Tempting the Broken Billionaire

It's the legs that quit. Not the equipment.

I looked Cassian Thorne dead in the lap and didn't blink when I said it.

The golden boy of Halcyon Bay, the man whose legs had given out. The one I'd wanted for years, now flat on his back with the whole world walked out on him.

And me, the girl nobody saw coming, swooping in while he was down.

Later. Much later. The most buttoned-up man alive pulled me down into his lap and put his mouth to my ear.

"I hear," he said, low, "you're quite the rider."

I shook my head hard enough to hurt. "No. I'm sore."

Chapter 1

Cassian Thorne's legs were finished.

His girlfriend ran. His brothers turned. The bastard his father kept on the side slid right into his chair at the top of the empire.

One night. That was all it took to drop the golden boy of Halcyon Bay into the gutter, alone.

I stopped in the doorway with an armful of flowers.

He sat with his back to me, propped up in the hospital bed. Thin. Thinner than I remembered.

He reached for the water on the side table.

Couldn't get it. Or his hand slipped. I couldn't tell which.

The glass hit the floor and shattered.

In a room that quiet, it was the loudest thing I'd ever heard.

He didn't pick it up. He fisted the blanket instead, knuckles going white.

The most arrogant man I'd ever known, folded down small in a white room.

My eyes started to burn. I swallowed it.

I knocked.

He turned his head. Pale. Eyes rimmed in red. Something in my chest pulled hard and mean.

He saw me. His eyes cut wide for half a second. Then something else, gone before I could read it.

"What are you doing here?" His voice came out dry and cracked.

I walked in big and loud, flowers and all.

"Came to watch you crash and burn." I smiled, sweet and rotten. "The great Cassian Thorne. Not one soul at your bedside."

I leaned in. "Funny thing. Two different people once swore to me they'd found the love of their life. Through anything. Forever."

I laughed under my breath. "Guess forever has a shelf life."

Every word was aimed to draw blood.

He didn't fire back. He let me carve.

He watched me wave down a nurse and get the glass swept up. Watched me dump the dead flowers wilting in his vase. Watched me rinse it, fill it, set the fresh ones in.

"Not even somebody to sit with you," I said, glancing around. "How'd you get this pathetic?"

For once he answered. "It's lunch."

So the people paid to watch him were off the clock. Sure.

I dragged a chair over and sat down, eye to eye with him.

The red had drained out of his stare.

I looked him over. Hair to legs. I let my eyes sit on his legs too long.

"They're done," he said, before I could. "Doctors say the odds I walk again are next to nothing."

Flat. Not a single dip or rise in it.

I didn't want to think about how many nights it took to say a thing like that and sound that calm.

I'd kept my eyes down. Now I lifted them.

And I couldn't hold it in anymore.

The tears came without a sound. One after another after another.

The bright, nasty little mask I'd walked in wearing slid right off my face.

The stems crushed in my fist. I bit down on the inside of my cheek and it didn't help.

His gaze wavered. His lips, pressed flat, parted.

"Don't cry," he said, barely there. "I'm not dead yet."

I threw myself onto him and held on.

I stopped trying to be quiet.

He didn't push me off.

His hands dropped to his sides and curled into fists, so tight the knuckles went bloodless. And they stayed there.

Chapter 2

I'd thrown myself at him and felt how wrong it was. Five years ago, the night I left the country, he'd hugged me for the first time. Part goodbye, part charity. His chest had been broad then. Warm. The man under my hands now was all sharp angles. Bone. Cold.

I went to the bathroom and scrubbed my face clean. Came back out. And said the thing he'd never see coming.

"Cassian. Marry me."

His eyes had been on the window. They cut to me.

"You're the family throwaway now," I said. "Half of them are praying you never climb back out."

"The jewelry your mother left you is already on your father's mistress. And Vanessa, the girl who swore none of it mattered? Engaged. To Preston. The one who used to call you brother." I tilted my head. "What did that take her. Three weeks?"

"What. You mad?"

I was doing it on purpose. Peeling every scar open, slow.

His eyes went from cold to something colder. Iced over.

"Cassian. Let me be your ace." I held his stare. "Marry me, and you get to keep yourself."

He shut his eyes. Pushed the cold back down somewhere I couldn't see. When he opened them again they were flat and black and still, like water with no bottom.

"What do you want," he said.

I stared at him until he was the one who looked away.

He knew. He'd always known.

"Don't play dumb. You know exactly what I want." I leaned in. "I've been after you for years, Cassian. You. Not the empire."

A short, ugly laugh. "You want me." Quiet. "I'm a cripple. You're backing a losing position."

I dropped my eyes to his lap and let them stay there.

"It's the legs that quit," I said. "Not the equipment."

The most composed man in Halcyon Bay went still. His pale skin flushed faint. He pulled the blanket up over his lower half, smooth and quick, like he hoped I wouldn't clock it.

I pretended to think about it. "Or I could check?"

"Romy." Low. A warning.

I beamed at him. Not one ounce of shame.

"Two months ago you walked into a car crash and woke up like this. Two months, and the whole room turned on you." I leaned closer. "Right now I'm the only hand left on the table that turns this around for you."

"So. Have you decided?"

Cassian looked at me.

And said nothing, for a long, long time.

Chapter 3

I'd flown back overnight the second I heard.

Came straight to him.

The marriage I'd offered was a transaction. It was also the most selfish thing I'd ever done. With my family's weight behind him, the relatives circling his carcass would think twice before they picked at him. His claim as heir would hold.

The silence stretched.

Then, evenly: "Even if I feel nothing for you, you'd still trade a marriage for this?"

I smiled, easy and sure. "Yes."

Feelings could be grown. He was a good man. Legs or no legs, I didn't care.

Because I wanted him. Past the point of sense.

It was no secret in our circle how I felt about Cassian Thorne. Everyone knew. He knew.

We'd grown up alongside each other. Right families, right names.

But the girl next door never beats the one who falls out of the sky.

The moment he chose Vanessa, I deleted myself from his world.

I didn't blame him. Didn't hate him. He'd kept his distance for years and never once handed me hope, and a one-sided love doesn't get to make demands.

Five years gone, and I'd told myself I was over it.

One look at him said otherwise.

Meet someone that dazzling when you're young, and you never really shake them.

"Fine. Deal's on."

He held out his hand. Business.

His hand was like the rest of him. Made well.

It also felt like a wall, and it bothered me.

I took it. And in front of his flat, watching eyes, I turned the handshake into something else. Fingers laced through his. Tight. I didn't let go.

I grinned at him. "Sealed."

Word got out that I was marrying Cassian Thorne.

The wolves pacing his bedside went quiet.

I came by the hospital every day after that. Always with flowers. Today it was sunflowers.

He sat propped against the pillows, working off a laptop, long fingers moving over the black keys. His face gave away nothing.

I set the flowers down and watched him.

It got under his skin. "Can you not stare at me?"

I went wide-eyed and innocent. "Can't. It's not in my control." I tipped my head. "Unless you give me a kiss. Then I'll stop."

He cut me a look that said he saw straight through it. Pressed his lips together. Went back to ignoring me.

I sighed, and let him hear the disappointment in it.

His phone buzzed. He answered without looking up, and his voice dropped into something flat and surgical.

"Those shares were never yours to move." A pause. "Check the filing date. Call me back when you've stopped wasting my time."

He set the phone down. Didn't look up.

Whoever was on the other end of that, I'd have put money on them sweating.

A man with dead legs, and they still hadn't broken him.

The blue hospital gown hung off him, loose. He'd lost weight these past weeks, and it had carved his face sharper. Cheekbone, jaw, the whole cut of him. At his collar the bones stood out, lifting a little with each breath.

And dead center, just below his throat, a single black mole sat dark against skin gone pale.

It pulled my eyes and held them.

I was still staring when one elegant, knuckled hand reached up and did the collar buttons, one by one, all the way to the top.

I frowned at him.

No need to guard the goods. I wasn't going to lose control and devour him in a hospital ward.

Even if I'd been hungry for years.

His hands went back to the keys. Clipped. Exact.

Whatever the world had done to him, the man in that bed was already taking it all back.

Nobody out there had noticed yet.

Chapter 4

"Button it up all you want," I hummed. "Once we're married I'll just peel it back off anyway."

His finger stopped on the key.

He looked at me, breathed in slow, let it out slower. "Romy. What exactly did you learn out there these past few years?"

I used to be a softer thing.

Nine brothers and cousins between them, and me the only girl of my generation. Watched like a vault. Spoiled enough to come with a temper.

But around him I'd blushed at nothing. Gone shy. Sweet, even.

A long way from this.

"Learned a lot," I said. "Want me to send you my syllabus?"

He gave me one look and didn't bother answering. Put his eyes and his attention back on the screen.

I cut up some fruit and handed it over. He ate a couple of pieces and stopped. Closed the laptop. Rubbed his temples like the day had wrung him out.

"I'll do it," I offered. "Let me rub them."

My hand was halfway there when he caught it.

He held on, watching me, his face gone serious.

"What?" I asked.

"Go downstairs and get me a drink." It came out of nowhere.

"What kind?"

"...Coffee."

I blinked. "Coffee?"

He'd never liked coffee a day in his life. He drank tea.

He met my confusion head-on. "Yes. Coffee."

I didn't think twice. Five years apart, people pick up new habits. I got up and left the room.

Down the hall. Into the elevator.

I'd barely stepped out when I stopped cold.

Forgot my phone.

I doubled back, annoyed at myself, and came back to find the curtain pulled around his bed.

Something in me went tight.

Every thought I had turned to something's wrong. I rushed in and yanked the curtain open.

What I walked into froze me where I stood.

Everything in me locked up. My head went white and empty. I just stood there, useless.

A toilet flushed behind the bathroom door.

My eyes had already landed on his hands. One low, holding himself. The other working a wet wipe.

The second I crashed in, both went still.

Cassian shut his eyes. I watched him push it all down. His throat moved.

"Out," he said. Low. Controlled, with something hot buried under it.

I came back to myself and bolted, turning on my heel, fumbling out past the curtain.

My back to him, my head a wreck.

The embarrassment lasted a second. What came after it was worse. Worry. That barging in like that had cut him somewhere that mattered. That I'd made him feel small.

I hated how reckless I'd been.

I cast around for something to say. Something to lighten it. Make it easy again.

What came out of my mouth was: "That... it was big."

The room went dead.

I was still cringing, slapping a hand over my own mouth, when his voice came through the curtain. Cold.

"What. You've seen enough others to compare?"

I froze for a beat.

Others?

The sheer injustice.

"I have not!" I said quickly.

Okay. I hadn't done a field study. But a girl picks things up. I had a working grasp of the general concept.

I spun back toward the curtain and the man behind it.

"Yours is the only one I've ever seen!"

Chapter 5

The room went quiet again.

This was a strange hill to die on. Why was I arguing anatomy with Cassian Thorne through a curtain.

"Miss Ashford?"

The aide came out of the bathroom and broke the standoff.

By the time the curtain slid back, Cassian was dressed and composed, not a thread out of place. He gave me a weightless little glance.

I couldn't quite look at him. I crossed to the nightstand, grabbed my phone, and dropped a line on my way out.

"I'll go get your coffee."

And fled.

The day before they discharged him, I saw Vanessa at the hospital.

She passed close enough to brush my shoulder, and it took me a few seconds to place her.

She didn't see me. Or she saw me and didn't bother to know me. I couldn't tell which, and something about it sat wrong for half a breath before I let it go.

It dragged me straight back five years.

Cassian was three years older than me. Senior year, I'd wanted to get into his school. Three days after I told him my list, he went public with Vanessa.

I'd folded a little, back then, the day she turned up.

I shook it off and walked into his room with my face arranged into nothing.

There was a new basket of fruit on the table.

"Who came by?" I asked, light.

"An old subordinate," Cassian said. "Nobody who matters."

I kept the frown on the inside.

He was lying to me. The fruit was from Vanessa, and he'd called her nobody.

It needled at me. I stepped up to the bed, sulking. "Cassian."

"Mm." He didn't look up. Eyes on his phone.

"We're getting married. A kiss isn't exactly out of line."

"What"

He lifted his head, and I kissed him. I'd aimed for his mouth. He dodged fast, so I caught his cheek instead.

His face went red. "Romy. We're in a hospital."

I smiled, shameless. "Nobody saw. And so what if they did. I'm kissing my fianc."

"Right out in the open."

When they let him out, Cassian didn't go back to the Thorne estate.

He moved into the riverside place his mother had left him, rebuilt so a wheelchair could reach every corner.

Days, I came to him. Evenings, I went home.

I'd have moved in and looked after him hands-on, except Cassian wouldn't have it, and my brothers would have it even less.

My eldest brother put it plainly. "Not home by eight, I come get you myself."

I gave him a weak smile. "You're a busy man. Don't waste it babysitting me. I'll come home."

He smiled back, warm as anything. "I'm busy. There's always a brother who isn't." A beat. "Look after him all you want. You're an Ashford. There's a line, and one of these days you'll feel exactly where it runs."

To his face I went sweet. "Best brother."

The second I turned around my face fell.

Too many brothers is its own kind of problem.

I came and went from his place as I pleased, and my favorite hobby lately was needling and flirting with Cassian by day, then wheeling him out for a turn around the garden.

Except I'd missed two days running, after going every single one before.

Two days ago, at his place, I'd been on a video call with my best friend.

She was distraught on my behalf. "Romy. You absolute simp."

"His legs are gone and you still won't bail. Icon."

I laughed. "I just like him. That's all."

"I've got money. Keeping him, looking after him, I can more than cover it."

"No," she said. "You actually want to marry him."

"So how are the two of you going to handle the, you know. Married part?"

Chapter 6

Best friends say whatever they want to each other. No filter.

"Relax," I said. "It's not complicated."

"One, the equipment's in excellent working order. I checked."

"Two, I've been a very good rider since I was a kid."

That shut her up.

"Romy. You used to at least blush saying things like that."

I ran my mouth at her, zero shame, right up until my phone was nearly dead and I had to say goodbye.

I hung up, turned around on instinct, and froze.

Cassian, who'd been inside the house, was out in the courtyard.

Which meant he'd heard every filthy word of it.

Whitman, behind the wheelchair, pushed his glasses up and found something fascinating to look at. Smiling. Saying nothing.

Cassian just looked at me, and my eyes went everywhere but him.

I went scarlet to the ears and bolted.

Today, on my way in, I ran into Cassian's right hand. Whitman.

A plain-looking man with a quiet, mild way about him. He smiled hello when he saw me.

I nodded and headed for the stairs.

"Miss Ashford."

He'd let me get ten feet before he called me back.

I turned, a question on my face.

"He's in a bad way today," Whitman said, careful. "You might want to give it some time before you go up."

That stopped me for a second.

"Okay," I said. "Thank you."

He left, and I stood there looking up at the second floor, turning it over.

I hesitated a few seconds. Then I went up anyway.

Cassian spent most of his hours in the study. I softened my steps and came up slow.

At the study door, I stopped.

He sat with his back to me in the wheelchair, facing the window. The sky out there was a low, sullen gray.

No lights on. The room sat in half-dark, and it flattened him into something black-and-white. A photograph of a man with all the color drained out of him.

A weight settled on my chest I couldn't name.

I'd opened my mouth to call him when I saw what he was doing, and it died in my throat.

My throat went dry. Then it hurt.

Cassian had both hands braced on the arms of the chair, pushing, trying to stand.

His legs gave. He dropped back down.

He tried again.

Again.

Each time, nothing.

I watched him sit there with his spine bowed and his head down.

And start to laugh.

Lightning split the sky. Thunder cracked over it and swallowed the sound of him.

It didn't swallow the rest. The thing underneath the laugh.

I stood in the doorway with tears running down my face.

I clapped a hand over my mouth so he wouldn't hear, turned my back, and pressed into the cold white wall to keep it quiet.

It wasn't until I heard the wheels turn that I ducked into the guest room down the hall.

Cassian came out of the study and went into his bedroom. A moment later, water ran in the bathroom.

I crept out.

And then, like something had a hand on the back of my neck, I walked into his study.

The place was wrecked.

Papers all over the floor. A glass smashed across the tile.

My eyes went around the room once and snagged on a wrong note of red on the desk.

An invitation.

Vanessa and Preston's engagement.

His laptop was still open, the screen sitting on a single message.

[ You can claw it all back. It won't change what you are: a man with nothing left, who couldn't hold on to one thing that was his. You don't get to drag her down with you. You'll never deserve her. ]

It clicked into place almost before I'd finished reading.

Vanessa's engagement party was today.

Someone had waited for the worst day of his life to slide the knife in.

It had to be Preston.

Chapter 7

The elevator opened on the ground floor just as I was hanging up.

I waved at him from the couch.

He had on oatmeal loungewear, a thin gray blanket over his legs. Face cool and even, the way it always was.

Not a trace left of the man from the study. The one who'd come apart.

"Cassian, what happened to your hand