Billionaire Brothers 2 : Love Has A Name (40 page)

Cody ran both hands over his head this time, then narrowed his eyes at me. He was trying to figure out if I was serious or if I was messing with him. Of course I was messing with him. But I’d prefer it if he thought I was serious, so I kept my face impassive.

“No, that’s not what I was saying. I’m just tryna find out if she belongs to any other trainer here so I can try to take her on.” As he said this, he didn’t seem to realize that his eyes had traveled from my face and got stuck on my breasts.

“My face is up here, Muscle Boy,” I said, pointing at my face.

He snapped his gaze back to my face and made another nervous laugh, then continued. “I-I just wanna make sure I’m not, um, stepping on anyone’s toes.” And yep, his eyes drifted down my body again.

“Are we still talking about the girl over there?”

Cody’s eyes flew to mine with a glimmer of hope and he flashed me a shy smile. Cute, he thought I was flirting with him.

I almost rolled my eyes. “Here you’ll most definitely be stepping on somebody’s toe. A toe that’s like a landmine. You don’t even wanna try tiptoeing around that toe — or else you’ll be warranted a lost leg. But her over there?” I pointed to the girl on the pink mat that was pulling on her poor neck as she
tried
to do sit-ups. “Yeah, she’s free. She just signed up two days ago. So go ahead and knock yourself out.”

Cody frowned, staring at me oddly as if trying to figure me out. Again he ran a hand over his head, muttered a “thanks” and carried himself away on his strong, muscled legs.

“Jeez, Axia. You didn’t have to be such a bitch to him. He obviously likes you. And he’s seriously hot,” Trudy scolded.

“Yeah, he is. But he lacks the balls to call me out on my bitchiness.” I powered off my treadmill and stepped down, grabbing my water bottle from the bottle holder. “You see, guys like him, I can have them eating from the palm of my hand by merely flashing them a smile. I can so easily toy them on my fingers like a yo-yo. They get nervous and intimidated if I’m bitchy. But with my Pretty Boy, there’s none of that bullshit. That sonuvabitch
owns
me.”

Some four weeks later, Lovello and I swanned through the doors of his work building; I’d promised to escort and ensure that he got on the elevator safely. Uh huh, we were that goony about each other.

With the time being just after noon, the atmosphere was subdued, as everyone was now settling back into their work spaces after lunch. Lovello and I had boycotted working for the first half of the day to stay at home and roll in the hay. I’d merely laughed and shook my head when I’d gotten a call from Trudy, who gave me the news that the popstar, Netta Williams, had popped up at Coded Solutions to visit Lovello. There’d been no need for me to play the jealous bitch, because
my
man was in
my
bed, with
me
. So there’s no possible way he could have known that the coveting Netta Williams was going to visit. She merely wanted what was mine. Flew all the way from New York for it. But she wasn’t going to get it.

We finally reached the elevator, laughing inanely at how ridiculous we were being, and with Lovello asking me who was going to ensure that I got to work safely, seeing that
I
was playing the man in ensuring
he
got to work safely. Just one of our usual leisure days, it was. We were happy.

Loving.

Enjoying each other.

Until the elevator doors opened.

Until. The. Elevator. Doors. Opened …

They slid open, revealing a tall, honey-skinned woman standing on smooth, long legs that went on for miles. Her medium-length, dark brown hair was scissored in an edgy style with highlights of platinum blonde. Her curvy figure did great justice to a cream-colored, square-necked pencil dress, and her feet were covered in a pair of turquoise pumps that I’m pretty sure were more than six inches high. Nice, this woman sure as hell put a lot of effort into her upkeep. She was highly polished, buffed and shined. To the ninth. If she wasn’t so copious in the boob and hips department, I’d have passed her off as a model.

It took me a few moments to realize that time had somehow stopped since the elevator doors opened. The only thing that was moving were my eyes, back and forth between the woman and Lovello as I tried to decipher what was going on. The woman was staring at Lovello with amazement in her eyes, and he was staring back at her with what? Fright? Awe? Adoration?

Some centuries later, after many great kings had reigned and died, after technology got more advanced to flying cars, and
Kentucky Fried Chicken
became a thing of the past, Lovello finally said, “Nicole…”

The woman, who I’d now discovered, by Lovello’s one word, as his ex, didn’t answer. She merely gazed back at him through glossy eyes as she took slow steps from the elevator.

As she got nearer, I slipped my hand from Lovello’s, and he didn’t seem to care that I did. Then, in one breath, Nicole pounced on Lovello, throwing her arms around his neck and exclaiming, “Oh, Ty! My God, it’s been so long! It’s so good to see you, Ty.”

Ty? Was that short for his middle name Tyler? Well then, jolly, she had her own intimate name for him.

“Um, Nicole, what’re you doing here?” Lovello seemed to have found his voice.

Nicole pulled herself from the hug, smoothing out Lovello’s jacket with her perfectly manicured fingers. “To see you, of course.”

“I can see that. But I mean, here, in SF? Aren’t you supposed to be getting married?”

Nicole took on a woe-is-me expression. “Canceled. It’s a long story.”

Lips folded, I stuffed my hands inside the back pockets of my jeans, thinking I could just leave right now and Lovello wouldn’t even notice. He’d probably even forgotten we’d come in together.

Nicole slid her hand down Lovello’s chest. “Can we go up and talk, or are you busy now?” she purred, cutting her eyes over to me in question.

Well, look at that! I’ve been visible all this time? Who would’ve thought?

Lovello followed her gaze and his eyes widened a fraction as if he were surprised to see me standing there. So he
had
forgotten we’d come into the building together. He reached for my hand, but I kept it glued in my pocket. Narrowing his eyes at me, he wrapped his arm around my shoulders instead and tugged me closer to him. “Nicole, this is my girlfriend, Axia. Axia, this is Nicole.”

Nicole’s eyes shot to Lovello with a surprised expression, as if not quite understanding the term ‘girlfriend’. She brought her gaze back to me, her light gold irises frosting over as she offered me a tight smile. “Hi.”

With a perfunctory nod of my head, I was just as friendly as her. Turning to Lovello, I told him, “I better get going. Text me what your palate desires for dinner.”

When I turned to leave, however, he pulled me back. “But you haven’t fulfilled your promise of ensuring that I get on the elevator safely, lady.”

Could he not see that I wasn’t in a damn mood to be smiling right now? Not with Miss Polish and Shine freezing me with her envious eyes. “That game has been sent to ruination now, don’t you think? This is quite the day of unexpected visits for you, Pretty Boy.”

Lovello sent his eyes heavenward, but refused to argue. He tilted my chin up and gave me a very inappropriate, tongue-dipping kiss. Was he trying to reassure me? Bringing his lips to my ear, he said, “Told you we should’ve boycotted work for the
entire
day. Don’t be mad at me, it’s your fault.”

That made me smile, and I grabbed the edges of his jacket and kissed him quite voraciously, whispered my favorite words, “Te amo”, then sauntered away, leaving the long-legged flamingo looking sour-faced.

It’s not that I was jealous of her. There was just something about her spirit that didn’t sit well with me.

Nevertheless, the trust aspect of the relationship between Lovello and me was like a spider’s web fighting to sustain itself against harsh winds. Spiders’ houses were the most fragile of houses, and that’s where our relationship resided at the moment. We therefore needed to strengthen our trust in each other so we could graduate from the weakness and insecurity of a spider’s web to the secure hardness of a turtle’s shell, hopefully.

Therefore, I gave my lover the benefit of the doubt and walked away, leaving him with a woman who, though I hated to admit it, was much too attractive for any sane man to resist.

If I couldn’t trust him with his ex, then maybe what I thought we had wasn’t real. Or worse, maybe he was never mine.

I’d be lying if I said the remainder of my day had been all mellow-jello like a vacation Sunday morning on the beach. It was anything but. What woman, as insanely in love as I was, would be able to maintain peace of mind knowing that her guy was in the company of his oh-so-stunning ex? That her long, smooth legs were probably locked around his waist as he rammed himself into her on his office desk while they both professed how much they missed each other. Heaven knows, I was
not
okay. Giving the benefit of the doubt wasn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world to do.

The thing is, he’d mentioned Nicole to me on a few occasions, and from those bits I’d deduced that he either loved her or had profound feelings for her. He’d never actually admitted that he used to be in love with her, but he’d never denied that he was either. That’s what made me so disconcerted. Was he over what he’d felt for her, or was he not? What if she came to reclaim him, would he take her back? There was an inordinate amount of questions swirling around in my head, it was impossible for me to focus on any one thing.

My insecurities, I believe, were on account of the fact that Lovello was yet to enlighten me just what I meant to him in this relationship. Whenever I love someone, I let them know. I
never
spare words, because everything I do, I do it wholeheartedly, to the extremity. So on a daily basis, I professed my love to him in profusion, but he never once returned the words. Veraciously speaking, it doesn’t bother me that the words aren’t returned, because I know that men are different when it comes on to expressing their emotions. In situations like these, however, it was hard to combat my insecurities, due to the uncertainty of what, truly, I meant to him.

My phone buzzed, hauling me from my brain-slaughtering thoughts. Great, it was
my
ex this time, Zane. Over the past few weeks, he’d been perplexingly determined for us to get back together. I hadn’t informed him that I was in a relationship, like a
real
relationship, because I didn’t think I needed to tell him a damn thing other than that the possibility of us getting back together was nil. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him I was in love with someone anyway, because he clings tightly to the notion that I was his and that I’d never love anyone else but him.
Cocky sod.

His relentless pressing was beginning to be a bother, and I seldom replied. Like now, when the text message merely rambled on about how much he ‘loved’ and ‘missed’ me, I simply hit ‘delete’.

That night, I ate dinner alone. For some strange reason, Lovello didn’t think it was important to inform me that he would be home five hours late. Not a phone call or text message had I received from him since I’d left him at noon. But I tried to assure my sighing heart that everything was fine. For the past month or so, he worked late on most nights because he’d started the ‘Trudy Green’ project, and this, I was informed, was the birthing stage where excess amount of work needed to be injected. Nonetheless, it had never been a detriment to our relationship, because he’d cared enough to
always
alert me that he’d be working late, and for how long. In addition, Trudy’s late-night working, too, would verify it all.

I wasn’t mad. Just disappointed.

Things like this needed to occur to remind us that we weren’t married, anyway. There was no bondage between us and neither of us owed an ounce of obligation to the other. We moved in sync much like a married couple, so simple things like a forgotten phone call were exactly what was needed to ring the Reality bell.