The Billionaire & The Barfly (Coming Home) (10 page)

~*~

Dropping Ben off had been hard. She knew he needed to go in there alone, but she wanted to help him, protect him. But she couldn’t. Ben and Mackenna had to face her parents together, as adults, if they planned on keeping the baby.

How had they been so careless?
The minute she found out that Ben was active, she had supplied him with condoms, and gave him the ‘don’t be an idiot’ talk. Apparently, her sex talk skills needed work. Or his listening skills. Probably both.

Aubrey parked her car
in the bar parking lot and stepped out. She had been so intent on proving to Henry how not hurt she was when she made the plan of going to the bar, but instead, she just wanted to relax. She didn’t care about finding another guy. She didn’t care about making anyone jealous. All she wanted to do was have a drink or two and get lost in the music. She needed to let the stress of the day shake off her with every beat of the music.

The
place was full as always, and the music was loud. She smiled to herself as she made her way to the bar. The bartender smiled at her and came straight over.

“
Well, well, well. Haven’t seen you here in a whole week! What have you been up to my lovely, Aubrey?”

“
Work. Life. You know, the bullshit that keeps us coming back here to get away from it all. Mind holding my purse behind the bar? I’m solo tonight and don’t want to have to hold it while I dance.”

“
You got it.” The bartender took her purse and put it behind the bar then poured her a drink. She downed it in a single shot, tapped the bar top, then went straight to the dance floor, shimmying and shaking to the beat the whole way.

The liquor warmed her from the inside
, and the massive amount of bodies on the dance floor warmed her from the outside. After a handful of songs, Aubrey was dying of thirst. Her sweat-slicked skin glistened under the colorful strobe lights illuminating the dance floor. She wiped a few strands of hair that were sticking to her neck and face away as she left the crowd behind to get a bottle of water.

A prickling sensation crawled up her neck, forcing her to look behind her. She knew someone was watching her, and while it wasn
’t unusual, she also had a feeling she knew exactly who it was.

Henry leaned up against the wall near the dance floor in what Aubrey came to call his Geek Chic look, superhero (she wasn
’t sure which it was; she was just pretty sure the white circle with a green symbol was some kind of comic book reference) t-shirt and jeans. She gave him the bitch glare and continued on her way to the bar.

She wasn
’t about to let him ruin her night of stress relief by causing more. Instead of the water she intended to buy, she ordered a double. The bartender smiled as he poured and let her know that the drink was covered.

“
Not by that asshole, right?” She asked in a growl, nodding her head in Henry’s direction.

“
No. That one,” he said pointing off to the other end of the bar. The guy that stood there was okay to look at, but even if he had been to die for, she wasn’t in the mood. She wasn’t rude either, so she raised the glass to him in thanks, and drank her drink.

When she started to feel the buzz come on, she realized that not eating all day,
and then drinking and dancing all night wasn’t her best choice. She seemed to be making a lot of bad decisions as of late.

“
Hey, let me get some water and a burger,” she said to the bartender. He nodded his head and punched some numbers into the computer before letting her know her food would be ready in about ten minutes. Aubrey took several small sips of her water, trying to fight back the drunken state she knew was coming, when the man from the end of the bar approached.

“
So you like to drink, do you? Bartender said you ordered a double.”

“
Yeah, sometimes. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“
No problem. Pretty girl like you shouldn’t have to buy her own drinks. Where’s the boyfriend?” The man kept moving closer. It wasn’t unusual to get advances from men in clubs and bars. Good thing Aubrey knew how to let men down gently.

“
Not here tonight, but thanks again.” Aubrey stood and went back to the dance floor. Typically, letting a man know she had a ‘boyfriend’ and walking away did the trick without embarrassing anyone. Not this guy.

“
Mind if I dance here?” he asked with a smile, standing next to her.

“
Go for it.” Aubrey made sure to slowly move away, trying not to be obvious. Apparently, this guy needed obvious. She found him right next to her again, reaching for her waist. “Listen, thanks for the drink and all, but I’m not interested.”

“
Whatever.” Then he left. Sighing in relief, Aubrey returned to the bar where her burger was waiting next to her water bottle.

“
Thanks,” she said, plopping into the chair and digging in. She picked up the bottle and downed it. Once she was full, she went back to the floor for one last song. Her head was feeling very fuzzy and the room began to spin. She had thought she stopped drinking in time, but apparently not.

Slowly, she lost herself, feeling especially dizzy and the lights
were just flashing too bright and too fast. Before she had a chance to fall, two hands wrapped around her waist and held her up. But she didn’t want hands on her waist.
Did she?

Suddenly
, she heard loud voices and angry yelling, and she was scooped up into someone’s arms. The whole room spun, and she closed her eyes to keep what was in her stomach down, but when the darkness stopped the spinning lights, her body succumbed to the sleep it needed.

Chapter Nine

Aubrey
’s head pounded and her throat was sore. A repetitive
beep beep beep
echoed into her head. Opening one eye slowly, the light crept in, blinding her. She closed her eye quickly before blinking rapidly, letting her eyes adjust to the bright light infiltrating her room.

Only, it wasn
’t her room. The walls were white and the bed she laid in was most definitely not hers. Turning from her side, she looked around and realized she was in a hospital room. And Henry sat in a chair beside her bed, snoring softly.

“
Hey! Wake up!” she whisper-yelled at him. When he didn’t respond, she grabbed the soft paper cup from the bedside table, wadded it into a ball, and threw it at his head. “Wake up!”

He jumped, startled
, and then his eyes landed on her. A sense of relief passed over him, his whole body visibly relaxed and a soft smile appeared on his lips. “Oh, thank god you’re okay. When the doctors said they had to pump your stomach and you still didn’t wake up, I was worried sick.”

“
What the hell is going on? Why am I in a hospital? What happened?” Aubrey was beginning to freak out. You don’t go to the hospital for being drunk. You go home and sleep it off. Unless she drank so much she blacked out. But she didn’t remember having more than two drinks.

“
You were acting strange all of a sudden on the dance floor. When that guy that had been bugging you all night showed up again, with his arms around you, I knew something wasn’t right. I remembered after you sent him packing on the dance floor the first time that he went back to the bar and sat down in your seat until the bartender brought out your food and shooed him away. He had to have put something in your drink. What the hell were you thinking leaving a drink alone in a bar?” His tone had gone from soft to accusatory. She didn’t care if he were right. He had no business being angry with her. She wasn’t his girlfriend. He wasn’t even her friend!

“
And how is it any of your business? What I do is none of your concern! Unless it’s for my job, you know the one that your company has been stealing clients from left and right that you forgot to tell me you owned!”

“
I care about you, Aubrey. And when you act stupid and reckless, I care. Maybe it isn’t my business, but oh well. And I am not even getting into business with you right now. You’re in a fucking hospital bed because some guy drugged you and tried to take you out of the damn bar. Who do you think stopped him? You know what? Forget it. I thought you had changed since high school, but you are still so self-involved that you can’t see beyond what you want and what you think is right, even if it’s dangerous.”

Henry stood and began pacing the room, his fists balling and releasing, as if he held a stress ball in his hands. Stupid? He thought she was stupid. And she
had
changed. Hadn’t she? Her brother was the stupid one. Her eyes widened remembering she needed to get home. She had to be there for Ben when he told their parents about the baby. See, she did think of others.

“
Shit, I have to go home. I need to go, now.”

“
Aubrey, it’s four in the morning. Just stay here until a normal hour.”

“
No. I have to go home. Now.” Henry looked at her with irritation but defeat. He knew he wasn’t going to win the argument. Even if he kept trying, he couldn’t actually stop her from leaving.

“
Okay, let me get the nurse.” Henry left the room, muttering under his breath. She couldn’t hear him, and that was probably a good thing. He saved her from something so horrible that no one should ever have to deal with. She should be grateful. She should have thanked him. But instead she yelled at him. Fuck. She was still a bitch.

When the nurse came in
, she had a list of papers about safety and drugs and drinking. She also had the release form which Aubrey signed so quickly that she almost missed the fact that the ginormous bill was paid.

“
You paid the bill?” she asked, almost accusatorily. She didn’t really have the funds to pay it herself, but she would be damned if she owed him anything.

“
Yes, don’t argue now. You can yell at me later for helping you out a second time in one night. Whatever you need to get home to is still waiting.”

H
e was right. It wasn’t the time, and honestly, she just wanted the whole damn thing to be over. She didn’t want to think about what could have happened, and she didn’t want to think about owing Henry a ton of money. She just wanted to get to her brother and hoped he didn’t think she was bailing on him.

She grabbed her things
, and she practically ran through the halls. When she stood before the door to the parking lot, she realized she had no car there. She looked back over her shoulder and saw Henry standing there with a little smile on his face. Bastard knew she couldn’t get away from him yet.

“
Where’s the car?” she asked, giving in to the inevitable.

“
Follow me.” Henry led the way through the lot to an old beat up black Mustang. She had expected to see the town car, but when he unlocked the door, she knew he wasn’t kidding.

“
This is yours?” Aubrey took in the dents and scratches in the frame and the patches in the paint. It was not what she expected a billionaire to drive.

“
Yup. The first car I ever bought. I love this thing. No amount of money in the world will ever make me get rid of it.”

She laughed but climbed in. Henry was full of surprises.

He got behind the wheel and tried to start it up. It took three solid turns of the key before it roared to life.

“
She may be old, but she is good to me. Don’t make fun,” he said with a grin and pulled onto the highway leading out of the city.

“
Then you may want to get a tune-up. I don’t think it’s supposed to be that hard to start a car.”

“
What do you know about cars?”

“
Not much, but I know they should start the first time. I guess I don’t need to tell you where to go, do I?”

“
I don’t know where you live.”

“
I live at my parent’s house.”

“
Oh, then I do know where to go.”

“
Go ahead and say it. Say what everyone is thinking. I’m such a child, still living at home.”

“
Nope, wasn’t thinking that.”

“
Uh, huh. Sure.” Aubrey stared out the window and didn’t say anything for the rest of the drive. He may not say it, but everyone thinks it. Just another thing he lied to her about. Liars are the reason she won’t get involved. She wondered how much of what he had told her was a lie.

Her parent
’s house came into view just as the sky began turning pink from the rising sun. She opened the door and with a quick, thank you, she climbed out and shut it behind her, ending the conversation. She said thank you. He could take it however he wanted, but it was a giant thank you in her mind. Thank you for the ride, thank you for helping at the bar, thank you for proving that her philosophy of not dating men was the best bet for her to keep her heart intact.