“Everything is okay,” I whisper, staring at the diamond because I can't bring myself to look at the man standing by the door. "I used ten thousand dollars for a last-minute helicopter charter. It was the most reckless thing I've ever done. But Penelope can't touch you. It's over."
"What's over ... the job?" Brooks asks. I don't have to look up to know he is moving. His footsteps are almost silent on the hardwood floor as he closes the distance between us. “You think this was about a job, Ivy? You think you spent ten thousand dollars of your future to fulfill a contract?”
“I’m a professional,” I say, though the lie feels like ash in my mouth. “I finish what I start.”
He stops inches from me. Heat radiates off him, a physical wall of warmth that makes my knees go weak. He reaches out, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone, his touch so light it is almost a question.
"I don't love you because you're reliable, Ivy," he says, his voice edged with a vulnerability I've never heard from him. "I love you because you are the only real thing in my world. Irealized tonight I'd rather be bankrupt and disgraced with you than the King of Wall Street alone."
My chest tightens, then settles into a slow, heavy roll. I finally look at him, seeing the dark, stormy honesty in his eyes. “You’re an idiot, Taylor.”
“I’m your idiot,” he whispers.
He leans in, his forehead resting against mine. The scent of him, scotch, sandalwood, and pure, unadulterated Brooks, floods my senses. I reach up, my hands finding the hem of his dress shirt, needing to feel the reality of the man beneath the suit.
“No more contracts,” I breathe.
“No more contracts,” he promises. “No more management,” he vows.
He captures my mouth in a kiss that isn’t a performance for the board or a strategy for the press. It is a claim, raw, desperate, and filled with the hunger of eight weeks of pretending we don’t want this. I make a soft sound in the back of my throat, my fingers tangling in his dark hair as I pull him closer, wanting to dissolve the last few inches of air between us.
Brooks doesn’t stop. He backs me up until my calves hit the edge of the California King.
“Take it off,” he murmurs against my lips, his hands finding the zipper of my leather jacket.
I help him, the rasp of the metal sounding like a final goodbye to the Stand-In. The jacket hits the floor, followed by my boots, until I am standing before him in my jeans and the thin tank top I'd flown in. He lifts me onto the bed, his weight following me down until I am pinned beneath the commanding pressure of him.
The balance has tipped, and it isn’t his. He is a man, and I am a woman, and there are no clauses left to hide behind.
"I love you, Ivy Sullivan," he says, looking down at me with an intensity that makes my vision blur.
"You better, Taylor," I gasp, already pulling at his shirt. What follows is a blur of discarded clothes and desperate hands. We move together in the dim light of the cottage, a rhythmic, soul-deep dance that echoes the waves crashing on the shore outside.
It isn't the "biology" he'd claimed before. It is the Main Event I have been waiting for my entire life. Every touch is a revelation, every moan a truth we’ve been suppressing since the night of the thunderstorm. When we finally shatter together, the force of it leaves us gasping and clinging to each other in the quiet aftershock.
Later, as the moonlight filters through the French doors, casting long, peaceful shadows across the room, Brooks pulls me close against his chest. My skin is cool now, my breathing finally slowing. I look at the emerald-cut diamond sitting alone on the table, catching the moon.
Tomorrow, we will face the press and the board. We will deal with the Vanderbilts and the headlines. But tonight, the only thing that matters is his arms around me and the way he kisses the top of my head in his sleep. He didn’t save his company; he let me save him. I close my eyes, his heat lulling me toward a sleep that doesn't require a plan.
The Stand-In has done her job so well that she has become the only thing that is real. The contract is over. The job is finished. I am exactly where I am meant to stay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BROOKS
I wake up to the sound of something I haven’t heard in years: silence that doesn’t feel like a vacuum.
Usually, the mornings in the Hamptons, or Manhattan, or London, are preceded by the mental ticking of a clock. I wake up and immediately begin triaging the day. Categorizing risks. Reviewing spreadsheets in my mind. Preparing myself to be the man the world expects me to be. The strategist. The successor. The liability-free billionaire. My life runs on containment, and every morning is spent making sure nothing leaks through.
But this morning, the only thing I can focus on is Ivy Sullivan’s head on my chest and the soft, rhythmic puff of her breath against my skin.
I don’t move. I don’t even want to blink. I’m not looking for a way out. I’m not calculating the ROI of the moment or wondering how this would look on the cover of the Journal. I am … still.
The guest cottage is bathed in the pale, watery light of a Tuesday morning, light that usually feels cold and judgmental in the Hamptons. But here, it feels soft. There's no "Great Wallof Down" this time; just her leather jacket tangled with my discarded dress shirt on the floor. Casualties of a war we've finally stopped fighting.
I look down at her. Her dark hair is a wild halo against the white silk of the pillowcase, a chaotic contrast to the sterile perfection of this room. There is a faint smudge of yesterday’s mascara under one eye, a messy human detail that makes my heart do a slow, painful roll in my chest. Her lips are slightly swollen from the way I’d spent half the night worshiping them, and she looks small in the center of the massive bed.
She looks fragile, and yet, she is the only person on this entire godforsaken island who had the balls to dip into a half-million-dollar fortune to set me straight.
