Billionaires Dollar Series

Hell, that part is probably the easiest; I know from experience that holding your child, seeing him or her for the first time… yeah, that wouldn’t be difficult at all.

No, the difficult part would be facing Bella over and over and over again. It wouldn’t be like with Lyra. No, every time I’d see Bella, it would be like seeing my own doomed hope.

She’d never sneer at me or laugh like Lyra did.

And somehow that felt worse.

The gates to Cole’s mansion slide open when I approach, allowing me to park by his house. A glance at the watch tells me I’m a few minutes late, and I find him and Nick on the back porch. A laptop is placed on the table, but that’s the only sign that this is a work meeting, the two of them reclining with sunglasses on.

I shake my head at them. “All you two are missing is a pair of pina coladas with tiny umbrellas.”

Cole pushes up his sunglasses. “Are you offering to make us two, Carter?”

“In your dreams.” I sit down on the lounge chair opposite them. “Is Skye around?”

“Upstairs, working,” he says. “She has a deadline next week.”

“New book?”

“A new chapter to her editor,” he says. “Books aren’t that fast to write. I should know, because I once said that and got my head bashed in.”

“Your hotels aren’t fast to build either,” Nick points out. “Learn some humility.”

Cole throws his hands up. “It’s my one flaw.”

“One?”

“Yes, one. Without humility, I couldn’t possible admit to more.”

I snort. “You said this was a business meeting. To the best of my knowledge, though, we’re not in business together. Nor do our areas overlap.”

Nick’s grin is crooked. “Not yet, they don’t.”

“We’ve been talking,” Cole continues, “about creating a holding company.”

I lean forward. “Oh?”

“Yes. A capital venture firm, of a sorts. Not the kind Nick runs, but with more focus on investing. We all have investments of our own, of course,” Cole says. “This one would be more for our own amusement. It would allow us to invest in companies off the beaten track.”

I run a hand over my jaw. “One we’d own jointly?”

“Yes, we’d all invest an equal share. The management would report to us, since we’d constitute the board.”

Nick nods to me. “And we’ll hire a known, expert capital investor to run the whole thing. He’d have his own team.”

I find myself nodding along. My own investments are solid, A-grade. Long-term, and all with the help of a private financial manager. This, though… it would be fun. We could have a say in the placements.

“He?” I repeat. “Do you already have someone in mind for the position of chair and manager?”This is property © NôvelDrama.Org.

Cole grins, like he’s already told a joke. “Your little brother.”

My laugh is surprised. “No, no way.”

“He’s one of the best investors in the country,” Cole says. “You don’t think he’ll accept?”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, no. He’s been distant for years, and he’s never in Seattle. He really only cares about making money.”

Nick raises an eyebrow. “And that would be a bad thing how?”

I run a hand over my face. Having Liam’s smug face around on the regular… “Mixing family and business never ends well.”

“We’d take the heat off of that,” Cole says. “Any bad news would come from us.”

“Think about it,” Nick offers. “It’s your call, in the end. We just figured it might be a good solution.”

“Right. Thanks.” I look past the two of them to the tennis court in the distance, the perfectly mowed lawn, the impossible homeliness of Cole’s palace.

“Why are you so morose, anyway? I thought you’d dance at this suggestion,” Cole says. “The girls are all right?”

“Yes, absolutely.” I run a hand over the back of my neck. “Man, it’s such a fucking clusterfuck of things. I don’t even know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning,” Nick says.

But that’s impossible.

The girl next door tricked me into becoming a father again. She actually lied to me about who she was the entire time, too. Fun, right?

There’s no way I can pour out all of my embarrassment on a silver platter and share it with them, not while it still feels like it might choke me.

“It’s Bella,” I say simply. “She wasn’t who I thought she was.”

“Ah.” Cole’s voice is delicate. “Should have recognized the look on your face right away.”

“You wore it yourself long enough,” Nick tells him.

Cole holds up a hand. “You wore it the longest out of all of us. Just because I couldn’t recognize it at the time doesn’t make it less of a fact.”

Nick ignores his future brother-in-law and turns to me. “Not who you thought she was? That girl was as transparent as glass, man.”

“And she clearly liked you,” Cole says. “Sweet, too.”

“Have you tried saying you’re sorry?” Nick asks. “Hurts like a motherfucker to admit, but it does the trick every time, even when you’re not.”

“Didn’t need to hear the last part,” Cole remarks.

I grit my teeth at their well-meaning advice. “There’s no solution to this. She’s a bit of a manipulator.”

“Bella?” Cole asks. “We’re talking about the same girl who blushed when we joked about how you were both single?”