The Bad Billionaire's Seven Kiss Negotiation novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Staircase

Jo walks into her stepfather's house at one in the morning and takes Lila out in front of the staff, with Ansel waiting on the step until she asks.

Roland's brownstone had every light on at one in the morning.

Ansel parked across the street and turned off the engine.

"I'll wait here," he said.

"You'll wait on the front step."

"Why the step?"

"Because I want him to see you from the window," I said. "And you don't come in unless I ask."

"Understood."

I crossed the street in my green dress and my camel coat, with my heels in my hand.

I still had my key.

I let myself in the front door that I had used since I was twelve.

The housekeeper was standing in the hall with her hands wrapped in her apron.

She looked at me and then up the stairs, and she shook her head very slightly.

Chantal came down the staircase in a pink silk robe with her blonde hair brushed smooth.

"Well," she said. "Look who remembered where she lives."

"Where's Lila?"

"Asleep. Daddy's very upset, Jo. You humiliated him in front of the whole board."

"I corrected a mistake in front of the whole board."

"You could've done it in private."

"He didn't ask me in private."

Chantal smiled and said nothing, and that was how I knew Lila was not asleep.

I went around her and started up the stairs.

Roland stepped out of the study onto the landing and stood in the middle of the top step.

He had taken off his dinner jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and he looked tired and gentle.

"Joanna," he said. "Thank God. Come in and sit down."

"I'm here for Lila."

"Lila is upset. She's been crying for an hour. She doesn't need you shouting at her."

"I'm not shouting."

"You're about to. You've got that face."

He had said that to me when I was fourteen and I'd wanted to go to my mother's grave alone.

I stopped on the fourth step from the top.

"Move," I said.

"No."

Two men in dark suits came out of the study behind him.

I had seen them at the company dinner, standing near the doors with earpieces.

They did not touch me.

They simply stood where Roland stood.

"Roland," I said. "Are you holding my sister in this house?"

"I'm protecting my daughter from a mistake."

"I am not asking you for a speech."

"And I am not letting you drag her out of here in the middle of the night to play house with Ansel Hawke."

His voice stayed soft.

"Do you know what that man has done to people? Do you know what the papers say?"

"The papers said I was engaged to Conrad. They were wrong about that too."

Chantal laughed behind me.

I turned my head and looked down at her.

"Chantal, hold my shoes."

"What?"

"Hold them."

She took them out of my hand because she was too surprised to refuse.

I walked to the front door, opened it, and said into the cold night, "Mr. Hawke."

Ansel was standing on the top step with his hands in his coat pockets.

He had not moved since I'd left him.

"I'm asking you in," I said.

He came into the hall.

He took up most of it.

He did not look at Chantal or the men on the landing, and he did not raise his voice.

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looked up at Roland, and said, "Amesbury."

"Hawke," Roland said.

For one second the gentle father went out of his face, and something flat looked back at us.

"This is a private home."

"Miss MacAteer asked me in."

"Miss MacAteer is overtired."

"Miss MacAteer," I said, "is going to walk up these stairs and get her sister."

"If one of those men puts a hand on me, I will call the police from this hall."

"Then I will call the reporter who stood on a chair at your party."

Nobody moved.

"Your daughter's livestream is still up, Chantal," Ansel said without turning. "Forty thousand people are watching your hallway."

Chantal's head snapped down to her phone.

The housekeeper pulled her apron tight and, for the first time, I saw her almost smile.

Roland looked at me for a long moment.

He stepped aside.

"Lila's door is the second on the left," he said. "She won't go."

I went up past him, past the two men, and into the hall where I had grown up.

Lila's door was closed but not locked.

My sister was sitting on the edge of her bed in pajamas with her knees pulled up.

Her eyes were red.

"Jo," she whispered.

"Get shoes. Get a coat. Don't pack anything."

"Roland said you were going to make me leave."

"I'm not making you do anything. I'm asking you to walk out with me, and you can come back tomorrow if you hate it."

She looked at the door behind me.

Then she took her sneakers from under the bed and her coat from the hook, and she slid her hand into mine.

We walked down the staircase together.

Roland did not say a word.

Chantal held my shoes against her chest and stared at us.

At the front door I took them back from her.

"Thank you," I said. "It's a nice robe."

In the car, Lila sat in the back seat with her knees up and her face to the window.

Ansel drove, and I sat beside him, and neither of us talked until the lights of the Drive came up on the left.

"Jo," Lila said quietly from the back.

"I'm here."

"Roland told me tonight that your billionaire ruined a man's family."

Her reflection looked at me in the window glass.

"He said to ask him whose father."

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