Page 56 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

“I’m sorry. But”—and here Caspian’s icescape eyes caught mine again—“you will thank me for it one day.”

Only the fact that I was in Nathaniel’s house stopped me from throwing the furniture at Caspian’s head. “You are sosowrong.”

There was a long silence.

“How is Eleanor?” asked Caspian, apparently deciding to just ignore everything.

“Ellery.”

“Yes. How is Ellery?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“Because she wouldn’t tell me.”

“Then I’m not going to tell you either.” I folded my arms. “You want to know about Ellery, put the work in.”

He swallowed. “She would never…that is, she knows what…what I did.”

“She knows what Lancaster Steyne did. But he didn’t take her brother from her. That was you.”

“Arden, please.” Caspian pushed away from the table, the legs of his chair rasping against the wooden floor, and surged to his feet. “Must you do this now?”

“No, but…”

He strode across the room to the French windows and stood, caged by their shadows, staring out at what I’m sure was a beautifully kept Nathaniel garden.

“I just think,” I told him, “like most things in your life, your relationship with Ellery isn’t nearly as irretrievably damaged as you think it is. She’s still your sister and she still loves you. That’s all still there. It’s just hidden. Like the stars in London.”

“Stars are dead light.”

“Okay then”—my voice exploded out of me at a frankly socially inappropriate volume—“I chose a bad fucking analogy.”

At which point, Nathaniel, gliding in from the kitchen, announced, “Île Flottante with pistachios.”

And we had to calm down, sit down, and pretend to give a damn about dessert. I’d seen enough BBC cooking shows to recognise that floating islands demonstrated some hard-core cheffing. But whatever. I smashed those smug meringue bastards with my spoon and drowned them in the crème anglaise.

“Y’know what I don’t get?” I heard myself say, when it was too late to shut me up again. “If you’re so big on this personal responsibility, be your best self, nobody holds you back but you thing, why do you work for an organisation that gives out free money?”

“Arden.” That was Caspian, in much the same tone he’d said “Nathaniel” earlier. Guess that put us 1:1 on diners behaving badly.

“No, it’s all right.” Nathaniel cast a sweet smile across the table. Evidently he was into Caspian defending his honour. “I’m happy to discuss this, although I’m not sure that’s an entirely fair characterisation of my position.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m sorry you feel that way. It wasn’t my intent.”

“Please don’t worry. Misunderstandings happen. But frankly, I’m not sure what you think the contradiction is.”

“Ten minutes ago, you were lecturing me on how I had this duty to better myself in order to deserve the opportunities I’d been given. But isn’t your entire job all about giving opportunities to people who, by definition, haven’t”—I threw sarcasm tongs—“earnedthem?”

Nathaniel gave me a sanctimonious look. “I’m not sure if you have a poorer opinion of me or the causes I support.”

“Hey now. I’m not the one going around saying people have to jump through a bunch of hoops just to be worthy of the nice things that happen to them.”

“I wasn’t talking about people in general, Arden, I was talking about you.”

“Wow. You’re not even going to pretend this isn’t personal.”

“You freely admit that you squandered an opportunity that most of us can’t even imagine, but you clearly think that this is some kind of charming foible instead of a character defect that you could correct if you wanted to.”