Ensnared (The Accidental Billionaires #1)(69)

Somehow I knew I’d probably always be a fisherman at heart. Maybe I’d clean up well, but I’d never quite be as casual in a tux as somebody like Eli Stone.

I exited the dressing room just in time to see Skye coming out of hers in a pair of jeans and a green sweater that I already knew matched her eyes.

Get over it, Sinclair.

My relationship with her happened a long time ago. It had been almost a decade. But for some reason, she was the only woman I wished had stayed.

Maybe I was still pissed that she left me while I was out on a long-haul trip. If I wanted to be reasonable, it wasn’t easy dating a guy like me. I had been at sea more than I was home, and I’d made shit for money. But the funds I’d taken in had helped raise my siblings, so I couldn’t ever regret doing it.

Just talk to her so you can both be civil for Jade’s wedding.

Not a single word had passed between me and Skye since she’d moved back to Citrus Beach from San Diego. Strangely, she’d appeared to be just as angry as I was, and had dissed me every time we ran into each other.

I stopped next to her instead of going for the door. “Hello, Skye,” I greeted her cautiously.

Her face looked tense as she stared at me. “Aiden,” she acknowledged.

“Look, I know that we have an unpleasant past, but can we just get along until Jade’s wedding is over?” I asked huskily. “Our relationship was over a long time ago, and we’ve both moved on.”

Christ! I’m such a liar.

Honestly, I really wanted to take her and shake her until she told me why the hell she’d married another guy, a man who had evidently put her and her daughter through hell. Shit! I would have been a better choice, even though I’d been poor. At least I wasn’t part of an organized-crime ring. And I’d cared about her.

She turned her head, her eyes darting away from mine. “I’m not over it, and you know why,” she said in a sharp tone I’d never heard her utter. “But I have no problem trying to be civil for Jade’s sake. Now I have to go. I have a daughter to pick up from school.”

“What in the hell did I do?” I asked in an angry voice. “You left me, remember?”

“Obviously you have a memory problem,” she answered as she put on her lightweight jacket. “I’ll see you at the wedding.”

I gaped at her as her shapely ass marched out the door.

“What the fuck?” I said under my breath.

She has no damn reason to hate me. I didn’t replace her with another woman. She dumped me while I was out to sea.

If there was one thing I knew, it was that Skye was a realist. And she wasn’t prone to drama. At least, she hadn’t been.

Something’s not right.

I strode to the door and exited just in time to see the back of her car as she drove away.

Why the fuck do I care?

Skye Weston was nothing to me anymore.

I put my hands in the pockets of my jeans, determined that I wasn’t going to give a shit about why she seemed to blame me for our breakup.

But as I headed for my vehicle, I knew damn well I was lying to myself.

Skye had haunted me for years, so I was going to figure out exactly what she was thinking. I just wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to do it.





EPILOGUE

JADE



Three months later . . .

“Eli, are you seriously considering this project?” I asked him as I went through a prospectus on a large research facility that was less than five years old and failing.

I hadn’t yet snagged the job of my dreams, even though I’d interviewed for several over the last few months. Some of them had been out of the area, a move that Eli wasn’t particularly happy about. But he was so supportive that he offered to have dual headquarters if I was interested in any of the opportunities.

Honestly, I didn’t want to go anywhere. San Diego and Citrus Beach were home for both of us. And even though I knew he’d do anything for me, I knew he didn’t want to live on the opposite coast, and neither did I.

I was still getting used to the fact that I was marrying Eli. We spent the weekdays in his San Diego home, and the weekends in Citrus Beach. I was still helping him out in his office every day because he insisted that he needed me, but I knew it was just an excuse for both of us to work together every day.

I was getting better and better at handling some things at Stone, but I was mostly still vetting the opportunities that came up on a daily basis.

“I really don’t know,” he said nonchalantly from his desk. “I thought I’d leave that one up to you. It’s not in my area of expertise.”

I looked up from my position on the couch across the room. “You have experts,” I reminded him.

“I’d rather have you take it,” he answered.

I went back to my laptop and finished going through the information I had. Finally, I said, “It looks like they took on way too many projects, and didn’t have the money to fund them.”

It was a state-of-the-art genetics lab, but it was poorly managed.

“If I decided to buy, I think it would make an excellent facility to do genetic conservation research for wildlife,” he said.

It took me a moment to take in what Eli was really suggesting.

The facility was enormous, and could accommodate several areas of study. Since it was already built, there would be minimal changes needed, but overall it was perfect.