Chased by the Billionaire 1 (6 page)

Jackson pulled away from me in the
darkened room and grabbed his shirt from the floor, pulling it on
as he stood. Then he grabbed his shoes and crammed them on his
feet.

“
What’s wrong?” I pulled the
bed sheet up to cover myself and sat up, watching him as he pulled
his clothes on in a rush.

“
Umm, nothing.” He shook his
head and pulled on his coat. I saw his red scarf flutter to the
floor. “I just…” He stopped and stared at me, but there was no
emotion in his eyes.

“
I have to go.”

He turned and walked out of my dorm
room. He didn’t look back.

I cried myself to sleep that night.
Crying for maybe the third time in my entire life… and maybe the
last time that I can remember.

He didn’t call. He didn’t even look at
me when we had class the next day.

I dropped that class that day and never
went anywhere near the man again.

“
So what happened?” Susan’s
words drew me out of my Jackson induced reverie and back to the
present.

I blinked and tried to think
straight.

“
I was having dinner with
Lance and Churchill at La Pampillon.”

Susan’s eyes flashed. “I heard their
bread is to die for.”

“
I wouldn’t know,” I said,
“I never fill up on the bread.”

“
What did you
get?”

I glared at her. “The menu isn’t
important.”

Susan looked a little disappointed, but
then snapped to. “So what happened?”

I felt my breath catch in my throat.
“He sent me a margarita.”

It’s what we drank on that first date,
two days after we’d kissed all night at the library. He cooked
enchiladas and Spanish rice in his dorm room, and made us a pitcher
of margaritas.

He could only find a couple of martini
glasses, but he had the salt.

No, no, no… I was not going to keep
doing this.

I am not a flashback kind of
girl!

“
Then I saw him, threw the
drink in his face, and stormed off.”

“
No way!” Susan was on the
edge of her seat. “You didn’t say anything?”

Oh yeah…

“
I leaned in, rubbed my
finger across his jaw and tasted it.” I could still taste the
tequila. “I think I said, ‘I forgot how good these were’, or
something.”

Susan’s mouth fell open and she put her
hands over her heart.

“
What happened
next?”

I cleared my throat and felt baby Sara
move in my arms.

What had happened next?

I know I was pretty damn excited, I’d
wanted to do something to the bastard for the longest time, but for
some reason hadn’t—which was so unlike me.

I was more of a
let it out
kind of woman,
and yet all this pent up hostility toward Jackson Burk had gone
un-avenged.

“
I left the restaurant,” I
said. “Jackson caught up with me outside, and that’s when
Lance…”—Oh, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay him for what
he did. I enjoyed it so completely.—“Well, Lance cleaned the
sidewalk with Jackson.”

Susan blinked, gave her head a tiny
shake, and then smiled. “You’re kidding, right?”

I shrugged. “Lance did say on his
résumé that he'd won a national medal in Aikido. I really just
thought he was kidding. But Jackson didn’t lay a hand on him.
Before I knew it Lance had him on the ground, his arm pinned behind
his back, and Lance’s knee grinding into his vertebrae.”

Susan still looked like she didn’t
believe me.

“
Stylish, ever so polite
Lance?” She definitely didn’t sound convinced. “What is he, five
foot nine? And the last time I saw Jackson he was the six-three
quarterback for the Dartmouth Big Green.”

I smiled, remembering how quickly it
had all happened.

Lance was wondrous.

“
Six two, actually, and I
guess they don’t train you for hand to hand when you’re on the
football team.”

Susan blinked a few times. “Did Lance
hurt him?”

A strange pang hit my heart. So small
and silent, but utterly disturbing.

“
No, he just held him there
for a while, and then let him up when I asked him to.”

Susan stood up and then sat
down right beside me. “
You
asked him to let him go?”

The look on her face was overly excited
to the extreme, like a geeky Goth girl meeting Robert Pattinson for
the first time.

I scooched over away from her. “You
really don’t get out much, do you?”

She shrugged, her gaze dogged as she
waited for me to answer.

“
I couldn’t let Lance hurt
him. What would I do if he were in jail? My gallery would fall to
pieces without him.”

Susan’s stare turned into a hard glare.
“Yeah, right. As if big, tough Jackson Burk would admit to having
his ass handed to him by your assistant.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. I wasn’t
about to tell her the truth. It was just so… confusing.

As if she could read my mind Susan
said, “I bet you just couldn’t stand seeing Jackson getting
hurt.”

“
Okay, that’s just…
creepy
.”

Susan looked victorious as she took the
now empty bottle from Sara’s lips, the towel from my shoulder and
then lifted Sara from my arms.

The sudden feeling of having my arms
empty made my chest hurt, but only for a moment.

Get a grip!

“
So that was the end of it?”
Susan deftly lifted one eyebrow. She’d been practicing.

I lifted mine right back at
her.

“
He… he… oh hell! He would
only leave me alone if I promised to have lunch with him tomorrow
at Chester’s.”

Susan had Sara draped over her
shoulder, lightly patting her back. “Isn’t that where you guys
were… you know, right before you two… well, right before you two
didn’t sleep together?”

“
Yes.” The word came out
with so much chill I was surprised it didn’t fall like ice from my
lips.

Susan looked up, thinking. “But isn’t
Chester’s in Hanover?”

“
They’re a franchise, and
there’s one on the corner of Wolfram and Hart. I looked it up on
the way over here.”

“
What are you going to
order?”

I blinked. “What am I going to order?”
I stood up and stared down at my best friend. “Is that all you
think about now, food?”

Susan got this hurt look on her pretty,
blemish free face. “I only leave this apartment to take Sara for a
walk, or to go grocery shopping.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “I
haven’t been out to a restaurant in three months, Liz.”

She started crying, silent, heart
wrenching tears.

I rummaged through my purse and found a
pocket sized sleeve of Kleenex. I pulled two out and handed them to
Susan.

She held a now sleeping Sara in her
arms as she wiped the tears from her eyes with her free
hand.

“
Kevin’s always out of town.
He’s heading up a project in New York.” She deftly blew her nose
with the tissues.

I guess motherhood makes you good at
doing things with just one hand.

“
He tries to come home every
weekend, but… but this is so important for him. He’s never headed
up a skyscraper before.”

I remembered that he was the
architectural renaissance kind of guy, and Susan was the steel and
glass type.

And now Susah was sidelined with a baby
and a long distance husband.

“
Have you thought of hiring
a nanny?”

Susan’s eyes shot to me and she all but
hissed, “I am not paying some stranger to raise my
child!”

Okay, note to self: never inquire about
child care again. Sooner or later, she’ll want to go back to work,
and will have to decide upon that then. But I guess she just wasn’t
ready to hear that yet.

I nodded my head in agreement. “Of
course not. No strangers.”

Susan’s expression changed: the glare
turning sunny, and her mouth transforming from a hard line to a
lovely smile.

“
Yes, no
strangers.”

What was she looking at me like that
for?

She stuffed the tissues into her robe
pocket and then transferred baby Sara to her other arm. “So, you
said you were going to lunch tomorrow with Jackson?”

“
God no!” I slumped back
against the couch. “I just said that to get him to leave me
alone.”

Susan giggled. “So what happens when
you don’t show up at Chester’s and he comes to your gallery looking
for you?”

“
He’ll get the hint. I want
nothing to do with him ever again. And anyways, how will he even
find my gallery?”

“
He has a college
education,” Susan said, “You don’t think he knows how to use
Google?”

I smiled deviously. “He has a college
education, Susan. I think he’ll know when he’s being blown
off.”

The modern style clock on the wall
chimed as if it were church bells twenty miles away, a most restful
sound. And as if on cue Susan yawned.

It was now nine o’clock. I needed to
let Susan go back to sleep.

“
Forgive me for waking you
guys up. I’m so sorry.” I kissed Susan on the cheek and started
toward the door. “I’ll call you later this week for lunch. We’ll go
somewhere amazing.”

“
And then you can watch Sara
for me while I get my hair and nails done.”

I almost choked when she said that,
thinking that she was joking—but the look on her face said it all.
She was deadly serious.

“
But Susan…”

“
Like you said,” her voice
was like a lullaby, “no strangers.”

Oh… my… god…

“
I’ll make the reservations
and the appointment, and call you tomorrow.” She stood up and
gingerly walked back toward the bedrooms. “Lock the door when you
go. Night.”

Chapter
6

I walked for a few blocks to clear my
head. Downtown Chicago was still awake, and the streets were
littered with people of every demographic imaginable.

I stopped and sat on a bench located
right beside a cotton candy vendor. I plucked a five dollar bill
out of my purse and waved it in the vendor's direction. He took the
hint and brought me over a stick covered with pink spun
sugar.

“
Keep the change,” I told
him as I leaned my elbows on my knees and tore off hunks of the
sweet treat.

I watched taxis, cars and buses stream
by. Lovers walked by arm in arm. Nuns waltzed by with ice cream
cones.

And there I was, sitting alone, dressed
to pay a visit on the freaking Queen of England, eating cotton
candy on a stick.

I was pathetic…

Chapter
7

When I finally got home Doris Day was
waiting for me. Not the 1960s blonde bombshell movie star, but my
three year old long haired miniature dachshund.

Empress Dory (Dory for
short.)

A friend of mine had asked me to take
care of her while she went on a business trip to Paris, France. My
friend met a French man she couldn’t say no to—I think if you’re
going to go to a foreign country you should learn the basics of the
language. Suffice it to say she’s still there, probably trying to
pronounce the French words for “harder” and “faster” while her
French man fucks the crème brûlée out of her.

Meanwhile, Dory and I bonded over our
love of steak and getting mani-pedis. She’s the perfect dog. She
loves staying in, lying on my lap and watching old movies, and
sleeping in my luxurious California king bed.

She’s puppy pad trained, so there are
never any accidents on my thousand thread count Egyptian cotton
sheets.

And she heads for her day bed in the
bathroom when I have male company over for the night.

Not that she’s had to do that for a
while now, but it’s good that she naturally knows when I need some
alone time with a thick slice of man-meat.

I kicked off my heels and padded
barefoot to the kitchen, Dory in hot pursuit. I pulled out a
pre-cooked filet mignon and started to cut it into tiny bites. I
usually ordered a second slab of meat any time I ate out, so I’d
have Dory’s meal ready to go.

She enjoyed the usual doggy treats and
Rachel Ray’s Nutrish dry dog food, but my girl always got a little
extra.

I gave her half the steak, knowing it
would fill her up and make her want to go to sleep.

Truthfully, I was exhausted.

Who knew not getting laid and then
running into the man who rejected your virginity in college could
be so tiring?

I leaned against the granite countertop
of my kitchen and watched as Dory inhaled her dinner, her cute
little furry behind swinging along as she wagged her tail. But it
was her jaws that always gave me pause. Gators and sharks had more
self-control when sinking their dentition into their
food.