Followed by a Stranger (BILLIONAIRE BEHAVING BADLY SERIES Book 3)

FOLLOWED BY A STRANGER

BILLIONAIRE BEHAVING BADLY SERIES

3

By

Holly Stone

Followed by a Stranger – Billionaire
Behaving Badly Series 3 Copyright
© 2015 Holly Stone

This book is protected under the
copyright laws of the United Kingdom.
 
No
part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any
form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the
prior written permission of the author.

This book is a work of fiction.
 
Names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
Any resemblance to actual events, locals or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
 

Cover Art by Holly Stone (Image from
Stockfresh.com by
Feedough
)

ANDREW

Rebecca had sent me a note.
 
I couldn’t believe it.
 
I was
convinced that she’d call me after my gesture, but I guess in another way I’d
been right about her all along.
 
She
didn’t want flowers or chocolates.
 
The
roses I’d sent to her hotel room ended up back on my desk, accompanied by a
scrawled brush-off on hotel stationery.
 

Andrew

I’m too tired to play games.
 
I needed something simple but this is getting
complicated and bruising me in the process. Can we part saying it was fun
(mostly!) and leave it at that?
 
I hope
you find someone willing to be what you want.
 
I can’t call you or see you without hurting myself further so I hope you
understand why I’m returning your flowers (they would only go to waste if I
kept them) and replying to your note with a note of my own.

Rebecca

I spent a long time standing at the
floor-to-ceiling window in my office, studying her elegant handwriting and the
words she’d written, realising that the sadness I’d seen in her eyes on the
first night hadn’t been a figment of my imagination.
 
Rebecca had been nursing some wounds and it
seemed that our interlude had exacerbated them.
 
I was angry with her for leaving without giving me the chance to
properly apologise for what happened with my brother.
 
I still didn’t know whether she fully
believed that I’d been unaware he was watching us fuck.
 
But behind my anger was a nagging sense of
regret that she was gone.
 
I missed her
sense of humour, her elegance and her smile.
 
I’d only known her for such a short time but she’d managed to wiggle her
way under the shell I’d constructed since Adrianna.
 
It was uncomfortable to feel out of
control.
 
The last time I’d let myself
feel anything I’d walked away with a shattered heart and a resulting inability
to trust any woman that crossed my path.
 
Some wounds are so deep it’s possible to believe you will never get over
them and I’ll admit that I still believed that of mine.
 

Only, I seemed to trust Rebecca.
 
I’ve witnessed manipulation at its most
calculated and this didn’t look anything like that.
 
She’d run for her own self- preservation and
I was confident she wasn’t playing games with me by fleeing merely so that I
would give chase.
 
I’d seen the pain in
her eyes before she knew who I was, and it was real.

And I wanted to take it away.

Admitting that to
myself
was tough.
 
Acknowledging how I felt
meant I would have to do something about it.
 
I wasn’t someone who lived well with regrets in any form.
 
They have a tendency to leach into
everything.
 
I should know because my one
regret had been shaping my interactions with women for over half a decade.
  

But what to do?
 

Maybe if I could see her again, and
we could talk, it would be enough.
 
If I
could apologise and speak to her about what was hurting her then I wouldn’t
feel the regret anymore.
 

It was a simple plan but looking back
I could see it was foolish.
 
I was lying
to myself about how much Rebecca had affected me and I was an idiot to think I
could shrug off the feelings I’d developed with a quick conversation, but we
live and learn.
 

I asked my Chief of Security to run a
search for Rebecca’s U.K. address and sent her more roses and a bottle of
whisky, knowing that they would rile her, but hoping she would also smile.
 
I wanted to leave my mark so she knew as soon
as she arrived home that I was still thinking about her and that her leaving
without saying a proper goodbye wasn’t the end of it.
 
Then I told Barbara to ready my private jet
and call Goodwin, my personal shopper, to deliver a suitcase of everything I
would need for a two-day trip, to the airport by lunch time.
 

I was going to England.

REBECCA

The first thing I did was step over the items that had been
left on my doorstep as though it was an altar to a Hindu god, open my front
door, and shove my suitcase into the hallway.
 
Then I grabbed the bottle of whisky, placing it on my telephone table
before tackling the ridiculously large bouquet that nearly didn’t fit through the
doorway.
 
Resting the annoyingly
beautiful blooms on my miniscule dining table for two, I tugged the envelope from
the card holder and ripped it open.
 

I was so annoyed with Andrew.
 
What the fuck gave him the right to seek out
my address?
 
The man had no sense of
propriety and acted as though it was his God given right do whatever he wanted,
and damn how it impacted anyone else.
 

The note was cryptic.

I wanted you to have
these flowers, Rebecca.
 
The smell of
them reminds me of you.
 
Maybe the whiskey
will remind you of me.
 
It was fun but
not as fun as it could have been.
 
Hurting you was not my intention and for that I am sorry. Maybe you’ll
forgive me.
 
I hope I will see that day.
 
Until then…

Andrew

What the fuck?
 
I threw the note on the table and stamped into
the kitchen to put the kettle on, seething that he had to have the last
word.
 
The man was infuriating.
 
But, I rationalised, as I stood at the
counter to make myself some tea, he was an ocean away and those flowers would
be dead in a few days.
 
The whisky would
make a nice gift for my dad; it looked like an expensive brand.
 
I’d have nothing to remind me of Andrew
except my memories and, though it would take a while, I knew those would fade
too.
 

Tea in hand, I relaxed on the sofa
and texted my mum to let her know I was home safely.
 
Moving out had its privacy benefits but I
knew she worried, even though I was independent.
 
I wasn’t tired despite it being 2am so I
flicked on the TV, searching for something to fill some time until my eyes started
drooping.
 
The programme I chose wasn’t
that engaging and I found myself looking at the flowers, mind wandering back to
Atlanta.
 
I wondered what Andrew was doing.
 
He was five hours behind so he was probably
having dinner or maybe he was in a different hotel bar, nursing a whisky and
telling another unsuspecting girl to take off her knickers in public.
 
The though made me angry and, I hate to
admit, jealous.
 
My memories were vivid
enough that I could almost see the glint in his eyes, and the arousal.
 
I imagined him taking those new panties home
and using them when he needed some self-relief and I hated the thought he might
prefer them to mine.
 

I was so stupid.
 

All it had been was a fling on a
business trip and all he’d wanted was anonymous sex.
 
The fact that he ended up knowing a bit about
me didn’t mean anything.
 
I hadn’t been
looking for anything except a chance to act without caution for once in my
life.
 
Jealous feelings had no place in
such a situation, especially now I was never going to see him again.

I wished it wasn’t so late so I could
call Marnie and offload my angst.
 
I knew
what she would say; take it as an experience that was fun while it lasted and
move on.
 
Maybe learn something in the
process.
 
It was hard to admit that,
whilst the sex had been amazing, the whole meaningless fuck thing wasn’t for
me.
 
I just didn’t have the kind of heart
that could be intimate with someone without it affecting me.
 
I felt loss, even though I had no right
to.
 
I’d given something of myself and I
wouldn’t be able to get that back.
 

When I finished my tea I pulled a
blanket over myself and lay down, thinking I would watch to the end of the
programme but I must have fallen asleep because, when I opened my eyes there
was sunlight streaming through the gaps in the blinds and someone was knocking
on my front door.

ANDREW

Did I feel nervous standing on Rebecca’s doorstep at
7.30am?
 
I hate to admit it, but
yes.
 
It’d been a long flight although I had
no right to complain because my plane is very comfortable, and I managed to
sleep a little on the journey.
 
I’d been
round and round on the sanity of what I was doing.
 
Transatlantic travel was nothing to me from
an expense point of view but I was a busy man with a lot of responsibilities
and I knew Barbara would be taking flack for my absence.
 
My email had been buzzing and I’d replied to
what I could on the ride over.
 
My
chauffeur was an exceptionally quiet man so I had space to concentrate.
 
When we were getting closer to Rebecca’s home
I started to take notice of my surroundings, wanting to see where she grew
up.
 
England was a funny place with
terrible civic planning.
 
The roads were
so narrow it was a wonder traffic flowed at all.
 

Rebecca’s road was quaint with a mix
of houses and small blocks of flats.
 
When we pulled up outside the address my Chief of Security had found, I
took in the concrete yard and peeling paint on the front door. It looked
neglected as many rentals do.

My driver opened the door for me and
then removed my small suitcase from the trunk.
 
I suddenly regretted coming straight from the airport.
 
Stopping by my house to drop off my things
would look less dramatic, but I didn’t want to risk missing her if she left for
work.
 
I didn’t have a lot of time and
wanted to make the most of it.
 
Rationalising that my arrival would be enough of surprise, I lifted my luggage,
opened the rusty gate and walked slowly up the cracked pathway.
 
There was no doorbell so I knocked, hard enough
to be heard.
 
Eventually I heard
shuffling inside and the door opened a crack with the safety chain on.
 
“Hello?”
 
Rebecca’s voice was sleepy and it made me smile.

“You left without saying goodbye
Rebecca. That wasn’t very polite.”
 
I was
trying to sound stern but failing because of the grin on my face.

“What the fuck?” she mumbled from
behind the door and then her face peeked around to look at me.
 
“Oh no!”
Rebecca
said, indignantly.
 
“What the hell are
you doing here, Andrew?”

“You know, I’ve kind of been asking
myself the same question.”

The door closed, the chain jangled
and then Rebecca yanked it open looking delightfully mussed from sleep.
 
She looked angry too, standing silent with
glaring eyes and hands on her hips.
 
Eventually she shook her head, as if she’d resigned herself to letting
me in, and stood to the side so I could pass.
 
It was a frosty greeting but one I’d been expecting.

“I see you got my offerings,” I said,
turning to watch her shut the door.
 
She
grabbed the whisky bottle by the neck and strode past me, disappearing through
a door I assumed to be the kitchen.
 
Leaving my suitcase in the hallway, I followed her and watched as she
dug around in the freezer for a bag of ice cubes.
 
 
Her
kitchen was tiny – only just big enough for two people to stand in and smaller
than my closet – but it was clean and quirky, with bold pictures and tins in
primary colours.
 
She’d made the best of
the space in a way that reflected her character; bright, feminine and full of
spark.
 

Pouring out two large measures of
whisky into blue glasses, she handed me one, and took a very long swig of her
own, screwing up her face as the liquid burned its way down her throat. “This
is so not okay on so many levels,” she said, shaking her head.
 
“You can’t just find out someone’s address
and then turn up on their doorstep.
 
That
kind of information is private and this here…it’s kind of
stalkerish
.”

“I can do whatever I like,” I said,
feeling smug about the fact.
 
Money is
power and all that.
 
I wasn’t about to
feel guilty for it.

“Yes, you can.
 
But that doesn’t make it right and that
doesn’t mean I have to be happy about the fact.”

“No,” I agreed.
 
“It doesn’t.
 
But I had to see you and explain.
 
You walked out and didn’t give me a chance.
 
I didn’t like the way things were left.”

“But I did.
 
It was how I wanted it, but you put your
feelings above mine in this didn’t you?”

Her comment surprised me and I sipped
my drink considering what she had said.
 
When I’d thought about coming to see her, how much of it was because of
her and how much was because of my own agenda?
 
It was hard to distinguish but she was right that I hadn’t really
respected her request not to see me again.
 

“I’m sorry.”

“Wow.”
 
Rebecca knocked back the rest of the whisky,
then grabbed a tea kettle and filled it in the sink.
 
Setting it down
she
turned to me and shook her head again. “I can’t believe you came all this way.”

“Why?
 
I have a jet just sitting there.
 
My company can cope without me for a day or so.
 
And you and I have unfinished business.
 
It was important to me that I got to see you
again to make things right.”

“What do you want to make right
Andrew?”

“You know that I wasn’t aware George
was in my apartment, don’t you?”
 
Rebecca
looked uncertain.
 
“He lives in New York
but has a key to my place for when he happens to visit Atlanta.
 
He didn’t tell me about his plans.
 
The first I knew of his arrival was when he
called out from the stairs.
 
I know that
doesn’t erase what happened but I wanted you to know that and believe it to be
true.”

Rebecca frowned.
 

“And he promised me that he wouldn’t
mention what happened to anyone.
 
I
didn’t want your privacy to be compromised.”

“Oh God.
 
I hadn’t even thought about that,” she said, clutching two mugs and
looking horrified.

“And you don’t have to now.”

“Do you drink tea?
 
I can’t believe I don’t know that about
you.
 
All the things we’ve done and we
don’t really know anything about each other.”

“We probably know more than you
think.”

“Yeah but the kinky stuff isn’t that
important, is it?”

“Yeah it is,” I said, with genuine
horror.
 
“You think chemistry like we
have is easy to find?”

“I know it isn’t for me.
 
You?
 
Probably not that hard.”
 
I ignored her sassiness.

“And I do drink tea.
 
No sugar.”

As Rebecca set about making us some
more appropriate beverages for the time of day, I leaned against the wall and
watched, enjoying the view.
 
She was
dressed in leggings and an oversized t-shirt, with a slouchy cardigan over the
top.
 
I liked her in comfortable clothes
rather than the high-powered work outfits I had seen her in before and I found
her candy pink toenails strangely endearing.
 
I knew she was younger than me but I now realised I didn’t know by how
much.
 
She was right that we didn’t know
nearly enough about each other but I shouldn’t care about that, I thought.
 
Shouldn’t but I did.

Rebecca handed me a flowery mug and I
followed her into her living/dining room.
 
It was tiny with a small table (dwarfed by my
inappropriately large bouquet), a single three-
seater
sofa, coffee table and wall mounted TV.
 
Books were housed in a stack of crates that rested on their sides and
two large house plants filled the corners.
 
It was basic but homey, the kind of place I imagined students lived
in.
 
Well, students from ordinary
families who didn’t get chauffeur driven to and from lectures.
 
She rested her mug on the coffee table and
then sat in one corner of the
sofa,
curling her feet
up underneath her while I stood uncomfortably near the door.

“You can sit,” she said, waving to
the spot next to her and I did, relieved that she seemed less angry with me.

“Can I just clear up a few things?” I
said, sipping at the scalding tea.

“What things?”

“Well, I’m in London for two days,
and I know I turned up on your doorstep unannounced but I wasn’t presuming I
would be staying here.
 
I have my house
in Kensington which is being prepared right now.”

“Okay.”

“And…well, I want to make things
right between us.
 
I know my arrival must
have been a shock but I need to know you’re not angry with me.”

She looked at me with a bemused
expression.
  
“It really matters that
much to you?”

“It does.
 
Despite what you might think of me, I don’t
set out to hurt people and if I do, I need to make it right.”
 
I ran my hand though my hair, feeling very
self-conscious and a way too exposed.
 
“You seem surprised.”

“Maybe I am a bit,” she said, reaching
for her tea and holding it in both hands as though she needed the warmth.
 
“That first night…you just seem really
different to that man.”

“We all have different ‘faces’ for
different situations.”

“And that’s the ‘face’ you put on for
women, is it?”

 
“Maybe.”

“So what’s this ‘face’ then?”

I rubbed my hands over my face,
wondering the same thing.
 
“I guess this
is just me,” I said with a shrug.

“And you don’t think women will like
your real ‘face’?

“It isn’t that.”

“Well, what is it then?”

“Can we talk about something
else?
 
Is that okay?” I said, leaning
back against the sofa and looking at the black TV screen to avoid her gaze.

“Of course,” Rebecca said, and I
could feel her eyes on me, taking everything in and I didn’t like the feeling
that she was
seeing
me.
 
Exactly the reason I put on the ‘face’.

“So, I don’t suppose you’d like to
fuck?” I said, trying to lace my efforts at distraction with some dirty humour,
the kind she would expect from the other me.
 
Rebecca simply raised her eyebrows disapprovingly.
 
“Guess not.
 
How about some breakfast?
 
Can I
take you somewhere nice for a meal?
 
A peace offering.”

“I’m still wearing yesterday’s
clothes,” she said, waving at her outfit.

“Well, shower then,” I said,
shrugging.
 

“How about you pop to Tesco Express
around the corner and pick us up some breakfast while freshen up.
 
I’m not in the mood to go out.
 
I still feel like it’s the middle of the
night.”

“Okay,” I said, jumping up.
 
“Which direction should I head?”

“Out of the front door, turn left and
then left again at the first junction and walk for about five minutes.”

“Okay,” I said, finishing my
tea.
 
I could do this.
 
Shopping at Tesco like a normal human
being.
 
I couldn’t remember the last time
I bought my own food.