Bad Boy of Wall Street: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance (5 page)

I didn't even bother to hide how I rolled my eyes at him. "Come on, that's what every single Wall Street guy says when he's caught. You think that's enough to convince me that you're totally innocent?"

A little part of me did want to believe that he was innocent, trying to argue that someone as sexy and handsome as Rob would never commit a crime like this, but I knew that this idea was totally ridiculous. Sexy, handsome men could be criminals, too!

Rob sighed. "Yeah, I suppose that it sounds pretty flimsy, but it's the truth. I'd show you the proof of it, but..."

"...but if you had any proof, you wouldn't be hiding out here, because you could prove that you didn't do it," I finished his sentence for him. "Right. So what is your plan, anyway, besides just hiding out here?"

He frowned and just looked back at me for a minute. I tried to match his gaze, unable to shake the uneasy suspicion that he was measuring me - and that I might not measure up. Finally, with a shrug, he stood up from the table. I tried to tell myself that it wasn't because he was about to throw me out of his grandmother's house.

"I'll have to show you," Rob said, and then headed out into the hallway of the house without waiting for a response.

After a second, I hopped up and chased after him, pausing only long enough to snag one last biscuit before I left the kitchen. Okay, they were pretty dry and stale, but they weren't totally awful - and I'd missed lunch, driving up to find this address.

Rob hadn't gone far. Just down the hallway from the kitchen was another room, behind a door that Rob unlocked with a key he produced from his pocket. He stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him so I could follow.

I entered the room, and feared for a moment that I'd managed to somehow stumble into a snowstorm. After a second, however, I realized that the blinding white wasn't from flakes of snow, but instead from sheets of paper.

Paper, paper everywhere. After a couple of minutes, I decided that this room must have been a study or library of some sort; I saw a big desk pushed back against one wall, and a couple shelves of books were back in a corner. But someone had decided to move the files of an entire company into the space, and now stacks of paper leaned precariously over in little skyscrapers rising up from the floor, teetering on the edges of tables and chairs. Some of them stood on top of boxes, the kind of cardboard boxes that seem to always hold files, which I suspected contained even more paper. The place wasn't a total rat's nest of fallen-down, jumbled confusion, but it would only take one strong breeze to convert the stacks of paper into complete and utter chaos.

"What is it all?" I asked, staring around at the piles of whiteness.

In the midst of all these dead trees, Rob looked grim. "It's all the records from Cartmann Securities - or at least everything that I could get my hands on before I was kicked out of the building, my access card no longer working," he answered. "And I know that the real identity of whoever framed me, whoever set me up, is in here."

"Somewhere," I added, looking in dismay at all the paper.

He nodded, and reached up to run his hand through his hair once again. "Yeah. Somewhere."

After another minute, Rob turned to me. "So, unfortunately, I'm not sure how much of a story is really here for you, Ms. Carpenter," he said, shrugging. "Not unless you're willing to do a lot of digging. You might as well turn around and head back down to the city now, cut your losses."

I thought for a second about turning around, about coming back to the offices of Grit, to my editor Sandy, with no story. If I came back empty-handed, I was pretty sure that I'd immediately find myself out of a job. And no job meant no income, which meant no rent, which meant eviction...

"No, I'm staying," I said, refusing to give in and admit defeat just yet. "There's definitely a story here, and I'm going to find it."

I sighed as I looked out at all the stacks of paper. "It's just going to be a bit harder to uncover than I thought."

I glanced back over at Rob as I finished declaring this, wondering how he'd respond. There was a curious look on his face, one that I couldn't quite read. He opened his mouth to say something, but then his eyes drifted past me, and his lips closed once again.

"Ah, excellent!"

The voice, thin and reedy, came from behind me. I turned and smiled as Diana Hendricks beamed up at me, still leaning on her ridiculous cane. "You're going to be staying, then, and helping out my dear grandson?" she asked me, blinking up at me through those thick spectacles.

Well, no turning back now. "Yes, I am," I nodded, not giving myself a chance to back down and change my mind.

Please, please let there be a story here, I prayed. I really needed this, really needed a hit. This was my last chance to find one.

Diana, meanwhile, clapped her hands together. "Lovely! I don't suppose you've found your accommodations in the Hamptons yet, have you?"

"Um, no, not yet." I really hadn't thought this far ahead. I considered the damage that an extended hotel stay could do to my meager bank account and already overtaxed credit card, and grimaced. The expense account from Grit definitely wouldn't be enough to help cushion that financial blow.

The little grandma clapped again. "Oh, perfect! Why don't you stay here?"

What? Even as I opened my mouth, Rob jumped forward. "Granny, I'm not sure if that's the best idea-"

"Oh, nonsense," Diana insisted, flapping her hand dismissively at her grandson. "We have a spare bedroom, and it's the least we can do for this young woman who's come to tell your side of the story! Now, April dear, do you have some bags in that cute little zippy car of yours?"

I glanced sideways at Rob, watching as he gritted his teeth and flexed his fingers for a moment, clearly struggling with annoyance and irritation. "Um, yes, I have a suitcase in the trunk," I answered after a second, realizing that Diana was waiting for me to respond.

"Bobby can go out and collect that for you." For a moment, Diana and Rob locked glares, but the conclusion appeared to be obvious to them both. After a couple of heated seconds, Rob's shoulders slumped, and he nodded.

As he left the study, Diana smiled at me. "Wonderful," she said, as if this had been her plan all along. "And perhaps Bobby can take you out for dinner; I don't have anything worth eating in the house."

As he headed down the hallway, I saw Rob's shoulders droop a little more, but he didn't protest.

Diana gave one stiff nod, as if confirming that this was how things were supposed to be, and then turned back to me with a smile. "Now, some more tea?" she asked.

Chapter Six

*

I eventually managed to escape Diana's probing questions about whether I had a boyfriend, and what I thought about her "dear little Bobby," begging off that I needed to use her restroom. I didn't lie, mind you - that tea that she kept on giving me apparently shot right through my digestive system!

When I emerged from the restroom, I decided not to head back to the kitchen right away. I'd heard Rob clumping upstairs, his footsteps audible in the little house. That must be where the spare bedroom was located. I went over to the stairs, right next to the front door, and ascended up to the second level of the cottage.

Several doors came off a short little hallway on the second floor. I wandered down the hallway, peering into each doorway without trying to seem like I was spying, until I found the room that was occupied by a bed, a dresser, my suitcase, and Rob, now frowning as he peered down at his cell phone.

"April Carpenter?" he asked as I entered the room.

"Yes?" I replied cautiously.

He lowered the phone, frowning at me. "And you're the one that Grit sent to interview me?"

"Um, yes?"

"Why?"

I stumbled, not sure quite how to answer that. "What do you mean, why? Like I said, Grit tries to get the real stories, not just what-"

"Oh, I get that," he interrupted me. "But I just looked up some of the more recent articles you've written, and I can't quite grasp why they sent you, in particular."

Oh. I opened my mouth, but he held up a finger to forestall my response, looking back down at his phone. "Top Ten Moves to Convince Your Boyfriend You're a Porn Star?" he read off, raising his eyebrows.

"That article got a lot of likes and shares," I mumbled, well aware that this wasn't a good defense of my writing skills.

"The article's trash, that's what it is," Rob said firmly. "And most of the other pieces that you've got up on the magazine's website aren't much better. Why in the world do you think that you're going to get anywhere with a real piece on me?"

I plopped down on the bed beside him as a wave of dejection rolled over me. "Because I need to get a hit," I said miserably. "Those fluff pieces are really easy to write, but they don't exactly pay enough to cover all my rent and bills."

"I probably could have guessed that," the man beside me muttered, but at least he didn't needle me further. He just lowered the phone and looked at me, waiting for me to keep going, to try and explain myself.

After taking a deep breath, I forged onward. "The stories that really earn money are the headline ones, the features on people that our readers really care about-"

"Or love to hate."

"-and want to learn more about, the real story," I went on, glaring at him for interrupting me, hating him a little bit for making me reveal these pitiful truths. "And so when I heard about you getting in trouble, making all the headlines, I figured that this could work out for both of us."

"How so?"

I looked up at him, my eyebrows rising as I saw him reclining across the bed where I'd be sleeping, indolently watching me. He looked really good, laying back like that with his flat stomach and tensed abs on display, but I didn't let myself get distracted. Instead, I just regarded him as someone sexless, an obstacle that I needed to conquer in order to get my story.

Of course, my eyes kept on straying to other areas and imagining how he'd feel pressed against me, but I fought down those intrusive thoughts as quickly as they bloomed in my head.

"Because I'll put out your story and get paid for it, and you'll get your side of the story out there," I stated. "We both win. You get to argue your side in to an audience of tens of thousands of readers, and I get paid for them tuning in."

Rob just rolled his eyes as he tossed his head back on the pillow. "Great. So I'm relying on you to get out the word of my innocence? I'm screwed, in ten sexy ways that will shock your readers."

I stuck my tongue out at him, and then forced myself to turn my back on him so that I could unzip my bag and start unpacking.

Part of me hoped that my act of unpacking would signal to Rob that it was time to clear out of this room, give me a bit of privacy. He, however, seemed to not get the message, and instead just kept on lying there, one eye watching me through a slit. I tried not to feel self-conscious about my clothes, although a little spike of embarrassment shot through my head as I pulled out my swimsuit from where I'd packed it on top of the pile of other clothes.

"Planning on going for a dip?" Rob remarked.

I glared back at him, trying to fight the blush that crept up my cheeks. Surely, he wasn't imagining how I looked in it, right? "I didn't know what would happen on this trip. I wanted to be prepared."

He shrugged, just tossing his head back to look up at the ceiling. "There's a beach down the path a little way from the cottage, actually."

I waited for another beat, but he didn't add anything more. I suspected, glaring at the bottom of his strong chin, that he just wanted to dangle that out in front of me to see if I'd go fishing for it.

Well, joke was on him, I told myself. After all, I'd be the one interviewing him for this story, and his personality was in my hands. If he was rude to me, I'd just write that he was rude, and tens of thousands of Grit magazine readers would know that Rob Hendricks was a total asshole in real life, not just in the papers and media. That would teach him to be rude to a perfectly nice girl who just wanted to score a win-win.

Still ignoring him, I turned my attention to the dresser, standing against one wall of the little bedroom. The dresser was made of solid oak, and I guessed that it had been in the Hendricks family for many years. I pulled out the drawers and, upon finding them empty, stowed my clothes away inside of them. Once finished, I zipped up the empty suitcase and stuck it down at the foot of my bed, ready to collect my dirty clothes as I worked my way through my outfits.

"There," I said to myself, straightening back up and dusting my hands against each other.

Rob, of course, still laid on my bed. I turned to him, planting my hands on my hips as I frowned down at him. "You certainly look like you're putting in a lot of hard work."

"I'm resting my eyes," he replied, not lifting his head up to look at me. "Being hated by the nation is stressful."

"And you're certainly painting yourself as a sympathetic character to me, I'd say," I added, making sure that he could hear the sarcasm in my voice.

This made him open his eyes, those chips of blue-tinted ice glaring up at me. "Hey, now. You have no idea what sort of stress I'm dealing with."