Top Love: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (Young Adult Stepbrother and Billionaire Romance Stories) (10 page)

“Can I help you?” the hostess asked.

“I’m meeting someone here, but I don’t know if they’re here yet.”

“What’s the name?”

She’s not going to believe me, Lauren thought. “Riley Thomson,” she said, embarrassed and waiting for the hostess to start laughing.

But nothing of the sort happened. The hostess nodded and asked, “Are you Lauren?”

“I am.”

“Okay. Mr. Thomson called and said he’s running late. He should be here in the next ten minutes or so. But he asked me to invite you to the bar and have a drink that we’ll put on his tab.”

“Oh,” Lauren said, a little disappointed that her plan to arrive late had backfired. Still, the idea of a drink soothed her. A nice strong drink would maybe help get her nerves in order.

“Right this way,” the hostess said.

Lauren led her around the side of the dining room and to the bar area. The bar was nearly empty, occupied only by two businessmen sitting in a booth and going over spreadsheets while sipping on a dark beer.  Lauren stuck to old fashioned means and took a seat at the bar.

A portly bar tender came over and sat a napkin down in front of her. “What’ll you have?” he asked.

“A cherry martini,” she said.

“And,” the hostess said from behind her, “this goes on Mr. Thomson’s tab.”

“Got it,” the bartender said, getting to work on her drink.

“Enjoy,” the hostess said and then gave her a smile. It was a knowing smile, but not one of disdain. It was more like the sort of smile women share when they know something monumental has happened. It was a you go girl smile if Lauren had ever seen one.

The bartender served the martini and then set to changing out one of the kegs. Lauren sipped from the martini, unable to believe how unbearable the waiting was. She wondered if he was doing this on  purpose, letting her stew over the fact that she was going to be having lunch with a man that made more money last year than she would probably make in her lifetime.

She was nearly done with her martini when a hand fell on her shoulder from behind. She nearly yelped out in surprise, the martini glass tilting in her hand. She turned to see Riley standing there, his face no more than a foot away from her own. She wanted to lean away, feeling that she was being imposed upon somehow. But she held her ground and focused on the feel of his hand on her shoulder.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “My morning meeting ran ridiculously late.”

“It’s okay,” she said, nodding towards the drink. “This was worth the wait.”

“Good,” he said. “Go ahead and order another. We’ve got some talking to do, I think.”

She pondered this for a moment and before she could decide, Riley raised his hand to signal the bartender over. “Another drink for my friend, please.  And a vodka tonic for me.”

“Yes sir,” the bartender said, his tone indicating that he was well aware of who he was serving.

“Shall we?” Riley asked, gesturing towards one of the booths along the side of the bar area.

“Sure,” Lauren said, the nerves once again creeping up.

Still, as nervous as she was, she noticed that he never took his hand away from her shoulder when they moved from the bar to the booth. Then suddenly, they were sitting down, facing one another. He was smiling at her, her heart was hammering in her chest, and she realized a very sickening thing.

Oh my God, she thought. I’ve gotten myself into some major trouble here.

***********************************************************

Once, when she had been fourteen, Lauren had thought she’d have an easy path ahead of her. It would be a path that led her towards finding love easily, towards success in her career, and just about anything else life had waiting for her. At fourteen, she’d been slightly less than average when it came to weight and she had a good three inches on just about every other girl in her class. More than that, her boobs had started to develop almost an entire year before any of her friends and the attention she’d gotten from the boys in their grade had helped her coast through her freshman year of college.

When her senior year had come, she’d out on a little bit of weight, but it hadn’t been enough to get alarmed about. She’d spent a lot of time dating, which meant she ate out a lot. She’d also stopped playing any kind of sport, deciding to instead focus on her grades. It wasn’t so much the little bit of extra weight that had caused her love life to suffer, but because she wasn’t as easy or as desperate for attention as her friends were.

While the majority of her friends had spent their junior and senior years of high school getting laid (two had even gone the scandalous route and had gotten pregnant), Lauren had kept her head in books. She’d dated two guys during that time, eventually surrendering her virginity to a boy named Luke Bornson while his parents were out of town.

For reasons she could not understand, it was Luke Bornson she thought of while she sat down at a table with Riley Thomson. She wondered what Luke was up to these days. The last time she’d checked (well, let’s be honest…the last time she had spied) on him on Facebook, he was the assistant manager at a graphic design start-up. She’d felt ashamed because here she was, not even quite the assistant manager at a mom and pop shoe store that had declined in annual income brought in over the last ten years.

However…she wondered how Luke might react if he knew that she was having lunch with Riley Thomson. Hell, she wondered what all of her friends from high school would have to say about that.  It was easier to wonder these things rather than actually commit herself to the moment—to actually look across the table to see the gorgeous and beyond-wealthy man that had invited her to lunch.

I don’t even care if this is some sort of sick joke, she thought. I’m going to enjoy this now, right down to the stares of the bartender and the wait staff. I’ll endure the embarrassment later like I always have. But for right now, I’m going to enjoy it.

“Okay,” Riley said, his voice like wrinkled silk. “You have to tell me what you’re thinking right now. You look…well, intense.”

She sighed, doing her best to bring the strong-willed woman that usually ran the show to the forefront of her mind. But she came kicking and screaming and when Lauren opened her mouth to speak, it was not the strong-willed woman at the wheel.

“This makes no sense,” she said.

“What doesn’t?”

“You asking me to lunch. If I had more influence with Mr. Farr, it might make sense. But me being here with you doesn’t add up.”

He was about to say something when the waitress came by to take their orders. Riley ordered the house burger and, at his suggestion, Lauren did the same. The also both ordered another drink.

When the waitress was gone, Riley continued on, not missing a beat. “What, exactly, doesn’t add up?”

She frowned at him. “You’re really going to make me say it?”

“No, no, I’ll say it. May I?”

“Go ahead,” she said, not trusting the smile on his face.

“Tell me if I’m wrong,” he said. “But you’re probably thinking that a man as rich as I am—and who is known for being involved with a certain type of woman—doesn’t usually go out with women that work at failing shoe stores. That about right?”

“Partly,” she said. “You’re far too kind to leave out the part about my weight.”

He rolled his eyes at her in a way that was almost demeaning. “You’re overweight,” he said simply. He shrugged and then laid that same smile on her again. “Why would that keep me from wanting to have lunch with you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve seen pictures of the women you date and I’m nothing like them.”

He nodded, giving a guilty-as-charged look.  “That’s sort of the point,” he said. “Look, if you want honestly, I’ll give it to you. Honesty is so much easier…a lot more direct. So yes…I am well aware that you are overweight. Truth be told, I’d guess you’re about seventy pounds heavier than the last few women I’ve dated. But I don’t really care. That type of woman is…I don’t know…they care too much about dumb stuff. I get so tired of women that order a salad or stay up late doing Yoga poses or on the treadmill because they have to burn off those last two hundred calories of the day.”

“But they’re so pretty,” Lauren said helplessly.

“So are you.”

The comment was so unexpected that it came like a slap across her face. She felt warmth swell up in her cheeks and her heart skipped a beat. This was unreal. This wasn’t real. Was it?

“What are you doing?” she asked, the question barbed with an accusatory tone.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re fucking with me,” she said. “This doesn’t happen. You want something…maybe to get closer to Mr. Farr so you can get his business and knock it to the ground.”

He rubbed at his forehead, aggravated. “Lauren…if that’s what you think, then I invite you to get up and leave right now. But I assure you…when I saw you in the shoe store, something about you struck me as peculiar. In a good way, I mean. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it excited me. And it was even stronger when you laid into me…calling me a bully and all that. That takes courage. And if we’re still sticking with honesty, it caught me. It was sexy.”

She didn’t know what to say. She was grateful when the waitress brought their drinks by, buying her another ten seconds to think of what to say.

“I don’t get it,” she said simply. “No one has said anything like that about me since high school.”

“It’s a damn shame,” he said, his eyes locking on hers. And the hell of it was that she did see something in his eyes that she used to see in the boys in high school and her longtime cheating boyfriend from college.

She had to take her eyes away. His stare alone was doing weird things to her. She was starting to sweat a bit and her heart was hammering away in her chest. She thought again of Luke Bornson and how he had been tender but also sort of urgent and rough during their first time in his bedroom. His hands had seemed to know where to go as if every boy knew by instinct (something she later discovered on several occasions was most definitely not the case).

She wondered what Riley’s hands felt like…and if they would be gentle or rough.

She partially hid her eyes behind her drink as she took a long sip. What the hell is going on?

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Am I being too forward?”

Forward, she thought lightly. This is a man used to getting what he wants. If he really does feel this way about me, he knew that there was no way I’d say no when he asked me to lunch. And even if I have had turned him down, he would have jumped right over the rejection by buying something expensive or hooking up with a model or actress.

“No,” she said. “Not at all. It’s nice.”

“Good,” he said.

And with that, he reached out and stroked her hand. And God help her, she let him interlace his fingers through hers and give a squeeze that sent electricity surging through areas that hadn’t felt such a stirring in a very long time.

***

Lunch was pleasant enough. The burger was delicious and the five drinks she’d taken on had given her a pleasant buzz. As she had worked her way towards her buzz, Riley had managed to keep most of the conversation on her. He had asked about her family, her education, her interests, and so on. She noticed that he had not mentioned the shoe store or Mr. Farr a single time.

She’d told him the basics. She’s told him that she’d been raised by a single mother since the age of nine when her dad had walked out for a younger woman. She’d told him about her brief obsession with softball—something she’d been very good at in middle school but has been replaced by boys and then grades in high school. She even told him about the devastating break up with her boyfriend in college and how it had affected her grade so badly that she’d had to go back for an extra semester just to bring them back up.

“Can I ask you something?” Riley asked.

“Sure,” she said.

“So, you went to college and you majored in what?”

“Economics.”

He laughed a bit and then shook his head in a comical way. “Economics? Forgive me for asking this, but…well, why are you wasting your time in that shoe store?”

“Because a degree in economics isn’t enough to land a job. I don’t have experience and when you look at my college transcripts, there’s that one year that went to hell.”

Riley seemed to think about something for a moment. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Every nerve in her body seemed to catch fire when he said this. She couldn’t even start to imagine what his house must be like. And what in God’s name would he do with her when they got there? Despite his kind words, she still found it next to impossible to imagine his flawless body next to hers.

He apparently saw the shock on her face because he held up a hand in a hold on sort of gesture. “No. Oh God…no, I didn’t mean it like that.” He checked his watch and added, “It’s nearly two o’ clock. Would you like to come down to my offices to check it out? I won’t lie to you…I don’t really need anyone with your skills right now, but I know a few people that we can check with.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Really. Come on.”

And with that, he didn’t even wait for her to answer. He simply raised his hand to request the check, paid it, and, with his hand ever-so-gently touching her back, led her out of the restaurant. It happened in a whirlwind, so fast and unexpected that she didn’t even realize that she was sitting in the passenger seat of his Ferrari until they were in motion.

***

His offices were located on the cusp of downtown, where the quaint part of town merged with the money-poisoned part. He pulled his ridiculously expensive car into a parking garage that looked more like a bunker than a garage, pulling into a spot that looked out over most of the western edge of the city. An elevator sat directly in front of them, layered in steel and glass panels.

When they got out of his car, a valet or doorman or something (what they hell did they do all day, Lauren wondered), pressed a button on the elevator and gestured them politely inside.

“So is it this entire building?” Lauren asked.

“My offices, you mean?”

“Yes. This building and the one next door.”

“What do you use them for?”

“Well, this one is all for my business. There’s two mortgage companies, three lenders, the finance department, an architecture department that takes up two whole floors, and then the executive suite with a bunch of offices. Next door, we only occupy three floors…all construction related things…and rent out the other eight to some pretty high bidders.”

“It must be nice,” she said.

“It can get dizzying sometimes.”

“Just out of curiosity,” she said, the buzz from lunch loosening her tongue and moral compass. “How much do one of your office spaces rent for next door?”

“Five grand a month.”

She laughed out loud. “I don’t make that much in three months.”

He smiled at her and they locked eyes. “That can be different, you know,” he said. She again saw that glimmer of what she dared to think might be an actual desire in his eyes just before the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open.

She felt his hand at her lower back and even through her shirt, it was pure electricity. She felt a tingle in all the right places as he gently ushered her out of the elevator doors. It wasn’t just that she was with him that was making her feel this way…it was that he wasn’t rushing her through the place, as if he was ashamed of her. He didn’t care that people saw her with him, here in his place of business. Sure, most people that saw them together in this environment would likely assume that she was there on business, but that was okay, too. She’d never been seen as anything important.

On the heels of this odd feeling of pride, there was her awareness of how absolutely grand everything on this floor looked. The paintings on the wall were all beach and ocean-themed in nature. They were enormous paintings and some of the most beautiful that Lauren had ever seen. There was a small waiting area halfway down the hall, adorned with a couch that was roughly the size of her entire apartment, and a reception desk that looked like it belonged in some incredibly successful New York publishing house.

The entire place smelled freshly cleaned and there didn’t seem to be a speck of dust or grime anywhere. The few people they passed along the hallway gave Riley quick smiles and waves which he returned. The most that was spoken were two simple greetings of “hello” and nothing more. On one occasion, Lauren did notice a svelte redhead of about thirty or so give her a what the hell are you doing here sort of look that she enjoyed far too much.