So This Isn’t Love (Last Billionaire Standing #3)

Chapter 1

FINN

"Iswear to God, if I have to hear about one more of us finding true love, I'm buying a small island just to get away from you all.

" I toss more chips into the pot and survey my fellow billionaires around the table at The Retreat, where the light is amber, the scotch is older than my youngest brother, and the company has been going soft on me one wedding announcement at a time.

"Careful, Bardot." Damien Langley's pressed suit and cold smile still terrify most of Manhattan, even if he does keep checking his phone like a teenager. "That's exactly the kind of arrogant bullshit I used to say. Right before fate knocked me on my ass."

Wyatt Reed's eyebrows shoot up. Brad Hayes actually sets down his scotch. Even Gabe Sinclair's unreadable expression shifts a degree. Because Damien Langley, the ruthless bastard who used to schedule his entire life in fifteen-minute increments, just admitted out loud that fate played him.

"Christ." I make a show of studying my cards. "First, Mason the Machine goes native in paradise with Lucy, then Alec starts building love nests with Ella in Sedona. Now you're getting philosophical about fate. I need stronger scotch for this."

"Don't worry." Damien's smile holds a challenge as he feeds the pot. "I'm sure your immunity to love will hold up much better than ours did."

"No doubt." Gabe's wry gaze finds me across the table. "Hard to fall in love when he's never had a relationship outlast his extreme sports equipment."

Wyatt chuckles. "Finn doesn't stay still long enough to meet anyone."

"Not a bad tactic, come to think of it," Brad says, moving a stack of chips to the center. "I might be more like Finn here, if I didn't have my daughter to think about."

Damien's phone pings. He glances down and smiles, an actual smile, on that face. "Sorry, gentlemen. I need a minute."

"Let me guess. Willow again? What does that make, the third time tonight?" While he types, I top off Brad's glass from the decanter at my elbow, since the man's been nursing fumes for ten minutes and somebody at this table has to have manners.

Damien flips me off without looking up, grinning at whatever his fiancée wrote back.

Wyatt shakes his head at me. "Pathetic. Sooner or later, it's going to be one of you three taking the fall."

And here's where I mention the part I never get tired of mentioning, ladies and gentlemen: The game inside the game.

The Last Billionaire Standing wager is my invention.

My title. I built it out of a stray remark of Gabe's the night Mason brought Lucy by to show off his post-elopement tan, then I named it, set the stakes, and shook six hands on it.

A million per man. Last single man to avoid the trap of falling in love takes the kitty, and if more than one of us survives the decade, the holdouts split the pot.

With Damien's and Alec's generous donations, the fund sits at a gorgeous two million and climbing.

The bookmaker does not lose his own book. That isn't arrogance on my part. That's just how good bookmakers work.

"Hell, no. Not me. Which is why I'm not taking any chances now." I raise the last bet, just to prove I can. "Gentlemen, I don't fall. Falling is for people who didn't plan the descent. I jump. There's a difference, and the difference is the parachute."

"The parachute being what," Wyatt says. "Your charm?"

"My exit strategy. I've never met a woman I couldn't leave by Tuesday.

" The table boos as one man, and I accept it with a bow from the neck up, because a good emcee never argues with the crowd.

"Besides, the only commitment in my future is a date with fresh powder in Colorado next week.

Breaking my own speed record down the slopes, right after I scope out that beautiful piece of land in Breckenridge I've got my eye on. "

"You still thinking about adding a chain of resorts to the Bardot Adventures brand?" Gabe tosses his chips onto the pile.

"More than thinking about it. I've been looking for the right opportunity to expand for a couple of years now. This Colorado property could be it."

"The resort market is saturated." Wyatt leans back in his chair, dark eyes glinting. "Though I suppose if anyone could make extreme sports luxury retreats work, it would be the guy who tests all his own death-defying equipment."

"Death-defying is a bit dramatic." I check my watch, running the time difference. My development team should be wrapping up their site survey about now. "Just because you prefer your adrenaline rushes in the boardroom doesn't mean the rest of us can't have a little fun."

"Fun." Brad snorts into his scotch. "Is that what you call jumping out of perfectly good helicopters?"

"Better than sitting in endless custody hearings." I toss back the rest of my drink. "No offense."

"None taken." Brad's ice-blue eyes narrow as he studies his cards. "Though I notice you didn't deny the helicopter thing."

"The prototype needed testing. What kind of CEO would I be if I didn't stand behind my products?"

"A sane one?" Gabe suggests dryly.

"Where's the fun in that?" I arrange my chips, enjoying the familiar rhythm of the table. "Besides, what's the worst that could happen?"

"Death?" Wyatt offers helpfully.

"Dismemberment?" Brad adds.

"Probably both," Damien chimes in, finally surfacing from his phone. "Though knowing Finn, he'd somehow manage to livestream the whole thing for his marketing team."

My phone buzzes in my jacket pocket, but I ignore it. Probably my Colorado team with the survey results. It can wait until I win this hand. "You're all just jealous that my company actually produces something exciting. Unlike, say, corporate restructuring or venture capital."

The phone buzzes again. And again.

I pull the device out, slide my thumb over the screen, and stare at my older brother's name. What does Colton want? Ten years of carefully maintained distance, of building my own empire far from Long Island’s North Fork and the family's sprawling vineyard, and now he's calling like it's nothing?

Like I'm still the screwup middle son who could never quite measure up to our father's impossible standards.

I send the call to voicemail and set the phone face up on the felt. Wyatt's knowing smirk says he clocked the whole transaction.

"Looks like someone's getting cold feet about those Colorado powder runs."

"Please." I aim for casual and hit it, because casual is my native language. "The only thing cold will be the champagne I'm drinking slope-side next week while you're all chasing your next acquisitions."

But underneath the ball-busting, the quieter channel is already running its math as Colton’s number rings again. For all our complicated history, my older brother has never once been a man for drama. This many attempts means something's wrong.

"Speaking of cold things," Brad says with a smirk, "remember when Finn tried testing that experimental wingsuit in Alaska..."

My phone vibrates for the third time. I reach for a joke, one about my stodgy eldest sibling discovering speed dial, or one about our mother’s frequent sulking over her dearth of grandchildren, or a joke about anything.

Nothing comes. Empty chamber.

That's the tell I'd never explain to this table. The jokes are my canaries. When they go quiet, whatever's down in the mine is real.

"Deal me out of this hand." I push back from the table, ignoring the raised eyebrows. "I need to take this."

"Everything okay?" Damien's question holds genuine concern beneath the polish.

"Fine. Probably just family business."

"Family business?" Wyatt's eyebrows climb higher. "Since when do you handle anything involving the vineyard?"

"I don't." It comes out sharper than I planned, with ten years of proving I could succeed without the family name pressing on the back of it. "And I'm not starting now."

But as I stride for the door, phone still buzzing in my hand, my swagger thins with every step. Because the last time my brother was this persistent about reaching me, it was to tell me our father had died.

I hit accept just before I clear the doorway. "This better be good, Col. I'm in the middle of..."

"Evan's in the ER."

I stop in the hallway, hand finding the doorframe. Evan's the youngest of us three, the one who still sends me videos of himself doing donuts on the vineyard ATV, and the picture of him in a hospital bed refuses to load right. "Shit. What happened?"

"Broken leg. He came off the storage loft at the winery wrong." Colton's voice holds that same steady calm he's always used to talk me down from ledges, literal and metaphorical. "Clean break, they're casting him now. He'll be home by morning. Mom's freaking out."

Of course she is. "But he's okay?"

"He will be. Look, Finn..." Colton cuts off, and Colton never cuts off. My brother could narrate a barn fire in complete sentences. "I know you've got your own life now, your company to run. But Mom could really use all of us here in Mattichogue. Even if it's just for a couple of weeks."

Two weeks in the hometown. I close my eyes and watch my careful plans unravel on the inside of the lids. The Colorado property. The resort plans. Everything I've built to prove I'm more than the disappointing middle Bardot son.

"Col..."

"He was asking for you. Evan, I mean. Before they took him back to set the leg."

Damn it. Colton knows exactly which buttons to push, because Evan's always been the bridge between us, the easygoing kid brother who never took sides in the long cold war between me and our father.

"Two weeks," Colton adds quietly. "That's all I'm asking. Help me handle Mom, deal with the spring scheduling while Evan's down. Then you can go back to pretending we don't exist."

The bitterness in that last line hits harder than he probably intended. Or exactly as hard as he intended.

Behind me, laughter rolls out of the card room. My friends, my chosen family, enjoying another evening of wealth and freedom and uncomplicated lives. Everything I've spent ten years building and defending.

But Evan's in a hospital bed tonight. And no matter how far I've run, some bonds don't break.

"Fine. I'll come." Two short sentences, the plainest I've produced all night, so naturally I can't leave them alone. "Tell Evan if he wanted my attention, there were cheaper ways to get it."

"Tell him yourself. First thing tomorrow?"

"First thing."

"Define first thing. Because Mom is literally pacing holes in the waiting room floor, and I've got Tyler asleep on two chairs."

"Jesus, Col. It's almost midnight."

"And you've got a perfectly good plane sitting at Teterboro. You know, the one from all those adventure posts and livestreams. Hell, you could drive to the North Fork in under two hours. I'm sure you've got a car or ten to choose from."

I want to argue. Want to tell him my life doesn't revolve around Bardot Vista's schedule anymore. But he's right. I'm two hours away, I've got a brother in the hospital, and a mother who, for all her faults, doesn't deserve to face another family crisis alone.

"I'll be on the road as soon as I can." Already my head is repacking the week. "Tell Mom I'm on my way."

Back inside, I cash out in about ninety seconds. The table reads me before I reach my chair, and the ribbing dies fast when I give them rough details: Family thing back in the hometown, brother's leg, nothing fatal.

Damien nods, slow. Brad, who would walk into traffic for his five-year-old daughter Abby without breaking stride, just says, "Go."

My concern is on my brother, on my family, but the thought of returning to Mattichogue carries a weight I don’t want to acknowledge. It carries a history, one that instantly brings to mind a quiet girl with big hazel eyes and thick, coffee-brown hair.

Darcy Gable.

I want to say I haven’t thought about her in years, but that would be a lie. I’m sure I’m the last person she’s wasted a single thought on in the time since we knew each other in school. I like to think I’m generally not a dick, but she’d likely testify to the contrary.

“I gotta go.” I grab my jacket and key fob.

Wyatt swears a solemn oath to defend my chair from lesser players. Gabe just watches me leave, offering no comment at all.

The penthouse gets four minutes of my time and loses half its gear room.

Base layers, trail runners, the duffel that's been on four continents and smells faintly of all of them. I leave my Colorado crew a forty-second voicemail postponing the trip. The land will be there when I’m done dealing with the family crisis in Mattichogue.

Colton asked for two weeks. I’m hoping I can slip out of there in a few days.

The Ferrari and I are through the Midtown Tunnel before two a.m., the city peeling off behind me a borough at a time.

Here's what I'm not doing for the next hundred miles.

I'm not thinking about the vineyard, the flat green miles of vine rows, the water waiting at the end of every road.

I'm not thinking about the high school, or the public library with its radiator smell, or how quiet the stacks got at four in the afternoon when practice hadn't started and I had nowhere to be that I'd admit to.

And I am definitely not thinking about the girl hiding away in those stacks with her legs folded under her and a paperback held up like a Do Not Disturb sign.

The way she'd mouth the big words to herself, silent, certain, gone somewhere I couldn't follow.

I used to watch her from the atlas section and tell myself I was hiding from coach, even though I knew better.

Dictionary Darcy.

I haven't let that old nickname surface in years, and up it comes anyway, easy as a cork.

She's probably long gone. The smart ones leave. The smart ones end up professors in cities with better libraries, and they do not waste one syllable of their excellent vocabularies on the idiot kid who made fun of their endless love of books.

The sky over the Expressway goes from black to bruise to gray, and the road empties out the farther east I push, the way it always did.

Ten years of running, and the first thing to catch me isn't the town, or the vineyard, or my father's disappointed ghost at the head of the table.

It's a brown-haired girl with a book in her hands.