Escape for Valentine's: Beauty and the Billionaire / Her One and Only Valentine / The Girl Next Door

Then it was Jack’s turn. “You can’t make unilateral decisions!”

“I can. And so can you and Gramps.”

“Not like this.”

“Yes, like this. There’s no advantage in three guys spending time on what one can do alone.” Hunter was warming up now. He just wished he was wearing something other than a bathrobe. “This is a good deal. It’s a great deal!”

“That’s not the point,” Jack said.

“The point being that you and Gramps are control freaks?”

“The point being you need to play with the team.”

Hunter turned on his grandfather. “You thought it was funny to send me to Lush Beauty. You thought it was funny to send me to Sinclair. Well, guess what? You send me to run a company, I run the damn company.”

“I have half a mind to take away your signing authority,” Cleveland threatened.

“Because that wouldn’t be an overreaction,” Hunter countered, folding his arms across his chest.

“You, young man, spent hundreds of millions without so much as an e-mail.”

“It’s amortized over twenty years. The property values alone—”

“If it wasn’t for Sinclair telling Kristy—”

“What?” Hunter roared, unable to believe what he’d heard.

Jack and Cleveland stopped dead.

Hunter stared hard at them. “You got information from your wife because my … Sinclair talked?”

“And thank God she did,” said Cleveland.

But Hunter was past listening to Jack and his grandfather.

“We’re done,” he said to them, moving to open the door. “Richard has the details. You take a look at the deal. If you don’t like it, I’ll sell my Osland International stock and go it on my own.”

Jack squinted. “Hunter?”

Hunter swung open the hotel room door. “Talk to you later.”

“It wasn’t Sinclair’s—”

“Talk to you later.”

Jack moved in front of him. “I can’t let you—”

“What?” Hunter barked. “What do you think I’m going to do to her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Give me a break,” he scoffed. He wasn’t going to hurt Sinclair. He wouldn’t let anybody hurt Sinclair. But the woman had one hell of a lot of explaining to do.

Eight

Hearing the latch click on the adjoining door, Sinclair broke out in a cold sweat. Her fingertips dug into the arms of the chair as she stared straight at the dove-gray painted panel.

The hinges glided silently and Hunter filled the doorway, his eyes simmering obsidian. But his voice was cool with control. “I thought we were a team.”

She wished he’d shout at her, wished he’d rant. She could take his anger a lot more easily than his disappointment.

She’d let him down. She wanted to explain. She wanted to apologize. But her vocal cords were temporarily paralyzed.

“I trusted you,” he continued. “I trusted your confidentiality. I trusted your discretion.”

She fought to say something, to gather her thoughts. “I didn’t know,” she finally blurted out.

“Didn’t know what? Was there something ambiguous about ‘don’t tell anyone, including Kristy and Jack’?”

“But that was before the deal went through.”

“The deal went through at 3:00 a.m. this morning. Are you telling me in the five minutes I was in the shower—” He snapped his jaw. “You called Kristy.” He gave a cold laugh. “You were so anxious to share gossip about my business dealings that you couldn’t even wait until morning?”

“It wasn’t gossip.”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

She slowly shook her head. She could only imagine the implications of her behavior now that she had all the facts.

“Well, that makes two of us,” he said. “Because I just offered to sell out of Osland International.”

The contents of her stomach turned to a concrete mass.

She opened her mouth, but he waved a dismissive hand. “Much as I’d like to sit around and debate this with you, I’ve got a few problems to solve this morning. I’ll have to talk to you later.”

Then he turned back to his own room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Sinclair’s cell phone chimed.

She glanced reflexively down to see Kristy’s number on the readout. She couldn’t talk to her sister now. She didn’t think she could talk to anyone.

There was every possibility she’d ruined Hunter’s life. The worry that she might not get plum assignments or choice promotions at Lush Beauty faded to nothing in the face of that reality.

She stared at nothing for nearly an hour, then shoved herself into a standing position. She crossed to the closet and took out the clothes she’d been wearing when she arrived in Paris. They looked pale and boring compared to the new outfits, but she didn’t have the heart to wear any of them.

She combed her hair, brushed her teeth, left the cosmetics on the counter and gathered up the suitcase with her old clothes inside. It seemed like a long walk to the elevator, longer still across the marble-floored atrium in the hotel lobby.

She figured Hunter would check out for her, so she wound her way past smiling tourists, bustling bellboys and intense businessmen. The men reminded her of Hunter and made her sadder by the moment.