Stingray Billionaire: The Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (5 page)

“I think they’re all
waiting for a job,” I tell him. “At least, that’s what—“

“They think I’m in here
hiring?” he asks. “We’re a long way away from staffing. Give me just a second.”
He grabs his phone and dials a number. “Yeah, how many people are out there?”

He’s nodding, but not
speaking. Nick lifts his head toward me and makes a writing motion with his
hand. It takes me a second to get it, but a moment later, I’m grabbing a pen
from his desk and writing my number on Nikolai Scipio’s open palm.

Nick smiles, and as he
looks up at me, I let my defenses drop for a moment. He hasn’t given me any
reason to think he’s playing me, but at the same time, what would he want with
someone like me? I’m just the chick who works at the junk shop.

I catch Nick’s gaze and
for six or seven heartbeats—it’s going too fast for an accurate count—and he
parts his full lips, taking a quick breath of air. As he looks me in the eyes,
he covers the phone with the palm on which I wrote my
number,
and
he says
, “Hey,
this is probably going to be a minute. I’m going to have to talk her through
this. Do you think you can get out all right? If not, I can have one of my
guys—”

“No,” I say. In that
brief, forgotten moment, I was almost ready to say yes to just about anything
that came out of his mouth. “Besides, if they’re going to turn hostile, I’m
pretty sure you’re the one who should be worried about the torches and
pitchforks
.”

“Okay,” he says. “If
we’re going to stay here much longer, I’m going to insist they put in a few
more exit doors—yeah,” he says, uncovering the phone, speaking into it. “Well,
tell them that we’ll be happy to take their applications once we’ve gotten the
forms back from the printers or something. They’re not responding when you tell
them we’re not hiring yet?”

I guess that’s my cue.

Slowly, I turn and walk
back to the door of the conference room. I glance back toward Nick. He notices
my look and smiles before turning his attention back to the phone call.

It’s no secret, no matter
how much I wanted it to be. I might be able to fool Naomi, but I wouldn’t be so
worried that Nick might turn out to be one of those guys if I didn’t get a shot
of adrenaline like a baseball bat to the chest every time I think about him.

This is
dangerous
territory,
and I’m gladly
signing up for it. I just have to be
careful;
that
’s all. I’ve just got to keep my eyes
open,
and I’ll be
okay
.

It’s
a bit
exciting, going out with a billionaire.
I’ll never admit it, but I’ve had the fantasies of the wealthy nobleman who
might save me from my life of serfdom. Maybe I haven’t exactly fantasized about
it in those terms, but the general concept is there.

I still don’t know why
he’s interested in me, but he did give me space when I told him I wasn’t ready
to go out with him. Either it’s a long con, or there could be a chance that
even as one of the richest men in the country, Nick Scipio just might be an
okay guy.

It looks like I’m going
to find out.

I hardly notice I’m
looking at the floor smiling until I
notice
the complete lack of noise from the rabble and look up. There at the end of the
hall, where the corridor leads out into the main foyer, are a few dozen scarlet
faces with narrow eyes staring at me.

They all think I’m the
reason they’re not getting jobs today.

Chapter
Four

Dinner on the Beach

Nick

It’s
taken
a few days, but my schedule is finally pliable enough that I can take Ellie to
one of my favorite spots, Kola Kitanabu. She was very impressed with the name,
but I could see she’d never heard of the place. No matter, we’ll be there soon
enough.

The best part so far is
when we pull up to the airport and my driver stops the car. She’s sitting on
the other side of the
backseat,
and she
grabs my arm as she looks out the window.

“Why are we at the
airport?” she asks.

“We’re going to Kola
Kitanabu
,” I answer.

My driver, Brent—hardly
the old-money kind of name I was hoping for in a driver, but you work with what
you can get—opens Ellie’s door and she’s leaning into me.

“We can go somewhere
closer if you like,” I tell her. “When I called and asked where you’d like to
get some dinner, though, you said—”

“Surprise me,” she
interrupts. “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“Why’d you think I asked
if you had a passport?” I respond.

Ellie looks up at me,
eyes gaping either from surprise or some deathly fear of poor
Brent,
who’s still standing there, holding his
hand out for Ellie to take.

“Your call,” I tell her.

She’s still staring at
Brent like he’s an alien come to abduct her, but she says, “Tell me about it,
where we’re going.”

It’s hard to contain my
amusement when she realizes we’re not flying commercial.

Over the clouds now and
somewhere over the vast, swallowing ocean, I don’t think Ellie’s stopped
looking out her window for longer than a couple of seconds. That only seems to
happen when we hit some unexpected turbulence.

“Is this your first time
on a plane?” I ask.

“I went to New Jersey
once,” she says. “I don’t
know. I
was little
, though.”

“Mind if I ask why the
passport then?” I ask.

She looks over at me and,
after a quick glance back to the
window; she
sits back in her chair. “I don’t know,” she says. “I guess I just never wanted
to be one of those people who dies twenty miles from where they were born, you
know?”

“Did you have a
destination in mind?” I ask. “I’m still working on our second date, and I’m
open to ideas.”

Her lower eyelids come up
a
little,
and she peers at me, saying,
“What makes you think there’s going to be a second date?”

When she lets herself
relax, she’s a lot of fun to talk to, but I guess the suspiciousness is going
to hang around a while. “Just thought I’d put it out there,” I tell her. “I
suppose you can call it an airing of hope.”

Her eyes unclench a
little,
and she faces forward. “Ah,” she says.
“Well, the plane’s
nice
and everything,
but it does seem a bit wasteful just for the two of us to go out on a date.”

“What do you mean?” I
ask.

“That’s a lot of jet
fuel,” she says and starts shaking her head. “Look at me. Here I am riding on
your plane, but is that going to stop me from chastising you for doing the same
thing?”

“You care,” I say. “I don’t
think that’s a bad thing. You’re right that you don’t have a leg to stand on
here, but you know, it’s a nice thought.”

For the very first time,
I think since she realized who I was when she started talking to me in her
store, Ellie seems to know that I’m joking. I don’t get a laugh out of her, but
her face goes that same
dark
red it was
when she came to on the floor. This time, though, she’s smiling.

“Maybe next time we can
do a date without all the jet fuel?” she asks. “I’m not going to lie and say I’m
not impressed, though,” she says, looking around the interior of the plane.
“You
seem
like you’ve done all right for
yourself.”

“I get by,” I smile.
“We’re all paycheck to paycheck, though.”

“Yeah, but your paychecks
are a little bigger, and if you’re going through the money that fast, you
should probably have them turn the plane around,” she says. “It sounds like you
can’t afford me.”

I’m not sure whether I’m
coming or going with Ellie most of the time, but she’s here. I keep telling
myself to wait until we get to know each other again before telling her, but it
already feels like I missed my shot to do that if I was going to be totally
upfront with her.

Right now, I’m just kind
of glad she doesn’t recognize me.

“So,” she says, “I have
to ask.”

“What would you like to
know?” I respond.

“Your first name is
Nikolai,
which is Russian, but your last name
is
Scipio,
which
is Italian,” she starts.

“You
're kind of
good at that. Yeah,” I answer. “Mom
was from
Minsk. Dad
was from—well,
actually, he was from the Bronx, but his grandfather was from a small village
in Italy.”

“I didn’t mean to pry,”
she says. “I’ve just always wondered about that. You see someone on
the cover of a magazine,
and you never think
you’re going
ever to see them
, much less
talk to them …”

She’s still talking, but
as she does, her face is growing ever redder.

“Is something wrong?” I
ask.

“Oh, thank
god
,” she says.
“I
don’t know, sometimes when I’m nervous, I just start rambling, and I don’t even
know what I’m talking about, and then I get all embarrassed and because I get
all embarrassed, I feel like I have to keep talking which, I know, doesn’t make
any
sense, but—”

“Ellie?” I interrupt
again.

“Yeah?” she asks.

“There’s nothing to be
nervous about, all right?” I ask. “We’re just two people trying to get to know
each
other. That
’s all.”

“Yeah?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I answer.

She looks out the window,
murmuring, “I don’t know. I’d say a trip on a private jet to
someplace
I can’t pronounce just for dinner
seems pretty
dangerous
to me.”

“We’ve got pizza in the
back,” I tell her.

*
                   
*
                   
*

By the time we arrive in
Kola
Kitanabu
, both of us are ready to be
done traveling. Maybe I did go a little overboard, but you don’t usually get
two shots at a first date. What can I say? I shot the moon.

Ellie and I got to talk a
bit on the flight, but after I let slip that there’s
a small
library in the back, I didn’t see her very much until we
landed. As we’re finally coming through the trees into the village itself, I
can’t help but wonder if it was a good idea to tell her she could keep anything
she wanted.

Along with a stack half
the height of my upper body and nearly as wide, Ellie’s still reading as we
drive down the old dirt roads toward the boardwalk.

I should have mentioned
we could keep the books on the plane, but she looked so excited when she
enlisted me to help her carry her stack of preliminary choices.

It could be a nod toward
the two of us finding something over which to bond, but I can’t help getting
the feeling she’s trying to keep me at a distance. That particular suspicion
is only strengthened
by the fact the book she’s
reading as we come to a stop is
The Bell
Jar
.

Don’t get me
wrong; I
like Sylvia Plath as much as anyone,
but her work doesn’t inspire much in the way of creating a romantic mood.

Brent opens Ellie’s
door,
and I can hear a couple of books falling
out of the car and onto the ground. This time, Ellie doesn’t recoil in fear and
confusion
but instead decides
just to keep
reading. As I come to think about
it, though, I haven’t noticed her turn the page in quite a while.

“I’m going to
make
sure everything’s prepared,” I tell her.
“Just let Brent know when you’re ready.”

“Sounds good,” Ellie says
into the book.

I get out of the car and
start walking toward the beach where I had a friend of mine, a local restaurant
owner, set up a couple of chairs.

On the one hand, I’m glad
she doesn’t recognize me because I don’t want the impression of who I was back
then to be the only thing in her head about me. On the other hand, I haven’t
felt this kind of engrossing uncertainty since my
roommate
and I dropped out of college to start Stingray.

That turned out well
enough, I guess.

“Hey!” Ellie’s voice
comes from behind me. I stop and wait for her. When she catches up, she doesn’t
say much, only, “It’s so
beautiful
here.”

We start
walking,
and I answer, “It is my favorite spot.
You know, that’s rainforest surrounding the village.”

“I know,” she says.
“While I was in the plane’s library, I might have taken the liberty of looking
it up.”

“Wait until you meet the
locals,” he says. “The first guy you’re going to meet is named Amin—”

“Would you mind if we
just walk around for a little while before we start—you know,” she says. “I’d
just like to walk around for a little bit if that’s all right with you.”

“Of course,” I tell her.

We get to the boardwalk,
and when she catches her first sight of the beach, I let her get a few steps
ahead so I can send a quick text
to Amin
to let him know
dinner’s
going to
be delayed
a little while.
The phone’s back in my pocket before Ellie turns
around, saying, “This is incredible.
The beach, the ocean—that is the
ocean
, right?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding.

“And then I turn back
around to tell you how beautiful
that
is and I see the rainforest on this side,” she says. “It is something. Thanks
for—you know, for bringing me.”

“You’re welcome,” I tell
her. “Did you want to walk around a little more or are you starting to get
hungry?”

“I don’t think I’m quite
ready to, you know,” she says.

“That’s the second time
with the ‘you know’ thing,” I say. “Just like last time, all I’m asking for is
dinner.”

“No,” she says, “I mean,
yeah, I know. I just
meant
I’m not quite
ready to …” she’s trapped mid-incomprehensible
gesture,
and she lets her hands drop. “You know,” she says.

“Okay,” I answer and
smile. I still have no idea what she’s going
on
about
.

So we walk for a while.
The village isn’t large. It’s not the kind of place you’d put a hotel unless
you wanted to ruin everything.

The sad thing about
places like this is that they’re so unique, so special you want to tell
everyone about it. When that happens, though, tourists
descend,
and the place loses its authenticity and ends up just
another tourist spot, like any other.

I’ve been here enough the
locals recognize me, but they don’t know
Ellie,
so they’re a bit wary. A lot of people have had the idea to turn this place
into a tourist
spot,
and although I’ve
been coming here for a few years now, it doesn’t seem like too many of the
townspeople
are past the fact
I’m
precisely
the kind of guy who lays waste to
places like this.

Well, I’m not that type,
myself, but I’ve got the kind of bank account that’ll
raise this sort of distrust
.

The sun’s starting to go
down and Ellie’s walking a little closer to me now. She says, “Thank you for
bringing me here. It
really
is
something.”

“I’m glad you think so,”
I respond. “Are you getting hungry, or are you still full from the last meal on
the plane?”

“I’m getting tired,
though,” she says. “
Could we
maybe
have our big
dinner after I’ve had a chance to
get a nap? The jetlag is killing me.”

“Sure,” I tell her. “That
won’t be a problem.”

It looks like I’ve got a
long night of apologizing to Amin ahead of me. I’m going to have to make it
good
, too. Otherwise, I might have to make other
arrangements for when Ellie’s up and ready for something to eat.

We’re walking back in the
general direction of the car and Ellie stops.

“Oh no,” she says.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“It’s my boss,” she says.
“When you picked me up, I didn’t think we were going to be leaving the
country—”