Page 16 of The Billionaire's Secret Kiss

"I went out with that guy from school a while ago. He kissed me at my door when he dropped me off," I offered.

Jo let out a snort of laughter. "Ella, that was more than six months ago, and you said it was a terrible kiss. Doesn't count."

"So there hasn't been anyone since this Noah guy?" Tate asked, reaching out to snag Emily's hand and pull her back into his side. He dropped an almost absent kiss on the top of her head before tightening his arm around her waist.

I was going to need another drink if this was where the conversation was going. Trying to ignore the heat in my cheeks, I admitted, “Basically, no. There hasn't been anyone since Noah. And there wasn't anyone before Noah. There's just been Noah."

"And we all know what Noah's been up to since you broke up," Jo said under her breath.

"Exactly," I said. "He dumped me, and a week later, he was all over the Internet at some Tech conference with a sleazy model on his arm."

"And she was just the first," Jo said. "If rumors are true, he’s slept his way through half of California in the last two years.”

“When he wasn’t being sued for stealing the code he used to found his company,” Tate cut in. “I don’t like this guy hanging around you, Ella.”

“I don’t know much about the lawsuit,” Jo said, “but I do know he’s a manwhore. Anyone with access to the internet knows that.”

Holden elbowed her in the side, and she glared at him. "What? It's true. He's like the poster boy for tech-billionaire player."

Holden cleared his throat and said, “Because the media always tells the truth, right?”

Jo sent me an apologetic look and turned to finish up the pasta. She and I were the only people in this room who didn't have good reason to hate and distrust the media. The entire Winters family had grown up with their lives under a microscope. Tate's parents had died in a grisly murder-suicide when he'd been a child. Combined with their wealth and power, the scandal had been enough to draw unrelenting attention from the press.

When Holden's parents had been murdered years later in an almost identical crime, the media had been a nightmare. And Emily had almost broken up with Tate over the media’s obsession with the Winters family. Her anxiety disorder started when she was a child and survived a mass-shooting. The press had hounded her so savagely she'd been afraid to leave the house and had ended up severely agoraphobic.

She and Tate were still navigating their relationship, learning how to balance her condition with a family that was in the limelight more often than not. For Holden, Tate, and Emily, the gut reaction would always be to distrust what they saw splashed on the papers and online.

I got where they were coming from. I did. But I'd seen the pictures. I'd seen Noah walking down the red carpet with a tall, skinny model on his arm. I'd seen pictures taken at SXSW—Noah kissing a hot up-and-coming actress, a drink in his hand. And there'd been more. After the first six months, I tried not to look. Once the lawsuit hit, the quality of the girls had fallen, but they were still there, hanging all over Noah. He never looked like he was trying to fight them off.

For the last year, between leaving school and focusing on work, I'd done a decent job of ignoring Noah's existence, but that didn't erase the memories of seeing his active social life thoroughly documented after we’d broken up.

"Ella, I'm not making excuses for him," Holden went on. "I'm your friend, not his. I don't even know the guy, and if he's making you this miserable, I don't want to. But I feel like I have to point out that men deal with breakups differently than women do."

"He's got a point," Tate said. "I know it must have sucked seeing him out there with other women while you were at home feeling like shit. But that doesn't mean he just moved on. It doesn't mean he didn't care. If you're still hung up on him after two years, maybe you should give him a chance."

"No way," Emily said, defending me. "He doesn't deserve a second chance. He bailed on her, didn't even come home for her college graduation, walked away from her for his company, and after two years, he decides he wants her back? No way."

"Thank you," I said. I hopped down off the counter, intending to fill my juice glass with another shot or two of the cinnamon schnapps. Emily was the closest, and she stepped in front of me, cutting me off.

"Nope, food. It's time for dinner. If you still want to drink more after you eat, I’ll pour. But if you keep drinking now, you'll end up not eating at all, and then you'll really be sick tomorrow."

I let Emily herd me out of the kitchen and into the dining room, the others coming behind with serving plates laden with food. I was hungry. I hadn't been able to eat anything at the coffee shop with Noah, and lunch was a distant memory. I already had a vague headache forming behind my eyes, a side-effect of drinking the overly sweet alcohol on an empty stomach. The subject of Noah was dropped when we took our seats and portioned out plates of food.

The pasta was freshly made and covered in a light cream sauce with veggies and shrimp. I suddenly realized I was starving. I was chewing my first bite, rolling my eyes in pleasure, when Holden said quietly from across the table, “We don't have to talk about this anymore, but I just want to say that starting a company can be really distracting. I can't imagine trying to sustain a relationship during the first few years Tate and I were building WGC. Do you remember that?" he asked Tate.

Tate shook his head and wound pasta around his fork. "Shit, yeah. I slept on my couch in the office more nights than I made it home, and our office is only a few floors away. We worked pretty much around the clock. The stress was a killer."

Holden cut in, "God, it was. I only slept when I was completely exhausted. If I tried to close my eyes any other time, all I’d think about were numbers and deadlines and what would happen if the game didn't ship and what we would do if it didn't sell. Running the company is fun now, but those first few years it was a love-hate thing. More obsession than anything else."

"Are you going to see him again?" Emily asked.

"I don't think he's going to let me avoid him," I admitted. "I told him we had nothing to talk about, but he tracked me down at the loft this afternoon, and I had coffee with him. That's why I was late."

"If you can't get rid of him, I’ll talk to Vance," Tate said. "If he's trying to convince Vance and Maggie to invest in Endicott Tech, he's not going to want to piss Vance off."

"Thanks, but Vance already talked to him," I said.

"So Vance and Maggie know about you and Noah?" Jo asked. I took a sip of wine and looked at the ceiling for a second before I answered.