort on my part.

I was ungrateful. I knew it. I was born automatically having everything I could ever need. Perhaps I was just another bored, rich white boy who couldn’t quit whining.

Maybe I just needed a pet. Or a girlfriend. Or a real routine. Or a hundred other different things people tethered themselves to in order to give their lives meaning and structure.

My feet instinctively knew the way to the exit. They took me across the platform and into the terminal of LaGuardia. The busy airport teemed with people. I kept to the side, doing my best to navigate the throngs.

The sleek, black car I’d called ahead for waited right outside the main entrance. It was from one of the services I regularly used. I nodded to the driver, a man who’d ferried me around the greater New York area more than a few times, and he smiled back before closing my door behind me.

Instead of going to the Central Park loft — though I knew it would be empty since my parents were in California trying to get their new vineyard up and going — I had the driver take me to my favorite cafe in the East Village. With no plans for the day ahead, sitting down and reading or just sketching seemed like a decent enough way to unwind from the flight.

Unless, of course, I ended up hanging out with someone else.

The drive was a decently lengthy one, giving me plenty of time to think… or make a phone call.

Leaning back in the seat, I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, along with the little slip of paper I’d stashed back in there before debarking the plane. Perhaps it was a long shot, but it was also late Saturday morning. There really couldn’t be a better time to call someone and try to make plans.

I nervously drummed my fingers against the cool leather seat next to me. Why was I having such a hard time tapping in the number?

I wasn’t exactly a player, but I’d dated and pursued a normal number of girls, and the very prospect of calling one of them hadn’t made my palms sweaty since high school.

So maybe it wasn’t those kinds of nerves. Maybe I was guilty about calling a woman who had just lost her boyfriend. That was it. What I was planning had skeeve written all over it.

But it’s just friendly. I’m not hitting on her.

Right. And nor would I ever. That was certainly the last thing she would need.

Gathering my courage one last time, I made the phone call. It rang five times, and just when I expected it to go to voice mail, someone picked up.

“Hello?” said the uncertain female voice.

I had to take a second to suck in a fresh breath. “Claire?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Owen Burke. From Crystal Brook.”

A long silence.

So she didn’t remember me. I shouldn’t have expected her to anyway.

“I met you and your sister at your parents’ house,” I quickly added. “About a month ago. Gwen gave me your number. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I remember you,” Claire said, like each word had to be dragged from her mouth.

“Oh. Great.”

“Gwen gave you my number?”

“Yes. She, uh, said that she would tell you that she did so.”

“She didn’t.”

“Oh.”

The most awkward silence of my life followed the utterance, stretching on and on. I’d really embarrassed myself this time. I needed to apologize and hang up.

“I’m s—”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupted, stealing the words right out of my mouth. “I stayed out late last night and only just woke up. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“You’re not being rude,” I said, maybe a little too eagerly.

“I was just a little confused at first. If Gwen told me she gave you my number, it totally slipped my mind.”

I tried to choose my words carefully in order to show her I wanted to respect her space, but truthfully, I also didn’t want to be immediately shot down. “If it’s a problem…”

“No, it’s no problem. So… how are you?”

I tried not to audibly sigh from relief. Already the woman on the phone seemed a livelier version of the one I’d met a month before. “I’m good. How are you?”

“Um, okay… what are you doing in New York?”

“I have some things to attend to here this week. Plus, my family has a place here.”

“Oh. Nice. Where?”

“Near Central Park.”

“Cool.”

“Where do you live?”

“Hell’s Kitchen.”

I grinned into the phone. “So we’re kind of neighbors.”

“I guess. Where did you say your place was?”

“Fifth and Sixty Fourth.”

“Oh… wow.”

I cringed at her reaction. My family’s loft was in one of the best locations the city offered. Lucky me, I got to enjoy it mostly by myself since my parents were usually off traveling somewhere. Generally, it wasn’t a problem when I told people about the address… but sometimes it was slightly uncomfortable. Just saying the words “Fifth Avenue and Sixty Fourth Street” was almost like a show of wealth. You didn’t live on that block if you were anything but filthy rich.