Stingray Billionaire: The Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (4 page)

“Probably,” she says.
“Anyway,
though, I want to see you happy. Maybe
the two of you aren’t going to end up with a house in the hills or anything,
but why not just get a drink with him?”

In many ways, my sister
is a lot like my dog. Back at the apartment, that was her equivalent of a
head-butt.
I
think she may have
head-butted me when we were fighting over the phone, because my forehead is
throbbing.

She’s trying a softer
approach now, but just like Max, she doesn’t quite know when to stop pushing.

“Oh, he probably doesn’t
even remember who I am,” I tell her. “Do you have any idea how many people
these guys talk to on a daily basis? I bet he meets more people a day without
leaving his house than the two of us would meet in a year working retail.”

“How do you know?” she
asks.

“Don’t start,” I tell
her.

“What?” she asks. “I was
just asking you how you know he’s forgotten you. For all you know, he might be
waiting by his phone right now.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” I scoff.

“Sis, how long have we
known each other?” she asks.

“Really?” I return.
“You’re going for ‘how long have we known each other’ here?”

“It’s a fair question,”
she says.

“I
t's
not,” I tell her.

“Look,” she says, “we
both know that chances are, the two of you aren’t going to work. I mean, he’s
all
high-finance,
and business or
whatever, and you’re more the quiet type who likes to cry into her pillow at
night because your life is terminally
dull
.”

“Thanks for that,” I say.

“Just meet the guy for a
drink,” she says. “Maybe you’ll hit it
off.
Maybe
you won’t. If not, you won’t be disappointed because you were
expecting that
anyway
. If you do hit it
off together, though, maybe I can finally realize my dream of getting you
married off and out of the apartment.”

“You do know it’s my
apartment,” I say.

“Whatever,” she says.
“Come on, what’s a drink going to hurt? You don’t like the way things are
going, you
walk away. It’s that simple.”

“Even if I
did
want to, I wouldn’t know how to get
in touch with him,” I tell her. “I deleted the number and threw out the card.”

“Oh, he and some of his
people have set up an office at the hotel next door,” Naomi says, taking her
last bite of soft serve as a reward for her cunning.

“So this whole trip to
the ice cream shop—” I start.

“That’s right,” she says.
“It was all a dirty, dirty
sham
. It’s got
to be the worst way a woman has ever betrayed the confidence of her sister. Now
shut up and go, will you? I want to order some
more,
and I don’t need you here watching me with those judgmental eyes.”

Just like Max, she’s not
going to drop this until she gets what she wants.

Truth
be told
, I’ve pulled up that number dozens of
times since Nick gave me the card. I don’t know if he’s a good guy or a bad guy
or what, but I can’t imagine we’d have very much in common. The only things I
know about the high life are what Troy’s told me to tell customers, and I don’t
particularly want to try any of that out on someone who might know better.

So, if for no other
reason than to get Naomi to leave me alone about it, I say, “Fine.” I tell her,
“I’ll drop by there and see if he wants to go out for a casual date or
whatever. I’ll humiliate myself,
I’m
sure
of it. I’ll probably be back before your next cup of cookie dough is ready.”

“That’s the spirit,”
Naomi says. “Now seriously, get out of here. I don’t want you to see this.”
With that, she gets up from the table and walks up to the counter.

I get up and start for
the door. What Naomi doesn’t seem to be capable of getting through her thick,
cookie-dough-addled brain is there’s a big part of me that’s been trying to
find a way to say yes ever since I stood Nick up at the restaurant.

What are we going to talk
about, though? “Hey, Nick, is it true they don’t make any
real
yachts anymore or is that just a ploy to
get the less-rich to stop buying them from under you?”

If nothing else, though,
maybe this will get Naomi and
the more
impulsive parts of me to leave me alone.

I go out and head toward
the hotel. Whatever Nick’s got going there, it looks like he brought some
friends. The usually empty parking lot of the hotel is full.

What do I say when I see
him—
if
I see him? Do I try to make an
excuse for why I haven’t called him, or do I go the aloof route and act like
it’s nothing? Once I get through the doors of the hotel, it looks like I’m
going to have plenty of time to figure it out.

The lobby
is packed
with half the people in town.
Nobody’s talking, though. Everyone’s just standing around silently, waiting for
something.

The sight is more than a
little unnerving.

I nudge Tom from the
local grocery store and ask, “What’s going on here?”

He looks around like he’s
going to tell these people something they don’t already know and he whispers in
my ear, “We heard they’re hiring for Stingray.”

I look around at the
room. “You mean everyone here is looking for a job?”

“Have you heard how he
treats his employees?” Tom asks. “The guy pays his interns more than most
companies pay their managers.”

“I don’t know that that’s
true,” I tell him, but know it’s not going to matter. Maybe this is why so many
billionaires and millionaires turn out to be such cynical people. If I had a
crowd of people that wanted something from me everywhere I went, I’d probably
be pretty abrasive, myself.

“Either way, they’re
doing something here in town. We want in on it,” he says. “After all, it’s only
right that they hire from the place they’re going to set up shop, right?”

“Well, good luck,” I say.

I’m not going to compete
with all these people for Nick’s attention. Turning, I start for the door, but
someone grabs my arm.

Looking back, I find a
woman about my age. As soon as I catch sight of her, she just says, “Come on,”
and starts tugging.

I tell her, “I was just
leaving,” but she’s surprisingly strong as she drags me through the throng
toward the unknown. “Seriously,” I say, “where are we going?”

“Give me about twenty
more feet and I can tell you,” she says.

I give her about twenty
more
feet,
and I ask again.

“Mr. Scipio has been
expecting you,” the woman says. “He’s just finishing up with someone. He’ll be
happy to know you’ve finally deigned to show up,” she adds.

“Listen,” I say, “I don’t
know who you think
I
am or why you think
I’m here, but—”

“Oh, come off it, honey,”
she says. “A lot of people try the unimpressed
approach,
and they always turn out to be the ones who end up doing something stupid—like
fainting when they’re in front of him.”

“It’s good to know he’s
spreading that around,” I say.

The woman glances back at
me. “Spreading what around?” she asks.

We get to the hotel’s
only conference
room,
and the smallish,
dark-haired woman lets go of my arm and heads inside, saying, “Wait here.”

I wonder if Nick hired
her because of her undeniable skill at pulling people through crowds. It’s a
silly job description, but I imagine someone like him could use someone like
her for something like that.

This is
what I think about while I try to convince myself I’m not overwhelmingly nervous.
Of course, the sweating palms, the dry
throat,
and the vague urge to run are getting harder and harder to ignore. I can’t
leave now, though. The door is opening.

“You can go right in,”
the woman says. “Also, I wouldn’t worry too much if you fainted when you first
met him. A surprisingly large number of people lose bladder control.”

And now I have to pee.

“Thanks,” I say, only she
doesn’t know it’s not appreciation.

“Go,” she says.
“Otherwise, that crowd down there staring at you is probably going to lose its
patience.”

“And they’d feel better
if I go in?” I ask.

“Out of sight, out of
mind,” she says. “It’s been nice to meet you, but I’ve got a lot of things that
aren’t you to deal with.”

It’s not the
best
thing anyone’s ever said to me, but she
reaches out her
hand,
and I take it. I’m
expecting a shake, but as soon as those vice-like fingers of hers
wrap
around my hand, she yanks me into the
room, saying, “Now talk.”

The hotel conference
room, a thirty-foot by forty-foot space, is now a series of makeshift offices
surrounding cubicles. The offices are all tan canvas, military-style tents.

“Hey!” Nick’s voice comes
from the corner to my right. He’s sitting at a desk, in an open-doored tent,
leafing through files. “I hope you don’t mind, but I have to make a very quick
phone call,” he says. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

In a surrealist way, Nick
looks like some commanding officer, though I don’t think too many of those wear
Armani suits on duty. It’s not just the tents, either.

“Yeah,” Nick says into
his phone. “Get over to Fifth and tell them this isn’t going to work for us.
They’re trying to screw us because they know we’re relocating, but do me a
favor and remind them that without me, they don’t have a company. If they give
you any hassle, you know what to do.” Without waiting for an answer, Nick hangs
up the phone, saying, “Ellie, I must say I’m a bit surprised to see you here.”

It occurs to me that with
all this time I’ve been waiting, I could have figured out what I wanted to say.
“Yeah,” I answer.

He smiles, but after a
period of silence I can’t begin to quantify, the smile fades. “Ellie?” he asks.

“Yeah?” I return.

“You’re not saying
anything. Are you all right?” he asks.

I’m looking around at the
room, wondering where everyone is. I’m not sure exactly how long it takes me to
realize he asked me a question. “Huh?” I ask.

“So, what brings you here
this morning?” he asks. “I was under the impression you’d decided not to pick
up the option.”

“Mr. Scipio,” I start.

“Please,” he says, “call
me Nick.”

“Nick,” I say, “it occurs
to me that I may not have been entirely polite.”

“How so?” he asks.

His phone rings before I
can respond.

“Sorry,” he says as he
picks up the phone on his desk. “I thought I told you to hold my calls,” he
says. An instant later, he’s nodding and jotting something down on one corner
of one of the papers in front of him. “I’ve got it,” he says. “Tell them if it
makes it all the way to the quarter, we can talk, but the index is still
recalibrating and it might not … Yeah, exactly. Thanks,” he says. Just for good
measure, he adds, “No calls now.”

“Mr. Scipio,” I say as he
answers the phone.

“Call me Nick,” he says.
“What’s on your
mind?”

I freeze. The truth is
I’m curious. I don’t tell him that, though.

“You know,” I start,
“it’s revealing that you went after me so hard that first day, but I haven’t
heard anything from you since.”

Hey, there we go. This
whole thing was his idea. I don’t see why I have to be the one to make the
effort.

“I don’t have your phone
number,” he says.

All right, that’s
a reasonable explanation
.

“Seriously,” he says,
“are you all right? You look
a little green
.”

“Yeah,” I answer. “I
don’t know, maybe a bit disoriented. Where is everyone?”

“We’ve got people from
corporate flying in this evening,” he says. “Listen, Ellie, it’s great to see
you and all, but I do have a lot on my plate right now. Was there something you
wanted?”

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah, hey,
I know I wasn’t exactly fair
to
you the
last time you asked me out,” I tell him. “I was wondering if you might like to
give it another shot.”

Wait. How did
I
end up being the one to ask
him
to go out again?

He gives me a pristine,
though brief smile and says, “That sounds great. If
you leave
me your number, I can
give
you a call when it’s not so hectic around here.”

“I know what you mean,” I
say. “All those people waiting out front, I didn’t think I was going to get
halfway into the lobby, much less actually—”

His head cocks to one
side,
and he raises an eyebrow. “What people
are waiting out front?” he asks.