Her Smoldering Billionaire (Tycoons of Pleasure Valley #2)

1. Margeaux

MARGEAUX

The earbuds came off in the elevator.

Twenty minutes, and the rest of the night was mine.

The rooftop was already full when I pushed through the stairwell door. Heat lamps glowing, string lights somebody had draped between the pergola posts, a folding table with bottles of wine and a cooler of beer. A dozen people I didn’t know standing in clusters, laughing at things I couldn’t hear.

Saylor was in the middle of it all, naturally—sundress, iced drink in hand, pulling a woman I recognized from Apartment 3D into a conversation with two guys from the second floor.

The 3D woman had a dreamy, distracted look about her—the kind of person who seemed like she was always thinking about something more interesting than whatever was happening in front of her.

Saylor didn’t seem to mind. She just kept talking, gesturing with her drink, making the whole thing look effortless.

My chest tightened watching them. Not jealousy—something closer to fascination. How did people do that? Just walk into a group and start talking as if the silence between strangers wasn’t a wall?

The planters saved me. Three oversized terra-cotta pots with tall grasses and trailing ivy, pushed into the far corner near the railing.

They blocked the sightline from the main group, created a pocket of shadow the string lights didn’t quite reach, and left a narrow strip of railing where one person could stand without being seen by anyone who wasn’t looking.

I found it in under a minute. Back to the wall. Water bottle in hand. The earbuds looped around my neck like a safety net I was trying not to use.

Twenty minutes.

From my corner, the rooftop was a fishbowl.

Saylor introduced the 3D woman to someone else.

The woman smiled, nodded, and drifted slightly to the left the way people do when they’re being polite but would rather be somewhere else.

The second-floor guys opened beers. Someone by the pergola laughed hard enough that I could feel it in the railing under my hand.

The stairwell door opened again. Two men walked out.

I recognized the first guy from the building—tall, broad, dark hair, five-o’clock shadow, sleeves pushed to his elbows.

Beckett Welch. He owned Pixel Lofts. Co-founded Myrror.

Everyone in Pleasure Valley knew his face, and everyone at this party seemed to know him personally, because three people called his name before he’d taken two steps.

The man beside him was different.

Short dark hair, cut close. Stubble along a jaw that looked like it had been cut from something harder than bone. Built, but contained—nothing sprawling about him, nothing loose. A fitted charcoal shirt, sleeves rolled once, expensive in a subtle way.

He stood like a man who was used to controlling a room, but right now, he wasn’t controlling anything. He was holding a glass of something amber and scanning the rooftop like someone looking for an exit.

Sebastian Locke. CEO of Solstice Shield.

His face had been in three filings I’d processed this month.

A former co-founder was suing him, claiming credit for the cybersecurity architecture Sebastian had built.

The senior litigation team at Mercer Grant was handling the case—depositions, document production, the full weight of a multimillion-dollar intellectual property dispute.

My involvement was limited to indexing exhibits and running citation checks, but the firm was small enough that everyone knew the name. Everyone had seen the photo.

The photo didn’t do the jaw justice.

Beckett got pulled into a conversation almost immediately. He clapped Sebastian on the shoulder and disappeared into the group. And just like that, Sebastian Locke was alone.

The shift was immediate. His posture didn’t change—still straight, still composed—but something behind his expression tightened.

His eyes moved across the clusters of people who all seemed to know each other, and I watched his thumb press against the side of his glass.

A small, controlled movement. The kind of thing nobody would notice unless they were watching.

I was always watching.

He lasted about thirty seconds before his gaze drifted toward the edges of the rooftop. Past the pergola, past the wine table, past the string lights—to the dark corner near the railing where the planters blocked the view and one person stood in the shadows with a bottle of water.

Our eyes met.

A flicker crossed his face. It was the same look I imagined on my own face every time I found a quiet corner in a loud room and realized someone else had gotten there first.

He walked toward me, confident and purposeful. He stopped on the other side of the planters, close enough to talk but far enough that the space between us still felt like a choice.

“You found the only defensible position on this roof,” he said.

His voice was low, unhurried. He wasn’t flirting. He was making a simple observation.

“Back to the wall,” he continued. “Sightlines to every entrance. Invisible from three directions.” His eyes dropped to the water bottle in my hand. “And sober.”

“Someone has to be.”

His mouth moved—not quite a smile, just an acknowledgment that the answer was better than he’d expected.

He glanced back at the group. Beckett was crouched by the fireplace alcove now, pointing at something with his phone’s flashlight while a woman I was pretty sure was the building’s leasing agent watched.

“You’re Sebastian Locke,” I said.

His attention came back to me fast. The glass stilled in his hand.

“My firm represents you,” I said. “Mercer Grant. I’m a junior paralegal—I don’t work on your case, but I’ve seen the filings.”

Silence. The string lights swayed. Someone across the rooftop dropped a bottle cap, and the small metallic sound carried farther than it should have.

“Most people don’t lead with that,” he said.

“Most people would pretend they didn’t know.”

“And you don’t pretend.”

“I don’t see the point.”

He studied me. The same quiet focus he’d used to scan the rooftop, turned inward now. Directed at a twenty-three-year-old paralegal in a button-down blouse and dress pants who hadn’t poured herself a drink and hadn’t introduced herself to anyone and was standing behind three pots of ivy.

“Sebastian,” he said. He extended his hand. “Since we’re skipping the part where we pretend.”

“Margeaux.” My hand met his. His grip was firm, warm, and brief, but not rushed. A man who understood that the handshake was information. “With an E-A-U-X.”

“French?”

“My mother was feeling ambitious.”

The almost-smile surfaced again. Slight, controlled, gone before it fully committed, but there.

He turned and leaned against the railing beside me, facing the party instead of the skyline.

Both of us watching. Neither of us seen.

The noise of the rooftop—laughter, music from someone’s phone, the low hum of a dozen conversations I’d never be part of—settled into the background like white noise through earbuds I wasn’t wearing.

“Twenty minutes,” I said, half to myself.

“What?”

“That’s how long I told myself I’d stay.”

He looked down at his glass. The ice had barely melted.

“How long has it been?” he asked.

I checked my phone. Fourteen minutes since I’d walked through the stairwell door. It felt like less.

“Six minutes left,” I said.

He nodded. Took a sip of his drink. Settled his shoulders against the railing like someone who’d found the one spot in a crowded room where he could breathe.

“I’ll keep you company,” he said. “Unless that ruins it.”

The earbuds hung around my neck. My water was warm. The planters blocked us from the rest of the roof, and the night air carried the faint smell of jasmine from someone’s garden below.

“It doesn’t ruin it,” I said.

I stayed forty-five minutes.