Page 8 of The Billionaire in Her Bed

“And the reason for all this secrecy is…” She let the sentence hang in the air between them, waiting for him to fill the void.

Eli hesitated, torn. He shared pretty much everything with his administrative assistant. In the eight years she’d worked for him, the matronly woman had become more than his PA. She was the mother he’d never really had, one who made sure he ate three squares a day and brushed his teeth after every meal and got at least eight hours of sleep. Or tried to.

But admitting he’d been stabbed in the back by his best friend? That wasn’t something he ready to discuss, even with Ginny. The wounds were still too raw.

“Business?” she prompted when he didn’t answer. “Personal?”

“Both,” he admitted. “I think Momentum has a mole.”

Ginny choked on her coffee. “Are you serious?”

“As an eviction notice.” He handed her a napkin. “It’s the only way Dupree could have known about Dumbo. And Stuyvesant. And Flatbush.”

“Who?” She dabbed her mouth and balled up the napkin in her fist. “Simon? “

“I don’t know.” The list of suspects was short, but he wasn’t ready to call it. Not out loud, not until he had proof. Which was why he’d dragged Ginny out to the boroughs. “But I’m going to find out.”

“How are you going to do that if you’re playing recluse in Brooklyn?”

“That’s where you come in.” He paused for the waitress, who was hovering over him with her pad and pen at the ready for their orders. Ginny got oatmeal with raisins and he settled on scrambled eggs and bacon, which he figured even the worst short-order cook couldn’t screw up. When the waitress snapped her pad closed and turned on the heel of her non-slip shoes, he continued. “I need you to be my eyes and ears at the office while I’m quietly working this Sunset Park deal. Keep me in the loop. Keep things running smoothly.”

“Done,” Ginny said without taking even a beat to consider her answer.

“And you’ll have to watch my penthouse. Water my plants. Forward my mail.”

“Where to?”

He pushed a piece of paper with an address scrawled on it across the table. “I’ve got a month-to-month lease for an apartment at Candy Court.”

It hadn’t been easy tracking down the listing agent, getting a hold of the owner, and negotiating a lease in less than two days. But Eli was determined. And when he was determined, shit got done.

“Candy Court?” Ginny unfolded the paper and studied it.

“The building I’m going to buy. And trust me, the name will be the first thing to go. Figured I could kill two birds with one stone. Hide out and do some recon.”

“What am I supposed to tell Simon when he asks for you?” She refolded the paper and tucked it safely into the purse at her feet. “And your sister?”

Shit.His sister. How could he have forgotten her? Paige might be buried in work as a postdoc research fellow at Columbia, but that didn’t mean he could go AWOL without her noticing. She had an annoying habit of dropping by his place unannounced, usually to raid the fridge or do a few loads of laundry.

“I’ll deal with Paige. And I couldn’t care less what you tell Simon. Tell him I’m at a monastery in Tibet. On a sailboat in the Caribbean. Hiking the Appalachian Trail.”

“Fine,” Ginny huffed. “I’ll come up with a suitable cover story on my own. How long will you be in hiding?”

He shrugged. “A few weeks. A few months. However long it takes to figure out who’s doing this.”

Someone—most likely Simon, unless his partner had shot off his mouth and told someone else about the East Harlem project—was fucking with his livelihood. With the business he’d built with his blood, sweat, and tears. And once he smoked them out, they were going down.

Hard.