Billionaire Romance: Out of The Cold (Book One) Read Free Page B

quietly as she poked at her green
beans. Her gaze rose back to the window, and she saw a few spatters
of icy rain hit the glass.
    Henry had them pack up the
dirty dishes, since there was no hot water available for washing,
and they brought them out to the car before settling in for pie and
coffee. That’s when Toby, with a big gap-toothed grin on his face,
presented his brown paper package to Henry, who
chuckled.
    “Another one,
huh?”
    “Yep! Got one to add to
your collection.” He waved it slightly and Henry took it, tearing
it open. A cartoonish statue of a woodchuck, expertly carved and
softly polished with beeswax, sat on its haunches with a derpy look
on its face and a branch in its mouth.
    Henry grinned and looked
the thing over. “Well damn, Toby, this one’s even better than last
year’s.” He had a display case in his office with the cartoonish
wooden animals, and now she knew where they all came from. “You
know I keep these at work for people to look at?”
    “No kidding?” Toby
brightened.
    “It’s true. He has a big
lit-up display case with a mirror behind it in the lobby.” Anne
couldn’t help but smile as Toby beamed.
    “Well, that’s awesome.
I’ll have to tell the boys back home that my work’s on display in
New York City!”
    “Now we just have to get
some more of it out there so I can sell it for you, and you can
finish fixing up your Mom’s house with the money.” Henry gave him a
pointed look, and Toby’s ears turned red.
    “Oh, I can’t carve except
when I’m making it for a certain person,” he demurred.
    Henry sighed. “So pretend
they’re all for me then?”
    “Huh.” Toby wrinkled his
scarred brow, then nodded. “I could do that! And maybe try selling
some of the furniture. You think this table turned out all
right?”
    “The table’s beautiful,
Toby.” Anna thought about Toby, living with his mom, his life a
regimen of medicines and doctor visits, and how the chance to make
more money made such a huge difference for him. For James, going
home alone to his trailer tonight. And, she realized, that bothered
her; should they have asked him to stay? If she wasn’t going to be
alone with Henry anyway, there had been no reason not to ask him.
But Henry had almost made a point of not doing so. Why?
    Could he be jealous of
James flirting with me? No, no, that’s just not possible. The man
is out of my league. He probably doesn’t even see me as a woman, at
least not in that kind of way.
    Toby excused himself soon
after, seeing the few raindrops start to become more than a few.
“Gotta hop on my bike and get out of here, Mom gets worried if I’m
too late and it’s starting to look messy out there.” He had Henry’s
gift of a new wallet in his pocket, along with some investment
certificates he didn’t know the value of and his mother would
explain to him later--and which would cover the repairs of their
house by themselves. Henry was like that: full of generous
surprises.
    They lingered together
over more coffee, and chatter about the job went quiet soon after
Toby left. “I’m keeping you. You must have a big day tomorrow,” he
probed gently.
    She looked up at him, then
smiled and shook her head.
    His brow furrowed. “You
look sad.”
    “I have nothing going on
tomorrow,” she replied. “I’m not in touch with my family, and I’m
not exactly a social butterfly around here. I...I can stay late, it
doesn’t really matter.”
    His face fell. “Nobody?”
he asked, disbelieving. “I don’t get it. You’re so
sweet….”
    She let out a soft little
laugh and looked out the window. “I have some people I volunteer
with at the SPCA. I have my brother, but he’s out in Los Angeles.
That’s kind of it in my life right now. My apartment won’t even
allow pets.”
    A silence dragged between
them, his eyes flickering with something soft and sad and
unfathomable.
    She looked down,
swallowing a lump in her throat. “I’m sorry, I’m being maudlin.
Point is,