Authors: Astrid Lee Donovan
“We won’t complain,” Nox said, studying Julie as he leaned against the pool table. “But I really don’t want you cleaning up and shit. Feels weird.”
“What if I just come and…hang out…” Julie said, blushing now harder than ever. The men shared another look, but when Nox turned back to her, he held the pool cue out. Curiously, she took it, and then eyed him.
“Well, we’ll just have to see how good you are at hanging out, then,” he said. “Don’t want some boring person coming around here bothering us for a good fuck twice a week.”
Julie’s jaw dropped, tears ready to spring into her eyes. She was putting herself out there, giving these guys what she thought they wanted, and that’s how they were going to treat her?
“Hey,” Nox said, suddenly seeming a bit more tender. “I was just kidding. Come on. I’ll grab you a beer. We’ll shoot some pool…”
“What’s that thing that guy says in that movie?” Tor interrupted, leaning on his pool cue and looking at Nox and Julie with amusement in his eyes. Julie cocked an eyebrow and Nox rolled his eyes.
“Could you be any more vague, man?”
“Nah, I got it,” Tor said, suddenly affecting a weird, unidentifiable accent. “I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.”
Nox’s head hung as he shook it slowly. Julie covered her mouth to hide her laughter. But at the same time, all three knew that he wasn’t too far off from the truth.
THE END
NIGHT WITH A BILLIONAIRE
Bad Boy Romance
Chapter One
Laney sighed, wiping her brow. It was hot behind the counter, with the ovens at her back constantly running at 400 degrees. A bell dinged and Samantha shot past her quickly, lunging for the center oven. The delicate puff pastries were extremely sensitive to heat, and if they stayed in the oven even a minute past their cooking time, they'd be ruined.
“Behind!” Samantha shouted as she maneuvered the rack of pastries to the cooling area. Laney was glad Samantha couldn't see her eyes rolling. Samantha had previously worked in big, busy kitchens, and she kept a lot of the habits she'd picked up there. In the little bakery, which had a whopping three employees, behind the counter at any given time, there was no need to shout your location. It only made the atmosphere that much more tense, and given the staff shortage and high demands of their customers on the Upper East Side, things were already plenty tense at Big Wide Blue Bakery and Coffee Shop.
Another bell dinged. This one was the front door, and Laney stepped forward to greet the customer. Her words caught inexplicably in her throat, though; instead of a cheery “hi, how are you how can I help you”, she croaked a bit.
Well, damn, she thought. The man who'd just come in was unbelievably good looking. In an extremely well tailored suit that looked like it cost more than Laney's rent and shiny leather shoes, he wasn't so differently dressed than most of the bakery's clientele. But his jet black hair, cut close to his head, piercing blue eyes, strong clean-shaven jaw and athletically lean body put him miles above any man who'd graced the shop in Laney's two years working there.
“'Lo,” he said, approaching the counter with a fetching smile playing across his lips.
“Hi,” Laney replied breathlessly, scolding herself for her reaction. She hope she didn't have any flour on her face, but when she stole a glance down at her apron she saw that it was so covered in flour, sugar, and chocolate smears that her face probably looked similar. Shrugging it off, she offered her friendliest smile. “How can I help you?”
He was studying the glass display case that held the day's fresh baked cookies, muffins, danishes and myriad treats.
“Well, I would love a coffee,” he said while still examining the goodies. “Regular. Black. No sugar. And, well, it all looks pretty good. You got a favorite?”
Laney wondered at his cavalier use of language, his cool relaxed demeanor. He didn't act like the rich boy he appeared to be. She thought she detected the slightest hint of a southern accent in his voice.
“I'm a sucker for our strawberry-banana muffins,” she said truthfully. “But these chocolate danishes are particularly good today.”
“You had me at strawberry-banana,” he said with a smile, glancing up to meet Laney's eyes. She hoped she wasn't blushing, and willed her hands not to shake as she poured out his coffee and picked out a muffin with the tongs.
“To stay or to go?” she asked, realizing she'd picked out the biggest muffin in the bunch. She wondered if that had been a subconscious hint to herself -or to him.
“Ah,” he said, looking at a silver watch on his wrist. “Make it to stay. I've got a few minutes.”
Laney nodded, placing the muffin on a plate and sliding it across the counter at him.
“There you go,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and waiting for him to take his coffee and pastry. He looked at her expectantly and she felt like she might have even more flour on her face than she thought. “What?”
“Aren't you going to charge me?” he asked with a chuckle, and she let out a small cry when she realized she'd totally forgotten. She was definitely blushing by then.
“Sorry,” she said, punching the cash register on the counter. “It's seven bucks even.”
“I was wondering if this was some sort of new business model,” he said indulgently as he slipped a twenty from his wallet and slid it across the counter. Even his wallet looked like it could pay for Laney to keep her two-bedroom room for another month. She was particularly caught up on the rent train of thought because it would be coming due in a week and she was, for the first time, genuinely worried about making ends meet. “Give away all your stuff and see if they feel like leaving money on the table.”
“Don't think the boss would survive a day experimenting with that,” Laney said as she made change. “And it'd probably come out of our paychecks.”
“People will surprise you, though, you know,” he said, not immediately reaching out to take the proffered change. His eyes seemed to dance over her own and she felt her heart hitch and stop, then begin again double time. “People mostly want to pay it forward.”
Despite her body and mind's reaction to the perfect specimen of manhood before her, she snorted at his boldly naïve statement.
“Tell that to the rich folks who come in here raising hell over the brand of soy milk we use and refusing to pay for coffee that has 'too much caffeine',” she retorted, using air quotes for emphasis. The man threw his head back when he laughed, loud and long.
“Touche,” he said, taking his change at last. Laney's eyes widened when he dropped the ten dollar bill she'd given him into the tip jar. He winked at her obvious surprise.
“To make up for all those 'rich folks',” he said, throwing the air quotes right back at her. She blushed a bit, wondering if she'd offended him despite his appreciation for the humor. He looked at his watch again and frowned.
“You know, actually, I'm going to be late. Can we make this to go?”
“Of course,” Laney said and busied herself with transferring his purchases into to-go cups and containers. “Here you go.”
When he was gone, pushing the door open with his back while he offered Laney a salute and a grin, she was left shaking her head.
“Behind!” Samantha screamed into her ear. Laney winced. With a sigh, she returned to what she'd been doing before the man had come in, and within minutes he was gone from her mind, a memory - until that night.
That night, as Laney lay in her bed asleep, she dreamed of him. A dream full of panting, mumbled words, entwined limbs. He entered her and filled her entirely, making her cry out in pleasure. She hadn't had a dream about a man like that in years, and when she awoke she was drenched in a cold sweat, her heart racing, her body tingling as though she'd come in her sleep.
Perhaps she had.
Shaking the sleep from her limbs and trying to reason with herself, she closed her eyes. But she kept seeing him, in her memory, seeing that luscious grin on his face.
Chapter Two
Laney sat at the kitchen table, a notebook open in front of her. The numbers she had been writing were numbers she'd gone over again and again. The amount of money she currently had, the amount of money that would be due for the rent, the amount she'd need for a Metrocard and groceries. No matter how she tried to fiddle with the numbers, they always added up to one thing: not enough.
She jumped slightly, having been totally absorbed in her calculations, when she heard her roommate Jenna behind her.
“Hey,” Jenna said, and Laney turned, offering a halfhearted greeting in response. Jenna saw the notebook on the table and raised an eyebrow, then looked her roommate over carefully. Laney blushed; she didn't want Jenna to know that she was having money problems. But Jenna only gave her a sympathetic look as she crossed the kitchen to take the chair across the table from Laney.
“Listen,” Jenna said, sitting across from Laney with an open, honest look on her face. “I know you're having money problems. You've been sitting around making lists of numbers for two weeks now. I know what that's like, I know....”
“No,” Laney said, blushing bright red. “Honest, Jenna you've got it wrong. I'm not...”
“It's okay,” Jenna said sympathetically. “I'm not, like, worried that we're gonna get evicted or anything. I know you'd do what you needed to. But...well, shit, Laney. We've been pretty good friends, right?”
Laney nodded slowly, wondering where Jenna was going with all this. The two girls were fairly close; a side affect of being single in New York City was that you tended to latch on the friends you could find, and though Laney had never met Jenna until answering a Craigslist ad, the two years in which they'd lived together they had plenty of split bottles of wine and pints of ice cream. She considered Jenna one of her best friends, and knew Jenna felt the same.
“Okay, well, I want you to remember that while I make this recommendation. Because I know you trust me, and I want you to keep trusting me. I would never put you in a bad situation, okay?”
Laney was growing increasingly suspicious. Was Jenna about to get her selling weed or something?
“So, you know how I'm modeling, right?”
Laney nodded again. Surely Jenna wasn't going to advise Laney to start doing some modeling gigs? She was a pretty girl, but still...
“Well, I mean, I never told you this before, but...well, it's hard being a model. Gigs aren't always available, you don't get all the shoots you apply for, sometimes you really don't know where that next meal is going to come from, you know?”
Laney bit her lip. She never thought much about Jenna's financial situation; she always covered her half of the rent, so there'd never be much reason to think about it. The most brainpower she devoted to her friend's career was jealousy that Jenna didn't have to show up to a job for eight hours everyday.
“Okay,” Laney offered as her friend paused to take a deep breath. “I didn't know that, but okay.”
“So, when I'm struggling, I have a second kind of job. And it sounds like something it's not.”
Laney cocked an eyebrow, knowing that whatever Jenna was about to tell her was going to be told in deepest confidence. She doubted she'd be doing whatever it was Jenna was about to divulge, but she promised herself not to let her friend's confession mar her opinion of her.
“I'm an escort. But not in the way you think,” Jenna said, clearly rushing to get to the explanation. “I don't sleep with the men. Well, I mean, sometimes I do, but that's just because I like them. I don't get paid anymore if I sleep with my clients.”
Laney remained silent, processing this. If anyone but Jenna had told her that, she would have immediately dismissed them as a liar – a big fat one. But Jenna?
“The men I work with, an agent sets me up with them. They're usually just visiting the city and they want someone to take out to dinner, to a party, to a club. It's like...it's like a dating service, kind of, except no one wants to wind up married, and you're getting paid for it.”
“Okay,” Laney said, narrowing her eyes. “When people say something's 'too good to be true', this is the sort of thing they're talking about, Jenna.”
“I know, it sounds crazy,” Jenna said with a small smile. “But I swear on my life, it's totally legit. I get $300 for a night out, all expenses paid, with a rich guy. I mean, they're not always the best conversationalists, and a lot of them aren't too good looking. That's why they have to pay for a date, you know? A lot of them want people to see them with a hot chick and be like 'wow, she's with him?' But I don't have to touch them, they're not allowed to touch me in any sort of sexual way.”
Laney sighed, looking down at the list of numbers she'd been muddling through. Fine. Okay. She could accept that her drop-dead gorgeous model of a roommate could be worth $300 for a date that didn't end in sex. Bully for her. So what? Jenna didn't expect anyone to pay $300 for a date with Laney, did she? Laney skipped more gym days than she made it to, and she didn't have Jenna's statuesque physique or perfect skin or blue eyes or red hair.
“So...” Jenna prodded, leaning forward expectantly.
“What? I mean, that's really cool for you, Jenna,” Laney said, exasperated now. “But I'm not a model, and I mean...that's really a weird way to make a couple of bucks. And I don't think I could demand what you do for a date.”
“What? You're crazy,” Jenna said, giving her roommate a thorough head-to-toe examination. “You're perfect; a real girl-next-door type. You could definitely make yourself some serious cash. And yeah, it's weird, but you know what else is weird? Going over the same damn numbers over and over again hoping your budget will magically rearrange itself and make more sense.”
Laney scoffed. She could see Jenna's second point; she was desperate for some quick bucks, and if she could make that much money in a night, she would. But was it even safe? And of course she still didn't believe that anyone would pay for the pleasure of her company. But then Jenna bit her lip and gave Laney her most worried look yet.
“Okay, don't be mad....”
Laney's eyes widened. Her mind began to race. Nothing good ever came from a sentence starting with “don't be mad.”
“What did you do, Jenna?” Laney shouted, feeling fear creep through her.
“I just...okay, I sent my agent a few pictures of you, and he thinks you'll be perfect for this client he's got...”
“You did WHAT?!” Laney screamed, jumping to her feet, ready to throttle her well-meaning roommate. Hurriedly, Jenna pulled out her phone and began to scroll through a screen, holding up a hand to try and stop Laney's oncoming bitch-out.
“Wait, just wait a second, okay? Wait until you see his picture. I mean, honestly, I'm a little jealous and....”
“How could you, Jenna? What pictures did you send him? I can't believe you....”
But she stopped mid-sentence when Jenna shoved her phone in front of her face. Laney's blood rushed hot. The man in the picture...she knew him. He was the man who'd come into the coffee shop. Grabbing the phone from Jenna's hand, she studied the picture. Yup, definitely him.
“This guy? Seriously?” Laney looked at Jenna in shock, and Jenna nodded triumphantly.
“He hasn't seen pictures of you, but my agent knows his type and he says you'd be perfect. And my agent would never set a girl up with anyone who wasn't really a nice guy at heart. Laney looked from the picture to her roommate to the picture again.
“How much?” she finally asked, her voice quiet. Jenna smiled even wider.
“Same as me, $300. For a date. Nothing else. No touchy, no feely, no hanky panky. Tell me you're in?”
Don't be stupid, Laney told herself as she stared into his blue eyes, his smile dimpling his strong, smooth cheeks. Too good to be true means too good to be true. You don't really know him, you met him once. Don't be stupid, Laney!
“Okay,” she said, handing the phone back to a now-squealing Jenna. “I'm in.”