How to Seduce a Billionaire (15 page)

“Go right in,” Kelly said, and swept her hand toward Brandon’s closed door.

“I certainly will.”

Bianca closed the door behind her and Kelly felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her. She slumped forward and laid her head on her desk. This was the last straw. She couldn’t take it anymore.

When she realized she was crying, she knew she had to act immediately. She couldn’t continue living like this. She was hopelessly in love with the big jerk in the next room and she could no longer sit by and watch him play his games with other women.

She was finished making romantic dinner reservations for him and his flavor of the week. She was finished buying diamond tennis bracelets for his civilized breakups.

She was finished.

With all the energy she could muster, she sat up and wiped the tears away, then quickly typed a letter of resignation and emailed it to him. Pulling her purse from the bottom drawer, she stood up and walked out of the office.

“Hello, Brandon darling,” Bianca said, closing the door behind her.

“Bianca,” he said, unable to disguise his shock.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said, pushing away from his desk and standing to greet her. “But what are you doing here?”

“It was just so good to hear from you the other night,” she said, kissing his cheek, then using her little finger to smooth her lipstick. It was a move meant to entice and he’d seen her do it a dozen times before. He watched as she strolled over to the floor-to-ceiling window and gazed nonchalantly at the view. “I didn’t feel like waiting for the weekend, so I had Gregory drive me out here to you.”

“I see.”

She spread her arms in invitation. “And here I am. Are you happy to see me?”

“Happy? Yeah, sure.” He looked beyond Bianca over to the closed door. “Did you see my assistant out there?”

“Yes, and honestly, Brandon, I can’t believe you still have that rude woman working for you.”

“Rude? Kelly?”

“I shouldn’t criticize,” she said, staring at her fingernails, “but she was very unpleasant to me on the phone the other day.”

“Kelly?” Distracted now, Brandon checked his telephone. There was no red light to indicate that his trusted assistant was on the phone. So why hadn’t she buzzed him to warn him about Bianca? Where the hell was she? “I’m a little busy today, Bianca.”

“Too busy for me?” she said, pouting.

Okay, that might’ve come across a little harsh. “Uh, no, of course not. It’s nice to see you.”

“I certainly hope so,” she said. “I’ve come all this way.”

He stared at her for a moment. He’d forgotten how beautiful she was, and how self-centered. “Yeah. What a surprise. I just need to handle a few things…”

“You’re going to keep working?”

“Just for a minute,” he said, folding up the files that were spread on his desk. “Then I guess we can go have a drink or something.”

“Sounds yummy.” She sat in his visitor’s chair and pulled out her smartphone. “I’ll just sit here and check my messages until you’re ready.”

“Fine.”

A soft ding came from his computer and he rushed to check his email. It was from Kelly. Good. Maybe she was going to explain exactly how in the hell Bianca had gotten in here.

He opened the message, skimmed the words, but couldn’t believe them.
Two weeks’ notice…Resignation… Thank you for the opportunity…

“What?” He stood up. “No, no, no.”

“No?” Bianca said.

He stared at her again, wondering why she was here. But he knew why. He was the one who’d called her and told her he wanted to see her. What the hell was wrong with him? He shook his head and muttered, “I’m an idiot.”

“Brandon?” Bianca said. “Are you ill?”

He’d made a huge mistake.

“Sorry, Bianca,” he said, pulling her gently from the chair and walking her to the door. “You’ll have to tell Gregory to drive you back to the city. Something’s come up.”

He raced out the door.

Kelly had just pulled her suitcase out of the closet when the pounding began. She sighed as she walked across the room to answer the door.

Brandon stood there, looking so handsome, so tall and rugged. And so concerned. “You can’t just leave me.”

“I’m not just leaving you,” she said, leading him into her room. “I’m giving you two weeks’ notice.”

“But why? Did Bianca say something to make you angry? Is that what this is about?”

“No, of course not.” She opened a drawer, grabbed a neatly stacked pile of shirts and put them in her suitcase.

“She did. She said something. I knew it.” He paced across the floor. “I’ve sent her away. I didn’t ask her to come to the office, Kelly. She’s gone and you’ll never see her again. You can’t quit.”

“Yes, I can. And it’s not about Bianca.” Kelly shook her head, still a little horrified that Brandon could enjoy spending time with someone as awful as Bianca. But that was none of her business. Not anymore.

“Then why are you leaving? We work really well together.”

“We do. Or we did.” She smiled sadly at him as she stacked a few pairs of jeans into her suitcase. “But then I broke the rules.”

“What rules?” he asked as he walked back and forth behind her. “What are you talking about?”

“The ground rules, remember?” She took a deep breath and turned to gaze up at him. “I fell in love with you, Brandon.”

He was stunned into silence.

“I know,” she said lightly, reaching for her lingerie and tossing it all onto the bed. “It was a shock to me, too.”

“What?” He grabbed her and whipped her around to face him. “No. No, you didn’t. I’m a jerk, remember? A big baby when I’m sick. I’m…I’m superstitious. You’d be crazy to fall for me, remember? That’s what you said. And you promised you wouldn’t…”

“I know what I promised,” she said. “And I’m really sorry, but it looks like I wasn’t able to keep my word.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true.” She patted his arm and stepped back. “I’m sorry.”

He blew out a heavy breath, then said slowly, “It had to be Bianca’s fault. When she walked in, you got mad and left.”

“I’m not mad,” she insisted, shaking her head.

“Then why did you leave? She’s gone. I don’t want her around. I realized that as soon as I saw her. Was she rude to you? She can be a little abrasive.”

“Oh, Brandon.” Kelly smiled sadly. “Don’t you see? If it’s not Bianca, it’ll be someone else. My point is, there will always be other women in your life.”

“But I want
you
in my life.”

“I want you, too, but not in the way you’re talking about. Look, I know you’re not in love with me. And that’s okay. You’re not the sort of man to settle down with one woman and I’ve always known that. This isn’t your fault. I’m the one who broke the rules.”

“I forgive you.”

She laughed. “Thank you. But today I realized that I can’t sit outside your office and watch women come and go. Call me a weakling, but I can no longer go shopping for gifts for the women you’re sleeping with. I’m sorry.”

He grabbed her hands. “This is all my fault.”

“How do you figure?” she asked, forcing herself to look into his deep blue eyes.

“We were just too good together. But that’s not love, Kelly,” he hastened to explain. “That’s just good sex.”

She laughed again, then realized she’d begun to cry and ruthlessly swiped away the tears. “Yes, the sex was good, really good. But I know my own heart, Brandon. I know that what I feel for you is love, and I know you don’t feel the same. I’m okay with that.”

“Well, maybe I’m not.”

“I’m sorry. But you must understand, I can’t work for you anymore.”

“Damn, Kelly.” He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I don’t know what to do to make this right.”

“There’s nothing you can do to make it right. I’ll stay on for two weeks and hire my replacement. Then I’ll leave.”

The two weeks went by too quickly, and before Brandon was ready to deal with the change, Kelly was gone. Her replacement was Sarah, an older woman so amazingly well organized that she scared Brandon a little. Kelly had trained the woman so well that in no time at all, she could do almost everything as well as her predecessor had.

But she wasn’t Kelly.

Sarah organized the major office move back to Dunsmuir Bay, and it went flawlessly from start to finish. Brandon was back in his office without a wrinkle in his schedule. Sarah was an organizational genius.

But she wasn’t Kelly.

Brandon knew he would snap out of this funk any day now. After all, it wasn’t like he was in love with Kelly. He wasn’t in love with anyone. He didn’t
do
love. It was just that he missed her. And why not? They’d worked together for over four years. That was all. They’d gotten to know each other well and it was weird that she wasn’t around. That was all it was.

And he’d get over it. As usual, he knew exactly what he needed to do to wipe her out of his mind. He would have to make some more phone calls. He had to find another woman to take her place. Not Bianca of course, remembering her visit. Why had he ever wanted to spend time with that vacuous, vain woman? There were plenty of other women out there.

But frankly, he couldn’t quite imagine himself having a romantic conversation with another woman. He couldn’t picture himself sitting across a dinner table, asking another woman about herself, sharing a bottle of wine, spending an entire evening with her, whoever she might be. He tried to picture the sort of woman he’d dated in the past, tried to remember what he’d talked about with them. But he couldn’t remember. They had all faded into the fog and now all he could recall were the fun times with Kelly, when they’d talked and laughed and shared secrets for hours. Whenever he tried to imagine spending time with someone else, he found himself bored to death.

So he buried himself in work, knowing he would snap out of it any day now.

The following Saturday, Adam and Trish invited everyone over to see the baby. Brandon pulled up in front of their sprawling Craftsman home and parked his car, then sat with his hands on the wheel and contemplated whether he should even go inside the house. It had been an effort to get out of bed that morning and he wondered if he’d caught some kind of flu. He didn’t want to be around the baby if he was sick.

But his head and sinuses were perfectly clear and he wasn’t coughing or anything. His stomach was fine, although he hadn’t given a lot of thought to fine dining lately. And he was feeling kind of run-down. He chalked it up to the big move back home and climbed out of the car.

Cameron stood on the front porch. “Hey, did you forget the beer?”

“Nope, got it right here,” he said, and jogged back around to the trunk of his car. He shook his head as he grabbed the case of beer he’d bought ten minutes ago on the way over to Adam’s house. Where was his brain today?

He found himself asking that same question all afternoon. Whenever his mother or brothers asked him a question, he’d realize halfway through his answer that he’d wandered off on some tangent or another.

They were gathered around the wide bar that separated the kitchen from the family room when his mother finally reached up and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “Are you feeling all right, sweetie?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, and grabbed a tortilla chip. “Just a little distracted.”

“I hope you’re not coming down with something.”

“Nope, just working too hard. I might need a vacation.”

“Oh, speaking of vacation, I ran into Kelly yesterday,” Julia said as she crossed the kitchen with a bowl of salsa. “She just got back from visiting her family. She looks wonderful.”

Brandon’s ears perked up. “She was back east?”

“That’s right,” Sally said, dragging a chip through the fresh salsa. “You know her family lives in Vermont.”

“Yeah.” He studied his beer bottle.

Julia sipped her lemonade. “Roger lives in her hometown, doesn’t he?”

“Roger?” Brandon felt the sudden, bitter taste of bile in his throat. “She saw Roger when she went home?”

Trish shut the refrigerator door and turned. “Well, they’re both in the same town.”

There was no way Kelly had gone back east to see Roger. Brandon knew that in his gut. She wouldn’t waste a minute of her time with him. But if Roger was from her hometown, maybe he knew her family. Maybe Kelly’s father knew Roger’s father. Had her family wanted her to marry Roger? Hell. Brandon knew all about family pressure.

“Sweetie, you do look pale,” Sally said, clutching his arm.

Brandon swallowed the last of his beer. “I just need a damn vacation.”

He decided to spend a few days back at the Napa resort, but he didn’t go there as the boss. Instead, he brought along his oldest boots, his rattiest blue jeans, some tattered shirts, and put himself to work in the vineyards.

As teenagers, Brandon and his brothers had spent a few summers on construction sites around Dunsmuir Bay, so he knew what hard labor was good for. It was basic and tough and real. Sweat and hard work helped a man think about his life, what was authentic and what was fantasy, what was important and what was crap. At the end of a long day, a man could look around and see what he’d accomplished.

As Brandon walked across the fields past the newly weeded and raked rows of grapevines, whose leaves were dry and brittle in the autumn twilight, he looked around and saw what he’d accomplished.

And he knew exactly what was missing.

Kelly had been back from Vermont for over a week now and knew it was time to start compiling her list of social organizations. She’d been putting the task off for long enough. She had a goal, remember? It was time to dive into the dating pool before she grew too old to swim.

There was a knock on her door and Kelly’s heart fluttered in her chest.

“Oh, stop it,” she scolded herself as she glanced up at the wall clock. It had to be the mailman, that was all. Brandon didn’t even know where she lived! What earthly reason would he have for being here? Would she always flip out every time the doorbell chimed or the telephone rang? She put the last dish away in the cabinet and hung up the damp dish towel, then walked over to open the front door.