Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (203 page)

“That was perfect,” she said, feeling
giddy.
 
It was over.
 
She could go home.
 
She clapped her hands and twirled around
the lobby.
 
Of course, going home
didn’t change the fact that she’d slept with Chad.
 
And it didn’t change the fact that if
she was being completely honest with herself, she didn’t want to leave, she
didn’t want to go home, she didn’t want to be away from him.
 
And it certainly didn’t change the fact
that she had no job back in Connecticut, and nothing to really look forward to
when she got there.
 
She stopped
twirling.

“Yeah,” Chad said, his tone cold.
 
“Perfect.”
 
He was walking toward the hostess stand,
his strides long and angry.

“Where are you going?” Kenley asked, rushing
after him.

He turned around.
 
“I figured we should eat,” he said.
 
“Since we’re already here.”

“But you just had an omelette,” she pointed
out.

“Yeah, well, I’m hungry.”
 
He turned on his heel and stalked away,
leaving her standing there by herself.
 
She looked around, not sure what to do.
 
Was she supposed to go with him?
 
Did he want her to?
  
She didn’t understand why he so
angry all of a sudden.
 
She’d done
exactly what he’d wanted. Hell, she’d even had sex with him!

And that’s when it hit her.
 
That was exactly the reason why he was
being like this.
 
Now that he had
what he wanted from her, now that their little arrangement was over, there was
no reason for him to be nice to her.
 
Her eyes burned with tears, and she tried to blink them away, but they
spilled down her cheeks. She wiped at them angrily with the back of her
hand.
 
Whatever.
 
She didn’t need Chad Parnell.
 
She’d go back to his apartment and bury
herself in his guest room, she’d refuse to talk to him, she’d take
herself
to the airport tomorrow, and
she’d never talk to him again.
 
Well.
 
That last one was more
for her benefit than his, but still.
 

She thought about not taking his money, because
that would really show him, but then she decided that no, she’d earned that
fucking money, and she was going to have it.
 
She left the restaurant.
 
The paparazzi were standing in a loose
knot on the sidewalk, drinking their coffees, smoking their cigarettes, and
still waiting for George Clooney.
 
This time, they didn’t pay any attention to Kenley.

She was in a cab before she realized that she
didn’t have a way to get into Chad’s apartment.
 
She’d never gotten a key.
 
Shit.
 
Why hadn’t she thought to get a
key?
 
Well, because the idea was for
them to be together twenty-four seven.
 
She leaned her head back against the seat and sighed.
 
What a fucking disaster this whole thing
was turning out to be.
 
Why the
hell
had she slept with him?

“Where to, miss?” the cabbie asked, sounding
bored.

She thought about it.
 
No way she was going into that
restaurant after him.
 
She didn’t
trust herself not to make a scene, and besides, she didn’t want to see
him.
 
She could always go back to
his apartment anyway, but then what?
 
Sit there in the lobby and wait for him, putting her life on hold while
he ate some stupid, ridiculously overpriced breakfast?
 
Forget it.

She’d spend the afternoon in New York doing
what she wanted, and go back to the apartment later.
 
She had a couple hundred dollars left on
one of her credit cards, and she decided that she deserved to spend it.
 
She was about to become a hundred
thousand dollars richer anyway.

So she told the cabbie to take her to the one
place in New York that seemed the most appropriate for her situation.
   

“Bloomingdale’s please.”
 
And then she settled back into her seat
and braced herself for the ride.

***

The hostess
 
at Norma’s was taking Chad to his table
when he realized what a complete ass he was being.
 
Kenley had come to New York to help him,
because he’d asked her to.
 
And now
here he was, pitching a fit because she was trying to get their picture taken
together, which is what he’d brought her here to do in the first place.
 
It was a shitty thing to do.

It was just that she’d seemed so happy just
now, twirling around like that in the lobby, like she was psyched that their
time together was about to be over.
 
He hadn’t expected it to hurt so much, and he certainly wasn’t used to
feeling this way about a woman.
 
But
still.
 
That didn’t give him an
excuse to act like a prick.

“Excuse me,” he said to the hostess.
 
“I’m sorry, I…I have to go.”

He ran back outside, scanning the street for
Kenley.
 
But he didn’t see her
anywhere.
 
A few of the paparazzi
started snapping more pictures of him, and a couple others looked up when they
saw the flashes, hoping maybe George Clooney had finally made his appearance.
 
When they saw it was Chad, they seemed
disappointed.

“Hey,” Chad said to one of them, a woman who
had long blonde hair and was wearing a black baseball hat.
 
“Did you see where my girlfriend went?”

She shrugged.
 
“Not sure,” she said.
 
“Hey, did any of you guys see where that
girl went?
 
The one with Chad?”

“She got into a taxi!” one of them yelled.
 
An excited murmur started going through
the crowd, and now the photographers were interested.
 
They smelled a scandal brewing, a fight
between Chad and Kenley, one that maybe caused her to leave the restaurant.

“Thanks,” Chad said.
 
It was definitely best not to ask them
anything else.
 
Jesus.
 
They’d just gotten the pictures of them as
a couple, and now they were itching for them to break up.

He hailed a cab.
 
Kenley was probably heading back to
Brooklyn.
 
He’d follow her back, and
when he got there, he’d somehow find a way to make it okay.
 
He’d apologize, talk to her, take her
out, do whatever it took.
 
He gave
the cabbie his address, then pulled his phone out and dialed Kenley’s
number.
 
She didn’t answer, of
course.
 
Damn it.

He drummed his fingers on the back of the
seat.
 
The cab zoomed through the
gridlike streets of New York City, and Chad willed the cabbie to go faster. He
had never felt this desperation, this burning need to be close to another
person.
 
Not being able to talk to
Kenley, to apologize to her was driving him out of his mind.

When the cab pulled up in front of his
apartment, Chad threw some money through the divider, and then ran into his
building.
 
But when he got to the
apartment, Kenley wasn’t there.
 
He
raced into the guestroom.
 
Her
suitcase was still there, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
 
She hadn’t left the city.

Okay.
 
He could handle that.
 
Maybe
she’d stopped off somewhere, or maybe her cabbie had recognized her as an
out-of-towner and was taking her the long way to Brooklyn.
 
Whatever the case, all he had to do was
wait for her.
 
He would wait for her
here, for however long, and when she got here, he would make it right.
 

Chapter
Eleven

Three hours later, Kenley emerged from
Bloomingdale’s, holding two shopping bags.
 
Inside one was a pair of shoes, and inside the other was a t-shirt.
 
The shoes were sparkly and pink and not
that expensive, and the t-shirt was soft and black and had cost her sixty-two
dollars.
 
But she didn’t care. It
was her
I’m-fabulous-no-matter-what-Chad-Parnell-says-and-I-deserve-an-expensive-shirt-if-I-want-it
shirt.

She walked down the sidewalk, swinging her
bags, wondering what she should do next.
 
She thought about maybe going to a museum, or out to lunch, or even to
the Empire State Building.
 
But she
was exhausted.
 
And the longer she
stayed out, the longer she’d be stuck in New York.
 
She was dreading seeing Chad, but she
knew it was going to happen sooner or later.
 
It was time to face the music.
 
It was time to go back to Brooklyn.

She hailed a cab, checking her phone on the way
back to Chad’s apartment.
 
He’d
called three more times since the last time she’d checked an hour ago.
 
She deleted the messages without
listening to them, praying that he would be in his bedroom or something when
she got to his apartment.

No such luck.As soon as she stepped off the
elevator, he was poking his head out the door.

“Hello,” she said, doing her best to sound
cordial but cold.

“Hey,” he said.
 
“Where were you?”

“Oh, just doing some shopping.”
 
She tried to sound breezy, like it was
totally normal for her to spend hours alone in New York shopping when she had
no money and had just gotten into a fight with the man who was paying her to be
his fake girlfriend.

“Do you need help with your bags?”

“No, I only have these two.”
 
She brushed by him and into the
apartment, glancing at the clock on the wall.
 
It was only four o’clock.
 
Her flight didn’t leave until seven
tomorrow morning.
 
Which meant that
she had fifteen more hours of this.
 
Okay, she told herself.
 
New
plan: get into guest room asap and don’t come out.

“Listen,” Chad said, closing the door behind
him. “I need to talk to you.”

This was it.
 
The moment she’d been dreading.
 
The moment where he was going to sit her
down like some kind of loser and tell her about how last night didn’t mean
anything, and that he hoped she wouldn’t take it the wrong way and it was
really fun but here’s your check now see you later bye.
 
Well, whatever.
 
She wasn’t going to listen to it.
  
And in fact, she was going to cut
him off at the pass.

“Yes,” she said. “I need to talk to you too.”

“You do?”
 
He seemed surprised.

“Yes.”
 
She took a deep breath.
 
“I’m
going to be leaving tomorrow, and I know this is kind of awkward, but we need
to talk about payment.”

“Payment?”

“Yes.”
 
She nodded, forcing herself to look him in the eye.
 
If he thought that sleeping with her was
going to turn her into some kind of pile of mush that told him not to worry
about the money, he had another thing coming.
 
“I’m assuming you’ll write me a check?”

“A check?”
 
His eyes were about to bug out of his head.

“Yes.”

“Listen,” he said.
 
“I need to apologize for –“

She put her hand up.
 
“There’s no need.”

“No need for what?”
 

“To apologize.”

“But you don’t even know what I’m going to
apologize for.”

“Yes, I do,” she said.
 
“You’re going to apologize for what
happened last night.
 
But I’m a
grown woman, Chad, totally in charge of myself.
 
It was just sex.”
 
She shrugged.
 
“It happens.”

“It does?”
 
He seemed stunned.
 
Probably
because he didn’t think that she could wrap her mind around the idea of casual
sex.