The Billionaire's Matchmaker(58)

Quickly, she combed through the strands with her fingers then pinched her cheeks, only to have the butler walk in seconds later.

“I see we haven’t changed,” the butler said, spying Charlie. By this point, the terrier had grabbed hold of one corner of the carpet and pulled it back. “Still wild as ever. I’d hoped he’d slow down while Mr. Bonaparte was gone,” he said to Jenny.

“I’m sure he’ll calm down once the excitement of being home wears off,” she said. Of course, she was the same woman who thought Charlie had calmed down at her house, only to find he’d replaced furniture chewing with other activities.

They both stared at Charlie, who had moved on from digging the carpet to squirming across the surface on his back. “Perhaps,” he said. He turned his dour expression from Charlie’s latest gyrations to her. “Mr. Bonaparte will give you exactly five minutes. Follow me.”

As she followed the man down a long corridor that was as opulent and foreboding as the foyer, it dawned on Jenny that she could be one of the few, if not the only person in Chandler’s Cove, to meet Nicholas Bonaparte face-to-face. Whenever Charlie got in trouble, it was always a staff member who came to bail him out—never Mr. Bonaparte. Occasionally a check would arrive for one of the local causes—the library renovation, the new lacrosse field—but Bonaparte himself remained a mystery. Even when he summoned Gabby to his house back in January and asked her to dog-sit, he did so through the butler and a note. If not for the occasional, distant sightings of him walking the grounds after sunset, she’d think the man didn’t exist.

A pair of heavy oak doors blocked the end of the hallway. Before either human could reach for the handle, Charlie, who had apparently decided to join them, cut in front and began pawing for entrance.

The butler gave a weary sigh. “I should have realized you’d need to be first,” he said, granting him access.

Whatever Jenny had been expecting based on her brief tour so far, it wasn’t the dark, almost gothic atmosphere that greeted her. Heavy velvet curtains covered the windows, killing any trace of the sun. In fact, the only interior light at all came from a pair of laptops that sat atop a gigantic desk. Oddly enough, the monitors pointed outward. Jenny could see the squiggly lines of the screensavers. The angle turned everything else into colorless shadows.


Behind the desk stood the biggest shadow of them all: Nicholas Bonaparte.

Jenny jumped as the door shut behind her, locking her and Charlie inside. She waited for the shadow to come closer, but Bonaparte stayed where he was, shrouded by darkness.

“Cyrus said you wanted to see me.” His voice was low and rough like whiskey. Jenny felt another shiver as the sound wrapped around the base of her spine. “He said it was important.”

“Um, yes.” She swallowed her nerves. Five minutes wasn’t a long time; she could handle this. “It’s about Charlie. I’ve been watching him the past month.” She looked over at the dog who’d settled in a wingbacked chair by the unlit fireplace.

“What do you mean, you have been watching him? I left the dog in Gabrielle Wilson’s care.” He didn’t sound pleased with the change.

The last thing Jenny wanted was to get her friend in trouble. “I’m doing her a favor. She recently married, and I thought she and her husband might like some privacy, being newlyweds and all.”

“Hmmm.” Again, not pleased. “Well, if this is about payment, you need to talk with her. She was paid in advance.”

“I know. I’m here for a different reason.”

“Which is?”

He sat down. Jenny found it interesting that the expansive desk managed to dwarf everything in the room except his figure. Meaning he was as tall and broad as his silhouette suggested. If standing toe to toe, he’d best her height by a foot or more. Or so she assumed. The glare off the computer screens made it impossible to see his features clearly.

If he was trying to use the shadows to intimidate her, it worked.

“It’s about Charlie. Are you aware the dog was never…” She paused, a blush creeping into her cheeks. Under the circumstances, spelling out words felt awkward. Unfortunately, Charlie had a habit of reacting very poorly to words he didn’t like. “He was never F-I-X-E-D.”

Silence. “Your point?” he asked finally.

“My point is that my Lulu’s pregnant.”

“And when you say Lulu, I assume we’re talking about a dog?”

“My dog. Lulu is my cavalier spaniel. I had planned to breed her.” High school English teachers only made so much and thanks to her misspent youth, she didn’t have a lot in the way of savings. “Now I have to wait another year. In the meantime, there’s the matter of veterinary care for her and the puppies, until they’re placed anyway.” She reached into her satchel and retrieved the paperwork she’d tucked neatly in there earlier. “Here’s the report from Dr. Gideon Roth.” When he didn’t reach out to take them, she dropped the papers on his desk. “I’m sure as a businessman, you can appreciate my predicament. Not only have I lost potential income but I have to pay for the cost of carrying and placing the unplanned litter.”

“And you expect me to compensate you for these costs.”

“It’s only fair, don’t you think?”