Bad Boy of Wall Street: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance (6 page)

I didn't let his glare intimidate me, fighting the quaking in my toes by squeezing them into curled little knots inside my shoes. "Oh, yeah, the rich Wall Street playboy is at risk of losing some of his millions? It sounds so stressful. Upset that now people know your face as the public persona of greed and corruption, instead of remaining hidden behind an electronic screen?"

I knew that I was goading Rob, but I wanted to get a rise out of him. I wanted to pay him back for how he looked so lazily at me, like he could have me at a moment's notice if he decided that he wanted me. Maybe he could, but that still didn't mean he should look at me in that way.

My attack worked, I saw, as he rolled to sit up on the bed, his playful lethargy gone in an instant.

"You have no idea what sort of stress I'm dealing with," he hissed, and he slowly rose up to his feet, towering over me. For a moment, as he rose up to his full height - at least six inches taller than me, I observed with a swallow - I felt real nervousness bloom inside my gut. It was a sickening feeling. "You don't know anything about my life. Don't pretend that you can paint me with those stereotypes."

I opened my mouth to say something else, although I didn't know whether I wanted to apologize or try and stand up for myself. I didn't get the chance, however, to get any words out.

Rob glared down at me for an instant later, and then dropped his shoulder and pushed past me, out into the hallway. "I'm going to go try and get some work done," he spat back over his shoulder as he paused for an instant in the threshold of my bedroom. "Don't come and bother me."

"Fine," I said after a heartbeat, but he was already gone.

I sat down on the bed, feeling the residual warmth from where he'd laid across the sheets, and listened to the sound of his receding footsteps. In the little house, I could hear him stomping down the stairs, down to the first floor, and entering the study. As I heard other scraping sounds rise up from the floor beneath me, I realized that my room must be positioned right above the study where he'd stored all those papers from his trading firm.

Perfect.

I flopped back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. I saw a faint little crack running through the plaster on the ceiling, and traced it with my eyes for a minute. You're doing alright, all things considered, I tried to tell myself. You've found Rob, which is more than what other reporters have managed, and you've at least got his grandmother on your side for the moment. You're in the same room as him, and he hasn't turned you down for writing a story about him yet.

Somehow, this wasn't enough to lift my spirits. Sure, he hadn't explicitly forbidden me from writing about him yet, but I was pretty certain that Rob wasn't yet totally on board with letting me tell his biography and argue his side.

In addition, I wasn't totally convinced yet that he was innocent. A pretty face and sexy body didn't mean that he wasn't a total scumbag on the inside.

After a few minutes of staring up at the ceiling and listening to the faint sounds of shifting boxes and papers from the floor below me, I sat up and reached out for my backpack. I dug my laptop out of the backpack and hunted around for a minute until I located the nearest outlet on the wall. I plugged in the computer and opened it up.

I pulled up a new document, looking at the blank page. I tried jotting down a few thoughts on Rob, my first impressions, but kept on hitting the backspace button after I'd put down more than a sentence or two. None of this sounded right.

I needed more story, some deeper thread about him. Some part of his personality that could run through the entire story.

I needed, I admitted to myself with a sigh as I closed the document and pushed the computer down further into my lap, to get Rob to open up to me.

Maybe in time.

In the meantime, at least, I had to get my normal "fluff piece" done for Sandy, still. I cast my eyes around the room, trying to think of some topic that I could write about, one that would perhaps help distract me from my current predicament.

"Six Bad Boys That You'd Bring Home (But Not to Mom and Dad)" I wrote at the top of the blank document, and smiled. That could be something.

And just to spite him, I added Rob Hendricks at number five on the list.

Chapter Seven

*

A couple hours later, my story was done and emailed off to Sandy, and I'd closed my computer. As I lay back on the bed, however, a new sensation rose up from my midsection - a loud growling as my stomach spoke up.

Great. I'd missed lunch, and the last thing I'd put in my stomach, besides those dry, hard biscuits from Diana, had been a large donut that I ate as I made the drive up from the city. I really needed to get something more substantial. A salad, I told myself, as my stomach grumbled and conjured up visions of delicious hamburgers or steaming, moist, delectable lasagna and bread sticks.

I stood up from the bed, wincing as the old springs of the mattress creaked and squeaked with my every movement. Perfect. Definitely wouldn't be getting up to any funny business on this bed, even if I had the opportunity, or someone interested in snuggling up to me.

I headed out of my room, listening in the house but not hearing anything. I hadn't heard Rob move from the study down underneath my bedroom, so he was probably still there. Maybe if I asked him out to dinner, used that per diem from Sandy and the magazine to cover the cost of the meal, he'd relax and open up to me a little bit.

Or even if he wasn't yet ready to open up, perhaps he could at least point me to someplace halfway decent to eat around here.

The door to the study was partially closed, but the latch hadn't engaged. I rapped lightly on the door with my knuckles, opening it up further. "Rob?" I called out, worried that I might face another explosion for interrupting him.

But when Rob looked up from where he sat in the middle of the floor, stacks of papers piled and shifted all around him, he didn't look angry. Instead, his expression was a combination of exhausted and overwhelmed, and for a moment I felt my heart reach out to him, wanting to comfort him.

"April," he replied, the caution in his voice making it clear that he wasn't sure why I was there. "What do you need?"

Before I could answer, my stomach rumbled again, loudly enough for his ears to catch the sound and his eyes to drop down to my midsection. I grimaced, putting a hand over my stomach as if I could physically hold the sound back.

"I missed lunch," I offered up, as if this was a suitable explanation. "I was hoping that maybe you'd know someplace around here worth checking out for the food? It will get me out of your hair, too," I added, well aware of his less-than-warm feelings towards me.

After a second, however, Rob put the papers in his hands back down on the floor and climbed easily up to his feet. "I probably ought to eat something, too, before I end up passing out," he said as he stood up. "I'll drive."

"Oh, I wasn't expecting-" I hadn't realized that he wanted to come with me!

Rob just looked back at me, raising his eyebrows, and I swallowed the rest of my sentence. "If you're driving, I'll pick up the tab," I offered instead, hoping to help mend a bit of the broken trust between us. "I can call it a business expense, write it off."

If he'd pressed me, I would have been forced to admit that I had no idea what 'writing off a business expense' actually meant, much less how to do it, but he fortunately just nodded. "Sure, that works," he said, stepping towards me - but then stopping. I realized that I stood in the entrance to the study, blocking his path. I hastily moved to the side so that he could squeeze past.

As Rob passed me, my nostrils instinctively flared, and I caught a slight little hint of his scent. He must have been sweating in the study as he read through some of that dense material, but he didn't stink. He smelled active, alive, strong but with a slight hint of something spicy. I had a strange sensation of taking a sniff inside a spice cupboard.

It wasn't unpleasant at all, I had to admit to myself.

Okay, April. Put those sorts of thoughts out of your mind, stop looking at the man's butt, and follow him out to his car. I managed to do all these things, even keeping my mouth shut and holding back the half dozen questions in my head, as we headed out to the little garage attached to the cottage.

Rob opened the garage door by bending down and physically hoisting the thing up along its track, revealing a sleek and powerful looking black car sitting inside. "Wow, your grandma sure has some taste in cars," I commented, looking at the beast of an automobile that hulked just inside the dim garage interior. "Not what I would have imagined her driving."

"It's not her car," Rob replied shortly, walking into the garage and opening the driver's side door.

The space between the side wall and the side of the car looked rather narrow, so I decided to take the less potentially embarrassing path and wait for Rob to drive out so that I could climb in on the passenger side. I took an unconscious step backwards as the car's engine revved into thirsty life, and the sleek black monster crept forward, out from its burrow and into the late afternoon sun.

Yes, I thought to myself as the car emerged, this was definitely Rob's car.

"Dodge Challenger SRT, 392 version," Rob said when I climbed into the passenger seat beside him. "Almost five hundred horsepower, V8 engine under the hood, enough power to outrun just about anything."

"Are we going to be outrunning anything?" I asked, trying not to roll my eyes. Boys and their toys. When in New York City, where most of the cars crept along at a snail's pace, was there any need for a car that could go over a hundred miles per hour?

Rob didn't reply, but I caught him grinning as he revved the engine, peeling out of the driveway of his grandmother's house and down the fortunately deserted streets of East Hampton.

"Nice job with keeping a low profile," I said, having to raise my voice to be heard over the roaring engine.

"Oh. Yeah." Rob reluctantly eased off the gas a bit, and the car's rumbling motor subsided to the point where I could hear my own thoughts again. "Anyway, there's a nice local place right around here - Rowdy Hall. They serve great fish and chips." He paused for a moment, his eyes not panning over to me. "And the prices are reasonable, too."

I bristled at the insinuation that I didn't have the money to pay for a more expensive meal, but part of me knew that he had hit the nail on the head. Fifty dollars wouldn't go far at some of the more expensive, classic East Hampton restaurants.

We pulled into the parking lot of a comfortable looking restaurant, parking in one of the few remaining spots in a large lot. I heard the chatter of voices as we approached the entrance to the restaurant; the voices sounded happy, relaxed rather than formal and classy. I heard the clinking of mugs and glasses together, the static crackle of multiple televisions in the same space.

Inside of Rowdy Hall, a young hostess smiled at Rob in a way that seemed far too warm and flirty, considering their apparent age differences, and gave me a brief nod. She led the two of us over to a small, high table with two chairs, tucked up near one of the windows looking out on the street. Occasionally, when a car drove past, I caught the blur of motion out of the corner of my eye.

"Fish and chips," I ordered, remembering how Rob remarked that the place was known for that signature dish. Rob nodded and requested the same, passing the menus over to the waiter. Once we'd both ordered, we settled back, Rob examining me over the top of his water glass as I tried not to feel too bothered from his frank perusal.

"So," he said after a minute.

"So," I repeated, not sure what he was after.

"April Carpenter." He set down his glass, crossed his arms across his broad chest. "Normally a half-baked sex columnist. What else?"

I tried not to bristle at the unfortunately accurate moniker. Keep your cool, April. "What else do you want to know?"

"What makes you tick?" He stared back at me, like his eyes could pierce right through me. "What makes April Carpenter decide that she had to come hunt me down for an interview?"

"Financial desperation?"

He shook his head. "And you clearly aren't a fan of me, which makes this even stranger. Why don't you like me?"

"Seriously?" I hadn't meant to lose my cool, but it slipped away as my mouth dropped open. "You, the Bad Boy of Wall Street, the rich kid who's upset that he might have been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, can't understand why someone like me, who has to work every day just to try and earn enough to pay my rent on my crappy little apartment, isn't your biggest fan?"

"Rich kid?" he repeated back at me.

I held up fingers, ticking off my points. "Fancy boy-toy sports car. House in the Hamptons for your grandmother. Stock trader. Where's your mom, off in her own luxury condo in Florida that you bought for her as well?"

Rob's eyebrows climbed. "That's how you see me? Spoiled rich kid?"

And then, to my amazement, he started to laugh.

"What?" I burst out, not letting the arrival of our food disrupt me as I glared across at this man, trying to understand what had gone wrong inside of his head. "Why are you laughing at me?"