The Billionaire Dating Game: A Romance Novel (24 page)

I yanked my arm out of his grasp and stepped out of the elevator. He followed, his lips pressed together in a white line.

“Dylan!” I threw my arms around Dylan’s neck and gave him a big hug. He picked me up and spun me, and I laughed brightly, giving him a kiss on the cheek before he set me down. There. That would give Piers a nice case of jealousy. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him gritting his teeth behind that stupid fake smile.

“You look awesome, Lisa!” Dylan said, looking down at me appreciatively and holding my hands in his. “Doesn’t she look awesome?”

“She looks amazing,” Piers said flatly.

“Aw, thank you!” I said.

“I’m sure you two will have a wonderful time this evening.” His eyes glared at me, even as his mouth was smiling. “Remember to be back within one hour. I’ll see you tomorrow morning for the judging.”

“Can’t wait! See you later, Piers!” I waved at him until he disappeared outside. The camera crew hung around. How weird. I had forgotten that they would be following us on our date.

“So,” Dylan said, “where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “What have you done already today?”

“Oh, man,” Dylan said, “I have done everything today! First I went roller skating with Kate, and then we got a bowling game in too. Then Heidi took me to a poetry reading at this art museum thing.”

“Sounds like a bad date I had recently,” I interjected.

“Well, I’m not gonna say anything bad about it, but… I can’t say anything good about it.”

I laughed and pushed my hair behind my ear nervously. The cameraman focused on me. I felt like I couldn’t act like myself with a camera trailing on me at all times. It was weird. I’d gotten so used to it before, but now that I was actually trying to make a good impression on Dylan, it felt strange to have a bunch of guys following us around with video cameras and microphones.

“And then Julie and I did a walking tour of New York City, which was okay since she doesn’t really know the city. And then Mia took me out for dinner.”

“Oh,” I said, a bit disappointed. “So you already ate.”

“Not really!” Dylan said. “She took me to this fancy ass French restaurant, and everything was like
this
tiny!” He held up two fingers pinched together. “Like, the dessert was one cookie, cut in half to share, with a strawberry for a garnish. And Mia ate the strawberry.”

His stomach growled, as though to corroborate his story. He slumped against the wall.

“You look tired,” I said.

“I’m pretty beat. So much walking! I was like, we can just drive! But Julie wanted to walk.”

“How about this,” I said, a plan forming in my head. “Let’s chill here at the apartment and order a pizza, and you can beat me at Mario Kart.”

Dylan’s eyes widened at the mention of video games.

“Really?” he asked.

“Really.”

“But… Like… You’re sure you don’t want to go out anywhere and show off your dress? You look really pretty.”

“Thanks,” I said, laughing, “but it’s all for you anyway.”

“Lisa, you’re the best!”

He swept me up in a big hug again.

“And you guys,” I said, pointing to the camera crew, “you can skedaddle out of here.”

“Uh, we’re supposed to follow you on your date,” the main camera guy said. He looked hesitant.

“And there are already cameras set up throughout the entire apartment,” I said. “Plus Dylan is wearing a microphone. You’ll have plenty of footage of us sitting on a couch and talking and being boring.” Without waiting for an answer, I turned and walked with Dylan back into the elevator.

“Nice work,” he said, looking surprised.

“It must be weird to have them following you around everywhere,” I said. “I don’t know if I could handle that.”

Dylan shrugged.

“It’s not that weird. I mean, there’s paparazzi following me everywhere I go in the city anyway.”

“Really? That’s awful.”

“It’s pretty awful, but, like, you get used to it.”

I felt a twist of guilt. I’d made fun of Piers for being so famous, but I hadn’t realized how bad it could be.

“And like, half the week I’m doing interviews and going on TV. I mean, I hate it, but I have to for the business.”

“What business do you do, anyway?” I asked. “I just realized I don’t know anything about you. You could be a Mafia don as far as I know.”

Dylan chuckled.

“I wish. Nah, I work for my dad. He has this business doing, like, I dunno, business stuff.”

“Business stuff?
Fascinating
.”

“You’re being sarcastic, right?” Dylan squinted at me. “Because it’s like, really boring.”

I smiled. I shouldn’t be sarcastic around someone who was impervious to sarcasm.

“No, really. I’m sure it’s not boring. What kind of business stuff do you do?”

“Like, you know, delivering shipments and getting regulations passed for local businesses, that kind of thing.”

“Sounds like it could be the Mafia.” I raised one eyebrow. “Shipments of guns and drugs, right? You shoot anyone on the city council who doesn’t approve your regulations? Or bribe them to do your bidding? Put horse heads in their bed if they don’t agree?”

Dylan gave me another look that said he wasn’t sure if I was kidding or not. My expression must have clued him in, because he burst into laughter.

“You’re hilarious,” he said. He smiled at me with such a genuine appreciation that my heart squeezed a bit in my chest. “I really like you, Lisa.”

I swallowed. The elevator stopped, thankfully, and I stepped out into the apartment.

“Let’s see how much you like me once I’m kicking your ass at Mario Kart,” I said. “And I’m
not
being sarcastic.”

We spent the whole hour eating pizza and playing video games, and by the end of the night, I was thinking that maybe—just maybe—I had what it takes to date a billionaire.

I pressed the space bar and stared at my laptop. My fingers were trembling. Dylan had just left, and I was trying to finish up the first part of the article before anybody else got back to the penthouse. My mind was whirling.

He kissed me,
I wrote. Then I deleted the sentence quickly. I put my chin in my hand and stared at the blinking cursor.

On Rainbow Road, I sabotaged Dylan the way my sister always sabotaged me. I threw myself on top of his lap and blocked the screen, sending his car careening off the edge of the course. To my surprise, he tossed the controller aside, and—

I leaned back in my chair and deleted the whole paragraph. My face was hot and my pulse was racing. What had I done?

Dylan had kissed me, and one kiss had turned into a minute or two of making out on the couch. It made me feel like a teenager again, and by the time I remembered that everything was on camera, it was already too late.

A makeout session. Really, Lisa.

Maybe I have been too hard on immature guys,
I typed.
When I came on this show, I was expecting to find a brilliant, witty, mature man. What I got was Dylan Chase. And I’m starting to realize that love doesn’t have to be scripted like a movie. It doesn’t have to be hearts and roses. Love can be immature, and silly, and spontaneous.

Love can be
fun
.

Clarence would love this, I thought. There was a good mix of sex and funny, and lots of pithy sayings about romance.

As I was typing the last line, I heard the elevator doors open up in the living room. With a last glance over the article, I pressed
Send.
Before anyone could come in, I quickly shut my laptop and sat back in my chair. I exhaled a puff of air.

Love? Was that really what this was? I didn’t know how I felt about Dylan, and my emotions got more and more mixed up the more I thought about it. It had been fun to hang out with him, but even when we were kissing, I hadn’t felt the kind of spark I’d felt with Piers—

No.
I shook my head before I could even go down that line of thinking. I’d been falling for jerks for way too long, and now that I was falling for a nice guy—scratch that, a nice
billionaire
—I wasn’t going to mess it up by comparing it to something else. I needed to stop overthinking things and just go with the flow. If Dylan wasn’t Mr. Right, he was better than any other guy I’d dated.

Even if that wasn’t saying much.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“What if I get kicked off?” Kate asked, twisting her hands nervously. She kicked her feet back and forth as she sat on the bed. I would have thought that she looked like a little girl, if I hadn’t known that she had a kid herself.

“We won’t get kicked off,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. “Didn’t you say that Dylan liked both of us the best?”

“Sure, sure. It’s just…” Kate trailed off.

“What? You had fun on your date, didn’t you?”

“Not really. I mean, I didn’t try.”

I stopped brushing my hair.

“You didn’t try to have fun?”

“Well…” Kate said. “I kind of bombed it. On purpose. I really wanted you to win this one, so—”

“Wait, wait, wait. You bombed it? What do you mean, you bombed it?”

I put the hairbrush down and turned around. Kate looked embarrassed.

“I didn’t flirt with him that much. And at the end, he went to kiss me, and I made him kiss me on the cheek.”

“Oh, jeez, Kate,” I said. My mind was reeling. It was strange—I didn’t feel jealous, exactly, but it was weird. Dylan had tried to kiss Kate on the same day he’d tried—and succeeded—to kiss me. “You didn’t have to do that!”

“I did! I mean, you’ve already done so much for me.” She gave me a meaningful look.

I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t done anything for Kate apart from keeping her secret—that she had a kid. And now she was sabotaging herself to let me win? It was insane.

“Don’t—don’t do that again,” I said, uncertainly. “Please, Kate. If I win, I want it to be on my own merits. Okay?”

“Okay, I won’t,” Kate said, still fidgeting. “ Lisa?”

“Yeah?”

“Did—did Dylan try to kiss you?”

She looked up at me with innocent doe eyes, and I felt awful.

After all, I hadn’t just kissed Dylan. We’d had a makeout session for the last ten minutes of our date. And I wasn’t even sure if I liked him or not!

“Yeah,” I said, turning back to the mirror and brushing my bangs back with my fingers so that Kate wouldn’t see the flush on my cheeks. “Yeah, we kissed.”

Kate’s face fell, but I could tell she was trying to stay composed. She bit her lip and looked down at the floor.

“You really like this guy, huh?” I asked.

She didn’t say anything, only nodded.

God, I was an awful person. She was the one who deserved Dylan, not me. I didn’t deserve anyone. That was why I couldn’t find my Mr. Right—because I didn’t deserve it. I sighed and tugged Kate to her feet.

“Come on, we’re going to be late.”

Piers and Dylan were sitting in the living room in front of the big white couch. I avoided looking at either one of them as I sat down on the couch with the other contestants. Behind Piers, the crew had set up a video/audio monitor. It showed all of us sitting on the couch.

I remembered the auditions in the TV studio where I’d met Piers to do the interview. All of the nervous girls lined up in a row. That’s how it felt now that we were down to five contestants. Now that I actually had a shot, I was nervous.

“Let’s talk about your one-on-one dates yesterday!” Piers said. The audio echoed softly through the monitor speakers, his British accent drifting through the air twice.

He’d missed a spot on his chin when he shaved that morning, I noticed. I stared at that one spot of stubble as he talked, focusing all my attention there. He and Dylan went over the day.

“How do you think your date went, Kate?” Piers was asking. I turned to see Kate swallow hard.

“I—well, I was nervous,” she said. “I think I was holding back.”

“I could tell that you were holding back,” Dylan said. He was nodding, his expression very serious. This was serious for him, I realized. He was trying to find a good girlfriend for himself. I felt even worse.

“Did you have any bad dates yesterday?” Piers asked Dylan. I noticed that there were circles under Piers’ eyes, and they had put on more makeup than usual. He looked hungover. When he glanced over at me, I turned my gaze to Dylan and tried to listen to what he was saying.

“Probably… the dinner with Mia.”

“No offense,” he said. “But I really didn’t like the food, and it just wasn’t very fun.”

“I was trying to be romantic, not fun,” Mia huffed.

“And Heidi’s date at the poetry thing.”

“You didn’t like that?” Heidi asked. “You said you liked it!”

“I didn’t want to be rude,” Dylan said, looking uncomfortable, “but that’s really not my kind of date.”

“So who lost this competition?” Piers pressed.

“If I had to decide, I would say…”

Dylan’s eyes flickered to Mia briefly.
Kick her off,
I found myself wishing.
Kick the stupid self-absorbed bitch off!

“Heidi,” Dylan said.

Heidi burst into tears and ran out of the living room. Dylan looked shaken.

“Let’s talk about the best date you had yesterday,” Piers said. He didn’t look shaken at all. He looked almost bored. This was just another day of work to him, I realized. Dylan was agonizing over finding the love of his life, and Piers was just here to collect a paycheck. I pressed my lips together. I didn’t understand my own feelings. Why was I so drawn to Piers? Even though he was immature, Dylan was a much better guy… on screen, that is. And he was a nice guy. Really. But there just wasn’t a spark between us. There wasn’t that ferocious intensity I’d felt during even my first kiss with Piers.

I almost sunk my head into my hands.
You’re the queen of making bad decisions. That’s why you’re head over heels for the British asshole. Keep it up, and you’ll never find Mr. Right—

“I really liked ice skating with Kate,” Dylan continued, “but I would say that the best date was with Lisa. We played Mario Kart and had pizza, and it was a perfect way to end the night.”