Married To My Billionaire Rival

Chapter Four

(Laura POV)

Nathaniel Cross. The man that is always on the front cover of every magazine.

The Billionaire bachelor, splashed across business magazines and gossip columns in equal measure, the one whose face I'd seen staring back at me from newsstands more times than I could count over the past two years, usually under some headline about a merger, an acquisition, or which billionaire's daughter he'd supposedly been seen with that week.

I remember the last time I saw him two years ago.

"You do realize the Arson account was mine before you came in and stole it," Nathaniel said, sliding into the seat across from me at the industry dinner.

"Stole it?" I raised an eyebrow, unable to stop a small smile from tugging at my mouth. "I believe the term you're looking for is outperformed."

He didn't smile back, though something in his eyes suggested he wanted to. "You know my company have been after that contract from a while now."

"You had a proposal that arrived a week late and a projection that underestimated their growth by a factor of three." I leaned back, enjoying this far more than I probably should have. "I had a better pitch, Mr. Cross. That's all there is to it."

"There's always a next quarter."

"There's always a next quarter," I agreed. "And I intend to win that one too."

Nathaniel Cross has always stand out, he was sharp, relentless, and infuriatingly good at his job, and somewhere in all that competition between our companies, without either of us admitting it out loud, something had curdled into more than professional rivalry. If not for the contract that we always share between us, The Cross would have been the leading organization in the region by now.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Nathaniel said. His voice carrying that same dry, controlled amusement I remembered from every boardroom and gala we'd ever crossed paths in.

My gaze shot back to his, it seems this last few hours I have been getting lost in my thought a lot.

"I am so sorry for bumping into you," I replied, staring down at my stained shirt. "What are you doing here, Nathaniel?"

"Flying, same as you, apparently badly, given the circumstances." He glanced down at the coffee stain spreading across his shoe, then back up at me, something almost amused flickering across his face. "Though I suppose I should ask you the same thing. Last I heard, you'd disappeared off the map entirely. No industry events, no company listings under your name. I assumed you'd left the business world altogether."

"I did," I said. "I left a lot of things."

Something in my voice must have caught his attention because his expression shifted, the sharp edges of his usual composure softening just slightly.

"I heard about your father," he said, quieter now. "I'm sorry, Laura. I mean that."

Hearing him say my name after two years of Ms. Whitfield across conference tables, after everything sent an unfamiliar feeling down my spine catching me off guard more than I wanted it to.

"Thank you," I said, and for once, I didn't have a sharp comeback waiting behind it.

"Whatever else was between us," he continued, "I always respected him. He was a hard man to compete against, but a fair one. That's rarer than people think in this industry."

"He was," I agreed quietly, though even as I said it, I thought of the office, the denied leave, the last words he'd ever said to me ‘’you're better off without him’ and wondered whether "fair" was really the word I'd have chosen if Nathaniel had known the whole story.

We were still standing there, caught in that strange, charged silence, when the same woman from the check-in counter came hurrying over.

"Ma'am, I'm so sorry to bother you again," she said, slightly out of breath, "but I wanted to confirm. We've checked every available option, and I'm afraid there's genuinely nothing except that there is a forty-eight-hour window. I know that's not what you wanted to hear, especially given the circumstances, but I didn't want you waiting at the gate for nothing."

"Forty-eight hours," I repeated, the words landing heavier the second time, now that they were being confirmed rather than just feared. "There's really nothing sooner? Not even standby?"

"I checked every flight on the board, ma'am. I'm very sorry." She hesitated, glancing briefly between me and Nathaniel, "If anything opens up, I'll call the number on your file immediately. I promise."

"Thank you," I said, though the words came out flat, all the fight draining out of me at once. She gave a small, apologetic nod and hurried back toward her counter, leaving me standing there with my bag at my feet and two full days suddenly stretched out in front of me like a wall I had no idea how to climb.

"Forty-eight hours," Nathaniel said quietly, watching me. "That's a long time to sit in an airport."

"I don't have forty-eight hours," I said, more to myself than to him, my voice starting to crack in a way I hated. "The funeral is in three days. If I lose two of them sitting here…"

"You won't," he said simply.

I looked up at him. "What?"

"You won't lose them. I have a plane." He said, "I am also about to leave and go back to New York within the hour. If you need to get to your father's funeral, I can have you there faster than any standby list this place is going to manage."

I hesitated, running through every reason this was a terrible idea the history between us, the company rivalry, the fact that two years of professional animosity didn't exactly evaporate because he'd offered me a favor at an airport gate. But then I thought about the funeral, about Luciana's cold, clipped text, about how much I needed to just get there and stop fighting every single piece of this trip.

"Fine," I said finally. "New York. But I'm not thanking you for this."

"Wouldn't dream of expecting it," Nathaniel said, already turning toward the exit, that same maddening half-smile still in place. "Come on, Ms. Whitfield. Let's get you home.”