She made a show of peering behind me. “Where is your fiancée?”
Shaking my head, I draped my overcoat on the back of the chair, unbuttoned my suit coat, and took my seat in the chair opposite her. A quick scratch of my nose and my smile materialized. I’d take the scent of my fingers over a two-thousand-dollar bottle of perfume any day.
Lena lifted the glass. “You really should try their lemon drop martini. After all, it’s New Year’s Eve.” Her soft-brown eyes went to the window. “It’s guaranteed to warm you up on a day like today.”
“Sir,” a young woman said, appearing at our table, “may I get you something to drink while you look at our menu?”
“Coffee, black.”
Lena’s painted lips curled into a smile as the waitress walked away. “Always such a fuddy-duddy.” She leaned forward. “You have heard that all work and no play makes Van a dull man?”
Not looking at the menu and placing it on the table, I also sat forward. “Did you get an inquiry from Marlin?”
“Aphrodite Corporation has been contacted.”
“GreenSphere?”
“I’ve made some headway,” she said.
“They contacted you with only a five-share investment, and yet I haven’t been contacted with twenty-six.”
“I still don’t know who the mysterious investors are,” Lena admitted. “Jeremy and his team are digging. Whoever controls GreenSphere has gone to a lot of trouble to keep it private. They secured the two shares from Wolfe.”
I sat back, shaking my head. “Fuck, when?”
She tilted her chin toward her phone. “It would’ve had to have been yesterday, but Jeremy just sent me the information.”
Removing my phone from my inside suit coat pocket, I saw one text from Jeremy. “The GreenSphere thing has me baffled. I have people digging too.” When her eyes widened, I added, “Nothing. They’re meeting the same roadblocks.”
“Here’s my proposal. We—you and Aphrodite—unite under one umbrella. It’ll make us a more formidable opponent.”
I shook my head. “The shares of Wade I acquired are for Julia, not for me. I can’t.”
“Together we’d have thirty-one. And if we could become investors in GreenSphere, we’d have a portion of their five.”
The waitress delivered my coffee. Before she could ask if we were ready to order, both Lena and I shook our head, essentially waving her away.
I voiced a concern that had been milling around in my thoughts. “Why does some multi-million-dollar SPAC want five measly percent of shares in a small private pharmaceutical company?”
“You sparked the interest.” Her smile grew. “The reclusive wolf of high finance not only swooped in to save a struggling company but shocked the world with the news of his engagement to the Wade Pharmaceutical heiress. And here I thought you were a committed bachelor for life.” She lifted her glass to her lips. “Apparently what you were looking for was a princess whose kingdom was about to fall.”
“I wasn’t looking. You above anyone should know that.”
“I do know and hindsight improves everyone’s vision. You weren’t the only one who made poor choices. You’ve punished yourself long enough, Van. Live before it’s too late.”
“That sounds like your blessing, Lena.”
She shrugged. “We deserve to have it all, you and me.”
Inhaling, I fought the urge to ask about Madison.
Meeting with Lena wasn’t in any way being unfaithful to Julia. There was nothing about the woman across the table that could arouse my sexual interest. She was a good fuck and so was I, but that was all it had ever been. No, Lena was my friend and my sometimes partner in business, revenge, and destruction. Asking about her sister would be crossing a line I wouldn’t cross.
Julia deserved the new and improved Donovan Sherman.
Keeping that forefront in my mind wasn’t easy, but another scratch of my nose reminded me that being a better man for Julia also wasn’t difficult. Julia was hardly a consolation prize. She was the top of the top. The star at the top of the fucking tree. I didn’t deserve her, but that wouldn’t stop me from never letting her go.
“She is it,” I said. “She’s the all that I didn’t realize was missing.”