The Billionaire Next Door (Billionaire Bad Boys #2)(59)

“But joining another corporate circus? I don’t know. Employees can be vindictive. Each out to stomp on other people in their race to the top.” She fiddled with the pen next. “Bartending is one for all, all for one. You band together and do the job. Survive the rush. Make tips. Split the bar so you make sure each bartender is waiting on the person they’ll extract the most money from.”

“Smart,” Tag said with a smile. “Who knew you were such a good player?”

“Am I?” She wrinkled her nose again and he felt all of him lean closer. She drew him to her in every way. “Guess I kind of am.”

“Yeah, I guess you kind of are.” He grabbed hold of her and pulled her closer. Her eyes slid shut and she pursed her lips, accepting his kiss easily.

Tag wasn’t exaggerating about Reese loving her ideas.

He was in love with them himself.





Chapter 17



The rest of the morning was domestic in a way she hadn’t expected. Rachel couldn’t very well go home in her travel clothes after spending all day on a plane in them, so when Tag offered to toss them in with the laundry, she took him up on it.

She sighed happily as she pulled on her warm jeans and sweater fresh out of the dryer.

“Much as I hate to watch you put clothes on, I have to say, you’re damn cute when you do it.”

She lowered the cowl neck of her sweater from her nose and smiled. She liked this. Liked being here with him. Hell, liked being anywhere with him.

His cell phone rang and he dug it from his pocket. As he stepped into the other room, Rachel pulled a few shirts and pairs of his (giant) jeans from the dryer. When he stepped back into the laundry room, she was about to make a joke about how folding them was like folding a tent…

Until she looked at him.

His face had gone ashen, phone in hand, his eyes unseeing. “I have to go.”

His monotone voice and vacant stare had concern flooding her bloodstream. She rushed over to him.

“What is it? What happened?”

He swallowed thickly before his mouth opened. The only word that came out was, “Eli.”

Two cracked syllables paired with wetness in his eyes.

Her heart hit her stomach.

The brother who was stationed overseas.

The brother who was supposed to come home in a few months.

Was he…oh, God, she couldn’t think it.

“I’m coming with you,” she said, having no idea where they were headed. But she wasn’t going to send him out on the snowy roads of Chicago by himself when he’d received bad news.

He moved through the apartment, grabbed his keys and wallet, and reached for the door. Rachel snagged his coat off a chair, put hers on, and grabbed her purse. Once they’d pulled out of the parking garage in a black Mercedes, she asked the question she’d wanted to ask right away.

“Where are we going?”

He blinked like she’d interrupted very deep thoughts. “Hospital. He was injured last week.” Bitterness eked into the worry in his tone. “They flew him home to Chicago Memorial. Dad knew—received the call when it happened—but Eli demanded he keep that to himself.”

“So that was your dad on the phone?”

“Yeah.” Tag cleared his throat. “He said Eli was out of surgery and Reese and Merina were already there.”

She heard the grit in those words and felt her ire rise in his defense. Why was Tag the last to know?

“I don’t even know what he had surgery for.”

“I’m sorry.” If this were her family, she’d know every bit of information and speculation before anyone knew anything. Like a live news report, they’d guess and wonder, and each unfolding minute would play out via text and phone calls.

The rest of the drive was silent, the only sound the wipers as they gathered snow from the windshield. At the hospital, they sat in the dark of the parking garage for a long moment, Tag with one hand on the steering wheel.

She wanted to ask if he was okay, but he wasn’t. She could see it in every taut muscle of his body. The way he wore worry like a second skin.

“My family hasn’t seen me with a woman in a decade,” he said, fingers flexing on the wheel. “Expect some shocked expressions.”

Her heart thudded, stopped, then restarted.

“Not something I make a habit of.” Without a glance in her direction, he climbed out of the car and came to her door to help her out.

Inside, he made short work of navigating the hallways to the room number his father had given him. She hurried beside him to keep up, worry and fear eating a hole in her chest. She didn’t have a lot of practice with emergencies. One close call with her mother in the hospital for what ended up being anxiety and a grandmother who’d had a heart condition and died when Rachel was six were the totality of her family crises. She was woefully ill-prepared to be here, but neither would she have let Tag come alone. She’d never remembered seeing anyone as devastated as he looked right now. She cared about him, and whether he knew it or not, she could tell he needed her here.

In the waiting room, he beelined for a cluster of chairs. A tall, handsome, dark-haired guy wearing a dark suit stood to greet them. Reese Crane. His build, his facial features, and even the scruff on his jaw told her this was Tag’s oldest brother.