Page 294 of Tormented Billionaire Romance Series

It seems along with a change of clothes Grace brought a thin, black, silken robe. She’s sitting with her legs draped over the arm of her chair. Dangling lazily from one hand is what looks like an unlit cigarette until she puts it to her lips and blows out smoke. It’s one of those e-cigarettes that only glows when you’re taking a drag.

She looks over at me, and with a faint smile, she says, “Back from the office? The chef came by, told me you'd ordered something.”

“Yeah,” I answer, loosening my tie as I walk further into the room, the door closing behind me. “I thought it’d be fun to get something not on the room service menu for once.”

“There was something I wanted to ask you,” she says, really committing to the role.

“What’s that?” I return.

“The chef,” she says. “Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he looked rather familiar. Have I seen his many recipe books at the local shop, perhaps?”

Without a clue where she’s going with the roleplay, I decide to join in. “Why yes, darling,” I say, affecting just a hint of a British accent. “He’s the young man from the Food Network, I believe.”

“How terribly bourgeois,” Grace says, then tosses her head back, cackling.

I shake my head and chuckle. “You know,” I inform her, “in this scenario, we would be the bourgeois.”

“I was going for the trophy girlfriend,” she says. “Given what I understand from Naomi’s hours watching celebrity television, I came to the conclusion they’re not particularly sharp as a breed. How’d I do?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “I’m usually so busy with my yacht that I don’t have time for such endeavors.”

“Yeah, we’re done with the accents,” she says. “You think you could give a woman some warning before doing something like that?”

“What, the accent?” I ask.

She throws the unlit cigarette at me, but it misses its mark. “You’re throwing stuff at me,” I say. “What about the mystery of the unlit cigarette which magically produces smoke, but only in the lungs?”

“It’s called an e-cigarette, Zachy boy,” she says. “You’d think someone as well informed as you would be up on that sort of thing.”

“So, you’re a smoker,” I say.

“No, Naomi is, and I like to steal her e-cigs every once in a while. At first, it had something to do with trying to get her to quit, but it’s devolved a bit,” Grace explains. “Now, what do you say we dig into this dinner before it gets cold?”

“You could have started without me,” I tell her. “Also, the whole ‘Zachy boy’ thing?”

“Not a fan?” she asks.

“Not especially,” I answer.

“You’re a bit high-maintenance, aren’t you?” she asks, smirking. “ As far as starting dinner without you, I planned to,” she says. “Luckily for you, though, your timing was perfect. I got your message just after he left, which gave me enough time to get into my lovely robe. Everything should still be warm.”

“I was hoping Girard would keep you company for a few minutes while I was finishing with work,” I tell her while pulling the dinner trolley toward the foot of the bed.

Grace laughs. “Yeah, that wasn’t happening. He came in here and started telling me about the dinner and about how you’d called him yesterday while I was in the shower or something and I think I might have started hyperventilating.”

“Yeah, that’s not very bourgeois,” I tell her.

“He wasn’t very impressed,” she says. “I mean, he was nice about it and everything, but I could just tell he wanted to get out of here.”

I’m a little disappointed I’m not the only one that can elicit that response out of her. To my credit, Ididget her to pass out. Girard only managed some light hyperventilation.

We sit down to dinner, but that tension’s starting to rise in my chest again.

“Grace, I’ve been getting a lot of calls from corporate,” I tell her.

She covers her full mouth, nodding. Once she swallows, she’s saying, “Yeah, I think I’ve overheard more than one of them over the past few days.”

“Well, it looks like we have some jittery investors and I’m going to have to make a trip back to New York for a little while,” I say.

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