Trusting Mr. Sterling (The Billionaire Hearts Club #2)

Chapter 1

GAbrIEL

Gabriel Sterling had given hundreds of toasts in his career, from board meetings to client dinners to product launches. He knew how to work a room, time a pause, and make people believe every word, even when half of it was performance. This one was different.

“To Ronan,” he said, raising his glass. The guests gathered on the Beauchamp estate lawn fell quiet, champagne flutes suspended mid-air, conversations cutting off mid-sentence the way they did in boardrooms when the person with actual power started talking.

“Who proved that even the most disciplined among us can be undone by the right person.”

The crowd erupted in laughter. Ronan Wilder stood at the head table with his bride, looking more relaxed than Gabriel had seen him in fifteen years.

A notorious control freak, the man who scheduled bathroom breaks during board meetings, now gazed at his wife as if she’d invented sunshine.

Devney beamed beside him, radiant in white lace, her hand locked in his as if she’d anchored him to the earth.

“When we met at Harvard,” Gabriel continued, “Ronan made a pledge. No distractions. No complications. Nothing that’d interfere with building an empire.

” He paused, thumb rubbing the stem of his glass, letting the silence do the work.

“And then he met his assistant, who turned his entire world sideways.”

The crowd reacted again. Devney’s cheeks flushed pink, and Ronan pressed a kiss to her temple with a tenderness that twisted behind Gabriel’s ribs.

“So here’s to breaking the rules when the right person makes them obsolete. To Ronan and Devney.”

Crystal chimed as glasses met. Gabriel drained his champagne and set the empty flute on the table, the hollow ache behind his heart settling into its familiar place. He’d learned to bury it under quarterly reports and market projections.

Ronan had broken The Oath. Gabriel was happy for him, really. Watching his closest friend grin like an idiot while his new wife fed him cake sent a hot spike of envy through Gabriel. He washed it down with champagne lifted from a passing tray.

He scanned the terrace. Couples were everywhere, orbiting each other like planets around the sun.

Ronan and Devney sat at the head table, fingers intertwined even now.

The bridesmaid to Gabriel’s left kept glancing at her fiancé across the room with a knowing smile that suggested secrets between them.

The groomsman on Knox’s right had his wife’s lipstick on his collar, and neither of them seemed to care who noticed.

Knox caught his eye from down the table and raised his glass in mock salute, that familiar smirk in place.

They were the last two standing, both of them seated at the head table like prized exhibits in a museum of endangered bachelors.

The Bachelor Best Men. At least Knox found it amusing, but then again, the man found everything amusing.

Four years remained on The Oath. Gabriel could survive that long. He’d survived worse, like markets crashing, deals falling through, and the occasional hostile takeover attempt. Surely, he could manage four more years of strategic solitude.

The reception rolled into evening with more toasts, laughter, and music blurring into the background hum of celebration.

Gabriel circulated through the crowd, expression pleasant, charm deployed—a weapon he’d honed over decades.

He’d perfected the art of looking engaged while remaining detached, a skill his mother would’ve considered excellent breeding.

Eleanor Beauchamp caught him between the cake table and the terrace. Her silver hair gleamed under the string of lights. Her smile was that brand of gracious that old money cultivated like rare orchids. “Mr. Sterling, the wedding was spectacular, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” he agreed. “You and Andrew have a beautiful home.”

They exchanged pleasantries. Business talk disguised as small talk.

The weather as a metaphor for market conditions.

The bride’s dress as a segue into textile investments.

Gabriel could do this in his sleep, and he had done it in his sleep more than once, his brain running on social autopilot while the rest of him drifted elsewhere.

He excused himself and headed toward the bar. Knox was already there, holding court with some hedge fund manager Gabriel vaguely recognized, telling a story that had the man choking on his whiskey.

“And then Ronan actually said, ‘I appreciate your input,’ which is corporate speak for ‘I’m not interested in a single word coming out of your mouth.’”

Knox spotted Gabriel and grinned, wearing a shark-like expression that meant he was enjoying himself far too much. “Sterling! Tell this guy about the time Ronan tried to schedule a meeting to discuss why we shouldn’t schedule so many meetings.”

The man laughed again, dabbing his lips with a napkin.

Gabriel accepted a whiskey from the bartender, took a drink, and let the burn ground him.

Across the terrace, Ronan and Devney moved through the crowd together, their hands linked, still adjusting to one another, close with an instinctive ease rather than learned.

The hedge fund manager excused himself, mumbling something about finding his wife, and left them alone.

Knox leaned against the bar, studying Gabriel with the look he got when he was about to say something ridiculous.

The man had a gift for knowing exactly when to deploy absurdity as a conversational weapon.

“So. Carpools.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Do you think Ronan’s going to drive carpools? Get one of those SUVs with the golden retriever in the back? Coach peewee soccer?” Knox gestured with his glass, the ice clinking. “I’m trying to picture it. Ronan Wilder in a minivan with snack duty.”

Despite himself, Gabriel huffed. “No.”

“Exactly. He’ll hire someone for that part.”

“Well, you can hire a full-time nanny whose entire job is diaper duty.”

“That’s exactly what he’ll do.” Knox took a sip, his expression thoughtful, as if contemplating the logistics of outsourced parenthood. “Five bucks says he has an au pair named Gretchen within six months of their first child being born.”

“You’re an ass.”

“And yet, here we are—the last two left.” Knox raised his glass. “May we stay just as committed to emotional unavailability.”

Gabriel was about to answer when the back of his neck prickled. He knew that feeling—he’d learned to trust it across years of reading rooms and sensing threats before they announced themselves—and he turned.

A server crossed the terrace toward the bar.

Her dark hair was pulled into a bun. She moved with grace, her footsteps careful on the ancient stone, the tray of champagne flutes steady in her hands.

She was watching him and didn’t look away.

As she approached, her posture changed, shoulders pulling back and spine locking into something rigid, and Gabriel watched recognition dawn across her features.

She reached the bar, stopped, and their eyes met.

Hers were warm brown with amber flecks that caught the fading light, and he knew them.

He had memorized them when he was sixteen and stupid with first love, dreamed about them when he was eighteen and desperate to forget, and tried to bury them under two decades of late nights at the office and a desk drawer he never opened.

Tessa Thorne.

His pulse kicked at the base of his throat.

The color drained from her face, and her grip on the tray went slack.

The flutes slid forward, crystal tumbling through the air until they hit the flagstone—one, two, three sharp cracks followed by the shattering of glass.

Gabriel flinched at the third one, his own glass tightening in his hand.

Other servers rushed forward with towels and a dustpan, already cleaning up the mess, but she didn’t move. She stared at him, frozen, a statue of shock.

“Tessa.” Her name came out wrong. His voice cracked halfway through, like he was thirteen again and his voice had betrayed him in the middle of a pop quiz. He’d spent two decades learning how to command a room with nothing but his voice, and one word had reduced him to a fumbling adolescent.

She took a step back.

“I never thought I’d see you again.”

Then she turned and ran across the terrace, through the archway, and was gone.

Gabriel stood frozen, glass still in his hand. Knox had stopped mid-sentence and was staring, his expression shifting from confusion to calculation. “Friend of yours?” he asked.

Gabriel couldn’t answer. Tessa was here, at Ronan’s wedding, working as a caterer. He had loved her at sixteen—the girl he used to walk to every class, even when it made him late, the girl who’d kissed him behind the field house until they were both breathless and shaking.

“I need a minute,” Gabriel heard himself say.

He walked toward the far edge of the terrace where the water view opened up, leaving behind him the reception, Knox’s perceptive stare, and a scattering of glass shards that was the evidence his past had crashed into his present.

His hands were shaking. He set his glass on the stone wall and pressed his palm flat against the cool rock.

Ridiculous. He was thirty-six, the COO of a successful private equity firm.

He’d negotiated billion-dollar deals without breaking a sweat, stared down hostile boards, and made CEOs twice his age flinch with a look.

One glance from her, and he was bracing himself against a wall like a kid who’d just learned heartbreak isn’t just a song.

He pulled out his phone and typed her name into the search bar.

Thorne Events: exclusive catering and event planning for the New York metropolitan area.

The website showed elegant food photography, testimonials from satisfied clients, and a small headshot of Tessa in the corner.

She looked professional and polished, wearing the same focused expression he’d seen on the terrace.

She’d done it. She’d built something solid, made herself into exactly what she’d said she would, back when they were kids dreaming at Ashford Academy, stealing moments between classes when the future seemed infinite.

He stared at her photograph. She looked older now, refined in a way that suited her, but he could still see the girl who used to steal fries off his lunch tray without asking, the girl who’d kissed him behind the field house until neither of them could breathe.

His thumb hovered over her contact link. He locked the phone before he could talk himself into it.

Footsteps sounded on the terrace. Gabriel pocketed his phone and turned. Knox stood there with two whiskeys, already extending one. Gabriel took it, and they drank.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Knox said.

“A ghost would be easier to ignore.”

Knox waited. He could outwait anyone; years of negotiating had taught him patience. Beneath the jokes and deflections, he let silence do the tightening.

“Who was that?” he finally asked.

“Tessa Thorne.”

Knox turned the name over. “And how do I not know that name?”

“Because I have never said it.”

“So how do you know her?”

“Ashford.”

Knox whistled, low. “That’s not a fling. That’s a chapter.”

“It was years ago.”

“And tonight she happens to be catering Ronan’s wedding?”

“Apparently. Her catering company is based in New York.”

“Sterling—”

“Drop it.” Gabriel set his glass on the stone wall.

“Got it,” Knox said, and swirled his own.

They turned together to face the water, the sky bleeding from gold to purple to the deep blue of coming night. Tessa was in New York. She was running a successful business. And one look across a crowded terrace had reminded him how little control he had where she was concerned.

Four years left on the oath suddenly felt impossible.