Dating A British Billionaire (BWWM Romance) (6 page)

Just in staring at her like that, I became consumed with the need to see her… and soon. My heart fluttered in my chest as I dialed her number with my house phone.

“Hello?” her voice sounded groggy, like she was still sleeping.

I grimaced, completely forgetting that waking her up was a real possibility. “Oh goodness, did I wake you?”

There was the sound of her shuffling, before she responded with, “It’s all right. I should be up anyway.”

I shrugged. “Well, it is unladylike for you to stay in bed beyond ten.”

She giggled at this. The sound of it made me smile. “Did your grandmother tell you that?”

“My grandmother’s dead.”

She made an odd sound that was somewhere between a yelp and a gulp. “I am so sorry.”

I chuckled at this. “No. I’m just messing with you. She’s in a home.”

“You put your grandmother in a home?”

“No. My mother did.” I winced at my own mention of my mother. I hadn’t even thought about her in years.

“Oh… So is there a reason you woke me up this early, or are you just wanting to torture me?”she asked. 

I shrugged. In truth, there really wasn’t a reason, but I didn’t want to say that and sound stupid, so I came up with one really quickly. “I want you to have dinner with me.”

“Really? We just had dinner yesterday.”

I laughed at this. “I don’t know about you, but I eat dinner every day.”

Her giggle filled the earpiece. “I know, but don’t you think we’ll run out of places to eat?”

“This is London, love. Such a thing isn’t even possible.”

I could almost hear her smiling through the phone. “Well, all right then. If you say so…”

Chapter 9 - Nisha

Edward and I were going somewhere fast. Part of me wanted to halt it right then and there; to stop it before I felt trapped inside of all of it. But the other part of me wondered what I had done to be so lucky as to deserve this. Part of me wanted to simply ask him what the expiration date on this was. Part of me wondered aloud, “What’s the catch?”

Edward glanced at me, his eyes flashing blank for a short moment before he turned his attention to the menu in my hand. With a smile, he replied with, “The mushrooms. The mushrooms are the catch.”

I laughed at this. “You’re just saying that because you hate mushrooms.”

He shrugged. “I’m not wrong…”

I scoffed at him. “All right, well what are you getting?” I asked as I looked over his shoulder. I caught a whiff of his magical scent. It nearly drove me wild with desire right then and there.

“The Chicken Parmigiana,” he replied in a matter of fact voice as he looked up at me.

We were inches apart and all I wanted was to feel his lips against mine. Then, as if he had heard my thoughts, he dropped his menu and wrapped his arms around me. He kissed me with such volition that I thought we might have been in one of those old American romantic flicks. I could feel his arms, tight and strong around me, so secure that he made me feel safe, as strange as it sounded. Our lips danced together in this kind of Viennese Waltz of emotion. I clutched at his expensive-looked dress shirt as his hand hiked its way up my leg. His tongue had just slipped in between my lips when...

“Excuse me, sir?”

We broke apart. It was the waiter with the wine. I took a sip of the white selection as I waited for the blood to settle away from my face, and then ordered the mushroom dish just like Edward didn’t want me to.

Then, just as the waiter collected our menus and walked away, he turned to me and said, “I love you.”

I honestly didn’t believe it, but, “I love you too.” The words leapt out of my mouth before I could even begin to stop them.

He leaned over his glass of wine and kissed me again. I could feel the beginnings of his five o’clock shadow brushing against my skin as he did this. “I suppose we’re in love now.”

“I suppose,” I replied, just as the appetizers came around. I sat there, eating my calamari and staring at Edward, wondering when I would wake up from this dream. In the weeks that followed, I found myself staring at him a lot, but not just like that, in the relative privacy of a SoHo restaurant in Central London, but in the public arena: watching him on stage at conventions, sitting on his arm in interviews, mouthing his speech to him from backstage.

It wasn’t until I ran into Felix on the way to his prep room at a rally that I got that feeling again, you know? That feeling that things were moving far too fast and that sooner or later, my sports car of happiness would crash, bursting into flames and killing anyone in the immediate vicinity.

He shot me a double take and even though I simply kept walking without so much as a glance back in his direction, I always wondered to myself whether he stared at me that way because he wasn’t sure if he recognized me, or because he was surprised that I could have cleaned up so… presidential.

Either way, I tried not to think about it on my way in to see Edward. He was standing in front of the window, on the other side of a rickety old classroom on a top floor in the University of London. “Ed?”

He turned, facing me with that winning smile on his face. He gestured at the tie that hung around his neck. “Do you mind?”

I nodded and crossed the room to him, but as soon as I put my hands on his tie, he drew me in for a kiss. I smiled up at him. “What was that for?” I asked.

He shrugged as I turned my attention to his tie. “I needed that.”

“Are you worried about this?”

“The election is around the corner and I just don’t feel ready.”

I nodded, not really sure what to say, other than, “Well, I love you, and Britain would be lucky to have you in Parliament.”

He chuckled. “You’re only saying that because you have to.” He planted a kiss on my forehead.

I finished up his tie. “I don’t have to do anything, my love.” Although it felt more like I was trying to convince myself of this than him.

Chapter 10 – Edward

I was obsessed with Nisha. Her face, her voice, her scent occupied my every thought, as damaging as that sounded. She was like the stunning goddess that had always lurked around my forgotten dreams, the whisper that woke me in the morning and the song that ushered me to sleep. As I sat in that campaign meeting, surrounded by people who were obsessed with me, all I could think of was her. I wished every moment with her was twice as long; every kiss tripled; every night, an eternity. It seemed like no time was enough time and yet she would disappear. On evenings like last night, I’d call her house and her cell and get her voicemail. She’d never return my calls when she missed them and, beyond that, she seemed reluctant to tell me what she did when she wasn’t around me. Her life was as elusive as her mind and I was rapidly growing impatient to know everything about her.

“Edward!”

I looked up to find myself staring at the image of my opposition: George Trent. His snake-like smile lifted goosebumps on my skin. I glowered at his impossibly blue eyes and his white teeth. His shiny skin looked as if he had walked right into the studio from a tanning appointment. He was a conservative, and disgustingly so; a part of a coalition to pull Britain off the brink of socialism. He was a puppet of America and a kiss-up to the Obama administration. He claimed to speak of the future, but he was a shame to the English. “Yes, yes. George is a bane and should be brought down at all costs.”

Peter glowered at me, folding his wrinkled sausage fingers in front of him. “It is a true shame that this is your election and you are paying the least attention out of all of us.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m also running a company.”

Peter leaned in to me. “So is half the population of this conference room!”

“Is there something in particular you wanted to tell me?”

“Nothing, besides ‘pay attention!’”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“George has a bastard child,” Felix spoke up.

My eyes went wide. He was married, had been for almost a decade now. “How old?”

“Four.”

I moved my legal pad from in front of me, resting my elbow on the table. “Are you serious?” The faces of everyone around the table were answer enough. “Does the wife know?”

“Our sources tell us that she is oblivious.”

I gulped. “That’s heartbreaking.”

Peter stared at me with those beady eyes of his, an ape ready to strike. “No. That’s golden.”

My stomach turned. “This makes me extremely uncomfortable.”

“The way that your campaign has been going so far makes me uncomfortable,” Felix jumped in.

“Are you really that disappointed in me?” For some reason, I felt like I needed to defend my own reluctance.

“I have no idea what’s going on with you! I can see it in your eyes. You’re distracted.”

Peter glanced at me, an odd expression on his face, as if he thought he knew something about me that no one else did. The trouble was that I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what that was. “Do you have something to say?”

“Where are you planning to take this Nisha flirtation?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I could feel my skin crawling at the fact that he would even begin to think of what I had with Nisha as a mere flirtation. “I’m in love with her.”

His eyes flashed wide, as if I had just declared my intention to go to the moon.

Felix sat down across from me, his hands folded in front of him and his brow furrowed in a serious way. “You can’t be.”

I cocked my head to the side. “Are you trying to tell me how I should feel?”

“She’s not good for you,” Peter argued.

“I know what’s good for me.”

“Do you know anything about her at all?” Felix asked.

I grimaced, taken aback by this question. It was like he had read my mind; managed to reach inside of our relationship and extract the one imperfection that remained; like he knew something I didn’t. “Do you?”

Peter bowed his head, for some reason, completely avoiding my gaze. “Look, I don’t care what either of you have to say. Nisha is the love of my life and, quite frankly, I don’t feel comfortable discussing my love life in a conference room.”

Felix sighed. “We only bring it up, because we cannot attack George this way unless you are impeccable in comparison.”

“Am I not?”

“You are dating a..."

“A what?” I demanded.

“She looks like a model or a bimbette.” Peter said.

“She’s the most intelligent woman I have ever met in my life.”

“Are you planning on marrying her?” It was retort, a malicious retort, and from Felix nonetheless.

But as soon as the question was raised, I could think of nothing else to say, but, “Yes.”

Felix sat back in his chair, his jaw slowly drooping lower and lower.

“That is exactly what I intend to do. If she will have me, I will be engaged by the time you can get your damaging story to the printing press.”

“There is no need to be condescending,” Peter snapped.

I had had enough of this. The room seemed to be closing in on me, as every wall felt shorter and shorter, the ceiling crashing down and oxygen seeping through the cracks. I was tired of being examined and judged. I had had enough of Peter’s beady stare and Felix’s damaging strategies. And, to be honest, I missed Nisha. “Look, I’m done for the day. If you want to ruin this guy’s marriage, his life, over a bloody election, go ahead. But count me out.”

“Where are your teeth, Ed?” Peter asked as I shoved my chair underneath the table.

“Don’t call me Ed.”

“You’ve gone soft,” Felix said.

“Forgive me if it makes my skin crawl to think of the kind of conversation he will have with his wife after this hits the headlines.”

Felix stretched his huge arms out to each of his sides. “Hey! I didn’t ask him to cheat!”

I huffed out a deep breath before I responded with, “You’re lethal and you scare me.” I didn’t wait for any more words to be exchanged before I walked out of the office, leaving the both of them there.

***