Page 1 of A Billion Dollar Romance
CHAPTER1
Edie
It wasunlike me to approach a stranger at a bar, and evenmoreunlike me to give a fake name.
“I’m Penelope,” I said, cursing myself as soon as the name escaped my lips.Penelope. Very sexy.“And you are…?”
Then again, this man wasn’t a stranger.
I knew exactly who he was.
I’d recognized him as soon as he walked into the bar, scanning the room like he found it vaguely amusing. I’d spent a semester of my senior year of college staring at him from my seat in his creative writing seminar, memorizing his tousled brown hair, strong jaw with just enough scruff, devastating green eyes…
“James Martin,” he said, and his voice sounded the same as it ever had, low and rich. The same glitter in his eye that he had sometimes when he was talking about writing, the same wry smirk that I’d craved, staying up late to think of insightful questions to ask in class.
“Can I buy you a drink… Penelope?” he asked. He tripped over the name.I should have picked something simple. Emma. Emily.I schooled my face into the approximation of a cool, sexy, woman at a bar and nodded.
Flora caught my eye over his shoulder as he ordered and winked, lifting her flute of champagne subtly in a toast.
Your fault,I mouthed, scrunching up my nose.
“You know, you aren’t his student anymore,” she’d said, before shooing me off to the bar.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I had scoffed, wobbling slightly in my highest heels, worried that I knew exactly what she meant.
“Buy him a drink, tell him how much you admire hislong,thick…”she’d leaned over intimately, and I’d rolled my eyes, “novels. You’re an adult now, a woman with a brand-new career in publishing,” she’d concluded, holding up her glass to toast. “So?”
“So,” he said, passing over a new glass of champagne. My first flute sat, still full, beside Flora’s on the table I’d abandoned: a celebratory drink in honor of my new job. “What brings you here tonight?”
“Well, James,” I said. “I would have answered differently a few minutes ago, but now?” I smiled, flirtatiously, I hoped. “Now, I’d say it was good luck.”
He smiled back, a familiar twist at the corner of his mouth that made tingles pour down my spine and brought heat to my cheeks.
There was a reason I’d had a crush on him all throughout the senior seminar he’d taught. It had been a big deal to have him take time out of his writing career to be a guest lecturer: he’d just sold his second novel for seven figures. His first had landed him at the top of the bestseller listsandthe short lists for several literary awards.
But it was thatsmilethat had landed him in most of my senior-year fantasies.
It felt, I thought as we made the pretense of small talk, like more thangood luckthat had us meeting tonight.
I was going to be a Junior Editor at Verity Publishing, starting tomorrow, and even if that mostly meant I was going to be getting coffee for more senior staff and proofreading celebrity memoirs, it was my first real job in the industry I’d longed to be a part of since I was a kid stapling construction paper into little booklets, filling them in with stories and pictures.
To meet Professor Martin–the man who’d made me take my writingseriously,who’d made me want to be a realwriter–at a bar the night before?
It felt likefate.
“I’d love to hear more about your work,” I said, looking from my drink to his eyes, wrinkled at the corners from his smirk. He knew exactly what I was asking, and somehow, that made the next words easier to get out. “Maybe somewhere a bit quieter?”
“I’d love that,” he said, stepping closer to me. He trailed the back of one finger down my arm, leaving a bloom of goosebumps in his wake. “My place?”
I nodded.
I studiously ignored Flora as we passed her, pretending not to hear her sing-song “use protection, Edie,” pretending not to see her smile and wink. She was right. I wasn’t a student anymore, his or anyone else’s.
I was an adult, a woman who could make her own choices, who could see something that she wanted and go after it. I’d applied for a publishing job and I’d gotten it, I reminded myself. I’d seen Professor Martin–James–in a bar, and I could have him too.
Only for one night.
I’d have to make it worth it.
