Page 18 of Dating the Billionaire
CHAPTER SIX
HERHEARTPOUNDINGlike she was on the run, Blair stuffed her crumpled dress into her overnight bag and, with shaking fingers, zipped it closed. She slid the strap over her shoulder and headed for the door. Just as she reached for the knob, the door shuddered as someone knocked—loudly—on it.
A curse slipped out of her lips. Had he found her? Had he followed her back to her hotel?
She’d been so certain that he was deeply sleeping when she’d disentangled their limbs and slipped out of the bed. But maybe he’d awakened when he heard her moving around.
She’d heard him murmur something in his sleep, something in Italian, which she usually understood, but the words probably would have been unintelligible in any language. He’d been so tired. So was she.
She hadn’t slept at all.
What the hell had she done?
All she wanted to do now was get the hell out of Milan and back to London, where the main office of Private Flights was located.
The door rattled again, and a voice called out, “Savannah, I know you’re in there.”
“Shit.” She knew this person too well to try to pretend she’d already gone. This person would convince a maid to open the door to check to see if she was alive if she didn’t open it herself. So, with a heavy sigh of exhaustion and resignation, she pulled it open.
Miranda pushed past her and slammed the door shut. “Savannah?” she repeated the name again, this time as a question, her voice high with disbelief. “You told him your name is Savannah?”
“It is,” she reminded her friend.
“Yeah, but you hate that name so much that you never use it,” Miranda said.
She had hated it—until Matteo Rinaldi said it like he had, in that melted-chocolate rich and warm voice of his. With such passion...
“Why didn’t you tell him your real name?”
“Why didn’t you tell him my name?” Blair asked. “You made me feel like a paid escort the way you sent me to his hotel room. I never should have agreed to join your damn service.”
“I didn’t think you were going to agree to it,” Miranda admitted. “That’s why I didn’t mention your name to him, but even when you had agreed to it, I couldn’t tell him anything unless you authorized me to release that information. As for having you meet him at his hotel, he didn’t have anything nefarious in mind. I vetted him completely, just as I have every other member of the service. You were safe with him, so why did you lie to him, especially when I promised him that all of our members are honest?”
Blair knew that honesty was important to him; he’d made that painfully clear to her. But she insisted, “I didn’t lie. Savannah is my name.”
“You hate your first name,” Miranda said. “You’ve made me swear to take it off your tombstone if your mom or brother tries to sneak it on there.”
“I would haunt them,” Blair said. “So they won’t.”
“You’re haunting Matteo Rinaldi right now,” Miranda said, “or at the least ghosting him. You didn’t give him your real name or any contact information for him to be able to reach you. Why not? Was the date that terrible?”
A little ripple of something passed through Blair—excitement? Relief? Her pulse had quickened, too, at the mention of him.
“He called you already?” she asked.
It was still early. The minute he’d awakened and found her gone he must have called, but she hadn’t been gone that long, just long enough to get a cab back to her hotel, shower and pack.
“How else would I know what you told him your name was?” Miranda asked. “I didn’t even realize who he was talking about right away. It’s been so long since anyone used your first name.”
Maybe it was because she’d had no sleep but Blair found herself murmuring again, “He called.”
“Yes,” Miranda confirmed, “he called for your number.”
The little ripple passed through her again, but this time she easily recognized it for what it was: fear. “You didn’t give it to him?”
“Of course not,” Miranda said. “I’ve told you already that one of the main rules of the service is that we won’t give out any information unless we’re authorized.”
So Miranda was running her business differently than she had her life. She was making and keeping the rules with Liaisons International.
