Read Bait: Alpha Billionaire Romance Boxed Set Online
Authors: Colleen Charles
Charlie
I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the opposite wall. During high school, I’d plastered it with pictures of my friends, school events, even my certificates. It was meant to be a happy memory, and each time I’d visited my father before, it had been.
Not now.
Not after leaving Nolan.
“I sold out,” I said out loud. And boy, I’d sold out big time. And I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to forgive myself. Or get over it. Had I just eighty-sixed my one chance at happiness in order to protect myself?
It seemed harsh to speak to myself this way, but it was the damn truth. I’d fallen in love with my boss and turned into the floozy I’d been warned about at the start of my career with Banks Realty. If Jasmine were here, she’d purse her lips like she’d sucked down a lemon and glare at me with her rattlesnake eyes.
And I’d deserve it. Every last censure from a woman I didn’t even respect. Because I no longer respected myself. My swanky law degree from Harvard couldn’t help me now. I was worse than a fallen woman or a gold-digging whore who hung out at The Rose Bar praying to catch the eye of a balding fat ass.
A knock sounded at my bedroom door, and I dabbed at the dampness beneath either eye, using the end of my flower-print bedspread. Black mascara stained the vibrant fabric so I let it flutter from my fingers. Who the hell cared?
He
cared. And he always would though I no longer felt worthy of his adoration.
“Come in,” I called.
Dad opened the door and shuffled inside. He ran a wrinkled hand over his receding hairline and smiled. He looked old. Old past his years because those years had been spent working hard to keep us both from ending up in a gutter.
And this was how I repaid him. I could have bought him a house with my salary from Banks Realty. I could have set up a retirement fund. I could have made him proud.
And I’d done none of it because I’d succumbed to the allure of foolish pride.
“How are you feeling, hon?” Dad asked.
“Meh,” I replied. “I think that’s the best way to describe it.” That was, of course, a lie. I didn’t feel “meh.” I felt as if my soul had been dragged backwards through a paper shredder and spat out. Expensive parchment printed with all the words that Nolan had said to me. All the useless nothings I could never truly enjoy because loving him was wrong. Lying to everyone was wrong. And he couldn’t possibly want a lifetime with someone like me. Someone so far beneath him a shooting star could sail between us.
Dad spent the awkward silence tapping his foot on the floorboards. He cleared his throat like he always did when it was time to deal with awkward lady problems. My dad was a blue-collar guy. A man’s man. Even though he may have an opinion about matters of the heart, he’d have a hard time articulating it. So he went with the old tried and true.
“I’m glad you’re here, Charlie. I don’t get to see you that much anymore.”
I nodded, and guilt squirmed around in my stomach like a slimy night crawler insidiously feeding on my insides. “I know. I’ve been busy. New York City and all…”
“Not busy enough to keep sending me money on the side,” he said in a reticent tone as he sank down on the bedspread next to me. The old box spring creaked under his weight. “I told you I don’t like charity.”
“It’s not charity, Dad. Promise.” My argument sounded trite and pathetic to my own ears, and my dad visibly cringed. I felt like I might not be able to get anything right ever again. To have my life ever
feel
right again. “It was paying you back for everything. I wanted to look after you, but it turns out I can’t even look after myself.”
I couldn’t take care of myself, and I hadn’t been able to keep my mind off Nolan ever since I’d fled from his side and returned to the house in Atlanta. He’d infiltrated every cell of my brain. Every crevice of my shattered heart. Setting up residence between the broken shards of muscle in my chest cavity until there were moments I struggled to draw breath. I didn’t have a job anymore, and I couldn’t go back there. Everywhere my eyes fell, I’d see his face and my body would ache with wanting for what could never be.
Dad grabbed my hand and squeezed it. A gentle pressure of solidarity that transferred his warmth and caring from his palm to mine. “You know that’s not true.”
“What?”
“That you can’t look after yourself. You’re strong, Charlie. You’re stronger than I was when you were growing up.”
“Yeah, but when times were tough, you didn’t end up falling in love with your boss and jeopardizing everything,” I choked, the words trying to lodge themselves in the bottom of my throat. “Everything.”
“No, I didn’t do that. But I did break down at least once a month about work or money or worrying about you. You just never saw it because I kept it to myself,” he admitted, squeezing tighter with his rough fingers. “Everybody has weak moments, sweet girl, everybody. That doesn’t mean you’re a weak person or that you’ve failed. It’s how you recover from this moment that counts. This is the South, and you’ll rise again.”
I inhaled through my nose and exhaled through my mouth, counting to four each time and holding the breath for a count of two in between.
Dad was right. Dad was always right. I’d make it. I just wasn’t sure how.
I slipped my arm around his torso and hugged him tight, tears squishing at the corners of my shuttered eyelids. They were desperate for escape, but I wouldn’t let the pain rule me. It may have won most of the battles, but it wouldn’t win the war. I could stay here. I could find a better job with a real estate firm right here in Atlanta that specialized in historical mansions. I could stand on the veranda in my hoop skirt and drink sweet tea.
Not.
“Thanks, Dad. I love you, you know.”
He smiled, and his eyes said everything he didn’t. “Anytime, sweetheart. Anyways, I just came to tell you that dinner will be on the table in ten. Better get washed up.” He got up and walked out of the room, then shut the door with a soft click behind him.
I stared at his retreating back and then at the closed door. Like a wooden barrier between me and what was outside it. I hoped I could slip through and out into the world again to hold my head high. After all I’d been through in my life, I could do better.
“Well, Charlie,” I said after a second, “it’s time to let go of Nolan Banks. It’s time to move on with your life. He’s gone forever. If you ever even had him to begin with.”
This was my chance to start something new, in my home state. I just hoped that prospective employers wouldn’t hold it against me. Everyone had heard about my engagement to the billionaire son and playboy, Nolan Banks. Now, they probably thought I was some whore that fraternized at work. But I could do this. I could pick myself up by my bootstraps, work harder than anyone else and prove the naysayers wrong.
I got up and hurried over to my old desk, then opened my handbag and dug around in it. I brought out my phone and dialed the number. A soothing, feminine voice answered on the second ring.
“Jane Simmonds, how may I help you?”
“Hi Jane, it’s Charlene de Monaco. I wanted to catch up with you about possible business opportunities,” I said and then those nerves were back, beating against the lining of my stomach, clawing their way towards the skin. “I’ve recently been freed of my obligations at Banks Realty.”
Jane was a headhunter, the best in the business actually. If there was any chance of getting a job at a firm or legal department anywhere in New York, she’d know of it.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m here, Charlene. I’m afraid I don’t have anything for you,” Jane replied coolly.
“What? But–”
The line went dead. I dropped the phone from my ear and stared at the screen. So that was it. Nolan Banks and my interactions with him had officially tarred my career. Anne Banks had probably made one phone call to the ladies she lunched with and blackened my name with a few vicious sentences. Any hope of following my dreams, helping those who needed it, was over.
My life was over.
The shrill buzz of the doorbell snapped my morose mood in two. Who could that be?
Charlie
“Charlie, there’s someone here to see you,” Dad yelled from the living room.
Confusion mingled with those nuclear accident sized butterflies in my belly, to form a special brand of nausea. I couldn’t take any more surprises.
“Charlie!” he raised his voice in his familiar southern drawl. “Get a move on, darlin’, we don’t keep visitors waiting.”
“I’m coming, Dad,” I replied. I straightened my old t-shirt and flipped my long hair back, then strode to my bedroom door and opened it.
Dad’s house was tiny. He had a living room and adjoined kitchen, two rooms, and one bathroom with a toilet and a shower in a rough neighborhood. That was it. And now thanks to me, he’d probably never have anything better.
I strode out of my room and into the living room. I lost my breath after the second step.
Standing between the threadbare sofa and the front door, smiling at my father, was none other than the star of my tortured musings every moment of every day since I’d last seen him. It was one of his charming, billionaire smiles and it rolled off dad like water off a duck’s back.
Frank de Monaco wasn’t a man easily charmed. With his Georgia roots, he usually did the charming.
Unlike me, apparently. Every southern belle east of the Mason-Dixon Line probably wanted to excommunicate me from the Daughters of the Confederacy.
Each conflicted, painful emotion that had run through my mind before making the decision to leave Nolan crashed back like surf pummeling a rocky shoreline. He was here. He was in my dad’s living room.
Oh, God. I didn’t think I could stay standing. I didn’t think I could speak.
Even breathe.
“There you are,” my dad said gruffly, eyeing me with worry. “Someone’s here to see you.”
“Charlie,” Nolan murmured at the exact same moment. He looked as tortured as I felt. But that couldn’t be possible. He was Nolan Banks. Like some nerdy,
Game of Thrones
watching math-geek could upset him. Not in a million years. Why hadn’t he moved on? Fired up the little black book to feed on a society piranha with fangs as big as his mother’s?
My name fell again on a whisper from his lips and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I caved.
I fell.
“I take it you’ve been introduced?” I said, wearing bravado like a superhero cape. My voice only wavered on one syllable. Rasping in a ragged breath, I puffed up my chest and ran a finger through my snarled curls. I couldn’t let him know that I missed him. A constant, aching Nolan-shaped hole in my heart.
“No,” both men said in unison, eyeing each other. I fully expected my dad to start pawing his booted toe into the green shag carpet like a bull about to charge.
“Dad, this is Nolan Banks, my ex, uh, my ex-boss. Nolan, this is my father, Frank de Monaco.” I walked to my father’s side on legs that had been fashioned out of jelly. My hand snaked out to settle on my dad’s shoulder so I wouldn’t embarrass myself by falling into a puddle at Nolan’s snakeskin Santoni’s.
Nolan extended a single, tanned hand to my father.
Dad looked at it as if shaking Nolan’s hand would be akin to emulating Benedict Arnold defecting to the Banks army. I nudged him, but he still didn’t move a muscle. Could I really blame Dad for his abnormal lack of southern hospitality? Probably not. He was just being protective.
“Can we help you with something?” Dad asked, fisting his hands at his sides. I felt my dad’s shoulders tense underneath my hand.
“Dad,” I said, “I’ll handle this. I’m sure it’s just a business mix up. You get that dinner ready, okay? I’m starving. You know how I love to eat.”
I let my hand drop from his shoulder to my stomach in an effort at distraction. Dad stayed a moment longer, eyes narrowed and unflinching. “Fine. You call me if you have any trouble.”
I heard my dad whisper, “Damn Yankee,” underneath his breath and I flinched as I glanced at Nolan. He stayed calm, and if the slur had hit its mark, he didn’t let on. Nolan had muscles on muscles and could probably pound Dad into a pulp if he wanted, but I knew Nolan. He treated everyone with respect, especially his elders. Even if he hated me, he’d never belittle my father in his own home.
Dad disappeared into the kitchen area and busied himself with the pots and pans bubbling away on the stove. Every few seconds, something would clang or bang until I wanted to put my palms over my ears.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. “I thought I made everything clear in my note.”
“Note? You mean those two scribbled lines of bullshit?” Nolan growled and then his eyes went soft in a rare moment of weakness. Anything but that. The same creamy softness I’d witnessed in them before. The softness I refused to believe because it’d gotten me fake engaged to him in the first place. I wanted him to unleash his anger. To rail and scream at me until I stopped feeling vulnerable. “I can’t let you go, Charlie,” he murmured. “I won’t let you go. I need you at my side.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “For Raminsky? Just tell him that we tried our best, but it didn’t work out. Shit, I’ll call him if I have to, explain it to him. He’ll be fine.” I didn’t believe that for a second.
The entire reason I’d agreed to the hoax of an engagement was so that we could break ground on a project which touched my heart. Housing for families in crappy situations just like mine had been while I was growing up. Some days, I didn’t know which heartbreak was more painful. Nolan and I never being together or me never finishing The Grant Project.
Equally painful. Just different.
“Not for Raminsky. Not for Banks Realty. Not for anyone but
me
,” Nolan hissed. He stepped closer, drawing me into his orbit. If he touched me now, I’d be gone when I needed to stay firm. Hard. Untouchable. “I need you in my life, Charlie. I won’t let you go. I won’t.”
I stepped back and gasped for breath. The heat streaming from his body was too much. Waves of straining emotion forced themselves into my bubble of protection like tiny pin pricks into a helium balloon.
“No.” I shook my head to emphasize the word. “I don’t understand.”
I lied. Because I did understand. The thought of spending a lifetime without him sent me into fist pounding bouts of ugly crying into my pillow every night before I drifted off into a torturous sleep.
“Let me show you,” he said, licking his lips. “I’ll do anything to have you back.”
“You can’t have me,” I replied and then stiffened. Saying the word “can’t” to Nolan Banks was like firing a warning shot. If a woman did it, she better be fully armed and ready to wage war.
“You need me too, Charlie. We need each other,” he said, pressing with the logical argument, preying on my known weakness. “Let’s take it easy. You can come back to work. No pressure. We’ll hold off on the engagement and wedding until you’re ready to–”
“Engagement? Wedding?” I stared at him, my mouth agape even as my heart pounded “yes” with rapid contractions. “The whole thing was a sham, and you know it. But I couldn’t go through with it, Nolan. I’m sorry I disappointed you and ruined your deal, but I’m not a sophisticated New York City girl. When it all came down to the final actions, I couldn’t do it because living my life as a lie wasn’t how I was raised. Sometimes, I think you’re so caught up in it that you don’t know where the truth ends and the lies begin.”
I had my ethics and my principles, and this time, I wouldn’t do something my gut told me was wrong. Dead wrong.
“I’ll pay you,” he said, grasping at straws and empty promises. “Whatever you want. Six figures. Seven. Fuck it, anything. I need you, Charlie.”
“You’ll pay me,” I whispered, not even recognizing my stricken voice. As if my overwrought vocal chords had rubbed together and produced a sound that wasn’t even recognizable as human. My heart sank to the bottom of my stomach and landed in the vicinity of my bare feet.
And there it was.
Nolan Banks would pay me to come back to work. This was his fantastic business deal, and he didn’t give a shit who he hurt in the process. It was just the pathetic bullshit to fire up my irritation, so the hurt fell away and molten hot anger seeped in to take its place.
Nolan Banks the billionaire playboy could guess again. His delusional thoughts that he could just buy any fucking thing he wanted. Even me.
How could I ever have expected him to understand that this wasn’t about the money? It was about something bigger than both of us. It was about doing something positive for the community and those who couldn’t do for themselves.
It was about love. And he wasn’t capable. At least not capable of the kind of love that I needed.
I stared at Nolan’s pleading eyes, the smart fit of his suit on those broad, muscular shoulders. Armani. In an instant, I wanted to spit on the expensive wool. He disgusted me.
“No.” My voice rang out, firm and true. “I’ll never work for you again. Get out of my house.”