Page 53 of The Billionaire in Her Bed

The waitress nodded and hurried off.

“Did you find Mom and Dad?” Mallory popped the rest of the canapé into her mouth.

“More like they found me,” Brooke grumbled.

“Let me guess. Mom wanted to know why your young man isn’t here,” Mallory said, putting air quotes around “young man.”

Brooke let out an unladylike snort. “How did you know?”

“She grilled me about Hunter.”

“Where is the boy wonder tonight?”

“He’s on call.” Mallory’s ever-present smile slipped a little. “And I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”

A pang of guilt sucker-punched Brooke in the gut. She’d been so busy with Eli and the wedding she’d never had a chance to talk to her sister about Hunter. More like never made the time, she scolded herself, remembering how she’d canceled their lunch date after the wedding.

The guilt doubled, then tripled.

“I’m sorry. I’m sure Hunter’s a great guy.” Brooke tried her hardest to sound convincing. “It’s just…”

The lights flickered, and Mallory put a finger to her lips. “Shh. They’re about to start.”

Simon Adler returned to the stage, this time accompanied by a slightly taller man with cerulean-blue eyes and dark hair that curled over the collar of his tuxedo.

Eyes that had seen every inch of Brooke’s body. Hair her fingers knew the silky feel of almost as well as her own.

Mallory clutched her sister’s arm in a death grip. “Isn’t that…”

“Yes,” Brooke ground out between clenched teeth. “It is.”

“I take it you didn’t know he’d be here.”

“No.” Brooke watched him step up to the podium, a vein pulsing in her temple. “I have no clue what he’s doing here or why.”

“Good evening.” He flashed the crowd a disarming smile she was more than well acquainted with. “I’m Eli Ward, president of the Geek Girls board of directors and co-founder of Momentum Development, the sponsor of this evening’s event.”

What. The actual. Fuck.

Anger warred with heartbreak as Brooke tried to process what she was seeing. Her Eli Ward wastheEli Ward, the one her parents had talked about at brunch. Billionaire real estate developer. One ofFortune’smost influential businesspeople under forty, or some crap like that.

If he’d ever been hers at all.

She considered turning tail and running. Almost as quickly as the thought popped into her head, she rejected it. She’d always been more of a fight than flight kind of gal. And her need to know why Eli had been lying to her all this time trumped her desire to bury her sorrows in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey.

“I don’t have a clue,” Brooke repeated, shaking off her sister’s hand and lowering her voice to a hard, cold whisper. “But I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

…

The night was going perfectly according to plan. Beautiful ballroom. Good food. Free-flowing alcohol. And tons of eager bidders. By Eli’s estimate, Geek Girls should have an additional hundred grand, minimum, in its coffers by the end of the evening.

He’d finished his speech and was barely off the stage when his sister intercepted him, steering him into a corner away from the tables of auction merchandise. “Houston, we have a problem.”

Great. More mess.

Eli glanced around the room. Still nothing but happy campers as far as he could see. “What’s wrong? Seems like everything is going great.”

“Pissed-off brunette at eleven o’clock,” Paige hissed. “Says she needs to talk to you and only you.”