Baby Love: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance (12 page)

I looked at my watch and realized it was on the floor with the rest of my clothes. "Yeah, sorry about that. I've been busy."

"Fucking your side redhead?"

I put my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and jerked my head toward the living room. "It's Roger," I mouthed.

Rachel wiggled her fingers in my direction to say that she was fine with me leaving the room. I shut the door behind me. "Talk, asshole," I said into the phone.

"Well isn't that a fine how-do-you-do from my best friend and recent ghoster."

"I'm kind of busy right now so make this quick." I suddenly realized that Roger was drunk. Or drinking. Or a combination of both. That wasn’t good.

"So you
are
fucking the redhead right now. Well done, man, well done."

"Where are you, Roger?"

Roger laughed. "I'm at 1OAK in Vegas, man. Took my plane over from California, because fuck California. Seriously. Just fuck her sideways, fuck her until she cries, fuck her fuck her fuck her."

I ran my hands through my hair and sauntered into the kitchen. I was too sober for whatever Roger was about to vomit all over me. I opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of German beer. I twisted the top off using my forearm. I realized Rachel had never been given the opportunity to see me do that little parlor trick. Women always liked that. "Roger, man, talk to me. What happened in California?"

Roger laughed darkly. "What happened? Oh. Right. I didn't get to tell you that this was supposed to be my trip for proposing. But of course what actually happened is that my little fling out here - remember her?"

I sipped from the ice cold neck of the bottle. "Yeah, waitress at a diner or something."

"Yeah. That one. Well, I thought she didn’t' know who I was. But she did. She did know. Oh, fuck, did she
know who I was."

"How do you know that?" I asked him. I wanted him to slow down the talking and the drinking; I knew this all lead absolutely nowhere good. I'd known him long enough to be certain of that.

"How do I know that? How do I -" he laughed again.

"Roger, stay with me. Are you alone right now?" My heart was pounding. The bedroom door opened and Rachel was standing there, naked and with a look of concern on her face. 

"Everything alright?" she asked me.

"It's Roger. Yeah, I think so. I'm not entirely sure, but yeah." I went back to the call. "Roger. What hotel are you staying at?"

There was nothing but music and heavy breathing on the other end of the line. I suddenly realized that Roger was crying. "I couldn't do it, man. She wasn't honest with me. She knew who I was this entire fucking time but I just couldn't fucking do anymore. Seriously." He broke down sobbing.

"Roger. Hotel. What. Hotel. Are. You. Staying. At. Talk to me, buddy." I heard a familiar man's voice on the other end of the line. "Roger! Is that Vince?" Vince was Roger's long-time bodyguard. I sighed with relief.

"Yeah, it's Vince. He's handing me a goddamned handkerchief like I'm some motherfucking maiden in distress. Can you fucking believe that?" His voice sounded angry.

"Roger, just hand the phone to Vince."

"Fine. Fuck you," Roger spat.

"Mr. Reid?" Vince's calming baritone voice slid through the phone and met my ears.

"Thank fuck you're there, man. What hotel are you staying at?"

"We're at the Wynn. Penthouse."

"Great," I said. "We will be there in three hours. Make sure there's a bed for us, okay?" I hung up the phone and slammed it onto the counter top.

Rachel looked at me, confused. "Where exactly are we going?"

***

A single phone call to Michael was all it took. Within the hour, we were sitting in my Citation X jet. Flight time: two hours and seventeen minutes. Rachel and I were cozied up in seats across from each other. She kept sliding the toe of her high heels up my leg absentmindedly as she gazed around the jet.

"Not bad, huh?" I asked her, a smile on my face.

"You know, I worked hard as a kid to lose my Georgia accent. I knew one day I'd be living in a big city and I didn't want it held against me." She shrugged in amusement. "But that's not worth much now that I'm gazing around this jet like a hayseed who just fell off the turnip truck." She affected an adorable Southern accent for this last sentence.

I reached across the space to put my hand on her thigh, sliding it up under her dress. "You should have kept the accent. It's fucking sexy." She laughed. "And I like you being awestruck. It's not too often I get to travel with anybody who can actually appreciate all of this for what it is. Myself included." I paused to look at her face again. She was still wide-eyed and staring around the cabin. "So you do like it."

"Yeah, I'm never ever flying commercial again. Like, I'll just walk from here on out if I can’t fly private. No security, no lines, no screaming kids, no stench of stale air and jet fuel."

I unbuckled my seatbelt and walked on my knees over to her. I spread her legs open and she gasped. "Also there's none of this on commercial flights."

She curled her fingers through my hair as I moved my mouth to her hot, wet panties. "Speak for yourself," she said in a low, husky voice as my tongue found all of her secret, most sensitive places. "I get this on Delta every single time I fly down South."

I paused only long enough to laugh, but it wasn't long before she had her high-heel-encased feet wrapped around my shoulders. She came twice before I went back to my own seat. I left her, sweaty and panting, in her chair, her cheeks a delicious apple red.

"What?" I asked her. She was still staring at me with an odd look on her face.

"All of this but you're not going to let me join the Mile High Club?"

***

Vegas was thumping and glowing, as always. The desk clerks recognized me and gave me a key card at once. Vince had clearly warned them that I'd be showing up soon. Rachel was wide-eyed again. "Never been to Vegas, either?" I teased her, wrapping my arm around her side. There were men staring at her in the black mini dress she'd poured herself into before we left the plane. I wanted everyone to know that she was mine and only mine.

I knocked hard on the double doors of the top-floor suite. Vince had the door open in a second. "Thank God," he whispered. I heard moaning sobs coming from somewhere deep in the suite.

Rachel held out her hand to introduce herself to Vince, who was three hundred pounds of pure, thick muscle and no hair whatsoever apart from his neatly trimmed facial hair. He looked like a WWF wrestler. "Rachel Cobb," she said cheerily. "I'm Zane's - uh. I'm with Zane."

"Vince," he replied. "Lovely to meet a woman with Zane who doesn't just ignore me."

"You okay here with Vince?" I asked her. "I'm guessing that Roger would probably prefer if it were just me witnessing his current humiliation."

Rachel nodded. "Say no more," she replied. "What's on TV, Vince?"

I heard Vince responding that a new episode of
The Walking Dead
was on in a few minutes, and I knew that Rachel would be just fine popping her Vegas cherry with an hour of sweaty Daryl Dixon and Rick Grimes. She had a thing for both of them, apparently.

I pushed open the master suite door and heard the sobs getting closer. They seemed to be echoing around a marble room. The light was on in the bathroom. I pushed the door open and saw Roger sitting pitifully in a large tub of bubbles, surrounded by candles. I was relieved to see that whatever alcohol he'd consumed previously in the evening was all there was going to be. Vince had removed his immediate access to it. Condensation dripped down the side of an ice-cold, glass bottle of Evian on the edge of the tub.

"Hey there buddy," I said cautiously, pulling over the velvet settee to sit next to him. "Rough night?"

Roger wiped his eyes with his hands and blinked at me. "Okay, I was drunk enough to be hallucinating a few hours ago, but I’m not at all drunk enough right now to be imagining you here." He still seemed uncertain. He reached out a pruny, waterlogged finger and traced my forearm tattoo with it. "Okay. You're here. How is that possible? Aren't you supposed to be in Chicago?"

I nodded. "The power of modern aviation. What a time to be alive."

Roger chuckled and sniffled, reaching behind him to grab a box of tissues. The soap bubbles on his arms fell onto the countertop. He blew his nose. "Man, I'm a fucking mess. I'm so sorry. You really didn't need to come all the way out here. Seriously."

I shrugged. "Yeah, well. My best friend falls spectacularly off the wagon? I'm going to be here to come help him climb back onto it. That's what we do. That's the deal. That's what friends are for."

Roger teared up again. "Jesus, asshole. Don't make me cry again."

I unscrewed the bottle of Evian and handed it to him. He took a few grateful gulps. "I'm glad you've got Vince, at least, to take care of you. Can’t have you wandering the streets of Vegas drunk and crying. Funny drunk? Sure. But not sad drunk. Nobody likes a sad drunk."

Roger set down the glass bottle. The water lapped peacefully against the edge of the bathtub. "Did I get angry with you?" he asked quietly.

I shrugged. "Yeah, you know. A bit. That's why I'm here."

"I'm sorry, man. It's just that my girl. She lied to me. I can't get over that."

I nodded. "You wanna tell me what the fuck happened?"

Roger exhaled. "Yeah. I proposed to her last night. And, to be honest - we were going to get married here. In Vegas. Just a quick, last-minute thing alone."

I howled with appreciative laughter. "You trying to kill your mother?"

"Whatever works to get the rest of my inheritance," he said, only half-joking. "So we were on our way here. We were actually driving in a rental car. Well, Vince was driving. We were fucking in the back like wildcats." Roger paused, a misty look crawling across his eyes at the apparent memory. "And we got here and I just heard my dad's voice in my head.
Sign a prenup. Sign a prenup
. So I brought it up to her. And she lost it. Refused to sign one. Patently."

I listened patiently. "Well, you can't really blame her for that, can you? I mean, a prenup to some people is like admitting that the marriage is probably going to fail one day. Who wants to hear that? I know I wouldn't, even with all my money. Even with being the one who would lose everything."

Roger shook his head. "It wasn't that, though, man. Because I asked her if it was the divorce thing. But she was just being super, super weird about it. That's when I realized she knew who I was. And I confronted her about it, and she got angry..." Roger had pain in his eyes like I'd never seen him have. "And then she admitted she knew who I was from the beginning. Pretty much day one."

I let out a low whistle. "Jesus fuck. That's rough shit."

Roger nodded. "Yeah, well. Vince took care of her."

My eyes went wide.

Roger held up his hands so quickly he splashed my jeans with cotton-candy-scented bubbles. "No, man. Jesus. Christ. He didn’t
kill
her. No. I mean he sent her home on a plane. He brought me back here and made sure to lock up the minibar before he drove her to the airport. But he found me down the strip right when I called you. Right before I handed the phone over."

I nodded. "That fucking sucks."

Roger sighed. "But I guess when it comes down to it, I was lying to her too, right? I didn’t offer up who I was." He sipped water again like it was a beer bottle. "So I guess I'm just as much of a fucking hypocrite. I just don't know what came over me."

"You just wanted to know that someone could love you for who you are. Not what you have. You just want to know that they
chose
you because of you. Not because of...weird strings." The words hung in the air and seemed to shimmer before my eyes. The things I'd just said were as much for me as they were for Roger.

***

I found Rachel asleep and drooling on the couch cushion. Vince had gone to bed and shut off the television. The curtains were open onto the glowing strip below; the brown, low mountains the ringed Las Vegas in the distance. I shook her shoulder. "Rachel," I whispered.

She slapped my hand away, still half asleep. "Not ready to get up yet," she said. "Five more minutes."

I laughed quietly and scooped her up into my arms. She nuzzled her face into my neck and I carried her into one of the spare bedrooms. I set her down as gently as I could, but I ended up accidentally waking her from her peaceful slumber. "Zane?" she murmured, squinting her eyes. "Where am I?"

"Vegas," I said, brushing a strand of red hair off of her forehead. "And I just had an amazing fucking idea. You ready for an adventure?"

Thirty minutes later we were standing on the edge of the pool downstairs. I'd paid off the night clerk and two of the security guards to let us come out here. The water was still; the night air warm and dry against our skin. It was nice to not be feeling humidity for once. "You ready?"

"I jump, you jump, Jack," Rachel said. Her porcelain skin was glowing in the light from the pool, her black lingerie substituting for swimwear.

We counted to three and jumped in together, making a splash that soaked the poolside pavement. Rachel went all the way under the water and re-emerged, her glasses soaking.

I grabbed her waist and drew her toward me in the water. I kissed her full lips. "It's nice to be with a woman who isn't worried about messing up her makeup and extensions."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "One day you'll find a compliment for me that doesn't involve how I am compared to other women." But she was still smiling. She pushed away from my body and glided onto her back, floating and looking up at the night sky. "I hate this light pollution," she admitted.

"The Las Vegas strip is probably one of the worst places in the entire world to stargaze. The light pollution must be in the top ten of all places on earth."

She pulled out of the corpse position and swam back over to me, linking her arms around my neck, her legs around my waist. I kissed her again. She moaned appreciatively. "One time I saw this artist's rendering of what the night sky would look like in Chicago if every single one of the lights went out. The skyscrapers were these black, monolithic shadows carved into this brilliant night sky behind them. You could see the gasses of the Milky Way and everything. It's always been my dream to be able to see that for real in person."