The Mistaken Billionaire (the Muse series)

by Lexxie Couper

  …

  Josie frowned. “So he knows who you are now?”

  “Unlikely. There will be no one in the office to take the call.” Mila rubbed her arms and then tucked her knees up under her chin. Damn, when had it become so chilly?

  “But that’s it? You’re done?”

  “Done.” Hell, it wasn’t just chilly, it was damn Arctic-ice cold. “Finished.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Mila closed her eyes and let out a soft grunt. “Well, given we’ve spent the last, what, three weeks together, have slept together numerous times, and he poured his heart out to me about M.E. Elderkin, I suspect the chances of us still being muse and author are slim.”

  Josie scowled and pushed Mila’s tea—probably tepid now—closer to her across the coffee table. “I’m not talking about you being his muse. I’m talking about you two as a couple.”

  “We were never a couple, Josie.”

  “Sounded like you were a couple. Looked like you were a couple. Every image I saw of the pair of you together on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook, you positively oozed coupleness.”

  “Coupleness?” Mila lifted an eyebrow and hunkered down deeper in the armchair. “That’s a word, is it?”

  “Do you want me to show you? Have you even seen them?” Josie straightened from her seat and strode across the room, talking as she went. “The way he looks at you, the way you look at him… Even some of his exes have commented on it on Twitter. One of them—some stick-figure model—congratulated him and told him he’d never looked happier.”

  Crap, she did not need to hear that. Or think about it. St. Clair happy hadn’t been her intention.

  What had been?

  “I never intended to feel anything for him,” she mumbled, knees mashed to her chin. “It was only ever about getting the money for the laptops.”

  “Did that work out for you?” Josie dropped back into her chair, focus fixed on her smartphone.

  Stomach a knotted ball of tension, Mila shifted on the armchair, dug out her purse from her bag, and withdrew a check from it.

  “What do you think?” She held the check out to Josie.

  Josie lifted her gaze and squinted at the piece of paper.

  “You really should wear your glasses,” Mila chided.

  “Holy fuck.” Josie’s mouth fell open. She looked at Mila, eyes wide, and then at Mila’s phone again. “Are all those numbers real?”

  With a sigh, Mila folded the check, put it back in her purse, and shoved it back into her bag. “They are. I wonder what he’s going to do when he finds out who I am. Sue me for all of it back?”

  Josie frowned. “Would he do that?”

  Would he? “My heart says no. But then, my heart convinced me not to tell him who I was two weeks ago in Central Park when he’d told me just how much the Times article hurt him, so my heart is an untrustworthy piece of shit.”

  “Oh, sis.” Josie came around to the armchair and squeezed in beside her, wrapping her in a tight hug. “Your heart is far from that. You just don’t tend to listen to it that often. You’re usually so focused on working and getting the job done better than anyone else. You’ve always listened to your head, and sometimes your head doesn’t know what’s best for you. Case in point, the article for the Times. It’s Mom and Dad coming out in you. I mean, seriously, those two still don’t know how to relax and go with the flow, and they’re retired. Dad asked me last week when I was going to win a Tony Award and was horrified when I laughed.”

  Mila snorted, dropping her head onto Josie’s shoulder. “I’m glad they’re in Europe. I don’t know what they’d make of all this.”

  “They don’t need to know. I’m not going to tell them. Unless St. Clair suddenly sweeps in here and presents you with an engagement ring.”

  “Yeah. That’s not going to happen.”

  Josie gave her a gentle shake. “He told you he loved you. And I know you love him. Love can make all sorts of things happen. Look at me and Shanti. When she first met me, she thought I was an upstart understudy.”

  “You were an upstart understudy,” Shanti’s voice—distant but still clear—wafted in from the kitchen.

  Josie grinned. “Shut up and keep making us our daiquiris, woman,” she shouted back.

  Mila laughed. If nothing else, seeing Josie so happy took the edge off some of her own pain. At least one of the Elderkin daughters was a success in love and life.

  “And look at these,” Josie went on, showing Mila her smartphone. “Look at these pictures.”

  An image of Mila and Thomas walking Reaper through Central Park filled the screen. Both she and Thomas were smiling at each other, their fingers threaded, his hand brushing a strand of hair from her cheek as Reaper bound their legs together with his leash.

  She remembered the Sunday afternoon the image had been taken. Remembered Thomas’s laughing insistence he hadn’t trained his dog to do that.

  “If that’s not the image of love right there”—Josie tapped her finger against the screen—“then I don’t know what is. You two can get this worked out. Hell, how long ago was it you wrote that article? How many years? Who holds a grudge that long?”

  Mila huffed out a sigh. “I do, remember. I’m pretty certain I called him reprehensible when I told you whose dog I’d rescued only a few short weeks ago.”

  “But you said Thomas knows the way he behaved all those years ago wasn’t acceptable. And it seems it was his agent, not him, that got you fired. Maybe…” She shrugged.

  “Maybe he’ll forget I’ve been lying to him all this time by omission and beg me to marry him?” She shook her head. A fantasy outcome. One she couldn’t waste time aching for.

  “Let’s wait and see how he reacts to learning who you are before you write him off.” A smile curled Josie’s lips, and she squeezed Mila’s shoulders again. “Write him off. See what I did there?”

  Mila rolled her eyes. “You so should have become a comedian, Josie.”

  “No, she shouldn’t,” Shanti called from the kitchen again.

  “Bite me,” Josie yelled back.

  “Later. When your sister’s not here.”

  “On that note.” Mila smacked a kiss on Josie’s cheek and then shoved herself from the chair. “I’m going home. I have some prep work for school that I want to do before I go to bed.”

  Josie frowned up at her, worry eating up her face. “You can stay here tonight if you like.”

  “I don’t want to cramp your and Shanti’s style.”

  “Won’t be,” Shanti declared from the other room.

  Mila laughed. Who would have thought she had it in her? “No, I’m going. I need to water my plants. And who knows what tomorrow is going to be like.”

  Straightening from the chair, Josie enveloped her in a hug. A warm body joined in from the other side, the scent of strawberry accompanying Shanti as she wrapped Mila in a hug from behind.

  A hot lump filled Mila’s throat. Thomas may not love her tomorrow—if he ever had—but Josie and Shanti did. It was something. A wonderful something.

  “Okay, okay,” she mumbled against Josie’s shoulder, “you can let me go now.”

  They did. Both kissed her good night and Josie walked her to the door of their apartment. “I think you’re going to be surprised tomorrow. Wait and see.”

  Mila kissed her cheek one last time. “Wait and see it is.”

  Halfway home, she had to pull over. Not because she was crying, but because if she spent a second longer in her Hyundai, she would. Damn St. Clair. How had he managed to turn her sensible car into an arrow piercing straight into her heart? Sitting behind the wheel, all she could think about was their first night together, about him driving her car, and about the likelihood he’d never do so again.

  A strong black coffee and a chocolate chip cookie from the closest Starbucks later, she climbed back in, slammed the door, and started the engine.

  Twenty One Pilots blared from the radio.

  Goddamn Twenty O
ne Pilots.

  She burst into tears.

  Chapter Nineteen

  7:42 a.m.

  He’d been calling Mila’s school office since six a.m. Of course, it was Sunday, so he shouldn’t be surprised there was no answer, but still…

  “Fuck.”

  Every time the call went to the school’s answering machine, his mind—his goddamn writer’s mind—took him places he didn’t want to go. What possible reason could make him not love her? Was she already married? Was she hiding a husband somewhere? Kids?

  Every fucking time. Every fifteen minutes.

  “Surely someone goes in and works there on a Sunday?” He killed the call mid recorded message.

  Reaper whined and jumped up onto the sofa.

  Thomas sighed. “Sorry, buddy.”

  A night of pacing, of brooding, of fighting his creative mind had put him in a bad mood.

  Ha. Bad mood. Definitely an understatement there. Worse yet, he hadn’t written a word since Mila left.

  He’d tried.

  Had tried to distract himself with the penultimate confrontation between Gabe and the Child That Never Was.

  Words wouldn’t come. Or when they did, they were crap. Deleted as quickly as they were typed.

  7:42 a.m.

  No words. No answer at Mila’s school. No last name for her.

  “Fuck.” He threw his phone across the room.

  Reaper yipped, scrambled off the sofa, and bolted from the room.

  Dragging his hands through his hair, Thomas dropped onto the vacated cushion. “Shit.”

  Silence. Too much silence.

  He threw himself from the sofa, crossed the room to where his phone sat on the floor, and snatched it up.

  He’d ring the school again. It was almost goddamn eight o’clock. Someone had to be there by—

  His phone rang.

  Darth Vader’s theme.

  Shelby.

  He punched accept with his thumb. “What?”

  “I know who she is.”

  His throat slammed shut. He didn’t want the answer. Ignorance was bliss and all.

  “Tell me,” he growled.

  More words he didn’t want. Words he couldn’t delete.

  Fuck.

  “I heard Hart tell you the name of her school, so I contacted someone I know at the Times who writes for their education section. Asked them to hit their contact on the—”

  “I don’t want a novel about how you found out, Shelby. If I wanted a novel, I’d write one. Just tell me her last name.”

  “Elderkin.”

  The air evaporated—all of it—and then rushed back in, crushing him. Hot and prickling and suffocating.

  He closed his eyes. Slumped back in the sofa.

  “I’ll contact your lawyer,” Shelby said. He had to give it to her, she sounded almost regretful. “Get him started on—”

  “No.”

  There was a second of silence. “What?”

  “No. That’s it. No.” Hell, where had all the feeling in his body gone? “No lawyers, no calls, no contacting Mila, no speaking to the media or letting anything slip on social media. No anything.”

  “But, Thomas?” Not regret now, just shock. “Mila is M.E. Elderkin. She’s the—”

  “I’ll call you later, Shelby.” He opened his eyes and stared at nothing. “For a while, I want you to pretend I don’t exist. That you’ve never heard of Thomas St. Clair, okay?”

  He hit end on the screen and let his phone drop to the floor.

  She’d conned him.

  He’d opened himself up to Mila, exposed who he was, who he really was, and she’d conned him.

  He’d fallen in fucking love with her, and she’d conned him.

  He closed his eyes and scraped his hand over his mouth.

  Love.

  How could he have been so goddamn stupid? Love was a ludicrous notion propagated by Hallmark and rom-com films that only fools believed in. He wasn’t a fool. He’d stopped listening to his heart years ago. He’d learned the harsh lesson and swore he’d never let what happened to his parents happen to him.

  And yet here he sat in his home alone, his dog so scared he’d run from him, Mila Elderkin tearing him apart without even being in the room with him,

  All those conversations where he’d opened up about himself, and she’d known.

  All those times he’d shared with her how his life had been irrevocably shaped by the very article she’d written.

  All those times making love to her, moving inside her, holding her, losing himself in her…

  All those times and she’d been…

  What?

  Using him? To what end? To mock him? Humiliate him again? Was she writing another article about him? About what a fool he was?

  Had it always been part of her plan? From the second he’d opened the door to her the night of his alma mater dinner? Or had she just acted on a coincidence too good to miss? Was she an opportunist as well as a liar?

  Liar? No. She never lied. She never blatantly told a mistruth. In fact, she more than once implied he wouldn’t like her if he knew everything about her. She tried to warn him.

  “And still your fucking heart keeps talking.” He shoved himself from the sofa and crossed to the bar. The morning sun streamed through the window, glinting off the cut-crystal glasses sitting beside a bottle of sixty-year-old Scotch.

  He wouldn’t touch the bottle until his current manuscript was finished. A tradition started with his very first book, the one M.E. Elderkin—Mila—called a metaphor for his personal demons.

  The night he’d finished that very first book, Night of Whispers, he’d snuck into his father’s study, poured himself a glass of Johnnie Walker from the bottle his dad kept hidden in the cupboard, and drank it, sitting on the floor, watching the moon through the window.

  A lonely seventeen-year-old, just trying to navigate the hell that was his family life with the only tools he had. Words.

  Every book since, he did the same: after typing “the end,” he would pour a glass of Scotch, sit on the floor of whatever place he called home at that moment in his life, and watch the sky through the window, regardless of the time.

  A tradition. The only things that had changed since that first Scotch were the location and quality of the alcohol.

  For his last four books, he’d completed the tradition with a glass of Chivas Regal. Not the most expensive Scotch on the market, but a smooth one. One that filled him with subtle warmth.

  For this book, he’d planned to celebrate with a glass of Glenfiddich. He’d bought the rare bottle for just under a hundred grand the day after he’d bared his soul to Mila in Central Park. Had planned to share it with her when he’d finished. Had planned to ask her to move in with him.

  It was time to begin a new tradition, he’d decided back then. No more drinking alone on the floor, looking at the world beyond the window. He would share the celebration with Mila, the first person he truly felt real with.

  “Real.” He grunted, closing his fingers around the bottle’s neck. Screw traditions. Screw love. Screw real. Real was a joke.

  He picked up the bottle and then stopped.

  Squeezed his eyes shut.

  “I like you a lot, Thomas St. Clair.” Mila’s words, the last she’d spoken to him, whispered through his head. “The real you. Please remember that.”

  “Goddamn it.” He slammed the bottle back down. All he wanted to do was get good and drunk and forget she ever existed, but she wouldn’t let him. Even when she wasn’t here, she was affecting him, messing with him.

  Stripping away his facade until he stood raw and exposed and incapable of denying the truth.

  He loved her.

  That was real. That was his truth.

  A cold fist slammed into his chest, and he opened his eyes. “Fuck that truth,” he snarled, lifting up the bottle again and twisting open the cap.

  …

  Mila gripped her phone tighter. Should she hit send?


  Eyes burning and chest tight, she read the text she’d finished typing almost seventy-two hours ago.

  I’m sorry, St. Clair. I wanted to tell you. From the very first night. I tried. More than once. I just got caught up in everything and it robbed the words from me. Please forgive me. I hope you are writing. I hope you will one day forgive me. M.

  It had been seventy-two hours since she’d left Thomas’s house. Seventy-two hours since she’d told Sebastian Hart the school she worked at.

  Seventy-two hours without hearing from Thomas.

  She’d expected something. If not from him, then from Shelby. Or a lawyer. Or some kind of media statement declaring her a lying harlot to counteract the images of them together that now existed in cyberspace.

  She’d expected pain and hell, and she’d deserved it.

  Instead…nothing.

  It was like she and Thomas St. Clair had never interacted.

  No calls. No texts. No threatening messages from Shelby.

  Nothing.

  She didn’t understand.

  Neither did Josie.

  Shanti had a theory, a ridiculous one in Mila’s opinion. One not worth the heartache of broken hope it brought. That Thomas loved her too much to cause her pain.

  Yeah. Completely not the case.

  Couldn’t be. If that were the case, he’d have reached out by now.

  But he hadn’t.

  Maybe it was time to break the silence?

  She stroked her thumb over the send button, the words of her message blurring.

  Do something. Anything. You can’t stay in this ridiculous holding pattern forever.

  She hit send.

  The whoosh of the delivered message damn near strangled her.

  “Mila? Is this you?”

  She let out a choked squeal at the sound of a familiar male voice and spun to face the door. “God, Graeme, don’t scare me like that.”

  Graeme Abernathy, sixth grade teacher and the school’s resident gossip frowned. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Aren’t you meant to be holding auditions for the school play right now?”

  Damn it, she didn’t want company. Not after the text she’d just sent.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Abernathy continued into her room, waving a dismissing hand as he studied a magazine in the other. “Is this you? There’s a bet going around it is, and I’ve got ten bucks on it.”