Bait: Alpha Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (23 page)

Chapter 14

Nolan

“Have you seen it yet?” Chase asked, walking through the front door with a newspaper tucked under one arm. “Because, dude, I don’t want to be the one to break it to you, but man, you can’t make this shit up.”

He thrust the newspaper at me, and I stared at it as if it had sprouted horns and a cloven hoof. A veritable Satan spewing flames of media vomit on the page. Even though my hand reached out to take the offering, my glazed over eyes didn’t read the headline. I’d spent the past two days locked in my apartment, trying to forget what happened.

I’d lost her for good this time. My Charlie.

I stared up at my best friend and inhaled, steeling myself for what I knew was coming next. “What is this?”

“Shit, you don’t already know?” Chase scoffed and thrust the rag into my outstretched hand. “Just read it because it’s not something that can be summarized in a few sentences. You look like hell, Nolan. While you’re reading, I’ll make you an espresso. A double.”

I ignored him, and he strode past me, toward the kitchen and the under cabinet espresso machine I rarely used, preferring to hit Starbucks or a local coffee shop on my way to work. But the chrome machine had looked good in the design plan, so I’d bought it anyway. Just another toy in a long line of them over the years that now just looked trite and desperate even to my own eyes.

I opened the paper and swallowed. Instead of saliva, it felt like construction nails trailing down the back of my gritty throat. Charlie’s face was splashed across the page, along with an article which spoke of her masterminding an extortion plot on Banks Realty. It was all framed as conjecture and infighting between Charlie and my mother. And in that party of two, only one was trustworthy, and my money was on Charlie. But the facts… they were damning.

My heart shattered as my stomach plummeted to my feet. She’d won. My controlling, demanding and selfish mother had knocked it out of the park. Any shot I’d had at approaching Charlie and trying to talk to her about the pretenses she’d been hired under had flown out the window thanks to Mother Dearest. She’d just sunk to a new low. I wanted to hit Travelocity and buy a one-way ticket to Bali. Escaping New York City might be the only way I could escape the pressure of being under her thumb. I crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it into the corner.

“I’m sorry, dude.” Chase walked into the room, carrying two glass espresso cups. Steam wafted over them. He sat down opposite me on the sofa and slid one across my coffee table. “Drink up. You look like a cougar dragged you backwards through a bush.”

I nodded, but I didn’t pick up the mug. “What am I going to do? You know my mother’s behind this. She had half the city in her back pocket and the other half pissing their pants trying to stay out of it.”

“Go after Charlie,” he said, blowing the steam off the top of his cup. “I’ve seen you charm the pants off a blind woman. There’s nothing Nolan Banks can’t do when he goes all in.”

“I can’t,” I said, speaking in absolutes and wallowing in self-pity. “She won’t talk to me. I’ve tried calling. Yesterday, I even sat outside her apartment in my town car waiting for a glimpse of her. When I finally saw her, I was too scared to approach like some kind of crazy stalker out of a bad b-list movie. Shit, I’ve never been this pathetic in my life.”

“If you love her, don’t let her go,” Chase said fiercely. “Believe me, you’ll live the rest of your life in a cloudy haze of regret if you do. Don’t be like me, Nolan. Ever.” He blinked and looked down, then coughed once and met my gaze again. “Get her back. Do whatever it takes. You have the resources for the grand gesture, you know. You’re selling yourself short here.”

“Haven’t you been listening?” I snapped. “She won’t talk to me. She hates me.”

“She’s hurt, bro, because Charlie has integrity. And pride. And you shattered that when you insinuated she wasn’t good enough on her own merits. She doesn’t hate you.”

I shook my head and let my chin hang on my chest in silence. I didn’t know where to go from here. I had to get out of the house, away from the pit of sorrow I’d created from these four walls. Liquor. Strong and straight.

“You wanna get out of here? Let’s go get a drink. Scotch.” I made the suggestion as I rose to my feet and steeled my resolve with a deep breath.

“Yeah,” he replied, setting his glass cup on a leather coaster, “let’s do that.”

If I couldn’t forget her like this, maybe I could drown myself in alcohol, numb the pain. I didn’t want to go on without her. But she’d already left Banks Realty. Left me. Fled in the dead of night before I could show her why it’d all happened. Tell her the reason I’d done it. Because I believed in a future. I believed in
her
.

Thirty minutes later, Chase and I slid into the comfy leather sofas in the VIP section at Ruffalo’s. Some hot chick with a tiny black dress sidled close to Chase’s chest. Other ladies sat around the table, trying to make conversation with me but turned away in frustration.
The
Nolan Banks had turned from a raucous party boy into a surly mute.

Maybe this had been a bad idea after all. I should have just asked my driver to buy a bottle of Macallan at the high-end liquor store and drank myself into a stupor alone. I lifted a lowball glass filled with amber swill to my lips and threw it back. The burn of the alcohol felt like a caress. A welcome respite from the overwhelming sensitivity to feelings I didn’t want to feel anymore. My web of deceit had finally come home to roost.

“Nolan?” A woman called out during the lull of music. Her voice speared me with unwanted memories and regret. “I thought that was you.”

Jesus Christ. Anyone but Georgia. I looked up, and my heart sank. She strode toward my sofa, her spandex bandage dress hugging every curve, her auburn hair sparkling beneath the multi-colored lights. The glorious mane I’d loved so much months ago swept around her shoulders with every stride. She looked beautiful. She just didn’t look beautiful to me. Georgia Malone was nothing but a conceited shell of plastic flesh created through smoke and mirrors. Like a scene out of a fucking Vegas illusion.

Georgia glided past VIP security without any questions. She was New York famous, after all, and Ruffalo’s wanted her presence more than Georgia wanted to see herself in the selfie view of her iPhone. Without invitation, she planted herself on my lap, cowgirl style and ground down on my crotch. Scotch splashed from my glass and down her bare back. She shrieked, giggled and squirmed, which thrust her perfect tits in my face. Her perfect,
fake
tits. Tonight, and every night for the rest of my life, I was jonesing for something real.

Charlie.

“I’ve missed you so much, Nolan, darling. I’m glad you’re here tonight,” she said, whispering into my ear. A sick sensation waved over me as I felt the humidity of her breath too close to my face. I wanted to buck up and throw her off me. Send her spiraling to the hand-scraped hardwoods in a puddle of indignant frustration.

I made to stand and gently shove her to the side, just as the flash went off.

No. Fucking. Way.

I dumped Georgia on the sofa beside me and rose, scanning the crowd for the offender. I owned part of this club, and flash cameras weren’t allowed and could never make it past the velvet ropes. But someone had taken a picture. The reason this bar had become such a coveted destination was the privacy of the patrons. I took it seriously, and a gossip rag photo of a celebrity had never graced the pages taken from inside this club.

“Nolan, why did you do that?” Georgia pouted. “I was just getting started.”

I ignored her and strode toward the burgundy velvet rope which separated “us” from “them.” I tore it back and stumbled down the steps, the scotch buzz tilting the floor up and down in time with the bass of the music. The reverb echoed through the soles of my loafers.

I felt sick, and I had to get some air.

Chapter 15

Charlie

“I can’t not look at it.” I held the remote in my fist, crunching it so that the buttons made squeaks of complaint. “Like some media trainwreck.”

E! News floated across the television screen. An impossibly skinny woman in a strategically sexy-professional outfit stood center stage, talking at length about the Banks marriage scandal. My face had come up a couple times in one of those square, head shots pressed into the upper right-hand corner. Along with the head shot were the words. Horrible speculation and assumptions that I’d been extorting money from Banks Realty. And then came the gut-wrenching part.

The part that shattered my already broken heart.

The part where the man I’d loved and probably still did was pictured in Ruffalo’s with Georgia Malone draped across his lap. A glorious red-maned ornament of feminine perfection riding Nolan’s crotch like a rodeo queen.

“At least he’s not enjoying it,” Melissa said from the doorway. She stood with a coffee cup in one hand and a donut in the other. Just what I needed. A sugar and carbohydrate fest to dull the ache in every cell. “His face is blank. Like he’s somewhere else.”

“He’s just drunk,” I argued. “A picture is worth a thousand words. Looks like Nolan chose to revert right back to where he was when we met.”

Like I never meant anything to him.

Because he’d hand-picked me to screw over like some kind of low-income science project. His foray into those less fortunate would give Mother Theresa a boner. The only part that still scratched at the walls of my mind was why? Why on earth would he do it? A wave of nausea roiled through my stomach and made Mel’s donut look like rancid trash.

“I’m so done with it all,” I said. “Done. Overdone. Like steak grilled to resemble shoe leather.”

“So switch it off then.” Mel took a big bite of her bakery treat and powdered sugar wafted on the air, floating through the incoming sunlight. I stared at the tiny granules of confectioner’s perfection. “Why are you torturing yourself like this?”

“It’s not torture,” I replied. “It’s consciousness. I need this to remind myself what kind of person Nolan Banks truly is deep in his heart. If he even has one. Since I grew up poor, it was always easy to subscribe to the wealthy colloquialisms like money being the root of all evil. I guess I’d hoped I was wrong.”

Okay, maybe this was torture. I hated it, but I still couldn’t look away. A knock at the front door pulled my gaze away from Georgia Malone and everything that I wasn’t now and would never be. I stared down at my flannel pajamas and fuzzy moose slippers. I kept tormenting myself with the constant trip down memory lane because I hadn’t removed the outfit I’d worn during my first night with Nolan in over twenty-four hours.

“I’ll get it,” Mel said, licking the sugar off her fingers with a loud smack. She traipsed past the sofa and to the door. She spoke in hushed tones to someone, and I didn’t even perk up my ears to eavesdrop.

My life had swirled down the toilet bowl of depression. I needed a break from Maria Menounos and a donut to swallow my sorrows. The lure of the carbohydrate sedative could no longer be denied. I clicked off the TV and rose from my seat, then turned and shrieked.

“Whoa!” Callum raised both palms in a defensive posture. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, Charlie.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, glancing down at my loose shirt and old PJ pants. The mortification probably painted a vivid image for my ex-colleague, formerly known as Hot-As-Hell. Until someone even hunkier had replaced him in my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Your roommate let me in.”

“That’s okay. I just wasn’t prepared for visitors as you can probably tell.” I dropped the remote on the sofa. “So, what’s up?”

Callum chewed the side of his lip and tilted his head forward. “I know you’ve been through a rough time lately, and I might lose my job for this, but I wouldn’t be sitting in integrity if I didn’t stop by and check in on you. I know you didn’t have anything to do with the embezzlement at Banks. Mrs. Banks has been coming into the office too much lately, creating havoc and stirring the pot. I have no doubt it’s all a media plot to spin your break-up with Nolan. She’d do anything to protect the family name.”

I stiffened, a hot rod of embarrassment shifting down my spine. Tiny increments of humiliation filtered down my body. Having never been in the public eye before, I still really didn’t know how to handle the negative limelight.

“I’m doing okay,” I replied, even though my eyes were puffy and red. So much for my calm and collected exterior. “Just another day at the office.”

“How about a shoulder to cry on then?” Callum shrugged, shifting his cotton button down with the movement. The sleeves could barely contain his muscles. “But only if and when you need it.”

“I have Mel.”

“Uh, okay. God, Charlie, you’ve got walls three bricks thick. Was I wrong for coming here this soon after the hurricane known as Nolan Banks showed his true colors?” Callum ran a hand through his thick hair and grinned, casting his eyes at his expensive loafers. “Here’s the truth. And I’m going to tell it because it seems that no one else wants to. I’ve always had a major crush on you, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to ask you out.”

I blinked in surprise, held my breath, then forced a laugh that sounded more like a hyena’s cackle. “I honestly had no idea you felt that way.”

“Wow, my flirting techniques must have gotten rusty,” he said as he leaned back against the sofa cushions. “I admit I haven’t been dating a lot, but I didn’t think I had been reduced to zero game.”

I reached out to clasp his hand into mine. It felt warm and solid. Like he wouldn’t push me in front of him like a human shield when the torpedoes were coming in. Or launch them in the first place. “Nah, I’m just impervious to stuff like that. I didn’t date until college. Curvy girls in the chess club weren’t very appealing. My stock plummeted.”

Here was this man. A gorgeous, intelligent, ambitious man who had a real interest in me. Not the fake bullshit interest like Nolan had acted out like he’d just been cast in a Broadway show. This was the real deal, and I couldn’t take the leap because my mind still swirled images of Nolan with Georgia. I shook my head in a feeble attempt to eradicate them.

“So, uh, would you like to go to dinner with me sometime? It doesn’t have to be soon. I understand if you need time. I just–” Callum broke off and shook his head. “Charlie, you seem like the kind of girl that’s never on the market for long. Not that I can buy you or something, but damn it, this is coming out all wrong.”

“You’re sweet,” I said and laughed. The first genuine laugh in days. “Yeah, okay, I’ll go out with you. Why not, right? It’ll be fun. And I already know I can trust you, which is number one on my list right now.”

Callum heaved a sigh of relief. “Yeah, it will be fun. I still might have a trick or two up my sleeve on how to please a lady. So, I’ll punch my number into your contacts, and you just let me know when you’re ready to meet up.”

“Actually, let’s go tonight,” I said, my nerves burning a hole in my belly. “A change of scenery is just what I need. Pick me up at around eight?”

“Totally.”