Training Her Curves - Dallas (A BBW Billionaire Domination and Submission Romance) (5 page)

********************

Despite promising myself on the long, circuitous drive to Marjolein's apartment that I would only divulge enough information about my past to see if she had a solution to my current legal dilemma, I wound up spilling my guts shortly after eleven that night. I told her in far greater detail than I had offered Jake. Together we went through several boxes of tissues and stayed up past two a.m. watching a sappy comedy before falling asleep in her bed.

When her cell phone chimed shortly after eight a.m., neither of us was ready for what happened next.

"Riona," Marjolein groaned, reading the display as she sat up and pressed the call accept icon. She yawned her way through a morning greeting, switching hands mid-way as she wrapped her robe around her body.

Cautiously, I followed after her. My luggage had been delivered from the hotel last night. I grabbed a set of clothes and tried not to listen to the phone conversation.

"What do you mean, Dylan's on his way here?"

That stopped me cold as I headed toward the bathroom. No doubt news had reached Big Brother about the blow-up at the studio yesterday and my leaving with Marjolein instead of Jake.

"Why on earth would Rick do that?"

My heart beating like a jackhammer, I turned back to Marjolein. Looking at her expression, I had the feeling Dylan's arrival was more about his feelings for Jo-Jo than his blatant disapproval of me. But how did Rick play into that?

Or was this about Rick and Riona's agreement?

Unable to stop myself, I laughed. It was too funny not to. This was like the soap operas Ruth had watched constantly before she married Donald. Only, instead of
The Young and the Restless
, it was
The Rich and the Restless,
with big girls and billionaires instead of department store mannequins.

Marjolein offered Riona a quick good-bye then ended the call.

"So what did Rick do?" I asked with a bemused shake of my head.

"Sent the test shots of me and Riona to Dylan. So now that meathead is on his way to Dallas. First for a nice long talk with his 'blond buttercup' and then with his baby sister." She marched into her room, her face scrunched like when a cartoon character has steam coming out of its ears.

I followed her as far as the room's threshold and watched her flinging clothes around in her closet. From what I understood, her wardrobe had changed drastically now that she was working directly with Riona on the fashion side. Apparently, she still had a couple of her long, dark skirts tucked away, because she pulled one out and then a pure white blouse with French sleeves.

"I have no intention of opening the door to him," she insisted as she moved to her dresser and pulled out a pair of silk stockings. "But it's best not to be in our robes if he makes such a fuss that the building manager shows up."

"Right," I nodded and waved the top and pants I had already pulled out of my luggage. "I'll just pop into the guest bathroom and change."

Once we were dressed and the last traces of yesterday's crying jag, hers and mine, were erased or camouflaged, we sat down at her kitchen table and discussed the merits of an impromptu drive. Before we could decide if we felt brave enough to make a dash for her car, voices on the walkway outside ended the possibility.

"That sounds like Jake," I whispered, my ears straining to make out the identity of the second speaker. I presumed it was Dylan, but his words and volume were more restrained.

"Plus the meathead," Marjolein confirmed. Her brows suddenly pressed together and her head swiveled slowly in the direction of the door.

I realized why a second later as I heard the scrape of metal against metal.

"And Mishka," she growled, stomping over to her door, twisting the bolt back and throwing the door open so fast that the big Russian fell into her apartment. Beyond him, Jake and Dylan each had their hands wrapped around the other's head in some sort of billionaire headlock.

"You were not just picking the locks on my front door," she chided the bodyguard, her finger wagging a centimeter in front of his nose as the stark blue eyes stared up at her.

His face displayed a moment's confusion and then he grinned before growing somber once more. Still on the floor, he waved the Kehoe brothers inside as he explained the situation to Marjolein in his accented Russian. "Very bad protocol to be outside."

"Good habits keep you alive," I added. I wasn't happy Jake and Dylan were now inside and glaring at one another, but I had a soft spot for the Russian giant who had guarded me several more times after Miami.

For the moment, Dylan seemed completely forgotten by the feisty blonde. Her hands found her hips and she bent at the waist until her face was almost even with Mishka's. "Do that to my door again and you'll lose some of your stuffing, Teddy Bear."

Undaunted by the threat, Mishka regained his feet and returned to the outdoor walkway, shutting the door behind him. Jake shouldered his way past his big brother. Stopping in front of me, he wrapped one large hand around my wrist.

The contact puzzled me. It was proprietary, the dangerous sparkle in his gaze leaving no doubt in my mind. Despite Marjolein detailing all the ways she knew her former boss was in love with me, I still expected Jake to have decided he was done with me. I may have fallen hard for him, but it was too soon for a man, especially one with so many options, to feel the same.

"Time to talk," he said, his gaze moving toward the open door to the guest room.

I didn't say anything, just looked at Marjolein. I didn't know why. Certainly I could make up my own mind. Moral support, maybe. Or perhaps I didn't want to leave her alone with Dylan since I knew she didn't want to talk to him.

"I'll be fine," she said, approaching me and Jake. Putting a hand on each of our shoulders, she started shooing us into the guest room like a mother hen. "I'll be outside with Mishka if you need me."

"No, you'll be in here -- with me," Dylan argued as Jake closed the door.

Releasing my arm, Jake jerked his head at the door. "How much of an ass kicking do you think he's in for?"

He asked the question with a shaky smile. Trying to break the ice for whatever bomb he was preparing to drop, I guessed. I shrugged. I could spend the whole day talking about nothing if he wanted to play it that way. Whatever questions he had for me, I couldn't or wouldn't answer. And, no matter how much I knew that our time together would soon be over, I wasn't prepared to take the news like the big girl I was. The thought of him turning away hurt, even if I was the one pushing him to do so.

"Do you think they could ever be anything more than a fling?" I asked, my voice low and soft so they hopefully couldn't hear the question.

Jake sat down on the bed, his hands wrapping around the top edge of the mattress as he stared at the floor. "He has something in his past he needs to get over, she doesn't. So I'd say fifty-fifty chance they could make the big commit."

"Do you have something in your past?" I thought about the girl from the car wreck -- Linsey King. I hadn't asked him about her or anything else from before he met me because I didn't want to risk any reciprocal curiosity about my early life.

He lifted his head and looked at me, a firm, but fleeting, smile ghosting his face. "On paper, but not on my conscience."

His head bobbed a few times then he drew a deeper breath and looked at me. "But you do. I guess that makes us fifty-fifty, too."

My nose began to sting with the threat of tears. I tried to shake away the need to cry. Seeing the gesture, he misinterpreted its meaning.

"So you don't even give us those odds, baby?"

Exhausted from just a few minutes in Jake's presence, I sagged against the bedroom door. I started to tell him that wasn't what I meant, but then realized maybe it was. Even scraping away all the shit I'd had flung at me from birth, I still couldn't get past one thing, something that had deeply become a part of who I was...

I didn't know how to be loved.

"It's not about percentages," I answered, my hand landing on the door knob and closing around it. "I just need to leave."

Jake stood, his long legs reaching bringing him to me in two steps. His palm landed lightly against the door above my head and then he leaned in, his weight and muscle preventing me from leaving the room unless I wanted to throw myself out the window.

For one flashing second, I considered doing just that.

"You're staying." His voice had a ruthless, determined edge to it. I knew that if I dared to look up, I would see the same qualities in his hard gaze.

I didn't look up. Just continued listening.

"You won't engage with me, but you can continue as the spokesmodel. Riona loves your look, thinks it's absolutely perfect."

My lips flattened together and I began to squirm in the small space between his body and the door. I felt certain at that second that he no longer desired me, that everything was, once again, all about business. His next few sentences only drove the point home.

"We're selling luxury, but we're also selling 'being out there' in what we like, proclaiming our tastes with pride. You have a very real star quality, Alexa, like Adele or Christina Hendricks, only with a damn jet pack strapped to your curves."

Listening to language that sounded like he'd read it in a damn brochure, my lips pressed more tightly together.

"And if you think leaving will make your parents go away, or the paparazzi vanish, you're wrong, baby girl. Your parents are nut jobs and the media has latched onto the same
X factor
that sucked me in."

His fingers wrapped gently around my chin. He nudged my face upward until I finally met his gaze.

"I've already talked to an attorney about your legal problems, they can be solved."

I nodded. "Marjolein said as much because my intent was personal safety and not any attempt to defraud anyone."

"Did she also tell you how much it would cost?" With his back to the light and his head pointed down, his jewel-like eyes looked as black as a shark's. When I nodded again, he pressed a little harder. "You said that you were leaving the money behind when you left, all of it. So that's money you won't have if you go."

I answered with another dip of my head, defeat wrapping around me like a cold, wet blanket.

"So don't leave," he finished. "Stay, let me handle the press, your parents and the attorneys. I won't touch you again and, when it all dies down, you'll leave."

I sucked a jagged breath in. He probably thought he was offering me a great deal, but I knew it was nothing more than charity and preserving his business reputation. No matter how big of a mistake he had made in selecting me, he would convince the world otherwise and then he would quietly dissolve the business relationship.

"Fine," I answered and tugged my chin from his grip. "As long as you understand there will be no more scenes and I can't travel overseas until the passport issue is cleared up."

He drew back, his hard stare cutting at me for a few seconds before he slowly nodded his agreement.

Hearing Marjolein's sharp tones in the next room, I pushed my luck a little harder. "And Dylan needs to give Jo-Jo her space."

"Of course," he answered coldly, his hand sliding down the door to brush my hand from the handle. He turned the knob and I stepped aside. As he crossed the threshold into the living room, he glanced once at me over his shoulder and drove the knife in my heart a little deeper.

"But that I'm doing for her, not you."

********************

My plan, and Marjolein's, was that I would move in with her. Considering how well we got along, her newness to the area, and the location of the photo shoots now moved to Dallas, it made perfect sense for both of us. Jake vetoed the idea. He didn't want me in his bed, clearly, but he insisted that we stick as close to the original agreement as possible, which meant that I would live in the Dallas penthouse he rented as soon as he discovered the arrangement I had made with Marjolein.

Fine, he had his bedroom, I had mine. He used one of the spare rooms in the penthouse to work with the Chicago office daily, while I spent as much of my day as I could at the studio with Marjolein and Riona. When I wasn't flashing the glam for the camera, I pitched in with any grunt work Marjolein had so that she got her time in front of the camera, as well.

Oh, and Rick kept sending proof sheets of Marjolein to Dylan. But that's another story and it's not mine. I just floated around entertaining myself with the idea of how the elder Kehoe must be walking around his fancy Chicago office with the biggest set of blue balls ever recorded. Secretly, I think Jo-Jo entertained herself with the same idea. There was a new swing in her luscious hips and a smile was never absent from her face except when she was comforting me over my increasingly conflicted feelings for Jake.

I mean, how could they not be conflicted? He didn't want me, the bored glaze of his told me as much, but he wanted me in the same house. And he moved around that house like we truly lived together. It seemed like every other morning I found him in the kitchen with nothing more than a towel around his trim waist, his dark hair still wet from the shower and small drops of water clinging to his shoulders as he juiced some abominable combination of fruits and vegetables.