Page 42 of Dating the Billionaire
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BLAIRKNEWWHERETeo would be...and not just because he’d left a message for her with the dating service. She knew because one of her pilots had flown him to Paris. He hadn’t been happy about that; she’d heard the frustration in his voice when he’d called Private Flights to complain.
She’d nearly blown it then. But she didn’t want him to learn the truth over the phone. She wanted to tell him in person. So she’d flown herself to Paris.
Flying, as always, had been easy for her despite a storm that had blown in just as she’d been landing. Walking across the hotel lobby to Le Bar where he’d gone for drinks was hard. Her legs trembled with each step.
Despite what her brother had said, she knew she needed to come clean. She wasn’t worried about Teo suing them. From what she knew of him, he was not a petty or vindictive man. He was too loyal for that, and he looked for that loyalty in others. So she was worried about him hating her.
Her heart pounded harder and faster with each step she took toward the bar, her heels clicking against the marble floor. If not for the music playing softly within the bar, he might have heard her coming. Maybe he had, because the moment she stepped inside the beautiful bar, with its glowing chandelier hanging from the coffered ceiling, he looked up—as if he’d been expecting her.
Had he known she was coming?
When Miranda had given her the message he’d left for her, Blair hadn’t even known that she was going to actually meet him. She’d actually told Miranda that she wasn’t going to, that she couldn’t.
But then she’d kept thinking about Teo, as she always did. And knowing that he was in Paris, one of her favorite cities, she’d had to come. She also hoped that she would come—the way only he had been able to make her come. So easily, so powerfully, so damn many times...
He jumped up from his chair and greeted her. “You’re here.”
She crossed the room to join him at a marble-topped table in the corner of the small bar. “I’m here.”
He reached out his hands but then, as if he thought better of it, he didn’t touch her. Instead he touched only the velvet chair as he pulled it out for her. “You’re here,” he murmured again as he sat down across from her.
“Is that okay?” she asked. Maybe Miranda had misled her; maybe he hadn’t actually wanted her to show up at all.
He sighed. “I never know with you.”
“You didn’t extend an invitation for me to join you if I was available?”
“Are you available?” he asked.
“I’m here.”
“But are you really available?” he asked. “Or is a husband the reason for your unwillingness to give me your last name and your phone number?”
She laughed at the thought, but the sound echoed hollowly off the coffered ceiling. “God, no,” she replied with a shudder. “I’m not married.”
He narrowed his brown eyes and skeptically studied her face.
“You should already know that,” she said. “Miranda makes it very clear that all the members of Liaisons International are unmarried.”
“What about attached?” he asked. “That wouldn’t be something she’d be able to learn from the public records she probably checks for marriage licenses. Are you living with someone? Involved?”
“No,” she said. But she suspected that she was lying now about the involved part. She was getting involved with him. Too involved.
He just stared at her, as if trying to see inside her. “I feel like I don’t know you at all.”
“I don’t know you, either,” she said.
He chuckled. “You know me very well. You’ve met my sister. My friends. I don’t even know if you have any family, any friends...”
“Miranda is my friend,” she said. “You know that. As for family...” She didn’t really count her mother, not with as seldom as they talked, and her father had been dead for a few years. “I have a brother.”
A brother who would be very pissed if he found out that she was dating their richest client. Actually, her friend wasn’t happy with her, either.
“You’re risking the reputation of my agency with your damn game,” Miranda had complained when she’d called her earlier. She wanted Blair to be honest with him. Maybe, like Grant, Miranda was worried about being sued.
A pang of guilt struck her over her petty thought about her childhood friend. Miranda cared more about her than she did her company. She wanted Blair to be honest because she was worried about her getting hurt.
