Too Late to Win Me Back, Mr. Billionaire novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Blue Dress
At their anniversary gala Pierce flies his collapsing assistant off the island in the helicopter Darcy needs for her sister's transplant, so she hands back her ring and runs to the airstrip, where the mail pilot says nobody flies tonight.
The night my sister's lungs came in, my husband's assistant was wearing my dress.
Pale blue silk, open to the waist in the back.
I'd tried it on in a Newbury Street fitting room in June.
Pierce's mother had made me send it back.
"Delano wives don't show their spines, Darcy."
Now Kenzie Lowell was showing hers to three hundred people on the lawn of my husband's new hotel.
It was our fifth anniversary.
It was also the grand opening of the Delano Thatch, the old harbor inn on the island where I was born.
Pierce had bought it in the spring, painted it white and hung his name on it.
Every lobsterman's wife I'd grown up with was serving canapés in a black apron.
I was at table eleven.
Table eleven was the staff table, by the kitchen doors.
My place card said "Mrs. Delano" in Constance's handwriting.
That was her joke.
Up at the head table, my mother-in-law sat in pearls beside Kenzie's empty chair.
My chair was nowhere.
Pierce stood up with a champagne flute and tapped it with a knife.
The tent went quiet.
He looked wonderful. He always did.
"None of this happens without one woman," he said.
I set down my fork.
"She knows my calendar better than I do. She knows my coffee order. She once flew to Zurich with my passport in her purse because I left it in a cab."
People laughed.
"Kenzie, raise your glass. This hotel is yours as much as mine."
Kenzie touched her heart and blushed.
Three hundred people clapped.
A waitress I went to grade school with put a hand on my shoulder as she passed.
That was the worst part.
My phone buzzed against my hip.
A Boston number.
I knew it by heart. I'd had it saved for fourteen months.
I stepped behind the kitchen tent and answered.
"Mrs. Delano? This is the transplant coordinator. We have lungs for Kit."
The grass tilted under me.
"They're a match. She needs to be here by one a.m. Can you do that?"
"Yes," I said. "Yes. We're on our way."
I hung up and ran.
My heels sank in the lawn, so I kicked them off.
The Delano helicopter sat on the far end of the grass, black and gleaming, its pilot smoking by the tail.
Fifty minutes to Boston.
Kit was a mile away in our parents' old house on Tern Lane, on oxygen, probably drawing.
I grabbed Pierce's arm at the head table.
"The hospital called. They have lungs. I need the helicopter now."
His face went soft and careful.
"Darce. Breathe."
"I am breathing. Kit can't. Tell your pilot."
"Okay. Okay."
He turned to wave the pilot over.
Behind him, Kenzie made a small sound.
She pressed both hands to her chest.
Then she folded sideways out of her chair onto the grass.
Somebody screamed.
Constance was on her feet. "Pierce! She can't breathe!"
Kenzie's lips were moving. "My heart. Something's wrong with my heart."
Pierce dropped to his knees beside her.
He gathered her up against him, blue silk spilling over his arm.
"Get the helicopter started," he called.
"For Kit," I said.
He looked up at me.
He'd made up his mind already. I could see it.
"Kenzie's having a cardiac event, Darcy."
"Kit's lungs are sitting in a cooler in Boston."
"Kit's had three dry runs this year. Three. You drove her to the ferry crying every time, and every time it was nothing."
"This isn't nothing."
"Then she'll still be first on the list in the morning. Take the six a.m. ferry. I'll send a car to meet you."
"The lungs won't wait until morning."
Kenzie gave a thin little whimper against his neck.
"Please," she whispered. "Please don't let me die here."
The guests were watching. All of them.
The waitresses. The fishermen in borrowed jackets. The board members from Boston.
Constance leaned close to me and spoke without moving her lips.
"Don't you dare make a scene tonight. Remember who pays for that girl's oxygen."
I had remembered for five years.
I had remembered every time she corrected my grammar at dinner.
Every time Kenzie "forgot" to put me on the guest list.
Every time Pierce laughed and said, "That's just Mom."
Pierce stood with Kenzie in his arms and walked toward the helicopter.
I followed him across the grass in my bare feet.
"Pierce."
He kept walking.
"Pierce, look at me."
He stopped at the open door of the helicopter and handed Kenzie up to the pilot, who laid her across the back seat.
Then he turned around.
I twisted my wedding ring off. It came hard, over the knuckle.
I pressed it into his palm and closed his fingers around it.
"If you get on," I said, loud enough for the lawn, "don't come back."
He stared at the ring.
Then he laughed, like I'd made a joke at a dinner party.
"We'll talk tomorrow."
He climbed in and pulled the door shut.
The rotors began to turn.
My dress whipped against my legs. Napkins tumbled across the lawn.
The helicopter lifted, tipped, and slid away over the harbor toward Boston.
Three hundred people looked at me.
I turned my back on all of them and ran.
Up Harbor Road. Past the church. Past the co-op, past the dark school.
The fog was already coming in off the water, thick and wet and white.
My feet were bleeding by the time I reached the north end of the island.
The airstrip lights were off.
The red tin hangar had one window lit upstairs.
I pounded on the door with both fists.
"Sawyer! Sawyer Kinney!"
A light came on. Heavy feet on the stairs.
The door opened and there he was.
Bigger than I remembered. Bearded now. A T-shirt and a scowl.
He looked at my bare feet and the blood and the silk.
"Darcy Ingalls," he said slowly. "You're supposed to be at a party."
"Kit's got lungs in Boston. I need the Hen."
He glanced past me at the white wall of fog swallowing the runway.
"Fog's down on the water. Nobody flies tonight."
I held out my hand, palm up.
"Then give me the keys."
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