Page 16 of Daddy Billionaire Dragon

“Well, then let’s not call it a date. How about I just show you around New York? You said you haven’t seen much of the city yet.”

“I don’t know, Lex,” I say, chewing on my lower lip.

Before he can say anything, Chuck pulls up in front of my apartment building. I am relieved and hastily step out of the car before either Lex or Chuck can come around to open the door for me. My defenses had almost crumbled. A few more minutes and I would have agreed to the it’s-not-a-date date. It feels like I narrowly dodged a bullet.

“Thanks for the lift,” I say, leaning in through the window.

He nods and smiles. Just as I am about to turn away, he places a hand on my wrist that is resting on the window. Then he moves closer and closer to my face till his lips almost touch my ear.

“I am not easily deterred,” he whispers. I take a step back and stand up straight, staring at him open-mouthed. His whispered words sound like a promise and a warning all rolled into one. He winks as Chuck drives away.

Uh oh. I am in trouble, huge trouble.

Once I step into the foyer of my walk-up apartment building, I take off my heels off, hook them on my fingers, and walk up the four floors to the rent-stabilized apartment I share with Penny. The problem is, I want him to change my mind, even when I know it’s wrong. I need to talk to Penny and make her make me see sense, because I don’t think I will win the argument with myself for very long.

“Penny?” I call out as soon as I open the door of our apartment.

“In here,” she yells from her room.

I drop the key into a hand-painted ceramic bowl on the table next to the door, throw my suit jacket on the couch, and go to Penny’s room.

“Lex asked me out on a date,” I say, falling face down on her bed, burying my head in her pillows.

Penny is trying out earrings in front of her mirror. She’s already dressed to go out. There’s almost never a weekend when she doesn’t have plans. Ever since I moved here, she’s been pestering me to follow in her footsteps, to meet new guys so I can forget what Manuel did. But I’m already so over Manuel. The only regret I have is that I didn’t stand up for myself when things ended. There was no showdown where I told him exactly what I thought of him. Instead, I packed up all my things when he was at work and simply left him a note saying that I was leaving.

“Lex as in your hot boss? The Sitting Duck guy Lex with whom you almost slept?”

“No, Lex the archnemesis of Superman,” I roll my eyes and sit up in her bed, hugging a pillow. My sarcasm has no effect on her whatsoever as she meets my gaze in the mirror.

“Wow, you lead such an interesting life,” she says with an unrepentant grin.

Whenever I mention Lex’s name around Penny, she makes it a point to allude to the fact that the guy I almost had sex with is now my boss. After I told Penny that the guy from the bar was my boss, she was shocked at first. But then she said something along the lines of you can’t run away from your destiny. Am I really destined to have Lex in my life? I think not. He wants a casual fling, I want a relationship.

I told her that perhaps it wasn’t my destiny taking shape here, but hers, since she had hit it off so well with TJ. There’s nothing stopping her from contacting him. When TJ found out that Penny is my roommate, he requested that I pass on his number to her. What’s strange is she tried to appear totally disinterested when I told her that he is one of the partners at Druk. But I saw through her charade. There was some anger and some embarrassment in her eyes when I gave her TJ’s number. Did something happen between them? I tried to ask her, but she brushed it off.

She’ll tell me when she’s ready to talk. Meanwhile, I need her to stop me from doing something that’ll leave me with my heart broken.

“Penn, what am I going to do?” I tap my head rhythmically against the pillow I’m hugging.

“Do you have a non-fraternization clause in your contract?”

“No,” I reply cautiously.

“Are you so attracted to him that you have been obsessing over him secretly while pretending that you don’t care in the least?” she asks wagging her eyebrows.

“Maybe,” I say with a sigh.

“Is he insanely hot?”

“Yes! You saw him!”

“Do you want to jump him?”

“Yes!”

“There! You have your answer,” she says, applying mascara to her naturally super long and thick lashes. Her blue eyes are sparkling mischievously.

“But Penny, dating my boss is a bad idea,” I say as my brows knit into a frown.

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