Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance (23 page)

“And this is for you – I trust it’s enough to ensure our friends will receive smiling and courteous service for as long as they care to stay tonight?” And with that, he reached into his wallet, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, and slid it across the counter to her.

The way her eyes lit up, I thought the bitch was going to have an orgasm. She snatched up Ben Franklin and disappeared him into her pocket in a heartbeat.

“Sweetie, they’re my number one customers as of now.” She flashed her trashiest smile, and then strolled over to the guys, order pad in hand.

The second her back was turned, Mr. K pulled out his phone.

“Ashley, I apologize for interrupting our date this way, but there’s a bit of business I must see to – this won’t take a moment.”

Seconds later, he was talking to one of his underlings.

“Yes, I’m well aware it’s Saturday night. Indeed? Well, I’m quite sure your dinner and your family members aren’t going anywhere for the next sixty seconds. Please make a note – first thing in the morning, we need to purchase a dining establishment named Five Points Grille, located here in the city at –”

He turned to me and raised an eyebrow.

“The corner of West 63
^rd
and Halsted, boss.”
            “ – 63
^rd
and Halsted. A depressed area? I prefer to think of it as an intriguing area, full of local color and local crime statistics, but no matter – pay twice what it’s worth if you must, or more, but I want to see this property on our books by no later than ten tomorrow morning. Is that clear? Excellent. Once that’s done, you’re to come down here in person – I beg your pardon?”

He paused, listening to the frantic objections I could just imagine on the other end of the phone, then continued. “Strangely enough, I have no interest in how dangerous you perceive the area to be. In any case, the moment the deal is closed, you are to present yourself here and personally fire a dreadful woman named Melanie Something; you’ll know her by her hideous dye job and ghastly manners.”

Another pause. “No, I haven’t a single idea at the moment as to what we’ll do with the business, but I rather think I’ll have come up with something by the time you report to me tomorrow that this matter has been taken care of. Yes, I’ll be waiting to hear from you. Goodbye.”

He dropped his phone back into his pocket. “Now, where were we, Ashley? Are you ready to sleep with me yet?”

An hour later, I was working on my second milkshake while listening to Jerry tell a long and almost coherent story about a war that may or may not have existed only in his imagination. Bob was enjoying seconds on meat loaf and Eduardo was thanking Sleaze Bitch for a slice of lemon meringue pie, while Michael and Mr. K were debating the finer points of Marxist dogma and various socialist theories.

“Mr. Killane, your viewpoint from the summit of the corporate power structure blinds you to the economic realities of life among the working proletariat – I’m just not seeing any other way of looking at it.”

“Ah, Michael, but perhaps you might wish to consider the views of Herr Engels on the possibilities of managerial co-operation with the proletariat to achieve the twin goals of political enlightenment and equitable distribution of goods and services?”

The big guy then proceeded to quote Friedrich Engels at length, entirely from memory, and in the original German – whoa. Not only that, but Michael, bless his confused heart, lit up like a Christmas tree and answered him in German, as if he’d stumbled across a long-lost friend who understood him when no one else did.

 Who knew either of them spoke German? What other topics was Mr. Killane an unexpected expert on? How did this adorable mystery of a guy keep surprising me at every turn?

This was turning out to be the strangest and coolest Saturday night ever.

Thirty minutes or so and another round of handshakes later, we left the guys sitting in the diner with full stomachs as my honest-to-God date and I walked back across the street to my car, holding hands and happy as hell.

My Honda waited by the curb, unmolested – apparently it wasn’t even good enough to be worth stealing or stripping for parts, which worked out great for me. I glanced down at the front bumper as I pulled out my keys … and I had a moment of inspiration.

I dropped the keys back into my coat pocket and before I could talk myself out of it, I stepped up onto the bumper. Now I stood nearly tall enough to be eye-level with Mr. K, which made it a lot easier to grab hold of the guy and pull him into a surprise kiss.

We stood right out there in the street – well, he stood in the street, I stood tip-toe on the bumper – and sank into each other. He slipped his arms around my curves, pinning me against his hard, muscled body as our mouths blended together, our tongues tasting and exploring. It was hot and arousing, sure, but it also felt sweet, and safe, and certain.

It felt like coming home.

15. Warmth

We both knew where our night together would end.

Sure, we made a couple more stops after the diner. The big guy and his bottomless pit of a stomach insisted on pulling over to buy a couple of steaming pretzels from a street vendor, and a few blocks after that we had no choice but to stop and join the crowd at a concert by a saxophone trio in Grant Park – after all, how often do you get a chance to see three dudes playing saxophones while riding unicycles?

The night sky went from clear to cloudy somewhere in there, and rain poured down in stinging needles by the time we arrived at my apartment complex. I nosed the Honda into its accustomed parking slot – 17B, between a pickup belonging to the guy that everybody said was running a meth lab out of his kitchen, and a PT Cruiser that passed its time by leaking antifreeze because the woman across the hall couldn’t afford to get the radiator fixed – and I shut off the engine.

Mr. Killane unfolded himself out of the passenger seat. He stood next to the Honda and stared all around. He stared at the rows of dilapidated cars, at the battered dumpsters huddled at the far end of the parking lot, and at the security lights, half of which weren’t working – as usual.

“Ashley, I grant that affordable housing in this city is scarce, but I had no idea – why in the name of common sense haven’t you used your ample new salary to move to a location that doesn’t look like it belongs in a movie about life after a world-rending apocalypse?”

I thunked the driver’s door shut, locked the Honda even though no one in their right mind would bother stealing it, and raised an eyebrow at the boss.

“First things first, big man – I’m saving so I can get Mom out of that shoebox of a house and into something bigger, more comfortable, and in a less dodgy part of town, okay? Once that’s checked off my things-to-do list, I’ll be getting out of this place, trust me.”

I hurried toward the nearest stairwell. Mr. K closed the distance between us in two strides and eased his left arm around me, pulling me against his warm body.

“My lovely and obstinate Ashley, it would make so much more sense if you simply moved into my home. That would cost you nothing, and you could do it tomorrow.”

I glanced up at him. “Move fast much?”

Using his calm, reasonable, you-know-my-way-is-best voice, my newly minted boyfriend said, “I live in an obscenely large home, Ashley – I am quite serious when I say that you could move into one end of it, and we might well never see each other. Therefore, I am not moving fast, but simply being logical – will you at least consider the possibility of moving in with me?”

He tightened his arm around me as we headed for the stairs. “In the meantime, I will be increasing your security detail – whenever you are here in this beastly rat trap, there will be at least one guard keeping watch nearby, starting tomorrow morning.”

“You’re over-reacting about six ways from Sunday.”

“No, I am not. I am reacting in a measured and sensible fashion to the spectacle of someone who means a great deal to me living in a dangerous situation. Rest assured that if you continue to object to a mild increase in your security coverage, I will see to it that multiple guards are posted immediately outside your door, twenty-four hours a day. Now, shall we go inside?”

 Soldiering up three flights of stairs took most of my breath, and leaning into his powerful body claimed the rest; by the time we arrived in front of my door, I was having a hard time coming up with any remotely reasonable argument against moving into his version of Wayne Manor.

And I meant a great deal to him? Those few words warmed me and terrified me.

The only thing that scared me more was how in the space of only a few months, this strange and troubled man had come to mean everything to me.

“This feels safe.”

Devon Killane stood in the middle of my combination living room-bedroom-kitchen, staring all around himself like an astronaut surveying an alien planet. My one-room-plus-bath kingdom was small enough as it was, and when a towering, dominant, gorgeous man stood in the middle of it, it looked more like something you’d wear than an actual living space.

While I fastened all four of the locks on my door – deadbolt, knob, chain, and another deadbolt, because I knew better than to trust this neighborhood – the boss turned slowly on one heel.

He took a long look around, eyeing the hobbit-sized stove and mini-fridge huddling next to the sink along the left-hand wall. He noted the flat-screen TV mounted between two small windows on the wall across from the door; my thrift-store couch and curbside-find coffee table gathered before the TV like a fan club. A closet and shelves and the bathroom door occupied the wall to the right, and around the corner of my L-shaped cubbyhole of a place, there was the bed.

Um, yeah. The bed. That was the crown jewel, such as it was, of my realm – a king-size four-poster complete with ruffled canopy, it filled its corner of the apartment from wall to wall, like a giant cramming itself into a subway car.

I’d had to take the thing apart to get it through the door when I first moved in, but the effort was well worth it. Some people might say it was too much for such a small place, but those people didn’t get to dive into it and curl up under a pile of three or four assorted comforters on a stormy night, feeling all nested and cozy and – well, the man said it, didn’t he? – safe.

I shrugged my coat off and hung it in the closet – hi, red dress – then visited the thermostat and spun that puppy up a few notches, because people who might be doing naked things soon appreciate a warm environment to do them in.

“Outside my door, all you could talk about was how unsafe it was out there – what’s different in here? Aside from the multiple locks, I mean?”

He turned to glare at the door, as if it had committed some personal offense against him. “Locks mean less than nothing when they’re attached to a cheap, mass-produced door that any man with a will could smash into splinters with a few well-placed kicks. I’ll be sending someone around tomorrow to replace that travesty of a door with something that’s far more secure.”

“I don’t think the management here will let me make a change like that without prior approval, big guy.”

“I give something less than a rat’s ass for the rules of any property management company that can’t be bothered to provide a minimum level of security for its tenants; you’re receiving a new door tomorrow, and that is non-negotiable.”

He turned back to look around the apartment again, and his face eased into a smile. “As for what’s different in here … outside, the world is a vast, shifting arena, filled with people with unknowable desires and erratic whims, people dealing with random chance and fate and all the impossible notions of a million other desperate strangers – but on this side of your door, it’s small, close, and safe. In here, you have your own tight, measured little world, like a warm and comforting womb from which you need never emerge, if you wish.”

I decided to ignore the weirdness of my apartment being compared to a uterus. “I need to emerge and go to work so I can pay the rent, or those evil management goons will kick me to the curb and hand over this cozy little womb to somebody else.”

He turned away from the far wall and walked toward me, glancing all around at my furnished shoebox. “The smallest bathroom in my home is larger than this, and yet I feel so much more comfortable here.”

“Hey, it’s just a regular-girl kind of place …”

My voice drifted away and deserted me as he drew closer. I’d daydreamed about this moment, dreaded it, desired it … and now, it was here. 

He stopped two feet away and glanced down at his t-shirt-and-jeans ensemble.

“Speaking of being a regular sort of person, have I succeeded in pulling off the ‘regular guy’ look you requested? I feel I’ve done rather well at taking you on a normal sort of date so far, but is this the proper attire?”

MORE talking? A girl has needs, big fella.

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his skintight jeans as he continued staring down at himself. “My housekeeper thought a casual sort of suit, with an open-throated shirt and no tie, would strike just the right note – but I don’t seem to own any casual suits, and wearing any sort of suit without a tie makes me feel quite naked. One of my drivers, on the other hand, assured me that jeans and a t-shirt are the standard ‘regular guy’ uniform.”