New York Billionaires Series

“The one I was brandishing as a weapon when you got home?”

“The very one.”

“I’ll get it.” A few minutes later she meets me back in the kitchen. I have three bottles tucked beneath my arm. They should be cold enough.

Her eyes widen. “Wow. Are we having a party?”This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.

“We’re celebrating you scoring your first investor, and we’re doing it the way I know best.”

“By drinking a lot of expensive champagne?”

“By using the saber you’re holding. Come on. Let’s do this on the balcony.”

“Outside?” But she’s smiling, leading the way through the living room. Two champagne glasses dangle from her left hand. “I’ve never sabered champagne before.”

“I’ve done it enough times for the both of us. Come on, I’ll teach you.”

“Yes.” I open the door to the balcony and we step out in the fall air.

She pulls her jacket tight around herself, the wind playing with curls around her face. The evening air is cold, but I feel warm, watching her looking with open curiosity at me untwisting the screw caps of the champagne bottles. “How do you do it?”

It’s been too long since I’ve done this. Too long since someone looked at me like that, with openness and ownership.

“Peel away the foil like this, exposing the neck… unscrew the cage. Remember to keep your thumb on top of the cork. Now, hand me the saber.”

She does, apprehension in her eyes. It makes me grin. New York with its glittering high rises as the backdrop and a beautiful woman looking at me. I feel fourteen again, showing off in front of a girl.

“Then you run your finger along the neck. See the seam in the glass here? You need to slide the saber along the seam, toward the head, and strike at where the cork is. The spot where the two seams meet is the weakest. Pressure on that point will make the glass crack clean and the cork will fly.”

“Are you sure this is safe?”

“Yes,” I say. It mostly is, anyway. “I’ve done this hundreds of times.”

“So that’s why you got it as a wedding gift.”

I shrug. “Yeah. It was probably from one of the guys I went to boarding school with.”

“Boarding school? I didn’t know you went to boarding school.”

“Yes, I was at Andover for a time. It was better for both my grandfather and me. We did this a lot, there. You can even do it with a kitchen knife, or if you’ve an appetite for risk, a credit card.”

The wind whips at my clothes and lifts her hair from her face. “Ready?”

Her eyes widen. “You’re going to do it out there?”

“Yes.” I angle the bottle at forty-five degrees out toward the dark city beyond. It’s been years. But I slide the saber along the neck once, twice, tighten my grip, and then strike.

The glass breaks clean and the cork shoots out into the cold New York air and into the darkened park.

“Oh my God!”

I laugh and pour out an inch of champagne onto the deck. It had been a clean hit, but the practice is ingrained into me. Removes any glass splinters.

“Can I try?”

“Of course. Why do you think I brought several bottles?” I hand her the saber with a flourish. “You just got your first investor, Cecilia. Brag as much as you like. This night belongs to you.”

A smile lights up her face. It reaches deep inside of me, twists. Too much. She sees too much, but I don’t want her to stop looking.

It takes several tries, and a bit of coaxing, but then she manages. A single swipe of the saber in her grip and the cork shoots out over the railing.

“Oh!”

“You did it.”

“Holy shit! That was such a rush!”

“You picked it up fast.”

“Liar,” she says, grinning. “It took me a dozen tries.”

“I couldn’t do it at all my first month at Andover.”

“I still can’t believe you did this at boarding school. What kind of place was that, really? I’m imagining you in a school uniform, harassing teachers.”

I chuckle. “It was an interesting environment, that’s for sure.”

“Is that Victor for ‘I hated it’?”

“I didn’t hate it,” I say. “At times, sure. But it was good for me to get away from living with my grandfather for a few years.”

“So you could drink champagne and smoke in the dorms.”

“Pretty much.” I wrap an arm around her shoulders and open the door. “Come on. You’re getting cold.”

“No, I’m not. I have champagne to warm me.”

“Then why were you shivering?”

She stifles a yawn with the back of her hand. “You need to stop winning arguments.”

“That’s the way I am,” I say. “And you, Cecilia, need to stop apologizing for bragging, or for your success, or for taking what you want.”

She sets her glass down and wraps her arms around my neck. I smooth my hands along her hips. She hasn’t said a word about the nightmare she’d woken me up from the other night. Nor did she comment when I got her from her own bed last night either, pulling her toward my bedroom. Sleeping next to her hadn’t been difficult. It hadn’t felt like a burden… and I hadn’t been waiting for her to fall asleep so I could head downstairs to my office.

I’d fallen asleep with the scent of her hair on my shoulder and the weight of her on my arm, and dreamt absolutely nothing.

“So,” she says. “Are we still going to the house tonight?”