“So am I.”

We ate. We spent the rest of the day together, walking along the beach, talking, joking, watching the recorded interviews from the floor of the stock exchange. There was wild energy out there, and we soaked it all up hours after the fact and from three thousand miles away.

Later that night, after watching a movie on his widescreen TV and dining on pizza and a little wine, we snuck out to the beach and made love on the packed sand under a big blanket. It felt daring and risky and fun, not unlike the other times we’ve had sex.

But unlike those other times, we weren’t filled with that rushed urgency to do as much as we could while we could. This time, there was a promise of a future—and oh, what a difference that made.

Chapter 29

Jordan

In my dream, someone was knocking at the door. It started out as a gentle knock, and after a few minutes progressed into pounding. At the same time, my phone chimed with a text message.

April sat up first, shockingly, and jostled my shoulder. “Some dickhead is pounding on your door.”

“Mmm.”

“It’s probably whoever is texting you.”

I sat up. What the hell?

“Maybe Sexilicious Sondra is demanding her handcuffs back. She’s had enough of the waiting,” she said, stretching lithely. The sheet fell away from the upper half of her body and my eyes fixed on her luscious bare breasts. Nothing downstairs was compelling enough to pull me away from this gorgeous, naked woman in my bed and the promise of morning sex…

The doorbell began to ring—at five-second intervals, no less—and I’d finally had enough. I slipped out of bed and went looking for my jeans on the floor, not bothering with underwear or a shirt. Whoever it was would have to deal.

April flopped back on the bed. “You wore me out last night with all that sex. I’m going back to sleep.”

“Get your strength up. I plan on wearing you out again when I get back upstairs.”

“Mmm,” she muttered as I left the room. I flew down the stairs, yelling that I was on my way. The pounding stopped.

When I whipped open the door, ready to tear somebody a new one, I stopped short.

“You look like hell,” I said. Adam hadn’t shaved and appeared as if he’d been on a red-eye and slept in his clothes. Not unlike me just twenty-four hours ago, in fact.

“You, on the other hand, look like fresh morning dew.”

I laughed and stepped back to let him in, combing a hand through my hair, which I was sure was sticking up in eighty different directions.

“I would have said you look like a million bucks, but that’s now chump change for you. It’s actually more like forty-one, thirty-two a share.”

He broke into a grin. “I’m still in shock about that.”

“Congrats, man. You are the first official billionaire that I have ever been friends with...” If we were, indeed, still friends.

Adam walked into the living room and looked out onto the beach through the sliding glass door. He folded his arms across his chest.

“Sit down. Can I get you something? I can start some coffee…”

“I’m good,” he said, turning around to look at me. “I’ve been sitting down a lot lately. I’d rather stand.”

That meant he wasn’t staying long. “Where’s Mia at?”

“She had to go straight to school this morning. It was hard enough for her to miss the one day.”

“So, umm. I just wanted to say again that I’m sorry—”

He held his hand up. “Don’t. You don’t need to say it. I’m sorry, too. I didn’t handle that well at all.”

My eyebrow twitched as I tried to hide my surprise. Getting an apology from Adam was about as rare as a gamer nerd at a frat party.

I shrugged. “I dropped a bomb on you out of nowhere. It’s understandable.”

“And I am still pissed about that. Mostly because it sucked being on the stock exchange floor without you. This was supposed to be our crowning moment. Our first huge milestone.”

I looked away, shifting my weight from one leg to the other. “It sucked not being there, man. But I watched it all on the Internet.”

“I don’t want to do the rest of this without you, Jordan. The company needs you too much. I need you too much.”

“But you get why I had to, right?”

“No, I’m still not getting that part.” He frowned. “Can you just…explain again?”

“About it being unfair to punish just her?”

“But would you have done this for anyone else? Why her?”