The Billionaire Dating Game: A Romance Novel (8 page)

“Honestly,” I repeated. “You’re really good at playing the piano.”

He laughed softly and looked down into his glass. When he raised his eyes to mine again, they had darkened to a deep aquamarine. And I realized that he was sitting close to me in the booth, close enough that our knees brushed each other. I was transported back to the night I’d heard him play, and I thought it was that more than the wine that made my skin burn.

“I can’t go back,” he said. “A journalist knows I play there.”

“Me?” I put down my glass and placed my hand on his. I meant the gesture reassuringly, but he tensed under my fingers. The air between us was electric. “I would never tell anyone about that.”

“Just our little secret, eh?”

“Yes. I can keep a secret.”

“You can keep a secret until you need the money. Until someone comes up to you and offers ten thousand for the secret. It’s such a little secret, and worth so much.”

Before I could protest, Piers had turned his hand over. His fingers twined up through mine and he lifted my hand to his lips. Any sentence that was forming in my head was melted by the heat of his lips brushing against the backs of my knuckles.

“Nobody can keep a secret like that,” he whispered. His lips moved against my skin. “I wouldn’t want to tempt you.”

I swallowed hard. His eyes were so dark now, dark like a storming sea reflected in the sky. I thought suddenly of one time when I’d been playing in the ocean as a child, when the water was getting rough and stormy. I’d gotten sucked into the current, and gulped a mouthful of salt water. Flailing, I’d looked up just as a wave crested above me, spitting foam. The dark underbelly of a wave coming to crush me—
that
was what I saw when I looked into his eyes.

“You asked about Sasha before.”

The name bounced around my head a few times before it registered. The singer he had been dating. Right.

“I don’t… I didn’t—”

“I thought I loved her,” Piers said. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. He had gone cold, blank.

“And?”

When he shook his head, his lips brushed against my skin once, again. And this time the storm was inside me, gathering deep inside my core. The rumblings of something dark and frightening.

“Piers?” I asked. My voice had gone, and it was only a whisper of a question. “What happened?”

His fingers tightened around mine, and I found that I was holding my breath as I waited for him to answer.

“She took pictures of me.”

“Pictures?”

“When I was sleeping. When we were together. You understand? Naked photos.”

My lips dropped apart. The image of Piers naked and asleep sent a hot shiver through my nerves, and that was my first instinctive response.

But the emotion that swept through me after that was revulsion, pure revulsion. My tongue felt thick in my mouth. To be betrayed like that—

“
Why?
”

Piers looked at me, and heat moved through my cheeks.

“I— I mean, she’s a famous singer, isn’t she?” I stammered. “Surely she didn’t need the money.”

“She had addictions. It’s possible she needed cash quickly.”

“You don’t think that was it?”

Piers shrugged. He looked down and seemed to realize that he was still holding my hand. He let go and ran both of his hands through his hair, staring off a million miles away.

“If I had to guess, I’d say it was the fame she wanted,” he said. His voice was bitter. “And she got it.”

I wanted to take his hand again. I wanted to curl up against him and hold him tightly, and stroke him on the back until he let go of whatever tension had strung itself through his body with this betrayal. But I was the wrong person to comfort him.

I was a journalist. I was the enemy.

And at that moment, I felt as though I could never close the distance between us, no matter how much I wanted to. I would never understand the kind of position he was in. I couldn’t even come close to understanding. Instead of scrambling back to shore, I was drifting even farther out to sea.

And the storm was coming closer.

Chapter Eight

“I can’t publish this.”

Clarence waved a copy of my interview with Piers Letocci at me. I crossed my arms and glanced out his open door at the office. Whenever Clarence punished someone, he left his door open. I’d known from the start that this was going to go badly.

“Well? Aren’t you going to say something?”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“The matter? There’s nothing exciting in here! There’s nothing
new
.” He stared down at the page. “
I’m half-English, half-Italian.
Everybody knows this!”

“I didn’t know it.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have sent you to do this piece. This is up on the front page of our site right now, and it’s total shit.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t publish it.”

“I have to publish something! And all I have is this piece of trash that’s supposed to be our lead article for the day!”

My nostrils flared, but I kept myself from snapping back. Clarence was always moody, but today he was all puffed up like a blowfish. Jessica walked by the open door, making eye contact with me. As she moved out of Clarence’s range of view, her face crinkled into a sympathetic pout.
Sorry!
she mouthed. I shrugged slightly. I’d known this was coming.

It was because I’d held back in the details on the interview. Maybe I’d held back too much. After what Piers had told me, though, I was wary of putting in the kind of information I normally do with my interviews. I hesitated to include some of the more emotional comments he made, and I didn’t do my usual speculation about the real answers to some of the harder questions I’d asked.

I’d spent a lot of time describing his suit jacket, mainly because I’d been wearing it for so long.

“Do you know how many favors we called in to get this interview?” Clarence was asking. “Do you know how much we paid to get this kind of access? And what do you go and do with it? This! What a fucking waste of an interview. How many shares am I going to get with this? How many retweets?”

“More than you deserve,” I muttered.

“Do you know how much we already poured into the promotions budget for this week? You didn’t even ask him about Sasha Tiernan!”

“I’m a journalist,” I snapped. “Not a gossip columnist. And if you’d let me write my article on Syria—”

Clarence exploded from out of his seat, his finger in my face.

“You are nothing!” he screamed. “Nothing, understand? You are off the writing staff as of today! No new assignments!”

The blood drained from my face.

“Wait,” I said. “Listen. I know it wasn’t a great piece, but—”

“Get your ass back into the office and help Tammy audit payroll once you’re done with the support graphics.”

“Wait—”

“No.” Clarence’s voice was boiling with fury. “I waited an extra day for this turd of an article, and look what it got me.”

“Please,” I said. I leaned forward on Clarence’s desk and picked up the article. I swallowed hard, crumpling the paper in my hand. “I’ll rewrite it. I’ll do a follow up.
Please
.”

Writing was all I’d ever wanted to do. Getting kicked back to support would be a huge step backwards.

“Get out of my office,” he said. He stood up and gestured toward the door, where a couple of people in the office snapped their heads back to their work. I flushed and turned back to Clarence. He couldn’t do this to me. I was the hardest worker in the office.

“But—”

“Get out before I decide to fire you.”

Clarence’s eyes flickered over to the door he was gesturing to. I was about to seal my fate with another protest when I saw his expression change. His rage turned to shock, and his clenched jaw dropped open.

I turned around and saw Piers Letocci standing in the doorway.

He leaned casually against the door frame, a bouquet of pink roses in his hand.

“Have I come at a bad time?” he asked.

“Piers!”

I froze, my back against my boss’s desk. Piers Letocci was here, at my work. Holding a bouquet of flowers.

Why?

For a brief moment, I knew—
knew!—
that he had come to rescue me. He was going to sweep me away into his arms, and kiss me in front of everyone, Clarence and Jessica and all of them. And then he’d tell me that he’d gotten me a position at the
New York Times,
and would I want to do some serious journalism, and I’d say
Yes, Piers, yes!
And then we would hop on our jet skis and ride away into the sunset.

But then I saw the camera crew behind him.

“Uh, what’s going on?” I asked.

“Hello, Mr. Letocci!” Clarence boomed from behind me. “Please come in! Ah—would you like to sit down?”

Piers didn’t even bother to reply to him.

“Hi, Lisa,” he said, smiling broadly.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “What are all those cameras doing here?”

“I wanted to personally congratulate you.”

It wasn’t his normal voice. I recognized that in an instant. It was Piers, the performer. Piers, the TV host. He came into Clarence’s office and shoved the bouquet of pink roses into my hands. I stared down at them.

“What is this, Lisa?” Clarence was asking from behind me.

“I—I don’t know,” I said. The whole camera crew had followed Piers into the small office. A microphone hung over our heads.

“You made it! We’d love to have you join us on the brand new show,
The
Billionaire Dating Game
!”

“Oh my God!”

Jessica was jumping up and down outside of Clarence’s office. Behind her, I could see people poking their heads up to see what was going on. Piers Letocci was here, and a camera crew, and I could already see some of the writers touching up their makeup in case they got to be on TV. The thought passed through my mind that it was lucky I was wearing my only skirt today.

The camera swept back to catch Jessica as she ran into the office and hugged me tightly. The bouquet of roses was between us, and I could smell the scent of crushed rose petals.

“Oh my God, Lisa, you never told me you were auditioning!”

“I—I didn’t—”

“You’re on the show?” Clarence was asking, in a confused voice. “Why wasn’t this in the article?”

“You didn’t tell your boss about the audition?”

“It wasn’t a real audition!”

I glared at Piers, who only smiled back at me even brighter.

“The producers loved you so much that they
had
to have you on the show,” Piers said. The cameras swung toward him, and I saw that he was wearing a wireless microphone on his shirt.

“You’re going to be on TV!” Jessica squealed. She hugged me again, and then hugged Piers, jumping up and down. Well, I was glad at least one of us was excited about this.

“No, I’m not!”

The cameras swung back to me. There was a silence in the office as everyone waited for me to speak. The light on the camera blinked red at me. I felt like I was in the middle of a hurricane.

“I can’t—I can’t take weeks off of work to be on a reality TV show. I have work to do here. I… Clarence…”

I turned around to my boss and gestured helplessly.

“Lisa,” Clarence said, “I can’t believe you would go and do something like this without telling me.”

I gulped. Was I about to be fired? Would this go on national television?

“Because I think that this is a
great
idea!” he said, his face breaking into a smile.

Jessica squealed again, so high-pitched that I was sure the dog kennel across the street was going nuts.

“You do?” I breathed.

“Of course! What an article this will make! You have to write down everything! I expect a full report!”

There was a hard glint in Clarence’s eye. I knew exactly what that look meant—
don’t fuck this up.
He clapped me on the back so hard that my teeth clacked together.

“Congratulations, Lisa!”

“This is going to be the best!” Jessica shrieked. “You’re going to date a billionaire!” She stuck her head out into the main office. “Hey, everybody! Lisa is going to be on
The Billionaire Dating Game
!”

The noise in the office was tremendous, but it all dimmed in my ears at the realization that I wasn’t going to be writing any more articles for the next few weeks. I wasn’t going to be doing any graphics, or helping Jessica pick out the next fashion model to shoot. If Clarence had decided to pick out the worst possible punishment for me, I would never have imagined something as awful as this.

I was going on reality TV… to date a billionaire.

“Well, this is just
terrific
,” I said, staring at Piers and holding the crumpled bouquet of pink roses. He winked, and for a second there I saw the real Piers under the polished persona in the suit.

“Gotcha,” he whispered, as the camera swung over the celebration in the magazine’s office.

Chapter Nine

“No,
please
,” I said, with forced politeness in my voice. “Allow me to escort you out.”

I shoved Piers into the office elevator. The cameramen started to follow us in.

“Sorry,” I said, blocking their way. “This elevator has a strict weight limit, and I haven’t been following my diet.”

“I’ll meet you downstairs,” Piers called out to them as the elevator doors closed.

As soon as the elevator started to drop, I spun around.

“What in the everloving fuck were you thinking, coming here like this?”

Piers was already laughing at me, and it made me furious. He had embarrassed me in front of the whole office, and for what? I swatted him with the bouquet of roses.

“Ouch! Wait one second,” he said, fumbling with his microphone. “Let me turn this off first.”

“No,
you
wait one second!” I said, punctuating my sentences with swats of the bouquet. “You! Are! Insane!”

Rose petals flew into the air and Piers warded off my blows with his hand.

“Cut it out,” he said, still laughing.