His to Have: A Billionaire Romance by Piper Hayes Page B

 
    “Come on, Cat. I’d like you to meet my sister.”

CHAPTER 13

    CATHERINE

    As Blake and I wind our way through the bar, I can’t help but feel the humidity of hundreds of bodies packed into a tight space. He leads me to a back room. It’s quieter, but still relatively full. The ceilings are lower in here, and it’s cozy in a hole-in-the-wall bar kind of way. It’s the type of place that I’d never have stepped foot inside before I met Blake. The smell of stale beer wafts up from the floor, and the tables are crooked with mismatched chairs. There’s a dartboard in one corner, and the wall around it is pocked with a thousand holes from drunken misses. The bar is dim and loud and perfect in every way.“Your sister is a bartender?” I ask
    “Yup,” Blake says.  
    “You’re worth how much and your sister is a bartender?”
    “I’ve told her she can do whatever she wants. She likes bartending. She worked at this place when I was in school. I bought it for her a year and a half ago. I offered her a job at my company, offered to pay her way through any school she wants to go to, but you know how it is. She won’t listen to me. She’s going to do what she’s going to do.”
    Alex meets us a few minutes later. She comes over carrying three pints of dark beer. She has a half grin that I’ve seen on Blake’s face more than once. “My little brother hasn’t brought a date here since he became all fancy.”
    “That’s the same thing Eduardo said,” I tell her.  
    “You brought her to see Ed first?” Alex says. She puts the drinks down on the bar top and picks one up for herself.
    “A necessary precaution. I had to make sure no one was following us. You know how it is these days.”
    “God forbid they find out who you really are,” Alex says. “I think I liked it better when you were broke.”  
    “Let’s talk about something else,” Blake says. He turns his attention to me. “Do you play darts?”
    “It’s been a long time,” I say. “I think I’d rather share embarrassing stories about you with your sister.”  
    “We’ll multitask,” he says. He heads over to the board to get the darts.  
    I’m alone with Alex for a minute, and she looks me over.   She’s beautiful, but she’s got the edge of someone who doesn’t take shit and doesn’t sugarcoat anything either. I can practically hear her wondering what the hell Blake is doing bringing a girl like me here. “So how did the two of you meet?” she asks.  
    “We both crashed the same party,” I tell her. “Blake never mentioned that he had a sister.”  
    “Big surprise there,” she says. “He thinks he’s protecting me. From who, I don’t know. I think it just makes it easier for him to hide his past.”  
    “Why would he do that?”
    Before Alex can answer, Blake is back.
    “I have to run back to the bar,” Alex says. “It looks like the two of you have a few things to talk about.”  
    Blake raises a brow. “What’s she saying about me now?”
    “She said you were hiding your past.”
    He places the darts down on the table. “I’ll tell you what, hit the dartboard, and I’ll tell you something about myself that you don’t know.”
    I pick up a dart and step over to the line. I chop my arm forward twice as I line up a shot. Then I let fly. The dart hits the board just above the bullseye.
    “Beginners luck,” he says. “But a deal’s a deal.” He’s smiling, like he had this planned. “My favorite color is blue.”
    “That’s the secret?” I say in disbelief.  
    “I never said it was a secret. I just said it was something you didn’t know.”
    “Doesn’t count. Tell me something real.”  
    “I moved to New York when I was seventeen. Alex was twenty three and she had gotten a job in Brooklyn after her boyfriend moved to the city. I had finished high school early, and took college courses in Manhattan. Alex forced me to go full time after the first semester. I owe everything to her.”