Page 2 of Her Brother's Billionaire Best Friend

“You should go,” I said, my voice hollow and lifeless. “It’s late.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I just wanted to get away from my dad.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just…”

“Look,” said Conor gently. “It’ll all be okay. I promise you.”

But it wouldn’t be okay. None of it was going to be okay. And the awful thing was that only I knew why.

I didn’t want to touch him—didn’t want to look at him, for fear that if my eyes lingered too long on his angular jaw, and handsome wiry frame, I’d be tempted to stay. Conor would know something was up. So I stretched out my arms, wrapped them around his slim torso, and rested my head on his chest.

He clasped his arms around me, and I smelled him, the sweet smell of varnish and the wood-smoke from his dad’s workshop. And I looked up at him.

“Goodbye, Laura Solomon,” he said. “Guess that’s the last time I get to call you that.”

“Yeah,” I faked a smile. “I guess it is.”

He bent down, and pressed his lips to mine. I swooned in his embrace, and for a moment, I could think about nothing but the sweet taste of his mouth, and the way he held me like he’d never let me go. And for a moment, I thought that I was wrong—that I couldn’t leave him, not now, not when I wanted him this way and always would. But when the kiss was over, and I looked into his eyes, I still saw that same pitying expression. And I knew there was nothing that could stop me.

Conor squeezed my hand, and then he was gone. I turned and watched him loping down into the valley. I knew the route so well—we’d snuck in together so many times, down past the old rail depot, through the swampy waters on the west side of the lake, to the tumbledown house where he lived.

“Goodbye,” I whispered.

My shoulders shook, and I realized a tear had rolled down my cheek. It was lucky Conor hadn’t come inside. If he had, he would have seen that I had a bag packed, waiting by the door.

I called a cab from the phone in the hotel. So much could go wrong. If it was Pete Dickey on the night shift, he knew my dad and the jig would be up. If it was Lawrence working at the turnstile by the rail station, he was best buddies with David, my older brother. And if anyone had been awake, then I would have been caught.

But as luck turned out, it wasn’t Pete on the night shift. Lawrence wasn’t working the front desk. He’d had the night off. And there was no one awake in the hotel. I was alone. I took a cab to the station, then got a train to Seattle. I got to the airport at 4 am, where I emptied my savings account and booked myself on the first flight to San Francisco.

And the pregnancy test? I threw it away. Some part of me wanted to leave it behind on the porch, so that everyone knew.

If only I had. Things would have been so different.

*

Kyle Derek Solomon was born on February 12th the following year, at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, at 8 am.

“He’s such a beautiful baby,” said Winnie, in my tiny, run-down apartment block where I’d been living for the past seven months. “Look at those eyes!” Out of the kindness of her heart, she’d driven me to the hospital when I’d gone into labor at 5 am. Kyle, I was told, was one of the quickest and easiest deliveries that had ever been seen. I guess he couldn’t wait to come into the world.

From the start, he was a special baby. Winnie always said so, and I couldn’t help but agree with her. The 67-year-old retiree who lived next door to me was a tireless helper. She shepherded me through the first few months of childcare while I worked long hours and nights in the mailroom of the San Francisco Post. But more than once or twice, my manager or a journalist down there searching for his paycheck had to turn a blind eye to the baby carrier nestled in the back of the office.

I loved him more than anything. And more than once, I burned with guilt. He had a family in the world. And somewhere out there, Kyle had a dad. Not that I knew where he was. Conor had joined the Navy a few months after I left. But I was persona non grata in Caluga Falls. My dad wouldn’t talk to me, and neither would my mom. I still wrote to my brother, David, and spoke to him sometimes on the phone. He kept urging me to come home.

And for a while, I thought about it. My life in San Francisco was tough. But one day, it just so happened that Keith Braggart, the commissioning editor, came down to the mailroom to ask me about something. We were chatting in the hot, stuffy room when he saw the book on my desk. It had been two years since I’d first arrived in town.

“Huh,” he said. “Local History of Portafino. Any good?”

“Well, I’ve only got through the first hundred pages,” I said. “But I’m going up with my son on the weekend. We’re going to see the flotilla.” Ever since my dad took me out on Caluga Lake when I was a kid, I'd always loved boats. Portafino had little boat races in the bay every year. They weren’t a big deal or anything, but I thought it might help me feel a little less homesick. I’d been living in San Francisco for a year then, but I still thought of home. I still thought of Conor, of where he was and what he was doing.

“You know,” said Keith, “I wanted to get one of my junior reporters to write that up. Interesting piece of local culture and all that. But she just called in sick this morning.”

I saw my chance, and I took it.

“I could write about it,” I said, staring defiantly into his eyes. “If you like. Something short, for the back pages?”

Keith studied me, his gray eyes looking at me before turning to the perfectly-organized mailroom and at the baby carrier, stuffed at the back in my office.

“Sure,” he said, smiling. “If you like. Put the copy on my desk on Sunday afternoon, why don’t you?”