New York Billionaires Series

“Be nice,” she says, but there’s only fondness in her tone. “She loves very freely, my mother, and has no boundaries. We often had her friends sleeping on the couch.”

“I can’t imagine you in that household. How did you become… you?”

“Someone had to be the adult.”

“And that fell to you?”

“The first person I was ever personal assistant to was my mother. I organized our trips from the time I was twelve.”

The image of a young Cecilia with a clipboard and a patient expression rises before my eyelids. Something tightens across my chest. Fondness.

I really am sick.

“Is that why you want to start your company? So you can be the personal assistant to a whole country?”

She laughs. “I suppose so, yes. Since the model is subscription and task-based, it’s affordable. People in all walks of life will be able to buy some peace of mind from us. Helping people help themselves, in a way.” Her fingers drum softly against her knee. “So my childhood was different from yours, then. I’m guessing your grandfather didn’t bring you to any barns to pet cows for stress relief?”

I snort. “He would’ve had a fit if I suggested something like that.”

“What recreational activities were acceptable for a young St. Clair?” Her tone holds fake grandiosity, but there’s interest there, too.

I flip the cold towel over. It slips slightly and then her slim fingers are there, brief and wonderful. “Tennis, golf, sailing,” I say. “Languages. We’d go to museums occasionally, especially if he knew the… the docent.” I wave a hand. My skin feels flushed, too hot. Damn fever. “I came with him on most of his business trips. Travel was important for him.”

“What did you do? When he was working on the trips?”

“I walked around whatever city we were in.”

She rearranges herself on the couch behind me, and then something rests against my head. Definitely her thigh. This woman is killing me. “Tell me about it.”

I sigh. My throat feels shot to hell, but I do it anyway, because she asked. “He went to Europe a lot, Asia on occasion. I walked across London when I was eleven. It’s deceptively big. I had to ask someone to explain how the Tube worked so I could make it back to the hotel in time for dinner.”

She makes an incredulous sound. “At eleven, I was getting up at six every morning so my mother could realign my chakras.”

“Well, you seem very well-adjusted now.”

“Thank you,” she says. “I haven’t had my aura read in years, though. I might be all out of whack. Do you miss him?”

“Who?” I already know, and she knows it too, but she presses on. She’s brave. I knew that already, but she confirms it daily.

“Your grandfather.”

“No.” I reach for the buttons in my shirt. It feels as if my skin is boiling, as if the heat in here has ratcheted up ten degrees. “He wasn’t… I don’t know. It wasn’t easy being his grandson.”

“I can only imagine,” she says.

I’m halfway down my chest when I remember the scar. She’ll see, but she already has. She’s already asked too, and damn it, I’m too hot. I undo the last button and take a deep breath. Still too warm.

“He had expectations, then.”Nôvel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.

“Doesn’t every parent or guardian?” I ask. “His were just very well-articulated.”

“Is that why you work so hard?”

“I’m sick,” I mutter. “I’m not lying on a therapist’s couch.”

Her voice turns teasing, and then she lifts the damp towel off my forehead. Smooth fingers rub circles at my temples. “Yes,” she says. “Your chakras are definitely off.”

I sigh. She’s good at what she’s doing, spiritual nonsense aside. “Realign them for me.”

“I really have no idea what I’m doing, you know.”

“Never admit that.”

“Right. Project confidence. Negotiate from your strengths. I’ve learned a lot, watching you do business.”

I don’t know what to respond to that, so I don’t, sinking into the feel of her taking care of me. It’s weakness, and it’s dangerous, and I should walk away. But I can’t remember the last time something like this happened.

In the background, an excited couple squeals as their renovated house is revealed.

“He didn’t want me anymore than I wanted him,” I say.

Her fingers pause. “How do you mean?”

“He wasn’t expecting an eight-year-old boy to raise, and I’d only known him as someone we saw once a month over dinner. But suddenly there was only the two of us.”

Her fingers finally run through my hair. “He asked for custody, then? After your parents passed?”

“Demanded it, more like it,” I say. “He wasn’t going to let me go to my aunt in Florida. He didn’t like her husband and he said I’d become a lost cause in that household. ‘Charlotte lets her boys play too many video games, but there’s still hope for you, boy.'”

Cecilia chuckles. “Was he like you?”

“No. He worked all the time. Didn’t really have a lot of close friends, either. Just people he considered… worthwhile to have as acquaintances. He tried to raise me like I was my father, the son he’d lost. A chance to do it over again.”

“Victor,” she says. “That sounds like you.”

I reach above my head and search blindly for her wrist. I find it and bring her hand back to my hair. “You’ve gotten a lot bolder since I married you.”

“I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

Her words are soft, matter-of-fact. But it takes me several seconds to process them. “You were afraid of me before.”

“Of course I was,” she says. Despite the seriousness of the topic, her voice is teasing. “You told me several times in the first couple of weeks how useless I was. Mason covered for me twice when I had to run into the bathroom.”

“Run into the bathroom?”

“To cry,” she says. “But you didn’t break me.”

I can’t reconcile the emotions I had toward the assistant back then, can’t match them with the Cecilia I know now. But I can’t deny the words she attributes to me. They sound like mine.