Mending Hearts With The Billionaire (Artists & Billionaires Book 6)

by Lorin Grace

  “Sabrina, turn off the TV.”

  His phone pinged.

  —Four tickets, Saturday 8:00 p.m. show. Driver and security detail scheduled. Would you like dinner at six?

  Thanks, Bonnie. Dinner would be nice.

  —Enjoy the show.

  Before he could think too much, he called Candace.

  “Hi, Colin, what’s up?”

  “Hi, I just—” Realized that Bonnie didn’t tell me what show. He couldn’t find the words to continue.

  “Colin? Are you okay?”

  A funny little gasp came out of his throat.

  “I’m coming up!” The call ended.

  “Sabrina, let her come up in the elevator.”

  “Define her.”

  “Candace Wilson.”

  “Allowing Candace Wilson access to the penthouse suite.”

  Candace rushed out of the elevator. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought you had passed out.”

  “Nothing so traumatic.”

  She took his hand and led him over to the couch. “Why did you call?”

  Colin took a deep breath. “I called to ask you out to dinner and the theater.”

  “Oh.”

  That was it? Wasn’t she supposed to say yes? What had he done wrong? His mind raced for something to say, but it was stuck on “oh” too.

  nine

  Date.

  Candace turned the word over, exploring it like hard candy, testing the flavor to see if it was sweet or bitter. Saying yes to Colin was riskier than to any other guy who’d asked her out. There was friendship on the line.

  From the earnest look on Colin’s face, a no would put an end to the friendship sooner.

  “What time should I be ready?” She twirled the end of the scarf she’d tied around her head as she’d run out of the apartment. Oddly, Colin hadn’t even commented on her headwear. Most people did comment the first time they saw her without hair. Of course, he had seen her in a scarf on video call, but this was the first in real life. And he was more concerned about asking her out than her lack of follicles.

  His eyes lit up. “Five thirty? I’ll take you to dinner before the show.”

  “What show?” Candace wondered if it would be one she hadn’t seen yet.

  His face pinked. “I wasn’t sure how to get tickets . . .”

  “Please tell me you didn’t ask Sabrina for help.”

  “No, I asked Bonnie.”

  A safe option. Bonnie wouldn’t pick something awful. “She wouldn’t tell you where you are going?”

  “She texted me the time but not the show. I called you and realized I didn’t know what I was asking you out for.” His voice trailed off. That explained why he had frozen on the call.

  “You could text her now and ask.”

  “I could, but Bonnie might not answer. You know how she was with Daniel and Mandy.” She made Daniel deal with his problems himself, causing any number of problems. “I’m surprised she helped me. Although it could be a high school production.”

  “It will still be fun. Some high school shows are brilliant.”

  “Really? I’ve never been to one.”

  “Not surprising. The school you went to wasn’t exactly typical.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I know—the whole boarding-school thing.”

  She didn’t express her thoughts on the matter. Families should stay together, and sending eleven-year-olds to live with other preteens did not make for strong familial bonds.

  “What else are you going to do tonight?” Candace thought of the empty apartment downstairs and realized she didn’t want to go back.

  “I don’t know. I have an app to work on. I thought of watching a show, but all I found was a rerun.”

  “Don’t you have streaming?”

  “Oh yeah. I forgot about that.” Probably because he was always thinking of the next project. “Do you want to do something with me? Like we can play a game. I have chess.”

  “I don’t think I stand a chance at chess. Maybe I can introduce you to a new show.” Anything Candace picked that wasn’t sci-fi should be new to him. Not a bad thing. Colin never made time to watch TV and, as a result, was the most productive person she knew.

  “Sabrina, turn on the TV and bring up streaming.”

  A list of channels appeared on the screen as the TV sprang to life. “Which streaming channel?” The computer voice asked the question without inflection.

  Colin shrugged and turned to Candace.

  She looked up at the ceiling, where the voice came from. “Sabrina, the Hearthfire channel.”

  The screen didn’t change

  “What did I say wrong?”

  “Nothing. Sabrina has a voice-recognition feature. She only responds to my voice. We can teach her to recognize yours.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “When I give the AI the command and she says ‘Ready,’ you will say, ‘Sabrina, this is Candace’ five times. It helps if you change the inflection in your voice from fast to slow to angry, etc.” Colin opened an app on his phone.

  “Sabrina, program new voice recognition.”

  “Ready for input,” said the computer voice.

  “Sabrina, this is Candace.” She tried to keep her voice as even as possible. Then she tried an annoyed-sounding voice since she figured if she talked to the AI often, she would be annoyed. By the time she hit her fifth “Sabrina, this is Candace,” she was laughing hard.

  “I’m not sure that last one took.” Colin typed into his phone. “Now try asking her for the channel you want.”

  “Sabrina, Hearthfire channel.”

  The channel appeared on the large TV screen.

  “Yes!” Colin punched the air. “You are in!”

  “Of course I’m in. You wouldn’t design something that didn’t work.”

  “Funeral flowers.”

  He had a point there, but he had thought of buying flowers, which she doubted he had ever done before. “That wasn’t your design. It was lack of input data.” Colin never gave himself enough credit. It was one of the few things that annoyed her about him.

  Colin watched the rom-com with only half interest. Candace hadn’t moved over when he’d sat next to her on the couch. According to everything he’d read, he should hold her hand next. Unlike with Dora Greenwood when he was thirteen, he wanted to hold Candace’s hand.

  During the scene where the guy finally noticed the girl, Colin’s pinky touched Candace’s. She didn’t move away, so he slid his hand over and watched how it covered hers, his thumb involuntarily rubbing the back of her knuckles—not the reaction he’d expected. Candace moved an inch closer, and his chest swelled with warmth. Strange . . . none of the articles he’d read included that reaction.

  Candace’s fingers moved in a duet with his, the TV noise becoming background to the new feelings he was experiencing. The music swelled before the credits rolled. As he had programmed them to, the lights in the room brightened slowly.

  Candace sat and pulled away. “Sabrina, what time is it? “

  “10:26 p.m.”

  “I should go. I am starting to paint the upper mural tomorrow. If I don’t get enough sleep, sometimes my hands don’t want to work right.”

  “May I walk you down?”

  “The stairs?” A soft, teasing smile graced her lips.

  “Ten flights? I thought the elevator would be better.”

  She nodded.

  The trip down lasted only a few seconds. He wondered if he could install a variable-speed mechanism in the elevator. At the moment, he would prefer a snail’s pace over the standard high speed of the penthouse elevator. Maybe he could push every button like a little kid. But that would mean other people could ge
t on.

  The elevator dinged at her floor. Colin had Candace exit first but didn’t let go of her hand. Her apartment door wasn’t exactly like the front porches from the scenes in the Hearthfire movies he had been studying. The fluorescent lights of the hallway were anything but romantic. How was he to attempt a first kiss here?

  “Thanks for letting me barge in and stay.” Candace dropped her hand and unlocked her door.

  “Thanks for running up and rescuing me from my blunder.”

  Candace turned to face him. “Good night, Colin.” She rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek.

  Frozen in place, he watched her enter the apartment and close the door.

  Candace had just kissed him.

  He needed to move. What if she was watching his reaction through the peephole? He returned to the elevator and went straight to the penthouse level, where he pushed the fingerprint-scanning button.

  Once in the penthouse foyer, he paused. Just how did one go about kissing the most incredible woman in the world? If only he hadn’t spent so much time figuring out computers at school.

  Watching the twenty-five best movie kisses according to Sabrina didn’t help either. The only one that made much sense to him was the animated dogs kissing over a plate of pasta. Grab-a-girl-and-kiss-her-silly wasn’t his style. Apparently kissing wasn’t something he could read about and learn.

  Maybe for now he would stick with holding hands. That act evoked sensations he had not anticipated. Holding hands was good. It was more than good. It was stupendous.

  ten

  Joy yawned and frowned in her sleep, and Candace adjusted her hold on Mandy’s baby. “She is so sweet.”

  “No fair using my daughter to deflect. I was asking about Colin.” Mandy sat in the other chair. “If you don’t tell me now, I’ll call you at 2:00 a.m. when she is screaming her head off, and you can deal with her not-so-sweet moments.”

  “I thought we needed to discuss the Hearthfire showing in Blue Pines.” Candace tried to change the subject again.

  “Nice try. Tessa and I have that under control. I’ll go out in October to make final arrangements. But that is not the point. Spill, or I let the little one scream you awake.”

  Candace adjusted the blanket around Joy’s face. “Don’t say such disparaging things about my honorary niece. You exaggerate.”

  “About her crying, or me calling you with it?”

  “Both, but I’ll tell you anyway. Colin officially asked me on a date. Even got Bonnie to help him with the arrangements.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Candace stifled a laugh, not wanting to wake Joy. “Colin was a bit vague on that. Bonnie didn’t give him the name of the play or musical she got tickets for. I think he is afraid to ask her.”

  Mandy covered her mouth with her hand. After a moment, she removed it. “Let me go put her in her crib so we can laugh.”

  Candace sat down in her favorite chair. A few boxes stood against the wall. Daniel and Mandy’s new house was finished. They decided they would rather not raise Joy in the heart of the city, but they would keep the penthouse for events there.

  Mandy returned in a different shirt. “Joy gave me a little good-night spit up. I am not sure the pumpkin spice cake I had this morning agreed with her. Now, back to Colin and Bonnie. She probably didn’t tell him just to get him to make his own dates. Nothing annoyed her more than when Daniel would ask for her help in his personal matters. Of course, with me, it is a different story. I don’t think I can ask too many silly personal questions, as long I ask them between the hours of nine and eleven in the morning.” Mandy took a seat in the chair opposite her. “Although I can pretty much text her anytime of day with a Joy-related question. Now, I digress. What did you think of Colin asking you out?”

  “It was inevitable?”

  “That is not what I mean.”

  “Honestly, I have never been so nervous about a date in my life. With my ten-year plan, I never took any guy very seriously. He was just fun for the moment. Colin is different. We have been talking and doing things together for a year and a half, but it has almost always been in the context of doing them with you and Daniel or because of the other roommates. I am comfortable with where things have been. He knows me as well as many of my roommates do.”

  “Have you told him about the ten-year plan?”

  “A little, but not the real pain behind it. There was a point I honestly didn’t think I would live for ten years—or if I wanted to. I lost so much.”

  “How long was it after your mom died that your dad figured out you had become addicted to pain pills?”

  “He didn’t. It was my sister. Somehow in the middle of everything, she had gotten engaged to a med student, of all things. I was barely talking to her I was so mad about Mom dying. I think her fiancé noticed it first and pushed her into telling Dad and confronting me. The fact that other than my mother’s pain-pill stash I had gotten the rest legally blew everyone’s mind. Some of the doctors were on a different computer system, and since some prescriptions were filled in Houston and others in Indianapolis, the pharmacy hadn’t realized what I was doing either.”

  “Does Colin know?”

  “I told him last fall. It came up one day about why I was so adamant about not having painkillers around when I was using an ice pack for a headache.” Ice worked relatively fast for her.

  “How hard was it when I broke my foot and had the painkillers in the house?”

  “You mean your lover’s fracture?” Candace loved using the nickname of the type of break Mandy had received from falling off Daniel’s fence, especially since the name turned out to be somewhat prophetic. “I was surprised how easy it was to leave them alone.”

  “That’s good. I always worried about that. Have you told Colin everything else?”

  “You mean the full effects of the cancer? Not yet. If our dating looks like we are moving forward, I will tell him then. In the meantime, he knows enough. You know, he doesn’t treat me any differently when I am wearing a scarf than when I am wearing a wig. I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t notice what I am wearing or if he really doesn’t care.”

  “I think he notices. Colin said he had a favorite wig.”

  “Really? Which one?”

  “I think you need to ask him that.” Mandy smiled one of those annoying I-know-what-is-best smiles.

  Candace decided to change the topic again. “Did I tell you Zoe went to the 9/11-wing opening at the museum?”

  “She sent photos to the group chat, and Tessa posted too. Is it my imagination, or is Zoe mentioning Nick a lot?”

  Nick would be so right for her cousin. Sean vouched that his childhood friend had earned the nickname “Do-Gooding.” “I have noticed that too. To be honest, I didn’t know if she would choose to move on, even with all the support she has had this past year. Statistically, the majority of men are decent people, even if they do seem to be from another planet sometimes.”

  “I like Nick. Daniel was talking about some of the things they did in school together. Nick is pretty good-natured and can handle a joke. Did Colin tell you about hacking Nick’s computer?”

  “No.”

  “It was like their junior year, and Nick’s dad bought him this new wireless printer. Colin realized it wasn’t protected and started sending documents to it. Things like, ‘Hi, Nick, I liked your striped socks today.’ ‘Nick, please remove the yellow toner. She is bringing cyan down.’ ‘Stop ignoring me, or I will not print that term paper you are working on.’”

  Candace held her sides to keep the laughter from hurting her ribs. “No way. What did Nick do?”

  “He took the printer to Colin and told him it was creepily self-aware and asked Colin to fix it. Colin told him it might be expensive and got a month’s worth of cleanup dorm d
uties in exchange. Then, a couple days before the end of their senior year, Colin sent a message to the printer confessing about the open Wi-Fi and that he’d hacked the printer. Daniel said he hadn’t seen Nick laugh so hard as when he told the story of his self-aware printer.”

  “That would freak me out! ‘Hi, I am your printer, and I am self-aware.’ I would chuck it into the nearest dumpster. Then, when I found out, I would be so annoyed.” Practical jokes. Colin didn’t seem the type, which made it all the funnier. Candace and Mandy laughed until tears formed. “At least I’ll know now if my printer starts acting up it has been hacked.” Part of her wished he would, just so she could see the humorous side of him. Suddenly she couldn’t wait for Saturday’s date.

  Concentrating on the board meeting was harder than usual. Colin never cared about the nontech side of the business. It was a good thing he had Daniel for a partner. Fortunately, Colin’s tech inventions made them enough money that Daniel was more than happy to deal with the mundane and day to day. But this meeting, instead of thinking of the line of code he could adjust, he was thinking of Candace. Perhaps it was the scarf Mrs. Johnson, one of the board members, wore. The soft colors were not Candace’s style, yet he thought of how the soft pastels would make her eyes sparkle.

  When the meeting concluded, Colin shook all the hands he needed to and breathed a sigh of relief when only Daniel remained.

  “Whatever the new idea you have in mind is, it must be good. You haven’t been that out of it in a board meeting for a while.”

  Colin removed his tie. “Sorry about that.”

  “What is the idea?”

  “It wasn’t an app. I asked Candace out on a real date.”

  Daniel stopped shuffling the papers in front of him. “As in you said ‘I am asking you on a date’ and not just one of those sideways-slide, hanging-out-with-her things?”

  “I lost it on the phone. I think she thought I was going into shock. I couldn’t say a word.”