Tributary: A Billionaire Romance (Oak Creek Book 2) Read online

  Enid flushes now and exhales, the weight of her confession dissipating as she adjusts her utility belt.

  “Are you going to give me a citation?”

  Her eyes go wide. “No! Are you kidding? What would I even write in the report? People read those, Diana. Lord! No.” She asks me to consider getting blinds, and I offer her a posey of herbs I was about to hang upside-down to dry.

  She accepts my gift and I know I have to think of something big to get Aneke to keep her mouth shut. I curse my stupidity for letting Wexler distract me. This is why I leave town when I feel the urge to fuck someone. But nobody fucks quite like Asa Wexler. As I wrap up some catnip for Aneke, I remember the feeling of his tongue lashing against my clit, and decide it might just have been worth the hassle.

  “I won’t tell a soul as long as you give me details,” Aneke says, reaching for the catnip with a sly smile. “You know I’ve been with Matthew for ten years.”

  “Details about what?” Indigo appears out of nowhere, cradling a writhing bundle of fur and staring at me intently. “There was another rabbit in my basement, Aneke,” she says, thrusting the creature forward and then crossing her arms. “Diana Crawford, do you have something to tell us?”

  I sigh and tug at the hair around my temples, wondering how to explain what happened when I still don’t understand it myself.

  I give Indigo and Aneke the rough overview of my unplanned tryst in the Houseplant Haven, but I save the details for myself. I don’t want to share the way I felt when Asa seemed to know what would bring me the most pleasure, before I knew. Like he had a map of my nerve endings. I don’t want to share how it felt to let myself go, to lose control, and emerge on the other side a shivering puddle of post-orgasmic mess.

  Later that afternoon, the bell rings above my door yet again. I emerge from the lab to find a confused courier I recognize from around the college campus.

  “Diana Crawford?” I nod. He thrusts a box in my arms and I open it cautiously. I gasp when I see what’s inside. Gingerly, I lift out the tiny plant cutting and inhale. Tettnanger—German hops I’ve been dying to grow.

  I hear a click as the courier takes my picture. “What the hell?”

  “Sender wanted proof of receipt.” He cracks his gum and zips out of the shop before I can ask anything else. There’s no card, but there’s also no question where it came from.

  “Damn you, Wexler,” I mutter, sniffing the fragrant hops again. I vow to make sure I don’t even exchange names with my next conquest. This is too messy—personal gifts. He knows how to reach me and of course, I can only contact him if I call his business number and ask his secretary. “It would serve you right if I chucked this in the compost,” I mutter, but then I stroke the plant apologetically, knowing I would never do such a thing.

  I have the seedling transplanted and sunning against its own trellis an hour later, while I set up sensors and lights to get it going back in my lab. My mouth waters, imagining the summer ale I’ll brew. I don’t let myself think about drinking it with Asa, naked, after another mind-blowing session of filthy sex.

  I don’t have time to dwell on Asa or his magic tongue. My research plants are nearing maturity, and it’s almost time to harvest them, pack them up gently, and trek out to Pittsburgh to deliver them to Dr. Khalsa in person. We both prefer when I transport the medical marijuana myself and take it straight to his lab at the hospital. Medical marijuana is such a new industry in Pennsylvania. There’s no real way to insure my crop or the delivery.

  I’ve tried. And my brother Archer knows it, but I’m not about to let my family in on my business details. Archer knows I’ve been sniffing around talking to insurance brokers—he’s the only CPA in town and knows more about everyone’s lives than the pharmacist.

  I’ve been cultivating this particular strain for Dr. Khalsa for a few years now, for his neurology research. I’m not licensed to grow medical cannabis for dispensaries yet, but I’m close. Khalsa has some sort of research loophole since he collaborates with other institutions in other states. Traveling out to see him every few months, talking to his neurology team…I’ll never admit it to my mother, but I’ve missed this sort of camaraderie, of working for a big academic system. I miss having colleagues.

  But, when you work with other researchers, you have to trust that they aren’t going to steal your ideas and then leave you choking on their dust. It’s better this way, operating under the radar. Alone.

  It was a fortunate accident that I found Dr. Khalsa right as I was setting up my lab once I bought the Houseplant Haven building. One of his patients was in town to give a lecture about something else, but she was staying with Indigo and I got to hear all about how her neurologist was among the first in the nation to dive into research for medical cannabis and seizure control.

  Indigo called me to come meet Emma Stag, knew I’d be interested in nerding out about brains and plants. I smile, remembering how nervous I was to make a call to Dr. Khalsa that first time, and then how excited he was to hear from someone able to grow a specific strain under pristine lab conditions.

  I shiver a little, walking the rows of genetically identical plants. My leech of an ex might have stolen my ideas in grad school, but his traitorous ass only made me work harder. This lab is a thing of efficient, nutrient-rich perfection. And I’ll be damned if I let another man so much as look at it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Asa

  “HEY, ANDREA?” I frown looking over the stack of papers she slid across my desk. “What the hell is all this?”

  She raises her eyebrows at me over the top of her computer screen, but doesn’t look away from her work as she says, “That’s the dossier on the botanist. Dr. Diana Crawford. I figured you were interested in investing, so I pulled up her whole back story.”

  There’s not much here. Print outs of articles Diana co-authored when she was a graduate student…a newspaper clipping of her opening the Houseplant Haven. I look down at the stack to see Andrea has highlighted something in bright red. Jay Buford. I hate that slimy jerk. He’s listed as the co-author on several of the papers along with Diana. They must have been at Princeton together.

  He pushed me to invest in some quasi-pot drug a few years back, and it ended up being a cash cow, but something has always rubbed me the wrong way about him. It’s hard for me to imagine Diana collaborating with him on an article about…botanical treatments for unilateral cerebellar damage in focal epilepsy. Shit, I can’t even pronounce these words, and she can sling them around in a meaningful way. She’s actually out there doing things, finding answers to people’s problems. Like her brother.

  My family legacy is asking people to sign away a portion of their dream so we can ride the coat tails of their success. My stomach turns, thinking of Jay Buford again, and I decide to go take a walk. “Andrea, hold my calls,” I grunt, and I don’t look back as I stride toward the elevator.

  I walk along the reservoir in Central Park, remembering how, as a kid, I always thought this was as wild as nature got. I can’t remember leaving Manhattan until I was a teenager—my parents didn’t bring us along with them on their European vacations. When I took my Birthright trip to Israel and stood in the darkness in the Negev Desert…then I knew how very small my view of the world had been.

  Ever since then, though, my parents began pushing, insisting I needed to do my Wexler duty and step into my role at the head of Wexler Holdings. Sometimes, today especially, I feel like a fraud. Spending my family’s accumulated wealth, trying to make the dragon’s hoard even bigger. My father was not pleased when I decided to invest in Hunter Crawford’s work. I’m not going to see a return on that investment for a long time…but damn it, he’s working to figure out answers to problems that matter to society.

  I kick gravel on the path thinking of Diana’s face as she talked to me about plants. That whole family is so inspired. So interested in the world. I think that’s why I never balk about staying in the Crawford’s house in Oak Creek. Everywhere else I ha
ve to stay overnight, I just have Andrea buy property and staff it for when I’m in town. But Rose Mitchell and her family just feel, somehow, like coming home. I try to imagine my mother serving homemade anything to a guest of honor, let alone beaming with obvious pride at her daughter’s beer.

  I sigh, realizing there’s no reason for me to go back to Oak Creek for business for at least a few months. I can’t stop thinking about Diana Crawford, and I pull up the courier’s picture of her in my phone to see if I can notice something else new about the curve of her cheek or the way her hair glints in the late afternoon sun.

  As I’m staring at my screen, I walk out of what must have been a dead zone for cell reception, because my phone erupts in missed messages from Andrea. “Shit.” I tap out a hasty apology and walk back to reality, where I pull the lever on people’s dreams, and have to make decisions that affect people’s livelihoods.

  My team is waiting for me as I exit the elevator, holding out pens and contracts requiring signatures, waiting for the green light to launch new initiatives or move ahead with calculated mergers.

  With the flick of a pen, I launch a new fleet of passenger jets, fund solar energy production, and liquidate a coal mining operation. Mine isn’t a life that can slow down and search for wild witch hazel.

  “Asa, we need to talk about the cancer people in Pittsburgh,” Andrea says. She’s got a folder, so I know this is a sit-down situation.

  “Hit me,” I tell her, gesturing for her to enter my office. “What have we got?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Diana

  ABIGAIL AND INDIGO texted me repeatedly all day to meet them at the Nobler Experiment after work. Oak Creek is a dry town—no thanks to meddling senior citizens—and the Nobler Experiment sits right across from the town limits. Townspeople flock there if they’re looking for a social gathering that does not involve Tai Chi, kombucha, or caffeine.

  I’ve been avoiding my friends since the Asa Encounter, and I know they know this. The whole thing just makes me so uncomfortable. But Abigail’s right. I haven’t made fun of Indigo’s baking habit for a whole week.

  I lock up and set all my alarms for my lab, then walk the few blocks to the bar. My eyes take a minute to adjust to the bright light after walking there in the dark. As I stand in the doorway banging sidewalk slush off my boots, my friends rush up and grab my arms.

  “Diana Crawford, enough of this avoidance.” Indigo’s curly hair shakes as she jabs a finger into my chest. She shoves me into a booth across from her and her wife, Sara. Abigail starts pouring liquor from a plastic pitcher and shoving too-full glasses toward all of us.

  “Now,” Indigo continues. “We’ve heard all about Abigail and Hunter trying out video sex from outer space. So you’re welcome for holding that convo before you got here. It’s your turn to tell us the real story about who sent you plant clippings from Germany and why you’ve been holed up in your root cellar.”

  “My seedlings reached maturity—”

  “Nope.” Sara cuts me off. “Last time that happened you were still at our house every night for Schitt’s Creek. Try again.”

  “Weren’t you and Indigo supposed to update us on your baby process?”

  Indigo swigs her drink and grins. “We chose a donor and ordered a tank of sperm. There. You’re up.”

  I sigh. These girls are worse than my mother. “He breaks all my rules,” I begin, spinning my glass between my fingers, not meeting their eyes.

  Sara grunts, and Abigail leans forward. “What rules? Like safety rules?”

  I shake my head, and Indigo butts in. “Diana only bangs men she doesn’t have to see again.”

  Sara nods, adding, “She goes into the city once a quarter to get laid and spends the rest of her time moping at our place.”

  “I do not mope!”

  Abigail frowns at this and says, “You said something about hating men when we first met. I remember because I was off men, too…after my ex…”

  Abigail came to Oak Creek when her loser boyfriend raised a hand to her. She and my brother have been pretty much inseparable, though. Apart from his current journey to the space station. “It’s nothing like your shit-head ex,” I tell her, swigging from my glass, which turns out to be filled with watery margarita. “I had a bad breakup in graduate school and I don’t care to do that again.”

  “Bad breakup? The guy stole your research, patented it, and sold it for millions of dollars.” Sara is still salty that I never hired her to sue Jay, but she was fresh out of law school then, and I was too angry and bitter to do anything productive. I moved back home to Oak Creek and bought the Houseplant Haven instead.

  “So you made man rules…and this new guy broke them?” Abigail prods, slurping down a second glass of watery booze.

  “Well, I mean, he…you know I’m talking about Asa Wexler, right?”

  Her eyes widen. “You slept with Asa? Ooh, I bet that was exciting. He has very nice fingers.” I can’t help but laugh at tipsy Abigail. It’s been great making friends with her, even if she is sleeping with my weirdest brother. “I heard you did it right in front of your store window.”

  “Damn it, Indigo. Did you blab?”

  “I did not,” Indigo insists. “I just told Abigail the highlights after she told me about her outer space cybersex—don’t make that face, Diana—because she and Hunter aren’t the only ones in this town getting freaky and spontaneous. The rest of us old married people just live for this kind excitement, Diana. Now. When are you seeing him again?”

  I shrug. “I guess when he comes to town. But like I said, he breaks my rules. He works with my family. I’m not starting a relationship with him.”

  “But he sent you a plant!” Indigo grabs my hand. “That’s way more romantic than when Hunter got Abigail apology chickens.”

  “This town is so weird,” Abigail says, and she drains her glass. “But if he sent you a special plant, he must want to show you his fingers again.” She hiccups. I laugh. “Want me to get his cell number from Hunter? Then you can text Asa a picture of your boobs.”

  Indigo and Sara applaud this idea, and help Abigail get out her phone. She’s in the middle of texting my brother before I dive across the table and snatch the phone from her. “Abigail. Stop it. I’m not having my brother’s girlfriend ask some guy for his cell number.”

  Abigail tilts her head and stares at me. “That’s right,” she says. “You don’t trust people. That’s why you do everything yourself.”

  “Well yeah,” I scoff. Everyone knows that. Don’t they? I look around the table at my friends, who look back at me uncomfortably. I trusted them with my secret this week, didn’t I? I trusted them not to broadcast all around town that I had an exhibitionist morning. “Look what happened the last time I trusted someone…”

  My brother’s girlfriend clutches my hand and meets my eye. “Thank you for showing me your special pot plants, Diana.” She hiccups. “Are you going to sell them to that doctor guy?”

  The energy shifts and I can tell we’re done digging into my personal life. I tell the girls how I’m packing up to go to Pittsburgh this week and deliver the latest batch. Indigo and Abigail insist I should go get my hair done before the trip, and before I can stop the bleeding, even Sara agrees I need to spruce up my look to make this sales call. She knows how important it is for me to maintain research clientele if I’m going to scale up and grow for the medical dispensaries.

  “All right, all right,” I tell them. “I’ll go to the mall and get a new suit and a haircut. Are you satisfied?”

  “NO!” Indigo pounds on the table. “I’m going with you, dang it. We can pick up my sperm tank while we’re out getting you new underthings.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Asa

  ANDREA CHARTERS ME a flight to Pittsburgh to close the deal with the cancer screening team. I should feel more excited about this trip. These are the kinds of investments I tell myself I need—the ones that truly make a difference in the world. I’ve read
this guy’s research articles, even though I don’t understand them. I’ve interviewed experts in the field to get their take. He’s the real deal. And private investment from venture capitalists like me are a lot easier for him to land than government research grants these days.

  I’ve been all out of whack since I got back from Oak Creek, though. I don’t even take the same joy in brokering deals. Andrea even commented that she hasn’t seen me yell at anyone in weeks.

  I’ve been going home from the office and sitting in my penthouse watching documentaries about plants. Jacking off to memories of Diana Crawford and her sharp tongue and her soft hips. She is the very best type of distraction, luring me in with an unfamiliar pull. I find that I enjoy just sitting and thinking about her, daydreaming about bringing her back to my otherwise lifeless apartment.

  The team in Pittsburgh gives me the royal welcome. I sit through their presentation at the hospital, and actually feel moved by some of the personal stories they threw in about the women who agreed to clinical trials for this device. I had already decided to say yes before I left Manhattan, but I make the decision to swing the contract a bit in their favor, taking less of a cut of the profits I know will come pouring in when this thing goes to market. These guys are going to change the process of women’s healthcare screenings.

  A guy with a mustache rises to shake my hand, and I realize we’ve come to the part of the show where we sign papers. “You guys put on a hell of a presentation,” I say, pumping the his hand. “This is where I’m supposed to tell you I’ll have my people call your people.” Andrea is standing by waiting with the contract back at the office. “But I’ll tell you what—let me save you the antacid. I’m going to call my chief of staff right now and have her send you an offer I promise you’ll like.”