Nora and her unexpected billionaire

Arlo Reeves

The phone call woke him.

He surfaced reluctantly, flinging one arm across his eyes against the faint strip of light leaking around the curtains. The bedroom was still dim, the heavy drapes keeping the rainy Manhattan morning outside and leaving the row of family photos on the opposite shelf in deep shadow.

The duvet had twisted around his legs sometime during the night. He pushed it away and swung his legs out of bed with a disgruntled groan.

The phone was still ringing.

He reached for it, saw the caller's name, and whatever remained of his sleep disappeared.

“Celeste.”

He rubbed a hand over his face before swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

"I need you in Thailand," she said, cutting straight to the chase.

"Good morning to you too."

"How's the baby?" he asked.

As Celeste launched straight into the problem, Arlo crossed the room and pulled the curtains apart. Rain streaked the floor-to-ceiling windows. Beyond them, Manhattan was only just beginning to wake.

He unlocked the balcony door just enough to let the cool air in. Rain streaked the glass beyond, turning Manhattan into a blur of grey and amber. He rested one shoulder against the frame and listened.

"Perfect and sleeping, which is more than I can say for the Chiang Mai deal. Suthorn's lawyers have been stalling for three weeks and I was supposed to fly out Thursday to close it personally, but I can't leave yet, and if we don't get someone in front of that table by the end of next week we're going to lose the option entirely."

He listened without interrupting.

Eventually he sighed.

"Give me a second."

He carried the phone back inside and dropped it onto the kitchen island, switching it to speaker before filling a glass with cold water.

"Go on."

There was a pause, during which he knew it was the very specific silence of a woman who had already decided the answer to a question she was pretending to ask.

"You're free."

"I had plans," Arlo said.

"You had a gym booking and dinner with people who will still exist next week." A beat. "Twelve percent of the net close."

Arlo said nothing.

"Arlo."

"I'm doing the maths."

"Well, hurry up with it," she said, trying not to sound desperate. "Also your birthday is in three weeks. Think of it as an early present to yourself."

"You're giving me a percentage of your business deal as a birthday present."

“Your older sister is giving you the opportunity to earn a percentage from her very lucrative business deal as a birthday present. There's a difference."

"...Fine. I'll fly tomorrow."

"Thank you."

He was about to end the call when she spoke again.

"Oh—and there's one more thing."

"What?" he said, a slight frown washing over his face.

“There's also the Lanna property. My assistant got it mixed into the Siam Stays listings by mistake… don't ask me how, I'm still too tired to be angry about it as I intend to be… and someone's booked it. Three, maybe four months."

He stared at the rain beyond the windows.

"You accidentally listed Grandmother's cottage?" He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Just make sure they aren't throwing loud parties or burning the place down."

"Fine," he said. "I'll handle the deal and I'll check the property."

"I knew you would." Softer now, the efficiency dropped back just slightly. "You're my favourite, you know."

"You say that to whoever is most useful to you."

"Mm. Currently that's you," she said with a chuckle. "Really. Thank you, Arlo."

The line went dead.

For a moment Arlo stayed where he was, watching rain crawl down the glass. Thailand hadn't been part of this week's plans.

He glanced at the clock on the oven before setting the glass down and walking back towards the bedroom.

If he was leaving tomorrow, he'd need to pack.

———

The Suthorn meeting took less time than expected.

By early evening the contracts had been signed, hands shaken, and lawyers sent away satisfied with themselves. Arlo loosened his tie as he stepped out of the conference room and called Celeste before he even reached the lift.

"It's done."

“How clean?"

"Very. I'm heading home, please don't call me again."

"I wasn't planning on it."

"You'd better not."

He ended the call and turned onto the road toward the Lanna property. The drive out was longer than he had anticipated and by the time he turned onto the familiar lane it was nearly ten o'clock. The rain that had been threatening all evening had finally committed. He knew this road the way he knew very few things outside of New York— every bend memorised, the trees arching overhead the same way they always had, the same deep amber dark, the same smell of wet earth when it rained.

He was not thinking about anything in particular when the headlights found the figure.

It was standing at the side of the road just past the bend, outside the gate of his grandmother's cottage and for one very strange second, in the rain and the dark with the trees pressing in on either side, his brain did not immediately process it as a person. It processed it as a shape. A pale shape, standing very still.

The road out here had a reputation. He had grown up on the stories. His grandmother had told them tales of things seen in the countryside, at the edge of the trees, beings that had no business being in the human world. He had never believed any of it, or had told himself he didn't.

He drove past.

Then, approximately ten seconds later, it occurred to him.

The cottage.

Someone had booked the cottage. Someone was staying there.

And he had just driven past someone standing outside the cottage gate in the rain at ten o'clock at night.

That was not a ghost. That was a woman.

He shifted into reverse.

She was still there when the headlights found her again.

He lowered the window.

Up close she had a very striking appearance and also smelled, unmistakably and rather impressively, of sewage.

“What the actual hell do you think you are doing out here looking like that?”