Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (174 page)

Walter pulled Alyssa’s chair out, and she slid into it.
 
“Thank you,” she said, and placed her
napkin on her lap.
 
She picked up
the menu and scanned it.

“This is one of the most exclusive restaurants in New York,” Jay
tried.
 

“It looks lovely,” she said.

Jay frowned.
 
Lovely?
 
Koi wasn’t lovely.
 
Yes, it was lovely inside, but you
didn’t go there because it was lovely.
 
You went there so you could say you went to Koi, you went there because
the food was kickass, you went there to see and be seen, even though you were
behind a privacy screen.

“Should we start with a caviar appetizer?” Jay asked casually.
 
Alyssa looked at him blankly, then
pulled her notebook out of her bag and started to write something down.
 
“What did you just write?” he demanded.

“I wrote that you wanted to order a caviar appetizer.”

“Why is that relevant?”

“All the women who are swooning over you want to know this stuff.”

“There are women swooning over me?”

“Yes,” she said.
 

He grinned.
 
Obviously
he knew there were women swooning over him.
 
And he liked the idea that she was going
to write that he ordered caviar.
 
It
made him seem refined.

When the waiter returned, Jay ordered sushi for them both.
 
Alyssa scribbled away in her
notebook.
 
“Are you writing that I
ordered for you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you writing what kind of sushi I ordered?”

“Yes.”

Finally, she set the notebook down and took a sip of her water.

 
“So how are you liking
Brooklyn so far?” Jay asked politely.

“I’ve only been here for a few hours,” she said.
 
“That’s hardly enough time to make up my
mind.”
 
She took another sip of
water, and her tongue snaked out and licked a stray drop of water off her
bottom lip.
 
Jay’s eyes flicked back
down to her sweater, which somehow seemed even lower cut than it had been in
the car.
 
She had nice full, breasts.
 
Jay imagined what they’d look like out
of that black bra.

The waiter set down their caviar, and Jay thanked him.
 
Then he scooped some up with a cracker, popped
it into his mouth, and sat back to enjoy the show.
 
The show being, of course, that Alyssa
had probably never had caviar.
 
Probably she was going to refuse to try it, or even better, spit it out.

“Good,” Jay said, after he swallowed.

Alyssa reached over, scooped up some caviar, and took a bite.
 
“Not bad,” she said, chewing and
swallowing.
 
Jay tried not to feel
disappointed.

They made conversation about the weather, about New York City,
about her job.
 
When the sushi came,
she was just as adventurous, and slammed down everything from raw tuna to eel.

When the bill came, Jay paid for it with his black American
Express.
 
He noticed Alyssa didn’t
pull her notebook out to make a note of that, which relieved him.
 
Black Cards were pedestrian nowadays,
with everyone from Jessica Simpson to Pete Rose to those Kardashian girls
running around with them.

“Thanks for dinner,” Alyssa said as they walked outside.
 
“I’m sure you have somewhere to be, so
don’t worry about taking me back to Brooklyn.”

“We’re done?”

“What?”

“Well, I didn’t know the date was over.”
 
And suddenly, he really didn’t want it
to be.

“This isn’t a date.”

“I didn’t mean a date like that.”

“Oh.”
 
She looked down
at her watch, and Jay could see her weighing the options in her mind. Getting
more dirt vs. going back to the hotel and relaxing.
 
Finally, she shrugged.
 
“What else did you have in mind?”

“I’m going to take you,” Jay said, “to my favorite place in the
city.”

~Chapter Three~

Alyssa gazed out the window of Jay’s car as he drove through the
streets of New York.
 
The windows
were tinted, which was good.
 
Otherwise
she’d feel self-conscious about all the staring she was doing.
 
It was just so hard not to!
 
Everyone in New York just looked…well,
like someone you’d want to stare at.
 
The people were diverse, from the woman in the long fur coat with the
tiny little dog, to the group of people on the corner banging on drums and
hoping people would drop change into the hat in front of them.
 
It was very overwhelming, and not like
Boston at all.
 

When she really thought about it, Jay was kind of right about
Boston.
 
It
was
a little bit pseudo-intellectual and kind of stuffy and
crunchy.
 
And even though it was a
big city, it lacked the energy of New York.

She shifted in her seat, then reached into her bag and pulled out a
bottle of water and took a long sip.
 
That caviar had been disgusting, and she’d choked it down only because
she hadn’t wanted to give Jay the satisfaction of seeing that she didn’t like
it.
 
That’s what he’d been hoping,
she could tell.

The car stopped, and Alyssa looked around.
 
They were on a busy corner, with a sub
shop across the street, and a bunch of nondescript little shops lining the
sidewalk.
 

“Where are we?” She looked around for a club, or some kind of
flashy monument or something where he’d take her to the top and show her a view
of the city in an effort to dazzle her.

“I told you, we’re at my favorite place in New York.”
 
He reached over and into the glove
compartment, and as he did, his arm brushed against the side of her
breast.
 
She felt how hard his arms
were, how strong, and for a second, she imagined what it would be like for him
to take her in his arms and hold her close.

Jay rummaged around in the glove compartment for a few seconds, and
then pulled out a hat and sunglasses.

 
“What are those?”
Alyssa asked.

“My disguise.”

“Your
disguise?”

“Yeah,” he said.
 
He pulled
the hat, a short knit green cap, down over his brown hair, and slid the glasses
on.
 
“Do I look like me?”

“Yes,” she said.

He nodded.
 
“You’re
right, it hardly ever works.
 
I’ll
get recognized for sure.”
 
He
sounded cheerful.
 

“Do you like getting recognized?” Alyssa asked.

He thought about it.
 
“Sort of,” he said.
 
“I don’t
mind signing autographs and talking to fans.
 
The only thing that sucks is when
there’s a big group of people.
 
They
all start taking videos with their phones, and they want pictures, and then it
wrecks whatever I’m trying to do.”

“So I should brace myself?”

“Well,” he said, and she was pretty sure she saw his eyes slide
down to her cleavage.
 
“We’ll see if
it gets out of hand.”

She opened the car door and stepped onto the sidewalk, and he came
around to meet her.

“What is this?” she asked as they walked up to a store.
 
There were carts of books on the
sidewalk, with cardboard signs that proclaimed them to be a dollar.
 
It was a nice night, with the sun just
starting to dip down, and a nice warm breeze, and so there were lots of people
outside, browsing through the racks.

“What does it look like?” Jay asked.
 
“It’s a bookstore.”

“Your favorite place in New York is a bookstore?”

“Yeah.”
 
He
shrugged.
 
“Why, you don’t like
books?”

“I’m a writer,” she said.
 
“I love books.”

“Then you’ll love it here.”

She followed him inside, and saw a sign that said “The Strand, 18
Miles of Books.”
 
She looked
around.
 
It was halfway between a
warehouse and a bookstore, with floor to ceiling shelves as far as the eye
could see, a bank of elevators to take you to another floor, and books, books,
and more books.

“Wow,” she said.
 

 
“Pretty amazing, huh?”

She nodded.
 
And then
she decided to ditch him.
 
She had
to, at least for a little while.
 
Books were her favorite things in the world, and she needed to be on her
own to really have time to browse.
 
Ever since she’d she’d learned how to read, she’d been in love with
books.
 
It was probably why she
hadn’t had many friends growing up.
 
While most of the neighborhood kids were out enjoying the summer by
swimming in pools and running lemonade stands, she was holed up inside with a
book.

“Meet you back here in half an hour?” Jay asked.
 
Alyssa looked at him, and nodded,
realizing that however much of a jerk he was, he obviously somehow got it when
it came to books.
 
The next thirty
minutes were pure heaven, as she loaded up her arms with lots and lots of
discounted books.
 
Romances,
thrillers, a young adult novel or two, and even a science fiction she’d heard
good things about.

When she met up with Jay at the front of the store, he looked a
little wary.
 
“Find anything good?”
 
he asked.

“Yeah,” she said.
 
She
nodded at the pile of books in his arms. “You?”

“Yeah.”

They waited in line, and Jay kept glancing over his shoulder.
 

“Okay,” he said finally, leaning into and whispering right into her
ear.
 
A shiver went through her body
as she felt his breath on her skin.
 
“I think we’ve been compromised.
 
Crazy teenagers at six o’clock.”

Alyssa went to look, but Jay grabbed her arm and pulled her toward
the register.
 
“Don’t
look,”
he said through gritted teeth.

“Why?” she whispered.
 
“What will happen?”

“They’ll follow me,” he said.
 
“Teenage girls always follow me.
 
They like to find out where I live so they can hang out outside.”

“Isn’t that info available online?”

“Yes,” Jay said.
 
“But
they like to stalk.
 
It’s more
exciting to them or something.”

They paid for their purchases and walked outside, and as they did,
Alyssa turned around.
 
It was like
being told not to think about something – of course you did the exact
thing you weren’t supposed to do.
 

“Uh oh,” she said.

“What?”
 
Jay looked
behind him, where the teenage girls were dropping their books down onto a table
that contained nothing but copies of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, and started
running for the door.
 
“You looked,
didn’t you?”

Alyssa nodded, feeling kind of guilty.

“Come on.”
 
He grabbed
her arm and they walked quickly down the street, then ducked into a small space
between two building.
 

Alyssa started to protest, but he put a finger to her lips.
 
“Shhh,” he said.
 

She shut her mouth obediently.
 
But he kept his finger on her lips, and Alyssa felt a frisson of heat
rush through her body.