Dangerous Curves 2: The Good Girl (A Billionaire and BBW erotica romance) (3 page)

I had just climbed back into the Lincoln town
car when my phone beeped, alerting me that I had a text message.

It’s Nick! I thought excitedly. He’s canceled his business trip so he can sp
end the weekend with me instead!

As I grabbed the phone out of my purse, I realized that the text was not from Nick, but from Katie
.

Dinner and drinks tonight?
It read.

I was hit by a surge of disappointment, which was immediately replaced by guilt. Once upon a time, I would have been thrilled at the prospect of spending a Friday night on the town with my best friend. Katie was drop-dead gorgeous and, as such, usually had a date on Friday nights. Even though we were best friends, we tended to hang out more during the weekdays.

Sounds great!
I wrote back.
When and where?

She suggested a chic
bar downtown and, since I still had use of Nick’s driver, I offered to pick her up.

Go, Violet
! You rock.
Katie replied

See you in 20 minutes.
I texted back.

I pressed the button to lower the partition, and Davis said, “Yes, Miss Lewis?”

“I know I said I was going home for the evening, but is it too late to change my mind?”

“Not at a
ll, Miss Lewis,” he said. “I’m happy to take you anywhere you’d like to go.”

“Thank you. And, really, you can call me Violet,” I insisted, laughing a little. “And don’t worry about keeping the partition up,” I told him. “Unless you want the privacy,” I added.

“Not at all,” Davis smiled broadly. “I always enjoy meeting people and talking with them. However, most of my guests prefer to read or talk on their phones, so I leave it up as a way of not bothering them.” I was reminded of the
Seinfeld
episode where Elaine fakes deafness in order to avoid talking to a chauffeur who’s driving her to a tennis match. I’m shy by nature, but I’ve certainly never thought myself ‘too good’ to talk to someone.

“Well, you’re not bothering me,” I told him. “I promise.”

He seemed genuinely pleased. “I see why Mr. Colby has taken such a shine to you,” Davis said, giving me a wink. “Very few people feel the way you do.”

Nick had ‘taken a shine’ to me? So did that mean he’d been talking about me to his staff? I didn’t want to look desperate and beg for information about myself. Instead,
I asked Davis how his day had been. He responded by telling me a hilarious story about his granddaughter’s high school pageant. 

Twenty minutes later, we were outsid
e Katie’s apartment building. Per Katie’s request, Davis drove us to the bar she wanted to visit.

“Wait til you hear my news!” I
told her, once we’d been seated at a high top for two.

“Mariah
offered me a lead feature article!” Before she could respond, I rushed on, “And I’m picking Nick up from the airport Sunday night!”

I expected my best friend to be happy for me, but instead she looked distracted. “Where’s that waitress?” she asked. “I need something to drink.”

“Are you doing okay?” I asked, genuinely concerned.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good.” She shrugged her shoulders and flagged down a server so we could order cocktails.

Once our drinks had arrived, she loosened up. “So tell me what’s been going on with Nick?”

“He’s amazing,” I told her, taking a sip of my drink. I sighed deeply.

“Amazing, eh?” Katie didn’t look impressed. Then, she added, “The way you talk about him, he almost sounds too good to be true. You know fairytales aren’t real, right?” She rolled her eyes.

I was taken aback. “Of course I know that,” I said.

“Well, that’s good to hear.” She paused. “Because the way you’re going on about Nicholas you’d think he was Prince Charming or something.”

“Katie, I – ”

“It’s not like the guy’s flawless.”

“I know that.”

She set her drink down, and fixed me in her gaze. “Do you?” she asked, “Do you
really
?”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Nick has plenty of flaws. Everyone does.”

“Name one thing you don’t like about him,” she challenged me. “Because I’ve yet to hear you say anything bad about him. Anything at all.”

Before I could answer, Katie rushed on. “
The way you’ve been talking and behaving this past week…it just isn’t healthy, Violet. You can’t put somebody up on a pedestal, especially not some guy you barely know. Especially not some guy who has already told you he only wants you for thirty days. You’re romanticizing him. Only seeing the good and ignoring all the bad parts about him. And as for Mariah and the promotion? Ugh, don’t even get me started on that.”

I was dumbfounded. Where was this coming from?

Slowly, a thought started to creep in. And it was unsettling. Was Katie jealous of my sudden success – in both my career and romantic life? Was my best friend trying to sabotage me?

It seemed far-fetched, and I found it almost impossible to believe that Katie – someone who had always had my back, from day one – would ever try to do me harm.

But, still…something didn’t quite add up.

Katie was no stranger to ‘romanticizing’ guys. How many times had I heard her rave about a man she’d just met, telling me how he was incredibly brilliant or perfectly handsome
or phenomenally skilled in bed?

And I’d listened.
Always. To every word. But now that I had some great things going on in my life, she was the one who was turning sour.

“I don’t understand where this is coming from,” I began, choosing my words carefully. “What do you have against Nick?”

“For starters, he’s only giving you thirty days,” she pointed out.

“I know that,” I said hotly.

“And that might be all fine and good right now,” Katie said, “because right now you’re still in the thirty days. You’re having fun. You’re seeing him every night. What happens when the thirty days are up?”

It was a good question, one for which I had no answer. At the same time, though, why did I owe her an answer? All my life I’d lived what you could call a “risk-averse” existence. I never took chances. I tried my best to play it safe, to keep from getting hurt.
I’d been the good girl for all my life.

And guess where that left me? Bored, lonely, and sad.

It was only once I started taking risks that things began brightening up in my life. Even so, I understood Katie’s point. Nicholas Colby was a notorious playboy, and thirty days was not a long amount of time. We were already more than a week into it.

Katie shrugged off my questioning, and spent the rest of our time together – a paltry thirty minutes – playing around on her iPhone. Then she gave me what sounded like a flimsy excuse, and bailed on getting dinner.

What was the deal today? Everyone was making plans with me, only to immediately break them. It was depressing.

By the time Davis dropped me off at home, all I wanted to do was crawl in bed and forget this day had ever happened.

# # #

I thought Sunday evening would never get here. It had turned out to be a terrible weekend. After our crappy Friday night conversation, I’d tried calling Katie all weekend, to no avail. She’d finally texted on Sunday afternoon to say she wasn’t feeling well and that she’d call me Monday.

I had spent most of the day feeling down in the dumps, the only bright spot my impending date with Nick.

As requested, I had Davis drive me to Nick’s penthouse before taking me to the airport. Nick had said there would be a surprise there waiting for me, and boy was there, ever!

As soon as I stepped inside,
Nick’s butler, Marlowe, handed me a black gift bag. Attached to the outside of the bag was a small red envelope, containing what appeared to be a car key, along with a note that said:

Bring this. Wear that.

-Nick

The
“wear that”
part was pretty self explanatory. Inside the gift bag, wrapped in tissue paper, was the most beautiful dress I had ever seen: a slinky black gown, with lacy, see-through sleeves and back. After asking Marlowe for directions, I ducked into the nearby restroom and changed into the gorgeous dress. It was skin tight, hugging my ample body in all the right places. Although, given its form-fitting design and its lacy back, it left very little to the imagination and offered very little coverage.

I felt slightly self-conscious wearing it, though I remembered what Nick had told me on Day One: he would push me past my comfort zone. Well, this dress was certainly past my comfort zone!

I wondered where he’d gotten it? There were no tags inside, which left me both surprised and relieved.

Surprised
, because: what kind of outfit came with no tags? And relieved, because: without the tags, there was nothing to remind me that I wore a size 18. I bristled at the thought of Nick going into some plus-size shop to purchase this outfit. Sadly, even in New York, few stores catered to girls my size (which I found to be fairly ridiculous, considering the average American woman is far from a size 2). My clothing options have always been sadly limited, which only added to my curiosity of where Nick had found such a gown.

Try as I might,
I could
not
picture Nicholas Colby heading into Lane Bryant or Catherine’s and asking to see their evening gowns. I actually found myself giggling a little bit at the thought. It
was
an amusing mental image, though, to picture Nick – who, at times, had the paparazzi in tow – making his way out of the mall clutching a Lane Bryant shopping bag. Not that Lane Bryant or Catherine’s usually carried dresses this extravagant, anyway, but that was beside the point. Since I was not thin enough to shop in the “normal” stores, Nick would most certainly have had to visit – or instructed one of his assistants to visit – a plus-size shop in order to procure this gown. I pushed that thought out of my head. I was not going to let my insecurities over my weight intrude on this evening.

Besides, Nick had been very forthcoming about the fact that he
loved
my body, that he found my curves to be an immense turn-on. I was starting to get aroused, just thinking about how much Nick loved my body, how he worshipped it when we were alone together.

Mmm.

Between the recent fight with Katie and my increased work-load, I was definitely in need of a little stress relief…the kind that could only be found through Nick’s fingers, Nick’s body, Nick’s lips, Nick’s tongue….

Focus, Violet!
You’ve still got at least another hour until you’ll get to see him .Touch him. Feel him. Kiss him….

Okay, I
really
had to get my mind back at the task at hand or I’d be too worked up to get anything accomplished.

In addition to the gown,
Nick had also left me a gorgeous pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. They were black, with maroon soles, and, like the dress, they were the perfect size. (Although I found less embarrassment over the fact that I worse a size 9 shoe, than over the fact that I wore a size 16/18 dress). The Louboutin heels were slanted to fit my feet at such an angle that they made my legs look fantastic – long and graceful, whereas they usually just looked long and
thick
.

Once I had completed my
“wear this”
part of the mission, I sought out Marlow to find out what the
“bring this”
part of the equation meant.

When I held the key up
, Marlowe promptly showed me to Nick’s private garage beneath the apartment building. I was stunned to find a luxury vehicle waiting for me.

Is he serious?! I’m supposed to drive this?

As if reading my mind, Marlowe said, “Mr. Colby has left you the key so you may pick him up in his car. If you so desire. Otherwise I can have Davis take you.”

If I so desired? You bet I so desired!

“I think I’ll drive,” I said, turning the key over in my hands.

“Come then,” Marlowe said, “I’ll show you to Mr. Colby’s car.”

Nick’s “car” turned out to be a silver Maserati GranTurismo. To call something like that a “car” was almost absurd. It was a bit like someone saying, “My girlfriend is kind of well-known.” And then you find out they’re dating Julia Roberts.

Feeling
giddy as a young child on Christmas morning, I drove to the airport in Nick’s silver Maserati. I had never been inside a car as nice as this, much less behind the wheel. 

I was overwhelmed with a strange mix of excitement and nerves. It was a beautiful car –
gorgeous
, if you wanted to get technical – and driving it felt like a dream. It had been a long time since I’d driven – New Yorkers rarely drove, if ever – and it felt good to power down the speedway in a shiny new car.