Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (191 page)

He was about to tell her no – leaving
messages wasn’t his style.
 
But then
he changed his mind.
 
“Actually,
yes,” he said.
 
“Can you just tell
her that Chad called?
 
You can give
her this number.”
 
He rattled off
his cell, being careful not to reveal his last name.
 
The last thing he needed was some
overzealous hotel room clerk plastering his phone number all over her facebook
wall.

He ended the call and sat back in the cab,
satisfied.
  
If she called him,
she called him.
 
If she didn’t, she
didn’t.
 
He was Chad fucking
Parnell, on his way to one of the biggest meetings of his career.
 
Getting all worked up over some girl
he’d just met was ridiculous.
 
He
was going to go into Expera, charm the hell out of them, and land the
deal.
 
Then he was going to
immediately get the hell out of here and celebrate back in New York, Brooklyn
style.

“Can you stop at McDonald’s?” Chad asked the
cabbie.
 
He was suddenly
ravenous.
 
“I haven’t had
breakfast.”

“Awww, man,” the cabbie whined.
 
“McDonald’s is all the way back
there.”
 

“Thanks,” Chad said, and gave him a pat on the
back.
 
“I appreciate it.”
 
He made a mental note from now on to
scrap his no limo policy.
 
This shit
wasn’t worth it.

***

Kenley had been awake since five am.
 
It was now eleven-thirty, and she was in
the clutches of a full blown panic attack.
 
Okay, so that was being a little dramatic.
 
Panic attacks involved sweating and throwing
up and losing your mind a little.
 
She was definitely losing her mind a little, but she didn’t think it was
appropriate to really call what she was going through a panic attack.
 
That would have been disrespectful to
people who actually
did
have panic
attacks.
 
Kenley was a firm believer
in karma and she felt professing to have a panic attack when she really wasn’t
was just asking for one.

“Do you want another coffee?”

Kenley looked up from her computer.
 
She was sitting in a middle booth in the
back of a Friendly’s after being directed here by the front desk clerk at her
hotel, who had told her that Friendly’s had free Wifi.
 
The clerk had neglected to mention that
they also had very pushy waitresses who were getting annoyed that Kenley was
sitting there, taking forever to finish her BLT and ordering coffee after
coffee.
 
It wasn’t like Kenley was
going to stiff on the tip or anything – she’d leave an amount that was
appropriate for the time she’d spent in the booth.
 
Besides, the waitress should just be
glad she actually
had
a job.
 
Some people weren’t as lucky.

“Actually, I’ll have a Diet Coke,” Kenley
said.
 
Maybe this would make the
waitress happy.
 
Two drinks would
equal a higher bill.
 
The waitress
sighed and then pulled out her notepad, writing Kenley’s order down as she
walked back toward the kitchen.
 
Obviously it was all for show.
 
Who needed to write down Diet Coke?
 
It was just one drink.
 

Kenley turned back to her laptop.
 
She was on monster.com, trying to figure
out what kind of job she should be applying for.
 
The financial sector was dead, and she
didn’t really know what else she was interested in.
 
Maybe she should go back to school,
become a teacher.
 
She loved kids,
and kids loved her.
 
It was one of
the things that she’d suspected would have eventually become a big point of
contention between her and her ex-boyfriend, Jeremy.
 
She’d wanted kids, and he hadn’t.
 

Of course, teachers had really hard jobs and
worked tons of hours.
 
Yeah, they
had summers off, but that didn’t really count because usually they had to get
other, crappier jobs working retail or tutoring some snot-nosed brat that they
probably couldn’t stand during the school year.
 
Still.
 
Teaching would be fulfilling.
 
She wouldn’t get rich.
 
But she didn’t need to get rich.
 
She just needed to be able to pay her
rent.

She went back to google so that she could try
to figure out what the requirements were for getting your teaching certificate
in the state of Connecticut. They probably involved something ridiculous, like
having to go back to school for five years and then take all kinds of
standardized tests.
 
Kenley hated
standardized tests.
 
You always
ended up getting all nervous and the questions were so
random,
like about how –

“Hello.”
 

She looked up.
 
Chad Parnell was standing in front of
her, and Kenley’s breath caught in her chest.
 
She’d been spending all morning trying
to keep herself from thinking about him, and now here he was.
 

He looked amazing. His broad shoulders were
encased in a black pinstriped suit, the kind of suit that was perfectly
tailored and showed off every muscle.
 
She remembered how hard his chest was, how it had felt last night when
he pulled her close to him.
 
She
remembered the heat of his mouth against hers, how his kiss had changed from
forceful to gentle and then back again.
 
Warmth flooded through her body, and she took a sip of her coffee,
hoping he couldn’t see how flustered she was.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted, and
then instantly regretted it.
 
It was
a stupid thing to say.
 
‘What are you doing here’
sounded like
she wanted him there, like she was just expecting him to walk in, like she was
happy
to see him. What she should have
said was
‘Leave me alone, asshole’
or, better yet, thrown a drink in his face.
 
She’d always wanted to do that to
someone, ever since she saw Samantha do it on an episode of Sex and the
City.
 
If she’d had her Diet Coke,
it would have been perfect.
 
She
looked around for the waitress, who, of
 
course, was nowhere to be found.
 
Kenley returned her gaze to Chad and glared.

“That’s not a very friendly look,” Chad said,
and slid into the booth across from her.
 
His legs were so long that they brushed against hers.
 
He smiled, like he could tell he was
getting to her.

“So?”
 
Again, not the best comeback, but she turned back to her computer
screen, hoping he’d get the message that she wanted to be left alone.
 

“So you were a lot more friendly last
night.”
 

Again, images from last night flooded her
head.
 
How small she’d felt when
he’d wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.
 
How he smelled like soap and peppermint
gum.
 
How badly she’d wanted him.

“Friendlier,” she said, her eyes never leaving
her computer.

“What?”
 
He seemed startled.

“I was a lot
friendlier
last night.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you said I was a lot more friendly.
 
And that’s not correct English.”
 
She clicked on an ad for a biomedical
engineer.
 
She knew nothing about
biomedical engineering, obviously.
 
But she needed to keep her hands busy.
 
She cut and pasted the name of the
contact person into an email, and started to compose a fake cover letter.

“Are you sure?”
 
Chad asked.
 
“Because that doesn’t sound right.”

‘Yes, I’m sure.”
 
It was a lie.
 
She had no idea which one was correct.

“Well, whatever,”
 
Chad said happily.
 
“I failed English.
 
And friendlier or more friendly, I liked
you a lot better last night.”

“I liked you a lot better last night, too,” she
said, still typing.
 
“Of course,
that was before I realized you were a big asshole who was just trying to get
into my pants.”

“I
was
trying
to get into your pants,” Chad said.
 
He leaned back in the booth, draping his arms across the back of
it.
 
“And I
am
an asshole.”

Kenley couldn’t resist anymore.
 
She looked up.
 
His dark brown eyes were looking right
into hers, and he actually seemed sincere.
 
No,
she told herself,
the guy’s a jerk.

“Let me make it up to you,” Chad said.
 
He reached over and picked up one of the
French fries that was sitting on her plate.
 

“That’s mine,” she said.

“You don’t share food?”

“Not with you.”

“Fine.”
 
He held it out to her, teasing, daring her to take it from him.
 
She was about to tell him he could just
put it down on the plate, but at the last second, she decided not to give him
the satisfaction.
 
Instead, she
leaned over and took the fry into her mouth.

Their eyes locked across the booth, and when
his fingers grazed her lips, shivers flew through her body, down her spine and
all the way to her toes.
 
She
settled back into her seat, determined to ignore the dampness that was suddenly
between her legs.

“So anyway,” Chad said.
 
“I come in peace.”

“That’s great,” she said, and rolled her eyes.
“How’d you know I was here, anyway?”

“The front desk guy told me.”

“Good to know they’re all about the privacy,”
she said.
 
“How did he know you
weren’t a serial killer?
 
Or a
stalker?”
 
What was up with that
hotel, anyway?
 
Now she was
definitely going to write to the Better Business Bureau about them.

A wounded look passed over his face.
 
“Is that what you think of me? That I’m
a serial killer stalker?”

“No,” she said, and tilted her head.
 
She closed her laptop and pretended to
think about.
 
“You’re probably not a
serial killer.
 
If you wanted to
kill me, you could have done it last night, when you had me alone in your hotel
room.”
 
The side of his mouth slid
up into a wry grin, like he was remembering what they’d been doing last night
when he had her alone in his hotel room.
 
“But you could definitely be a stalker.”

“I’m not a stalker.”

“Then why are you following me?”

“I told you, I want to make it up to you.”
 

She knew it was a lie.
 
Guys like him didn’t just try to make
things up to people.
 
He definitely
had some ulterior motive.
 
But
what?
 
He reached over and went to
grab another fry, but Kenley pulled the plate toward her.
 
Chad rolled his eyes.
 
“Can I please have a fry?”

She nodded, afraid that if she said no, he was
going to try and feed her again, and she was already completely worked up.
  
It was extremely unfair.
 
Here she was, just sitting in a booth at
a freakin’ Friendly’s, minding her own business, trying to find some shitty job
to replace that shitty job she’d just lost, and even though Chad was a total
asshole, she couldn’t stop thinking about going back to his hotel room and
letting him do whatever he wanted to her.

She couldn’t decide what was worse – that
some people were so physically attractive that they were able to have that kind
of effect on people, or that she was dumb enough to actually fall for it.

“So all I’m asking is that you listen to what I
have to say.”
 

Kenley realized Chad had been talking, but
she’d completely zoned out.
 

“And if you don’t like it,” he continued, “you
can walk out the door, and I’ll never bother you again.”

“Fine.”
  
She leaned back in the booth,
crossed her arms over her chest, and waited.
 
“Talk.”