Most Eligible Billionaire: a grumpy sunshine romantic comedy (Billionaires of Manhattan)
Chapter 32

ELEVEN MONTHS LATER ~ NEW YORK CITY

I’M HAVING drinks with Smitty, an old college friend, and Theo Drummond, a chemist who might do some work with the Locke Charitable Foundation.

We’re at one of the posh bars that cater to the Wall Street large-assets crowd.

The place is filling up. People come up to us now and then to say a quick hello. Locke is stronger than ever. Everybody wants in.

Small consolation.

Smitty has his eye on three women across the way. “Should we ask those three to sit with us?”

“Not me,” I say. My heart’s not in it. Hasn’t been for a while.

“Theo?” Smitty tries.

Theo shakes his head. “You’re on your own.”

“I can’t fuck all three,” Smitty says. “Well, actually I could…”

Theo groans.

I point my finger into my empty glass, lit from the bottom from the glowing bar. The bartender comes over and pours the scotch.

Smitty turns back to me. “Come on, Henry, when was the last time you had any?”

“A minute ago, and it tasted utterly amazing,” I say.

“You know what I mean,” Smitty says.

How long? The answer is a year and twenty-one days. It’s been a year and twenty-one days since I had sex. A year and twenty-one days since Vicky disappeared. Literally disappeared along with her sister.

I try not to think what she’d say about my sex hiatus, how she’d tease me about losing my most eligible bastard status.

I don’t care. It’s only her. Her or nobody.

My PI hasn’t turned up jack. It’s a lot easier to hack through somebody’s fake identity than to scour the planet for a person who knows how to disappear.

Last I heard, Denny was up to his eyeballs in debt, drinking heavily and trying to borrow money from the people he once snubbed for being beneath him.

A spate of Where is Vonda? articles came out, but nobody ever found her.

One year and twenty-one days.

“You sure?” Smitty tries.

“I’m not over my last thing,” I explain. “Final answer.”

He turns to Theo. “What’s your excuse? You’re not dating anybody. Look at them—smokin’ hot!”

“I’m not dating anybody,” Theo says. “But there is somebody.”

“What?” I ask. This is the first I’ve heard of Theo with anybody. “Who is she?”

“I don’t know who she is,” he says. “That’s the problem.”

“I don’t understand,” Smitty says.

“This is going to sound a little crazy, but I’ve been having…conversations…with my wake-up call girl.”

He’s got our attention now. “Conversations?” I ask.

He gets this faraway expression. He sucks in a breath.

“Are we talking phone sex here?” Smitty demands.

“No. I mean, yeah, but it’s more than that,” Theo says. “We talk about everything,” he says.

“But to be clear, phone sex is involved,” Smitty presses.

Theo says nothing. I take it as a yes. “Jesus,” I say.

Smitty just laughs.

“You’ve never seen her,” I clarify. “You literally have no idea what she looks like…”

Theo shakes his head. “No information about her whatsoever. I’ll replace her, though. I’m scouring this fucking city.”

“You know she could be a total troglodyte,” Smitty points out with his usual sensitivity.

“I don’t give a shit.” Theo gazes out the window at the people going by. “I have to replace her.”

He looks exhausted. Is he even sleeping?

I nod. “Dude. Hard to replace a woman who doesn’t want to be found.” I should know.

He tells us the scant details he has on her. We brainstorm ways to us it to replace her.

I tell him about my attempts to replace Vicky. How I sometimes scour the jewelry collections, but nothing I see ever comes close to what she’d make.

Nothing feels like her.

Or maybe I’m just getting further away.

“Speaking of makers and their studios, you put a bid in for that London thing?” Smitty asks me.

“What London thing?”

“The huge warehouse share studio—Redmond or something?”

“I haven’t ever heard of it,” I say.

“That’s weird. You have a UK presence. I would think Locke would be the first firm they’d invite to bid. It’s the kind of shit you guys have been getting off on lately. It’s some big cooperative makers space. Freaking huge. Reclaimed urban ruin, neighborhood integration…”

I sit up, interest piqued.

He goes on to outline more features…familiar features. “We bid it, and it’s not even our thing.”

“Are there places to eat, sleep?” I describe the ideas I had for the Southfield Place Studio.

He nods his head. “So you do know about it.”

“The owner’s not named?”

He gives me a funny look. “No.”

“You have access to the RFP?” Request for proposal. I nod at his phone.

“What? And let you bid against us if you weren’t even invited?”

I nudge his phone toward him. “Forward me the RFP.”