Page 3 of One Night Billionaire

“Oh, I know. I mean, you’re not wrong, but I know that you weren’t being mean.”

They sat and soaked for the next hour until Rick came to find Lucy. Anna felt much better by the time she climbed out.

“I think I’m going to call it a night,” she told them. “I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

“At least come to dinner?” Lucy asked.

Anna shook her head. “I’m going to sleep for the next twelve hours.”

Chapter two

Rumandcoke,please?”Brian ordered a drink from the bartender.

He looked around the bar with its blue lights glowing everywhere around the room. It was meant to look like ice, he assumed, but he would have preferred it to look like fire or something warm.

It was impersonal in here and not a place he would have chosen for himself to take a vacation. Then again, he was supposed to have planned something for this vacation with his friends, but he’d been too busy to get around to it.

Now he was here at the mercy of Jack’s planning. They arrived yesterday for what was supposed to have been a week-long trip, but none of them ended up being able to get away for that long.

They’d gone skiing this morning and then devoured lunch before coming down for dinner. Now they were hanging out in the bar, but Brian was having a hard time relaxing. There was too much he needed to do back at work.

“Are you coming?” Jack asked him, heading for a table.

Brian took his drink and thanked the bartender before following Jack. Darren was already at

the table looking at his phone.

“No phone,” Jack was saying as he approached. “This is supposed to be a work-free space this weekend.”

“Maybe I was texting a chick,” Darren said but stuck his phone in his pocket.

“Please, if you had a hot date, you wouldn’t have hit on the chicks at the slopes this morning.” Jack sipped his drink.

Darren didn’t push back on it, which meant he hadn’t been serious about it being a woman. They were all a mess when it came to working too much, with Jack being their only real balance. Somehow, he could work non-stop when he was there but push it from his mind completely when he left.

Jack was the one that pulled them out of their offices a few times a year to do something that wasn’t work-related. It was great when he got to enjoy it, but usually, it came at what felt like the worst time for him to leave work.

There was never a good time, though. He’d thought about passing the bulk of the work to staff but had never found a good time. Again, it seemed there never was a good time for anything but to keep working.

“Look who just walked in,” Darren said.

Brian turned. “Is that the woman from the elevator yesterday?”

Darren nodded.

“What a difference a few less layers of clothes make,” Jake added.

“I could help her remove the last layer,” Darren joked.

“Really?” Brian looked at his friend. “That’s why you don’t get laid, man.”

“It was a good one,” Darren defended himself.

Brian and Jake both laughed at the obvious lie. Darren and Jake argued back and forth on his ability to make jokes or pickup lines.

Brian watched the brunette he’d seen watching him yesterday. She was in a skimpy black dress. She wore it well. The dress hugged all of her curves, making her nothing but temptation.

She was uncomfortable in it, though. It made her more appealing to him to watch her keep pulling down on the bottom of that dress even though it hadn’t moved. Something about a woman

---