Page 73 of Do It With Me

Her words tumbled through my head, but I didn’t quite understand what she was saying. My brain seemed to have been flung into a jumble of disbelief. His baby.

The same Holden who had held me through my mother’s funeral. The same man who had taken her to the beach. Who had kissed me in the waves. My heart stuttered painfully in my chest.

“Ma’am?”

“Uh, yeah,” I managed, but my voice was shaky as hell. “I guess I should speak with his assistant.”

“Of course. Just hold on the line for me, please. I’ll put you right through.” There was a short pause, then a soft click as she transferred me.

A new voice came on just a few seconds later, smooth and professional. “Good morning. You’ve reached Holden Langton’s office. This is Maia speaking.”

“Hi,” I said, the word almost slurred with the weight of my disbelief. “I, uh, I’m one of the tenants the Renewal Initiative is trying to work out a deal with. I was wondering if I might speak to the developer directly?”

I couldn’t bring myself to say his name. Not out loud, too scared that would make it real. Although all indications were that it was real already.

“Of course,” Maia said cheerfully. “You’re in luck. He just walked out of a meeting and he’s available. Please hold while I transfer you.”

The line clicked again and then his voice, his devastatingly familiar voice, slid through the receiver. “This is Holden Langton. How can I⁠—”

I didn’t even let him finish. My hand holding the phone simply slipped away from my ear and I blindly hung up, so stunned that I kept blinking rapidly, and there was no way to stop it. I set my phone down on the counter so I wouldn’t accidentally drop it.

The last thing I needed right now was to have to replace my phone. I slid off my chair and backed up a step. It didn’t make much sense, but I suddenly felt the need to put some distance between myself and the device, my stomach twisting violently.

Holden Langton. Langton Development. The Renewal Initiative.

The dots connected, forming an ugly picture. I grabbed the edge of the counter to stay upright as the truth crashed through me, hard and cold. I couldn’t believe that the same man who’d comforted me, who’d stuck by my side and made me laugh even on the darkest days, could be responsible for this.

Holden wasn’t so heartless, was he? No, he couldn’t be. He was warm and friendly, with that thick, sandy hair always a little mussed. He hadn’t hesitated to splash into the ocean with me that day, running across the sand like it was the best damn thing he’d ever done.

He couldn’t be the soulless developer who was about to wreck my livelihood. He couldn’t be the brain behind the idiotically named Renewal Initiative.

But then a memory trickled slowly into my shock-numb brain. That night when he’d taken me to dinner, we’d gone to a neighborhood he’d revived before. At the time, I’d been impressed. Sure.

Everything had looked so polished and refreshed, the community on the streets vibrant and alive. What I hadn’t been thinking about was that before them, others had been there. Other people who had operated businesses and lived in the area he’d swooped in to fix.

Oh, God. He is that guy.

That guy who came across as one thing but was morally bankrupt and just really good at hiding it. That guy whose hubris was such that he had to have his name slapped on the skyline forever, no matter who or what had been there before.

I was really, really struggling to accept that the man who had stood by my side through the very worst part of my life could really be the same person. Holden had arrived in my life like a tornado, simply arriving and refusing to leave until he was done.

Done with what, I didn’t yet know, but I hadn’t seen him coming. That first night I’d walked into class and saw the most handsome man ever was my professor, I hadn’t thought for a second that we’d end up here.

Yet we had.

All because he’d asked me to coffee. He’d made a business proposition and sent me shopping, inviting me to dinner to get to know each other even though that hadn’t been part of our original agreement. I’d never quite understood what the word blindsided meant until this very minute.

Had he been playing me all along? Was this some kind of sick billionaire game? Get close to the girl whose shop he was about to bulldoze just for kicks?

I slid down the cabinet, my ass landing hard on the floor. My breath came in ragged bursts, tears streaming down my cheeks before I could stop them.

I didn’t even know what hurt more. That he was behind it or that he hadn’t told me. All I knew was that it hurt, so I pressed my hands over my face and sobbed until my whole body was sore.

The last time I’d cried like this, he’d been there to hold me. Now he was the one causing it, and I would never, ever allow him to know.