Page 18 of Wait for Him

“To the fucking Sullivan Empire!” Rosalie screams, and then she's popping the champagne bottle with her thumbs and shaking it over all three of us, spray arcing gold under the office fluorescents while Bennet howls and I throw my arms up like that's ever stopped anything.

Today, the three of us became millionaires.

Fucking millionaires.

The business Bennet and I started building in college with two desks, a folding table, and more confidence than common sense has taken off in ways none of us ever let ourselves say out loud. Rose was there almost from the beginning, redlining our first contracts at midnight because we couldn't afford anyone who wasn't sisters with one of the owners, making sure Bennet and I didn't sign anything catastrophically stupid while we figured out how to turn his brain and my ability to bullshit people into an actual company.

And now there's a wire confirmation sitting in the account with several zeroes behind it, champagne is soaking through my shirt, and my best friend is dancing on a desk chair that is absolutely going to roll out from under him at any moment.

Millionaire at twenty-fucking-three.

I don't even know what to do with that.

“We're going to need better chairs,” Bennet declares from atop the rolling one, wobbling, rich and evidently fucking invincible.

“We're going to need a better building,” Rosalie fires back, wiping champagne off her face with her forearm.

Then she laughs.

Not the polite little laugh she gives clients, or the one she uses when Bennet says something stupid in front of people she doesn't know well. The real one. Big and loud and completely spontaneous, her head falling back while she tries to keep champagne from running into her eyes.

And my chest does the stupid fucking thing it always does when she laughs like that.

I ignore it. I've gotten good at ignoring it, considering I've had three years of practice.

She catches me watching and aims the bottle at me like a threat. “What are you grinning at, Jackson?”

You. Always fucking you.

“We're millionaires,” I say instead, letting the grin go wide. “I'm allowed.”

“Not anymore.”

“Rose, don't you fucking—”

She sprays me directly in the face.

“You little shit!”

Bennet nearly kills himself laughing, the chair rolling backward until he grabs the desk at the last second.

“Get down from there before our first purchase as millionaires is a fucking wheelchair.”

“I can afford one now!”

“That's not the point!”

Two hours later, we found ourselves at Santa Monica Beach, drunk off our asses after an Uber ride that mostly consisted of Bennet trying to convince the driver to invest in the company.

Now Rose and I are sitting in the sand watching the waves crash, and Bennet is passed out snoring on a towel a few feet away.

Even though we've been at it since five this morning closing the deal, she still looks fucking incredible. Her dark, silky waves are pulled back in a carefree ponytail, loose tendrils dancing around her cheeks in the wind. She changed into one of those long, swaying dresses before we left the office, tight around her perfect breasts and flowing loose from the waist, and I've been fighting back an erection since she walked back into the building wearing it.

Her cute little toes are buried in the sand, wiggling deeper every time the wind blows, and she's got both arms wrapped around herself trying to fight off the chill coming in from the water.

“You're cold.”

“I'm fine.”