Chased by the Billionaire 1 (5 page)

I stood up and frowned. Even in pain
and pressed against the sidewalk, he could still flirt.

That’s how he’d gotten me to go out
with him.

Susan had manipulated me into
volunteering on a blood mobile drive, handing out orange juice and
cookies to the student athletes while they gave blood.

The woman taking Jackson’s blood was
missing his vein repeatedly, and though he was a blotchy red, and
sweating, and cursing, he asked me out the instant he saw
me.

I crumpled that memory up in my head
like a piece of paper.

“
Well then,” I said,
stepping past him. “Lance can just keep you there until I call him
and tell him I’m safely at home.”

I took a few steps and he called,
“Wait! Don’t leave.”

I didn’t look back. I wanted him to
give up and leave—and to leave me alone forever.

“
Just go to lunch with me
tomorrow. We’ll meet at Chester’s.”

Chester’s…

I hadn’t thought of that place in
years. The best cheddar cheese fries in the history of the world,
and steak hoagies so mouthwatering you never left any on your
plate, or took it home.

“
Is there one in Chicago?”
It had been a small new chain restaurant back when we were in
college. We used to eat there like ravenous wolves, studying and
kissing, and…

I was about to say no… but then he’d
just keep this up until Lance hurt him, and as much as I wanted him
to pay for…

I let my head fall back and sighed,
looking up at the sky, not seeing a single star due to all the
ambient light covering the sky like smog.

“
Fine, if you promise to go
away now, I’ll meet you at Chester’s at noon.”

“
Okay.” Jackson looked over
his shoulder where Lance knelt on top of him. “Will you get off me
now?”

Lance smiled and gracefully stood up,
letting go of Jackson in one elegant movement.

Jackson groaned again, this time in
relief, and rolled gingerly onto his back.

Lance leaned down and offered him his
hand.

After scrutinizing the offered help,
Jackson grasped hold of Lance’s hand as he was heaved off the
ground.

Lance was far stronger than I’d
imagined.

“
Radioactive spider bite?” I
asked as my assistant circled around behind me.

He snorted. “I’m just glad he gave up
so quick—would’ve hated messing up something so pretty.”

The look Jackson was giving me as he
brushed off his suit was like a forest fire burning behind his
eyes.

“
You may still have to,” I
said.

Lance blinked and then rolled his eyes
at me. “Breeders. I just don’t get you people.”

I turned to walk away, but Jackson
moved to follow me.

Lance cleared his throat and wagged a
finger at him. Jackson stopped in his tracks.

He leaned into me and murmured,
“Churchill probably has his car ready for us, if you wouldn’t mind
bumming a ride from us.”

I looked behind him and saw Churchill
looking dapper, waving us over to his…

“
Is that a vintage Rolls
Royce Phantom?”

I walked as if in a dream toward the
car… no, not a car, an automobile of the highest order. All those
curves and metal, all covered by a perfect paintjob at least six
layers deep.

“
No,” Lance said as we got
closer. “That’s a
1955 Rolls-Royce Silver
Wraith.”

Jackson was suddenly standing right
beside me, staring at the four wheeled wonder before us.

“
It’s an Empress Touring
Limousine,” he chanted. “Bruce Wayne’s butler drives him around in
one of those.”

I had to smile.
Geek much?

I looked over to Lance and saw my
expression mirrored there.

I walked over to where Churchill stood
and accepted his hand as I slid into the car. The Italian leather
seats were so soft I wanted to strip out of my dress and roll
around on them… but I didn’t, of course.

That would have been tacky, though I’m
sure Lance would have recorded it on his iPhone and posted it on
half a dozen social media sites before I even got home.

Churchill followed me into the car, and
then came Lance.

I heard Jackson call out, “Remember,
Tigger… Chester’s at noon. Don’t be late!”

Lance turned and said,
“Tigger?”

I gave him my most deadly of glares.
“Don’t ask. Now shut the door.”

Lance laughed one
perfect
Ha
, and
pulled the door shut. The Roll-Royce sped off into the night,
slipping through traffic like it was made out of smoke and
shadows.

As Chicago slid past in our wake, my
assistant placed his hand atop mine and squeezed.

“
You alright, boss
lady?”

No, I wasn’t alright. I was so
confused. I was numb. My mind was a word jumble from hell: hurt,
hate, loved, abandoned…

I suppressed the tears vying to course
down my face, and wreck my makeup, and took deep breaths
instead.

“
Would you gentlemen mind
dropping me off somewhere?”

Chapter
5

I texted her on the way over, and
called her from the lobby and the elevator, but Susan refused to
answer.

I needed to talk to her. I needed my
best friend to help me figure things out.

So I knocked on her door and rang her
doorbell over and over and over again.

And then I heard a baby
crying.

Shiiit!

I’d forgotten there was a baby
now.

And I'd woken her up.

I considered sneaking away, and dashing
down the fire exit stairs, but Susan opened the apartment door just
as I was turning to run. She held little Sara in her arms as she
cried and screamed—Susan’s eyes were blood shot and her expression
pissed off.

I opened my mouth to talk, but she cut
me off by slicing the air with her free hand.

“
Get in, shut the door, and
sit down,” she said, voice terse, and then turned to pad off to the
living room.

I’d read that new mothers were not only
sleep deprived but dangerous. Under normal circumstances I would
never have come anywhere near this apartment or baby Sara. Too
loud, too stressful, and far too many chances to walk away with a
terrifying stain.

But I had been so turned around and
shaken by seeing Jackson again, I hadn’t thought things
out.

I did as I was told. I came in, shut
the door, and followed Susan into her living room.

She pointed to a beige couch with a
huge stuffed snowman on one end, and a duo of stuffed princesses on
the other. Well, the one with the white hair was a princess for
sure… the other might have been her maid.

Susan gestured for me to
sit in the center of the couch, and I obeyed. She immediately
slapped a pink and orange bath towel over my shoulder and set baby
Sara in my arms, her wails and sobs like the raptor screeches
from
Jurassic Park
.

She turned and grabbed two remotes from
the coffee table I’d bought them for their wedding gift—I cringed
as I saw the scratches and dings already inflicted on the Hooker
Brookhaven wood topped table.

She pointed the dual remotes at the
large flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, and then pocketed the
remotes in her wrinkled and stained polka-dot robe.

The fifty-inch screen blazed to life,
and I was suddenly bombarded by a dancing snowman singing about the
joys of summer.

I looked at baby Sara—she had suddenly
stopped crying, and was now smiling, cooing as the snowman
danced.

I looked around and found myself alone
in the room with the baby.

“
Susan…” I called. “Are you
there?”

No answer.

I looked to the baby and then to the
snowman and sighed.

And now I was going to
pay
.

An eternity later—technically about ten
minutes—Susan emerged from the back of the apartment with a baby
bottle in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

Oh yes, that was what I
needed.

Caffeine.

I reached out my hand… and Susan handed
me the baby bottle.

I frowned and watched as my one time
best friend sat in a chair off to the left and sipped at her
probably delicious cup of coffee.

She sighed, closing her eyes, leaning
back into the cushions of the chair—even curling her
toes.

Then she smiled and opened her eyes to
regard me.

“
So why is my best friend
pounding on my door in the middle of the night?”

I looked over to the clock on the wall.
“It’s eight o’clock.”

“
Not when you have a three
month old.” She shot me a hard, level look. “Then it’s the middle
of the night.”

“
Maybe I should go.” I’d
obviously wrecked her night, and now that I was thinking about it,
the appearance of an ex-boyfriend might not seem all that important
to a new mother.

Susan shook her head slowly, a cruel
smile on her usually sweet face.

“
You’re not going anywhere
until you’ve fed Sara her bottle, and then rocked her to sleep
again.” She took another sip of her coffee and sighed again,
looking far too happy.

“
What the hell’s in that
coffee?”

“
Nothing illegal or
alcoholic,” Susan said, “but it’s nice to be able to drink it like
a regular human being.”

“
Regular human being?” I
raised my eyebrows.

“
Try drinking a cup of hot
coffee when you’re juggling a baby. It’s harder than you’d
think.”

I looked down at baby Sara and felt a
pang of pity. As cute as she was, just holding her was precluding
all other activities.

I dutifully brought the bottle to her
mouth and she took hold of the nipple with a happy sound and
started to feed.

“
Now,” Susan said, “Tell me
what’s the problem.”

“
It’s nothing,
really.”

She gave me the
Don’t be stupid
look.

I bit my lip, took a deep breath and
told her.

“
I saw Jackson Burk
tonight.”

At first there was no reaction from
her. And then her eyes widened and she sat up and put her coffee
cup down.

“
Jackson, as in the Jackson
Burk that
didn’t
take your virginity?”

Okay, so there it was.

That night flickered through my mind:
we’d been out in the snow, building a snowman, and then stopped for
hot chocolate and waffles at Chester’s. From there we went back to
my dorm room, and we started making out. One thing led to another
and I felt it was time.

I’d wanted Jackson to be my first. All
the other guys I’d dated had been so immature, and impossible to
talk to.

But Jackson had been different. He’d
tried to act like a big brother at first, but I put a stop to that
the first week. I’d kissed him in the stacks at the library. We’d
been there to research a paper for the class we both were taking.
But I did everything I could to make sure we had to stay late
getting the actual researching done.

So I took his hand and placed it on my
breast. It’s how I’d seen girls in movies let the boy know that
they wanted to go “all the way.”

His breathing quickened immediately,
our kiss deepening.

Before I knew it we had pulled each
other’s shirts off, and he’d peeled my jeans off over my hips,
kissing his way down to my bare feet as he did it. All I had on
were my bra and panties.

I leaned up and unhooked my bra, slowly
letting the satin and lace fall from my shoulders, exposing me to
him.

Jackson gulped and then pulled me to
him.

We kissed and kissed and kissed, as he
caressed my breasts and kept pulling me closer to him.

When his hand slid down over my
stomach, his thick fingers inching down into the waistband of my
panties, I started getting nervous.

It was my first time, and besides a
bare bones “talk” my father tried to give me when I was sixteen,
and the mountains of erotica I’d read over the last couple of
years, I had no real-world experience or knowledge base.

I grabbed his hand with my own and said
what so many have said before me.

“
This is my first
time.”

Jackson smiled and laughed, which
didn’t make much sense, but then his expression sobered, and he
asked, “You’ve never done this before?”

I shook my head and kissed his
lips.

“
I want you to be my
first.”

His eyes were looking off into the
distance, and then suddenly he looked back to me—the look on his
face was as if he had never seen me before.