Page 18 of The Billionaire's Cinderella

5

Ryker

Here’severything you need to know about me: I’m not a hard-driving and relentlessly ambitious person like my brother Damon. I’m not a gruff guy who tiptoes along the edge of assholery like my brother Griffin. I’m a mellow guy who drinks bourbon and watches sports in his downtime and doesn’t get too bent out of shape about anything. A woman I dated years ago once called me a textbook Taurus, by which she meant that it takes a seismic event to get me out of whack. I think she meant it is an insult, because I didn’t care too much when she gave me an ultimatum about moving in with her. But I took it as a compliment. Life is short. Why let day-to-day nonsense—and most of day-to-day life is nonsense that won’t matter two weeks from now—disturb your peace?

All that said, I think you’ll agree that the fact that I’ve spent every waking and sleeping second since Friday night thinking about Ella Richardson is fucking significant.

Where did she go? Why did she go? Why didn’t she wake me up to say goodbye and thereby give me the chance to talk her out of leaving? Sure, she left me a little note on the coffee table, but a standard XOXO, Ella is meaningless, isn’t it? Am I a loser for keeping it tucked away in my wallet? More importantly, when will I see her again? Why do I care if I ever see her again when she walked out on me? Is she smiling at some other guy right now? Did I imagine how fantastic she was? How funny? How smart? How sweet? Has she given me a second thought? Should I track her down? If yes, should I wait another couple of days before tracking her down? Will tracking her down make me a stalker? Do I care if I’m a stalker? Aren’t some stalkers good people deep down inside where it counts? What if I track her down and she cold-shoulders me again? Will I survive?

All compelling questions. Too bad I have no answers.

Except one. I won’t wait another couple of days before tracking her down. I can’t. I’ve used up my lifetime supply of patience and good manners by waiting this long. I’m barely surviving in this miserable purgatory of my own seething thoughts. I’m like some pathetic high school geek who thinks the head cheerleader smiled at him in the hallway during the bell change and can’t wait until English class after lunch to find out for sure.

I have to see her again. Have to.

And it’s not even that I’m desperate to fuck her again, although that’s certainly a factor.

It’s that I want to be where she is again. Absorb more of her sunshine.

I wait until she emerges through that swinging door, my breath trapped in my throat, and suddenly all is right with my world again.

It’s that sappy. Exactly that simple.

“Hey,” I say, my smile of gratitude and relief threatening to take over the entire bottom half of my head. I don’t mean to behave like a kid who’s caught a glimpse of Santa Claus sprinkling high-end toys under the tree on Christmas Eve, but that’s how I feel. Especially when a pretty surge of pink floods her cheeks and her eyes begin to sparkle at me exactly the way I remembered.

Does she smile back at me? Not exactly. But that doesn’t matter. Her expression just sang like a canary, telling me everything I need to know. Namely that she’s glad to see me again. That knowledge will power me through whatever invisible barriers I need to break down to convince her to spend time with me again.

“Hey,” she says.

In some feat of dark magic, she’s managed to make herself even more beautiful than I remembered. No makeup. Perfectly smooth and rosy skin. Dark lashes and brows. That plump berry of a mouth. Wisps of hair framing her face on either side for that angelic vibe she does so well. Even her pastry chef uniform and the brown dust on her chin and forearm—what is that? Cocoa?—only serve to make her more approachable and less like a sex goddess.

Although she is that.

When the staring threatens to continue forever, at least on my end, the older woman makes a discreet coughing sound that jars me back to my senses.

I hastily clear my throat and try to string two words together.

“I, ah, hope I’m not catching you at a bad time. I was, ah, in the neighborhood and thought I’d check out the bakery and say hi.”

“In the neighborhood? You work in the Village?” the older lady asks with unabashed nosiness.

Shit. I feel my ears burn red hot.

“Yep,” I say, feeling sheepish as I tug on my earlobe. “I stepped out of my office building in Midtown, hailed a cab, came straight south for fifty blocks or so and suddenly I was right here. In the neighborhood.”

Ella slips up and smiles at me before yanking it back, but that’s more than enough to make the fifty blocks worthwhile.

The older woman, meanwhile, regards me with a distinct twinkle in her eye. I’m starting to think that maybe she likes me, which is great. I’ll take any allies I can get.

“Funny,” she says. “I could’ve sworn they had a bakery or two up there. So what do you do for a living, Mr. Flan with a Palmier?”

“I’m in real estate—” I begin, my standard speech, but Ella interrupts.

“Can the man get his pastries without you going straight for the third degree?” she asks the older woman. “You’re not in training to become an interrogator for the CIA.”

“No, he cannot,” the older woman says, nose in the air. “Not when he shows up on my doorstep asking about my niece.”

“Niece?” I say, detecting a resemblance for the first time. They both have the same eyebrows and noses. The same delicate face structure.

---