Page 13 of The Billionaire's Beauty

5

Bellamy

Monday morning seemsto come earlier than usual, or maybe it’s just that I’m completely unprepared to see Griffin again. I hit the Midtown office at six forty-five, a time when only the first few bleary-eyed folks have begun to trickle in, determined to get settled with my game face firmly hitched over my ears before he arrives after his breakfast meeting. Hopefully around seven thirty rather than his usual seven.

As always, I’ve got a million things to do before he arrives and intend to start with the most crucial: by heading down to the kitchen so I can grab my first cup of coffee. So it’s with some annoyance that I feel my phone buzz in the blazer pocket of my sensible but still kinda sexy peach suit.

It’s Ella, which is good, because I’ve been trying to reach her since Saturday morning.

“Hey,” I say, balancing the phone on my shoulder while I pour. “Where the hell have you been? I thought for sure you’d be blowing up my phone and demanding to know what happened the other night.”

“I’ve got my own issues,” she says wryly. “I needed time to process.”

“Process what?” I demand, reaching for the sugar.

“I met someone at Bemelmans. Right after you and I spoke. We bonded over your birthday cake.”

“That was my cake,” I say, trying to tamp down most of my horrified delight. Ella is no more prone to wild and impromptu sexual adventures that I am. “So who was he? What’s he like?”

There’s a long and pregnant pause that really spikes my curiosity.

“You tell me,” she finally says. “It was Ryker Black. Your beloved’s brother.”

I blink, my brain blanking out for a second or two. Then it sinks in.

“What?” I cry in a scandalized whisper as I dart to the furthest corner of the kitchen and huddle there to make sure I’m not overheard. “Are you telling me you hooked up with Ryker Black?”

“Hooking up is such a tacky term.”

We burst out laughing.

“How was it?” I ask.

“About like your night was, I’m guessing.”

“Is that right?” I say, trying to keep the smirk out of my voice as I take a moment to enjoy the sweetly lingering ache between my thighs. If her night was anything like my night, the two of us need to spend about a thousand dollars on joint lotto tickets, because fortune is definitely smiling on us. “Are you seeing each other again?”

“Of course not.”

I frown. “Why do you say it like that? Did he escort you from the premises when it was over?”

“No. I left, actually. I stayed until, I don’t know, midnight or so. Then he fell asleep, I wrote him a little note and I left.”

“Yeah, but it went well, right? What if he wanted to see you again?”

“It doesn’t matter if he did,” she says. “You know my policy on dating right now. Especially dating wealthy men who are likely to look down their noses at me.”

Ella’s coming off a long-term relationship with a rich guy who wound up telling her that he didn’t know if he’d ever get married. Jackass. Plus, she’s got issues with her late father, who was also rich.

“What, you mean going out with some guy you met online twice a month or so? Your policy is stupid,” I say. “How about just making it a policy not to date jerks?”

“Since men rarely show up displaying scarlet Js on their foreheads, I choose to eliminate entire categories of high-risk individuals. That’s a nice, safe policy. And in keeping with that policy, I left in the middle of the night. Which served the double purpose of preventing any awkward scenes in the morning and stopping me from getting too attached to the wrong guy.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” I say in glum remembrance of waking up to a cold and lonely bed at dawn on Saturday morning. “Leaving in the middle of the night.”

“I mean, that’s what you do with one-night stands when you meet a guy at a bar, right?”

“You’re asking me?” I ask.

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