Page 35 of The Billionaire's Heart

Me:Yeah. I guess I am.

Sawyer:So, are you two engaged?

He adds a bunch of winking emojis.

Me:I’ll know more in the morning. Either way, I’ll protect her from these vipers. Thanks for the warning. I’ll talk to her in the morning when she wakes up. See ya.

Sawyer:Bye, Mr. Whale.

He adds a bunch of whale emojis and I just sigh at his lack of humor. My little brother has always thought that he was funny, but he’s not.

Truly, he’s not.

I climb up the stairs and look at Mia’s bedroom door to see if there is a light on from the bottom of the door, but it’s dark. She’s probably exhausted, and I don’t blame her. It’s been quite a few days for me, too.

Turning towards the other end of the hall and to the master bedroom, I can’t help but smile to myself that Mia is sleeping under my roof. Maybe not in my bed, but at least for tonight, I know where she is, what she’s doing, and who she’s with.

Me.

I take a quick shower and am now lying in bed, just staring at the ceiling, thinking about Mia. My cock twitches as I remember how soft her skin feels, her kisses that taste like honey, and her beautiful eyes. She’s only down the hall, but it feels like she’s a million miles away from me and I just want to touch her.

Instead, I touch myself and stroke my cock as I replay every touch and kiss we’ve shared until I’m spurting all over my chest and abdomen. I get cleaned up and lie back down, chastising myself for being a perv for jerking off to images of Mia and me.

Chapter 17

Mia

What the hell is that buzzing sound? It won’t stop.

Shit! I’m late for work!

I sit up in bed and scramble for my phone to turn off my alarm. That’s when my surroundings remind me I don’t have a job to be late for anymore.

Plopping back down on the softest bed and pillow combination I’ve ever experienced, I let my heart slow down to a more normal rhythm.

Last night after I finished the dishes, I took a bath in that bathtub that is so deep, nothing but my head was above water. There were some citrus smelling salts I found that were sitting on the bathroom counter, so I threw them in for good measure. By the time I climbed out of the tub, my entire body was loose, relaxed, and pruned. I practically fell asleep in there.

Thinking I might need the sound of the television to help me sleep in a strange place, like I did in the hotel, I found a remote on the end table in the living room. The remote had so many buttons, I could probably control the space station from here. But I found a button that had a picture of a window, so I pushed it thinking it was a picture of a television.

I was wrong.

This button controls the curtains in the entire suite and when I pushed it, all of them closed automatically. What little light that was coming in from the moon was gone. The entire place was pitch black and, in my book, that is perfect for sleeping. I never did find the remote for the television.

The room remains very dark, so I grab the NASA remote from the nightstand and press the curtain button again, instantly bathing the room in bright sunlight. It’s almost blinding, going from pitch black to sunlight so quickly.

As I lay here enjoying this bed, my life and all its quandaries come flooding in and it feels so surreal. “Maybe it’s not real, Mia.” I say out loud to myself as I grab my phone and start surfing the net.

Oh, it’s real all right. Very real.

There are dozens of articles about how I’m a gold digger and only after Ian for his money. That I’m some kind of slut. Then there’s one where it says I’m trying to break up the happy couple of Mackenzie Laughlin and Ian Gallo and howtraumatizedshe is right now. If they were a happy couple, then why didn’t he take her to the gala? My favorite story so far is one that says I’m pregnant and that I’ve trapped him in this situation.

Then I see it. The article with James’ interview where he basically tears me apart. He tells the reporter he talked to that I broke up with him because he couldn’t make enough money to sustain the lifestyle I demanded and that I constantly berated him for not working hard enough even though he worked night and day for me, and that I kept sleeping around on him trying to find my ‘sugar daddy’ and that’s how I probably met Ian.

What a load of pure grade-A bullshit!

At no point in the entire article did James mention he was the one cheating on me or that I was the one working day and night. He barely got forty hours in delivering pizzas ‘full time’. Full-time, my ass.

But the kicker is when I see James has spilled my childhood issues for the entire world to read. His version, anyway. He talks about my many foster parents, the homes I ended up living in, and even hints that I was into drugs, which is an absolute lie.

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