Mr. Big: A Billionaire Romance (3 page)

“You must be Miss James. I’m Logan Parker. It’s wonderful to meet you. Thank you so much for taking the time to come in to my office to meet with me. I appreciate it.” He looked at her seriously and she knew he meant it; he wasn’t just being polite.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” she answered him with a smile. She was. He seemed very nice. “It’s just as easy for me to meet you here as it is anywhere else, so whatever is convenient and close for you works well for me.”

It was true, as long as it was on the island anywhere, or not far from it, she was glad to meet her clients at their businesses or their homes, although she did prefer businesses, as it kept the feel of their meetings focused on professionalism. Mia had a small office in SoHo, but she rarely met anyone there. She preferred to use it for her work on her client’s files rather than meeting them there in person.

He tipped his head backward behind him in a directional gesture. “Would you care to come back to the office and we can get started?” he asked in a light tone.

She nodded and picked up her bag, following him as he led the way. She looked around at the other offices they passed on the way to his at the end of the hallway. Upon entering it, she found herself surrounded by floor to ceiling glass windows, barely off white carpet, and light wood furnishings. There were more plants in corners and on flat surfaces, and a softly bubbling water fountain on a low table by one window. The environment was peaceful.

Mia looked up at him and gave him a smile, and he asked her to have a seat on the sofa against the far wall. She took the seat and he gave her bottled water from the small refrigerator in his mini bar.

Pulling out her tablet and set it on the table before them, opening the file she had created for him. She turned the tablet toward him as he sat beside her. “If you look here, you will see some of the current placements for your investments.” She let him take a cursory glance at the page and then she swiped it to the next one. “These are some of my immediate recommendations for you, and we can go over why I recommending each of them for you,” she began.

She explained her suggestions to him in detail, and she knew that he was immersed in their discussion; he was asking pertinent questions and watching everything she did, but he was also watching her, now and then out of the corner of his eye, and she knew that he wasn’t looking at her entirely with a business perspective.

He kept their conversation business-centered and was polite and thorough in his discussions with her. When she was finished with her presentation and offering him her suggestions, he turned to her with a pleasant and warm smile.

“I like everything you advised me to look into, and I’m going to go with all of your suggestions,” he told her earnestly. “You have a clever and quick mind, and I can see that nothing really gets by you. I feel confident that my money and my investments would be well-managed in your hands.”

She grinned and as he stood up, she followed suit, reaching for his hand to shake it. “I appreciate that! Thank you so much. I will take excellent care of your investments for you,” she answered. He nodded and shook her hand, and he held it a moment longer before letting it go and giving her a sweet smile that had nothing at all to do with business.

“Miss James…” he began, his gaze holding her eyes. She shook her head slightly at him.

“Please, feel free to call me Mia,” she said kindly.

He nodded. “Thank you. Mia,” he said, hesitating only for the span of a few breaths. “I wonder if you would like to have dinner with me.” He watched her face carefully and continued, “I do want to keep business and pleasure separate, of course, but I find you charming and irresistible, and I’m enormously curious about you, outside of your professional capacity with me. Have dinner with me tonight, please?” he asked confidently.

She felt pleased at his invitation and the way he had asked her. It wasn’t a typical come-on, and it made her want to do something she rarely did, and that was mix her business with a little pleasure. She lowered her lashes just a little, giving him a bit of a flirtatious smile.

“I think I’d like that,” she answered him.

He nodded back to her. “Very good. Shall I pick you up or would you like to meet me at the restaurant? I was thinking Bella Italia north of here on 5
th
Ave. Do you like Italian?” he asked hopefully.

She laughed a little Bella Italia was four blocks from Carly’s where she and her friends always met. She loved the neighborhood. “I’ve actually been there before. I really like that restaurant. I’ll meet you there tonight.” She told him, picking up her bag and turning toward the door just a little way. “What time would you like me to be there?”

He grinned at her. “Let’s say six?” he asked, his eyebrows raising slightly in the asking.

“Six it is. I’ll see you then. Thank you, Logan.” She gave him another big smile and walked down the hall from his office, wondering if he was watching her. When she got to the end of the hall, she turned and glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was watching her, and she lifted her hand and gave him a small wave.

Feeling sexy and empowered, she looked straight ahead as the elevator doors closed in front of her and she felt a bubble of triumph growing inside of her. She had landed an enormous account, as well as a hot date. The day had gotten off to an excellent start.

The rest of her time that day was spent in her office in SoHo, going over files and making changes to various investments for her clients and for herself. She had lunch in Chinatown, and then at the end of day, she sent an email off to Ava, Maddie, and Liam, double-checking that they were all still available for cocktails the next night at Carly’s. They each responded a short while later that they were, and they agreed to meet the following evening.

She didn’t say anything about Logan. She wanted to save that gossip for their visit. Instead, she left her office a little early and went home to change and ready for her date. She slipped into a skin-tight black dress and black heels, letting her hair down and adding a matching set of gold earrings and a gold necklace. She looked elegant and refined, she decided, as she walked out of her apartment and headed to Bella Italia to meet Logan.

He was waiting for her when she got there with a bouquet of red roses in his hands. As she walked toward him, his face lit up and he smiled widely at her, giving her a hug and handing the roses to her.

“These are lovely,” she told him as she happily buried her nose in the blooms. “Thank you so much.”

He watched her with no shyness whatsoever. “They pale in the shadow of your beauty,” he said softly, gazing at her face and into her eyes. She blinked in surprise and thanked him again, and they were escorted to their table.

All throughout the evening he asked question after question, not discussing much about himself, but seeming to be fascinated with getting to know her. At the beginning of their dinner, it seemed as if everything was the fairly standard “getting to know you” part of a first date. It was a part of the date that she had gotten fairly good at, having been on so many first dates. By the end of the evening, she felt as if she was being interviewed for a position, and she wasn’t pleased about it.

They walked out of the restaurant and he looked satisfied with how their night had gone. She was slightly annoyed, but she had had a good time most of the evening, and he was handsome, well off, and a new client, so she smiled up at him as they walked out onto the street.

“Thank you. It was a fun evening,” she told him simply, her mind more on the taxi she would be hailing in moments than on the goodbye she was giving him.

He grinned. “It was fun! You’re quite a lady,” he told her, stepping closer to her.

With her mind on the taxi, she wasn’t paying quite enough attention to Logan, and she was a little startled when he wrapped his arms around her and swept her up into an embrace. She lifted her chin suddenly to look up at him and in that moment, he pressed his lips to hers, kissing her softly, moving his mouth over hers tenderly as he pressed her body to his. She was caught completely by surprise at first, and didn’t respond right away, but the longer he held her and kissed her, the more curious she became, and she kissed him back, though with a little less enthusiasm than he kissed her. At long last he let her go, his eyes slightly glazed over, his mouth parted, and his lungs breathless.

“Wow! You are something else, Mia.” He breathed heavily.

He moved his hands to her shoulders and she turned the corners of her mouth up slightly and stepped backward, subtly freeing herself from his grasp. He gave her a naughty grin and she turned and waved to hail a cab. One pulled up to the curb right away.

“Thank you Logan, you have a good night,” she told him with a wave of her hand and a parade queen smile. He stepped forward and reached for the cab door as she slid into the seat.

“Well, I’ll call you. We should do this again really soon,” he said, still breathless as he held tight to the cab door.

She nodded and reached for the door handle and he reluctantly let go of the door, pressing it closed between them, watching her as if there was nothing else in the world but her, sitting in the back of a big yellow car. She turned to the driver and gave him her address, and the cab sped off into the night.

***

The next morning she ignored three phone calls from Logan and smiled when a delivery person brought a huge bouquet of roses to her office in SoHo. The card attached to them was sweet. He thanked her for their night and hoped to see her again soon.

Mia put the roses on her desk and went back to work. She was intently working when her office phone rang two more times, and the caller ID showed it to be Logan. She ignored both calls as she focused on her work, and an hour later she discovered two emails in her inbox from him.

She sighed and frowned, wondering if going to dinner with him had perhaps not been the best idea. At four that afternoon when she locked her office door, she had still not responded to any of his attempts to contact her, save for one email back, thanking him for the evening and the flowers.

At six, she was seated in Carly’s waiting for her friends to arrive, and they showed up as she expected them to. Liam and Maddie arrived within two minutes of each other, and Ava was ten minutes late. She cited rush hour hassles and they smiled at her and hugged her. Kisses and hugs out of the way, they sat down and ordered their drinks, and Mia launched into telling them about Logan. She had waited long enough, and she wanted to dish a little on him. She took a sip of her cosmopolitan and then looked around the table at them.

“So I met with a new client yesterday morning. He is a heavy hitter on Wall Street, so I was really hoping to land his accounts, but I wound up landing a date with him last night as well,” she began. Her friends’ eyes grew wide and Ava giggled and gave her a wink.

“Did you spend the night with him?” she asked hopefully. She loved steamy gossip.

Mia shook her head. “No, we met up at Bella Italia,” she began.

“Up the street?” Maddie asked tilting her head slightly.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Mia answered. “Anyway, we had a nice dinner and he’s a really nice guy, but he didn’t do much talking about himself. He just kind of asked me tons of questions all night. By the time we left, I felt like I had been on a job interview, unless he was interviewing me for something else, and I can tell you right now, I don’t want to know about it if he was,” she said, rolling her eyes a little.

Liam lowered one brow. “He was nice but trying too hard?” he asked, evaluating what she had shared with them.

She nodded. “Way too hard. He had a dozen roses for me at the restaurant,” she said with a small smile. Ava put her hand on her heart and swooned a little.

“That’s so sweet!” she cooed.

“…and then he sent roses to me at my office today,” Mia continued.

Maddie raised an eyebrow and turned her head slightly in surprise.

“Then he called me about five times today and sent me two emails,” Mia finished, lifting her glass to her mouth for a sip of her cocktail.

Liam frowned and knitted his brow. “He’s trying far too hard. Leave now,” he stated flatly.

Mia looked at him and lifted her palm in the air in agreement. “Right? That’s what I thought. The man is just a little too overboard. A little too inquisitive and too desperate. I don’t know why, he’s rich and good looking. He doesn’t have to go after women like he’s coming after me.”

Ava was still grinning romantically. “What’s his name?” she asked with a grin, looking up through her eyelashes.

“Logan Parker,” Mia answered as she set her glass down.

Maddie choked on her drink and covered her mouth for a moment as she swallowed. All of the friends turned to look at her. She glanced around the table and smiled; her cheeks turning a soft shade of pink beneath her freckles.

“What? I know him,” she said quietly, as a smile played at the corner of her mouth.

Liam raised an eyebrow. “Really? How well?” he asked in a teasing tone.

She shrugged. “Well, I can tell you he’s one hell of a lover. I still think about him now and then. That man can rock your world in the sheets, but this clingy behavior he’s showing right now? Yeah. That’s just the beginning, Mia. I was sick of him after the third date, and no matter how hot the sex was, I just couldn’t take the clinginess outside of the bedroom. It drove me nuts. It took me four months to finally get the message through to him to leave me the hell alone.”