Reckless Hearts: A Billionaire Romance (6 page)

"Now you know. I'm going to call you again."

"Don't," I replied, the vestiges of my resistance fading away. A flirty heat moved low in my stomach. I could feel how if anything happened, it would throw us both off our tracks. And I’d spent so much time and effort constructing mine.

"I didn’t ask if I could call you again. I said that I'm going to."

We were almost there now. Second floor. The car began slowing, my stomach lifting as it did.

"This isn't going anywhere. It can't go anywhere." There was something else. A hint of danger, like I stood at the edge of a cliff, could feel the distance yawning away beneath me. And part of me wanted to jump even though I didn't know what waited at the bottom.

"When something catches my interest, I don't let it go. How do you think I'm so successful?"

The elevator chimed and the doors opened. The lobby appeared in front of us, men and women checking in at the desk, going about their day. The sounds of their footsteps off the marble floor, of their conversations, washed over us.

And beyond that, the revolving door to the street and to freedom from whatever spell Mr. X, Owen, cast on me.

I stepped out, not intending to look back at him even though his eyes tugged at me.

"I’ll call you," he said.

I did turn around then. Just in time to see the door slide shut.

"This is crazy," I murmured. Then I left. When I got outside, I could still remember the way his hand felt on my cheek.

B
ack at my apartment, I considered disconnecting my fancy landline phone from its socket.

Although I have to admit that I did check it for a message, wondering if he might try and contact me right away. He didn't, though. Did billionaires follow that ridiculous three day rule?

Ordinary guys might, but Owen was anything but an ordinary guy. And thus completely unpredictable. I hated that, hated not knowing.

I didn't disconnect the line. However, he didn't call that day. He didn't call the next, either.

In class, I kept slipping into daydreams. I kept wondering if, when I returned to my apartment, there might be a message waiting for me. And I realized that I wanted there to be one.

Except that entire day also passed without anything. I began wondering if maybe I shouldn't give his office a call. Ask that secretary if maybe she hadn't passed my number onto him.

"This is ridiculous," I said, sitting at my desk, watching the phone. It had all been some weird game on his part. He wasn't going to call. That was a joke.

Rather than thinking about him so much, I needed to take this time and put all of that behind me. I'd barely begun the research phase of my essay. I needed to start that.

I couldn't, though. The more I tried to forget about him, the more he came to mind. It reminded me of that trick my dad had taught me to help fall asleep. 'Try and stay awake.' The harder you tried to stay up, the sleepier you became. It was the same with trying not to think about Owen.

It got to the point that even Jennifer noticed.

"Who put the bug up your skirt?" she asked.

"Sorry?" I said, unused to hearing that sort of language from her.

We both sat in the small room in my apartment that served triple duty as office, library, and den. The school had decorated it fairly tastefully, making the centerpiece a large Sony flatscreen above a mantle on the opposite wall between two bookcases.

We perched on the small bench that backed onto a window looking down into the quad. The leaves had begun coloring more noticeably, the vibrant oranges beginning to overwhelm the deep greens.

It had been four days now with no word at all from my Mr. X, AKA Owen. Even I noticed a shift in my personality, and not for the better.

One of Justin Rothsman's friends had asked me if it was PMS after our lecture on globalization and the economy.

"You've been distant these last few days. I think this is actually the first time we've said more than a couple words to each other. I know we haven't known each other for that long, but I'd like to think I know you well enough to see when something is off," Jennifer said.

If there was one thing I hated talking about, it was myself. People always say that everyone's favorite subject is themselves. I'd rather talk about literally anything else.

"It's nothing," I started.

"Don't pull that on me."

I wondered if whether I could get away with feeding her the PMS line. Then I realized how much I wanted to tell someone. It could help relieve the pressure building up inside me.

Maybe even let me stop thinking about him. At least for a little bit. I couldn't look her in the eye, though. I thought I knew how she might react to the news.

Besides, I didn’t want her to think I was pushing her away. I hated the thought of sitting here all alone, waiting for a call.

Jennifer was fashionable as usual in a knee-length skirt, a matching blouse, and an airy scarf around her neck to accent it all. An ensemble, you might say.

So I looked down at my lap. I picked at a thread in my jeans coming out just above the knee.

"Late last week I got a call," I said, surprised at how hard it became to get the words out. A tremble started low in my back, my body buzzing with sudden adrenaline like I'd been marched to see the principal and now had to confess to tagging the girl's bathroom.

"From who?" Jennifer said, urging me on.

"Well... It was from Utopia. From Mr. X's secretary, actually."

Surprise arched Jennifer's eyebrows up her forehead. "You're kidding?"

"No. I wish. Remember all that stuff I said to him at his keynote?"

"That's like asking if I can remember my middle name."

Apparently my infamy had only increased on campus. I suppose I was an easy target. The outsider who didn't try to conform to all their expectations. Who was, in fact, there in spite of those expectations.

I was actually still pretty shocked that Peabody or one of the deans hadn't yet hauled me in for a good dressing down.
Does Owen have anything to do with that? Did he tell them to lay off?

"Come on, don't drift away on me again," Jennifer said, touching the top of my hand.

"He wanted to show me. He wanted to answer my questions. I went into Manhattan last Thursday and he showed me around. Showed me a bunch of numbers having to do with all the charity type stuff Utopia does."

Jennifer lapped it all up. I don't even think she blinked. And she didn't let go of my hand, either. Her fingers squeezed up tighter around mine, trying to keep me from escaping. "You mean he showed you around himself? Not a secretary or an intern or something? Mr. X himself? What was he like?"

"Yeah, he showed me himself. Actually..." I caught myself there. I was just about to tell her that his name was really Owen. That I intrigued him. That it was his fault I'd been so distracted.

I didn't, though. It seemed like a secret to me. Something between Owen and me. Something I didn't have the right to share with anyone else.

However, I wondered if maybe somewhere I liked having that secret. Had something valuable, some worth keeping secret. Jennifer and the others could have their money; I had this.

People do this because they like the mystery
, Owen's voice told me. His name was right there, in the business registry, for anyone to find. That set me off on another tangent, wondering whether he paid the press to not publish it. Just who else was in on his game?

"Actually what, Allie?" Jennifer said, another squeeze bringing me back for LaLa land.

"I guess that's it. That's why I've been so moody lately. I thought I'd been right about him. Right about those things that I said to him. But he proved me wrong..."

"And you hate being proved wrong, don't you?" she said, smiling at me.

"More than anything. It just got to me is all. I'm starting to feel better, anyway. You know, letting go and all that."

I didn't like lying to her. She was my only real friend out here, after all. But it was right to keep it from her. I knew that, at least. I didn't want to drag her into whatever it was I'd gotten myself into this time.

"It's so weird, him doing it himself. Maybe he has a thing for you," she teased.

"Me? Don't be ridiculous. I mean, look at me," I said, nodding down at my clothes.

Jennifer gave me a once over and shrugged, "You need to give yourself some credit. Maybe you don't see it, but I notice the way you get looked at. Some guys find it really hot."

"Find what hot?" I said, some heat rising to my cheeks. All of this focusing on me made me uncomfortable. I shifted on the bench, the lip of it digging into my thigh and making my leg go numb. My clothes all seemed to fit wrong.

I wanted to shrink up into a ball and then pop out of existence like a floating soap bubble.

"This whole 'I don't know how pretty I am' thing you have going on. They write songs about this sort of thing, you know."

"I don't really listen to music." Or go to movies, or watch shows, or go out clubbing. The list went on, and I didn't want to keep going through it. I knew what I wanted out of life, and I didn't like other things getting in the way. What was wrong with that?

Life was too short to waste on doing things that didn't get you where you wanted to go. Just ask my mom. She started writing a novel about ten years ago and as far as I know the dozen or so typed pages are still stuffed into her desk at home.

She kept letting things get in the way. Kept telling herself, and anyone else who asked how the writing was going, that life kept throwing up barricades.

"Oh, I'm painfully aware of that," Jennifer said. Every couple weeks she tried to get me to go out clubbing with her, usually asking what good it was to be legally old enough to go out drinking if I didn't go do it. I always turned her down.

Sometimes I found myself wondering why she even liked to hang out with me.

Perhaps sensing my thoughts, Jennifer squeezed my hand again, "But you make up for it. You're so thoughtful sometimes. And nice. Once someone gets past that shield you throw up it feels good to be around you."

And just like that Jennifer managed to explain to me what so unnerved me about Owen. He had seen right through that shield without a problem, seen right into me.

But if he liked what he saw, why didn't he call?

"What is it now? I really wasn't trying to be mean..." Jennifer said.

"No, it's not you. Just a lot on my mind I guess. Thanks for listening."

Again I came close to telling her about waiting for that call. Again I ran into that well with the sign on it that told me I needed to keep this a secret. Again I heeded the sign.

"No problem at all. Now, are we finally going to get some lunch?"

"Sounds good."

It did help telling her. Even that little bit of information bobbing above the surface. It was what waited below the surface that worried me. Would I be able to navigate around it, or would I hit it and sink?

We collected our bags and went out. As I checked my door handle to make sure it locked behind me, I caught myself wondering if maybe there might be a message waiting on the machine when I got back.

Walking down the hall towards the stairs I strained my ears trying to hear the ring of the phone, ready to sprint back and snatch up the receiver before the machine could catch it on the fifth ring.

N
o message came.

I came back in disappointed to see the little light that would blink red to indicate a message dormant. No missed calls, either.

But that night I did start to feel better. I put it down to my talk with Jennifer. Being around her reminded me why I'd come to SNYUC, and I actually managed to get enough research material together to get started on that essay. I went to bed with the entire introductory paragraph complete.

I only thought of Owen once, when I hopped into bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. I always hated that first chill of slipping into a cold bed. I rubbed my feet against the sheets, trying to build up some friction heat.

I lay there, watching the way the shadows pooled in inky darkness in the corners. I listened to the silence of the campus. There was a curfew in place, for one. And we were located between Nowhere and Nothing to See Here.

Out of that quiet and stillness, me shivering under my covers, it came without warning. Owen's voice, telling me that maybe I'd even find out how he managed to sleep at night.

I went to sleep rolling that name of his around in my mind.
Owen, Owen, Owen...
So much better than 'Mr. X.' It was a nice name. A normal name. Extraordinarily ordinary for someone in his position.

I wondered if he thought I had a nice name. Would he call me Allie someday? I only let my friends and my family call me Allie.

In my semi-conscious state, I thought it would be nice if he called me that.

***

O
n the sixth day the little red message light blinked at me when I came into the room.

I stared at it dumbly, my brain, still wrangling its way through my latest lecture, not yet comprehending the meaning.

When I did, an "Oh!" escaped my lips. My messenger bag slipped and fell to the floor, forgotten. I ran over to the phone, acutely aware of how pathetic I was.

It took me a few moments to find the play button on the LCD screen. When I did, I paused.

Several possibilities occurred to me in quick succession.

There was a strong chance it was from Owen. A very strong one, I ventured to think. But it could also possibly be Peabody or someone else high up in the school's administration getting around to dealing with me.

And if it was Owen, I wondered if I wanted to hear it. The thought of listening to his voice again excited and terrified me all at once. I knew I was slipping over the edge of that dark cliff, the bottom unknown.

I still wanted to hate him so much, just for being who and what he was. But somewhere I did feel that same desire to know more, the desire to see what happened.

I could delete it.

It would be so easy. The delete button was two buttons to the left of play, with pause and stop between them.