Page 95 of Stolen By the Billionaire
“Yeah, okay. Did you rob a cave full of gold in the Middle East or something? Because I’ve got to tell you, watch out for that lamp. The genie is tricky.”
Her cute little joke burst over Blaze like a water balloon over his head, and he rubbed the side of his face and looked away from her. “Not a cave.”
“Oh my word, you smiled. Did it hurt?”
He frowned at her. “I can—smile.”
“And now it’s gone. That was the first time I’d seen you smile.”
“There isn’t much to smile about. What did you want to ask?”
“No, really, I shouldn’t pry.”
“Speak freely,” he said again.
“Okay, fine. A house this size in Chicago directly on the lake shore that was designed by an architect so famous that you can’t even have a recliner if you want one must be worth a lot of money.”
“It was a good investment,” he confirmed.
“Who are your neighbors?”
Blaze frowned. “I haven’t met them.”
Her mouth dropped open as her chin lowered, and she said, “You don’t know your neighbors? Oh, that’s sad.”
He gestured vaguely toward the walls enclosing the houses on either side of his. “One of them is the head coach for the Chicago Bulls. The other is a US senator.”
“Are their houses as nice as yours?”
He shrugged because this discussion of housing dismayed him. He’d gone from a boarding school dormitory to basic training, base housing, and then this house. “Not according to the real estate agent.”
“What did your agent say about the other houses?”
The muscles in his face cramped from keeping his face passive. “That this house was a good investment because it was designed by one of the best students of Frank Lloyd Wright and was developed from one of Wright’s last plans.” He gestured to the fragile wall of glass overlooking the sparkling pool and lake. “Peters obviously worked more in glass, whereas Wright used stone and concrete. The others in this neighborhood are just big houses. McMansions, I think they’re called.”
“You know a lot about architecture,” Sarah said.
“I can recite what the real estate agent told me.” And the boarding school he’d attended had ensured he had a solid grounding in culture and the signals of extreme wealth.
“So, you didn’t get a pension from the military, and you don’t really work for a living—”
The lilt of her voice rising at the end made it clear that he was meant to finish her thought.
A lot of people wondered about that. Blaze had made a policy of not discussing his finances.
And yet, he admitted, “I did something stupid and reckless when I was drunk one time, and it worked out all right.”
Sarah stared at him with her liquid dark eyes, so lovely when she was tied up and helpless. She asked, “What did you do?”
Blake sighed and ran his hand over the hot back of his neck. “I bought a metric ton of Bitcoin for fifty cents a pop on a sarcastic whim to prove to my Navy buddies how dumbass I was when I was wasted. They ran through traffic or jumped off buildings. I dumped a month’s pay on something so obviously worthless that I might as well have set it on fire. I won the game of stupid. They were convinced I was a financial wild man, and I drank for free until I lay face down in the sand that night. The next time I thought about the Bitcoins, they were worth over sixty grand apiece.”
Sarah’s jaw dropped. “Oh my God.”
“Yeah. So, that five grand was cashed out for over six hundred million dollars, and I had other investments with brokers that did pretty well, too, all because I’d taken a loan from a man I shouldn’t have. And then I bought this house because the financial guys told me I should.”
Sarah slid down the cabinets and sat on the floor, her elbows resting on her bent knees, a posture of utter defeat. “So, that fifteen thousand dollars you gave me means nothing to you.”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
