Read Online One Night With the Billionaire (Men of the Zodiac) by Sarah Ballance - Free Book Online Page A

because they sure wouldn’t want anything to do with me if I were still fixing up old cars. Except Aggie, of course.” He grinned. “But how about you? If you like island living so much, why don’t you chuck it all and buy one yourself?”
    The question took a couple of watts out of what looked like a forced smile, leaving him feeling like an ass without really knowing why. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” she said. “Life back home awaits. Life, my father, the law firm I’m supposed to take over when he retires. I’ve been working my whole life toward that goal.”
    “That’s a hell of a thing tying you down.”
    “It’s complicated.” She raised a cupped hand out of the pool and tipped it, watching the water pour out.
    “I think you attorney types have a habit of making things complicated whether they are or not.”
    His words earned him a sharp glance, but then she sighed. “You’re probably right.”
    “You only get one ride, princess. If you’re not happy, figure out how to get there.” Funny, the irony. Her father had basically given Ryder options, and he’d be willing to bet her father was exactly the one to take hers away.
    “So, are you happy?” she asked.
    He held out his arms in dramatic fashion. “Look at this. Who wouldn’t be?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Let me rephrase. Are you happy without anyone to share this with?”
    Straight to the cross examination . “Happier than I ever was looking.”
    “Why is that?”
    He shrugged. “After a while, you stop trusting people. There’s no such thing as ‘just sex’ once you make the Forbes list. And anything more than that? Forget it. Everyone has an agenda, and I’m tired of being on it.”
    “That’s really sad.” She tilted her head. “I guess we’re both a little pathetic in our own ways. Both running.”
    He opened his mouth to tell her he wasn’t running, but he hadn’t bought an entire island, population him, because he’d been content to stand still. There was just one difference. “I’ve stopped running. What about you?”
    She sank past her shoulders, a small smile shaping her lips as tiny waves bumped her chin. “For me to quit running, you’d have to fire up that jet of yours and send me back to…back to where I came from, so I could face what happened there.”
    “You’ll have to do that eventually.”
    “Yes, and eventually I want to. My eyes are opened in a way they weren’t before… I want to go back on my terms. Start working for what I want instead of doing everything to please my father. In a way, I’m grateful for what happened. I have a second chance. But until the gossip rags move on to the next scandal, I’d be ineffective, and I don’t want to walk back into failure.”
    Her confession shifted something inside him. All these years she’d existed in his mind on the pedestal her daddy built for her—a place where Ryder figured nothing went wrong, even though logically he knew better. Scandal that hit both on personal and professional levels had a way of devastating most people. Shattering illusions. But not her. He admired that she took the blow she’d been dealt and wanted to do something with it.
    He related a little too well.
    But did she know that?
    She hadn’t laid eyes on him in ten years. Having money didn’t make him a good guy; if anything, his past suggested the contrary. He imagined she placed a degree of trust in him because of the unexpectedly mutual friend who had arranged for her visit, but trust was a damned hard thing to win. In retrospect, he was shocked she hadn’t taken one look at him and demanded to go home. She probably hadn’t the wherewithal to do so at the time, but now she’d had time to think. And he cared a little too much about what she thought of him, but hadn’t that always been the problem? So much of his life had been shaped by disapproval. It was past time to move on. Past time for a truce…not just with her, but with the man he’d