Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (160 page)

They
broke
apart and Taryn’s boyfriend rolled his eyes up at her.
 
“What’s the problem?
 
That chick weighs about two pounds and
looks like a stiff wind would knock her off.
 
Come on!”

Taryn
shook
her head angrily at him.
 
“You’re
unsteady.
 
You keep going off
balance.”

Kallie’s
stranger looked up at her now.
 
“Ready?”

“Ready,”
she
said, and gave him a thumb’s up.
 
Suddenly he was charging full speed, and it was shocking how fast he
could move in the pool, with water up to his chest.
 
The other couple wasn’t expecting it,
and when they got close enough, Kallie grabbed the girl by one arm and yanked
her once, plenty hard enough to completely topple her face first into the
water.

The
crowd poolside let out a cheer.

Kallie
threw
her arms up in the air and did a quick fist pump.
 
The stranger put up one hand and grabbed
hers, squeezing.
 
“That was pretty
cool,” he told her.

She
started
to swing her leg off of him, but tattoo guy wasn’t done just yet.
 
“Hey, best out of three,” he said.
 
“We’re the champs.
 
You can’t beat us unless it’s best of
three.”

“I’m
done,” Kallie said.

“Figures,”
the guy replied.
 
“She knows that win was total bullshit.”

Taryn
nodded
at him.
 
But Kallie could see the
other girl didn’t want any part of another round.

Something
about
that guy reminded her of all the jerky, snobby people she’d run into in The
Hamptons, and Kallie figured maybe it was time to take a stand.
 
“Okay, let’s go then.
 
Best of three,” she said.

The
stranger
laughed beneath her.
 
“You keep
surprising me.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“Apparently.”

Taryn
sullenly
clambered up on her boyfriend’s shoulders.
 
This time they were more cautious as the two teams slowly approached one
another in the pool.
 
They circled
one another, and then Taryn went to grab Kallie’s arm and instead grabbed her
hair, yanking anyway.
 
Kallie gave a
small, strangled yelp—it hurt.
 
A lot.
 
But then she got a
rush of anger, because this was cheating, plain and simple.

Kallie
had
always hated cheating, and growing up in a house with five boys, she’d dealt
with her fair share of rough housing and cheating.
 
The rough housing was nothing, but
cheating enraged her.

Despite
the
fact that Taryn had a huge fistful of her hair and was yanking it, Kallie
managed to get her arm hooked under Taryn’s arm, and swung her around so that
she nearly spilled forward.
 
Then,
as both she and her tattooed boyfriend tried to pull their weight back to
counterbalance the forward motion—Kallie pushed the girl in the chest,
knocking both her and her boyfriend straight backwards into the water.

They
sank
like stones and the entire watching audience cheered like it was a great tackle
in a football game.

Kallie
swung
down off the man’s shoulders and he suddenly hugged her.
 
The feel of his chest against hers, his
skin, his body—was like nothing she’d ever felt before.
 
His

heat
was amazing, his touch was absolutely
magnetic.
 
He was a total turn-on in
every way.

The
losing
team slunk away and the stranger just chuckled.
 
“Some times good guys really do finish
first,” he said.

“I
don’t know.
 
Are you sure we’re the good guys?”

His
dark
eyes smoldered and his smile momentarily faded.
 
“Well, I’m pretty sure you are.
 
Maybe I’m just lucky I found you.”

Kallie
tried
not to show how much she liked that he’d said that.
 
“Are you here with friends or
something?”

“Nope,”
he
said.
 
“I know Kane Wright because
he did some advertising for one of the films that I produced.”

“Oh,”
she
said, not knowing how to respond.
 
He was some kind of big shot film producer, and she was a disgraced East
Hampton nanny.

“Want
to
get out of this pool now?” he said, looking around.
 
“Everyone else left and my hands have
turned to prunes.”

“Definitely
time
to get out,” she agreed, conscious of his eyes on her body as she got out of
the water.
 
She found that she
rather hoped he liked what he was seeing. Shivering, she hugged herself as she
stood dripping at the edge of the pool.
 

He climbed out and saw her standing there,
obviously cold and wet, and gave her his towel.
 
“Here,” he said, “wrap this around
you.
 
I’ll be back in a second, I
just need to grab a towel for myself.”

And
then
he disappeared through the throng of people and Kallie was left standing
there—hoping he would come back.
 
She waited, wondering who he was and if she was right to feel that there
was a connection between them.

Maybe
he
was just a cute guy who also happened to be nice and somewhat chivalrous.
 
But somehow Kallie thought there was a
lot more to him than that.
 
She
found herself desperately wanting to find out more about him, but told herself
not to be silly.
 
He was a rich
movie guy here on vacation and probably lived in LA.
 
There was nothing to be excited about.

Just
be
flattered he’s paying you any attention, she thought, and leave it at that.
Someone finally broke her out of her thoughts.

“Wait
a
minute,” the familiar male voice said.
 
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She turned around, somehow knowing it was
bad before her brain even put together whom the voice belonged to.

Standing
there
in his pleated pants and fancy blue sweater, his hair perfectly coiffed, mouth
sneering—was Brad Danvers.

Kallie
couldn’t
believe her eyes, nor her bad luck.
 
What on earth was he doing here? She thought.

“I
should go,” she muttered.

“Wait
just
a goddamn minute,” he said, his voice low enough not to draw unwanted
attention.
 
“You better not walk
away from me.”

“I
don’t
have anything to say to you.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“How
about
an apology for quitting in the middle of a job, leaving our two children
completely without care, and never bothering to even get your stuff or call to
explain yourself?” he said.

Kallie
was shocked that he had the nerve to
pretend that he didn’t know why

she’d
left.
 
But she didn’t really care if that’s the
story he’d decided to tell about her.
 
She just wanted to get away from him as far and as fast as possible.
 
“I’m not explaining anything.
 
Now, please leave me alone.
 
Don’t follow me.”

She
turned
around and walked in the opposite direction, but she knew without even turning
around that Brad was still behind her.
 
“You better understand what you’ve done,” he said.
 
“I am going to make sure your name is
mud, okay?”

“Whatever,”
she said, walking faster.

“You
might
be able to get in your little slutty bikini and shake your tits and ass around
town for a little while, but it won’t get you far, honey.”

Kallie
felt
the tears sting her eyes and she started to break into a run.
 
He grabbed at her and she felt his nails
actually scratch her wrist and hand, but she kept going, wanting nothing more
than to get away from Brad’s voice and the memory of what he’d done to her in
the laundry room.

And
then she ran straight into the arms of her
stranger.
 
“Hey, what’s going on?”
he said, grasping her shoulders and looking at her.
 
He was wearing a white t-shirt now, but
still wore his swim trunks.

Kallie
couldn’t
speak.
 
She was shaking and crying
and didn’t want to make an even bigger scene.
 
The stranger looked up and saw Brad, who
was standing there, trying to explain to someone nearby what Kallie had done.

“This
girl
totally left me and my wife in the lurch.
 
Fucking pathetic, you know?” Brad said to
whoever would listen.

Kallie’s
stranger
left her side and started walking toward Brad.
 
“The girl is crying, so just chill out
and go back to the party.”

Kallie
turned
and watched, both terrified and also elated that someone was actually defending
her.

“Whatever,”
Brad said, turning away from the stranger
with a shake of his head. “These fucking nanny’s they bring in—I bet they
never even did a background check or anything.
 
Totally sick.”

“Seriously,”
the stranger told him.
 
“Knock it off, I’m warning you.”

Brad
just
rolled his eyes.
  
“She might
be cute and all, but I’m pretty sure she’s got more STDs than a Thai hooker.”

Suddenly,
Kallie’s stranger grabbed Brad by the
shirt and spun him around.
 
And then
he hauled off and punched Brad in the face.
 
Punched him so hard that Brad fell into
about five other people.
 
The place
erupted into pandemonium.

The
stranger
ran back to Kallie.
 
“Are you okay?”
he said.

People everywhere were talking and pointing at
them.

He
looked
down and saw that her wrist and hand were bleeding from where Brad had
scratched her.
“Come one,” the
stranger said, “let’s get that cut taken care of.”
 
And then he quickly pulled her into the
darkness of the grounds beside the pool, where they couldn’t be seen.

Once
in
the darkness, he held her hand and slowed to a quick walk.
 
“I just wanted to get away from that
scene,” he told her.
 
“But I’m
taking you back inside the house and getting something for that cut.”

“It’s
no big deal, just a scratch,” she told
him.

“That
asshole actually laid his hands on you,”
he said, still clearly infuriated.

They
doubled
back and managed to blend in with a group of partiers heading back inside, with
nobody seeming to know that Kallie had been involved in any fracas.

Once
into
the house, it was easy to depart from the crowd and make their way to the
stairway.

The
stranger
appeared familiar with the house.
 
“There’s a bathroom upstairs where we shouldn’t be bothered and I can
take care of your wound,” he said.

Kallie
had
to smile a little at his characterization of her scratch as a “wound,”

although
it was stinging pretty badly now.

They
climbed
the stairs and then he led her down a huge, long hall that could have been
endless for all she knew.
 
“Okay, here
it is.”
 
He opened the door to an
ornate bathroom with a large soaking tub raised above the rest of the room, on
marble steps. Everything in the room was white or gold.

“I
could
live in this bathroom,” Kallie said.
 
“I’m pretty sure it’s bigger than my parents’ house in Ohio.”

“You’re
from Ohio?” the stranger asked.

She
nodded,
suddenly aware of the fact that the two of them were now alone. Really alone.

He
made
sure to close the door to the bathroom, all business.
 
Moving next to the sink, he ran the
water and checked the temperature.
 
“Let’s get some soap and water on that cut,” he told her.

Kallie
smiled.
“I’m okay, I swear.”

The
stranger just looked at her.
 
“That douchebag’s nails were probably
riddled with dirt and grime.
 
I’m not
chancing you getting an infection.”
 
Although serious, she got the feeling he was definitely milking her
“wound” for effect.

Well,
she
wasn’t going to complain about being pampered and taken care of.
 
She thought back to yesterday when she’d
watched the way Red took care of Nicole.
 
Didn’t she deserve a little of that too?

The
stranger
gently took her by the wrist and put her hand under the water, scrubbing her
scratch with soap.
 
“Now dry it on
that towel,” he said.

She
patted her hand down with the towel.
 
“All set,” she told him.

“No,”
he
said, crossing his arms and shaking his head.
 
Up close like this, his eyes were even
darker and more intense than she’d first thought.
 
His lips were full and soft. She could
smell him—he smelled clean, like the pool water.
 
But underneath that was another
scent—manly and strong and somehow comforting.

“No?”
she said, softly.

He
shook
his head again.
 
“I don’t think
we’re done here just yet.”

“Why not?”

Something
about
his demeanor had changed.
 
His voice
was lower now, deep and husky and smooth.
 
“Let me look at your cut again.”
 
He reached slowly to her hand with