Page 25 of Dating the Billionaire
CHAPTER EIGHT
BLAIR’S“BILLTHEPILOT” disguise, with the big sunglasses and the bushy beard, had worked too well. Teo hadn’t recognized her at all. And he’d been so comfortable with themanflying the plane that he had chartered Private Flights for several more trips. He traveled often between Madrid and Milan. Madrid was where he lived and where his corporate offices were, while it seemed as though Milan was home to him despite his not having a home there. Perhaps that was because his sister lived there, and despite her meddling in his life, they must have been close.
As usual, when they landed in Madrid he poked his head into the cockpit and praised her. “Another smooth flight, Bill. Thank you.”
He wasn’t really praising her, though. He was praising a man. But unlike some of their otherimportantclients, he always took the time to greet her and to compliment her after every flight.
“He sure is a nice guy for a billionaire,” Jean-Claude remarked after Teo descended the stairs to the tarmac.
“For a male chauvinist pig,” Blair reminded him and herself.
Jean-Claude dropped into the seat next to hers. He was as much a copilot as he was a flight attendant. She’d assigned him to Teo’s flights in case the businessman ever saw through her disguise and insisted on getting what her brother had promised him. A male pilot. “So when are you going to take off the beard and the padding and show him that a woman has been flying him for all these flights?” Jean-Claude asked.
Her pulse quickened at the thought. He was bound to be furious at getting duped. He’d told her before that he didn’t like games. Despite the disguise, though, this wasn’t a game to her. This was her proving, just as she had been forced to prove her entire career, that she was as good as or better than any man. Just because she was female didn’t make her weak or stupid...like so many of her instructors and fellow fighter pilots had thought.
But Blair couldn’t actually prove this to Teo until she removed her disguise. Once she did, she knew there would be no chance of anything professional or personal between them. He would be much too angry.
And while she hadn’t thought it was smart to see him again, to be with him again...
Her body ached with desire for his. She wanted to be with him...like they’d been that night. She needed the release and the mind-blowing pleasure they’d found with each other.
That was why she hadn’t taken off the disguise yet.
She wanted one more night of ecstasy in his arms, in his bed. But did she dare risk it? Even knowing he was a chauvinist hadn’t abated her attraction to him.
And flying him had only made her want him more. He always looked so gorgeous whether he wore one of his expertly tailored suits or a pair of worn jeans and thin cashmere sweater. And his hair, with those rich chocolate-brown curls, was just ever so mussed, reminding her of how it had looked that night, how it had felt when it had brushed across her bare skin...
Her breath caught with desire, and that hollow ache inside her yawned even wider, deeper. Her body yearned for his, to feel him inside her again.
And every time she flew him, that hollow ache just intensified. Because he was so close, but she couldn’t touch him, couldn’t kiss him—like she had that night, like she had to again.
She’d been worried that being with a man would make her like her mother, make her lose herself. But being without him was worse, was making her lose her patience and her self-control. She had to have him again.
Teo had gone right to his office when the plane landed in Madrid. He hadn’t had a break from work until now, hours later, when he’d returned to his apartment to shower and drop onto his bed in exhaustion.
But he knew he wouldn’t sleep—at least not restfully. Because whenever he closed his eyes, he thought of Savannah. He needed to get her out of his mind for good.
He pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans and, uttering a weary sigh, he punched in the contact number for Liaisons International. When he’d signed up, Miranda Fox had insisted on giving him her direct cell number. She’d probably grown to regret having done that, though.
Because she answered with a weary sigh of her own and asked, “Hasn’t she returned your calls yet, Mr. Rinaldi?”
Teo flinched, and his face heated with embarrassment and anger. He’d told himself when he was a kid that once he’d made his own way in the world, he would never resort to begging again—anyone for anything. And yet here he was.
“No,” he replied. “She hasn’t.” And he’d come to accept that she wouldn’t.
“I can leave another message for her to—”
“Don’t,” he interjected. He’d already given Savannah more power over him than he had any other woman.
Savannah clearly wasn’t interested. Maybe their date had not been as amazing to her as it had seemed to him. Unless he had built her and that night up in his mind beyond what she and it had really been.
“I didn’t call about Savannah,” he said. “I’m calling because I want to cancel my membership.” Although that was entirely about Savannah.
“Cancel?” Miranda Fox repeated with such righteous-sounding indignation that she was acting as if he’d sworn at her. “But you have not given the agency a chance. You’ve only been on one date. You have yet to take full advantage of your membership with Liaisons International.”
He smiled at her tactic. Clearly she was good at talking people into things they didn’t want to do, which was probably why Savannah hadn’t called him back. Despite her agreement that she wouldn’t do something she really didn’t want to, she must have regretted their date.
Had she regretted everything?
