Sway With Me (Inspiring the Greek Billionaire) (8 page)

These days, she indulged in purchasing new designer bras and matching panties whenever the whim possessed her. She’d rather live on Ramen Noodles for a month than wear bargain basement cotton underwear. She may not have much to cover, but what she did have was covered in luxurious silk and satin. The idea that Ryan saw that piece of her she kept hidden from everyone else sent a rush of warmth and dampened her Stella McCartney panties.

If he could play dumb then so could she. She picked up a pillow that had fallen on the floor and fluffed it before laying it at the head of the bed. “You’re right. We can get more done if we each work on different areas of the house. Besides, we agreed we’re nothing more than roommates sharing space. I can understand after spending the night together one of us might get the wrong idea of where things are going between us, and we’d already decided it wouldn’t be a good idea.” Refusing to look at him, she continued fussing with the pillows then moved on to tucking the blanket under the mattress. She bent over at the waist trying not to pay attention to him. Her plan backfired.

Inching her way around the front corner of the bed, she bumped into something solid. His hand cupped her shoulder sending another wave of heat through her core.

“Which one of us got the wrong idea, Portia?” he asked softly.

She sucked in a breath and stood to face him. “I didn’t mean to imply either one of us actually got the wrong idea, just that it was possible since we’d slept in the same bed together.”

The corners of his mouth twitched as if he was suppressing a smile. “I’m a big boy. I promise you, one night in bed with you did not change the way I feel one bit.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Well . . . good. Me, either.”

“Come on, let’s grab a cup of coffee on our way to Home Depot. My treat.” He bumped her shoulder with his before he walked out of the room.

She meant it. Sleeping with Ryan hadn’t changed her feelings at all. She wanted him before and she still wanted him. Thank goodness he wasn’t attracted to her because if he made a move, she didn’t think she’d have the power to resist him. No, it was better this way. And though her mind completely understood her position, she’d have to spend some time convincing her lady parts all the reasons why having sex with Ryan Sullivan would be a terrible idea.

Chapter 8

Fie, what a question’s that

If though wert near a lewd interpreter!

William Shakespeare,
Merchant of Venice
, act 3, scene 4

“I can’t believe you’ve never been inside Home Depot before,” Ryan said as he started the car to head to Braden’s house.

They had spent the last two hours shopping for items they’d need to fix up the mansion. He’d concentrated on things like tools, a ladder, flashlights, electrical testing equipment, and gloves, while Portia had practically bought out the entire cleaning section. He had a hard time thinking of such a delicate woman scrubbing mold off of dishes and cleaning toilets, but then again, she’d grown up in communes, shelters, and tents.

He wondered why she’d lived like a nomad when her aunt had been married to a billionaire. If he’d grown up as she had, rather than in a mansion with all his basic needs fulfilled without a second thought, he’d probably be bitter. Yet, she didn’t seem to hold it against his family. In a way, he envied the way she didn’t fixate on the past, but instead, focused on her future.

A clicking noise caught his attention and he looked over at Portia as she tried unsuccessfully to get her seatbelt latched. He reached over the center console and stayed her hand. “Here, let me help.” With a blush on her cheeks, she released the belt and he grabbed it, easily buckling it.

“The tongue is a little bent so it doesn’t always fit properly into the buckle. You have to play with it a little.”

She mumbled her thanks, the blush spreading down her neck just before she glanced out the window. “It’s not as though we had a Home Depot at every corner. I think there was one store in all of New York City. But, then again, why would I have ever needed it? I lived in a shoebox apartment. If I needed something fixed, I called the super. And then, thirty days later,
voilà
, it was fixed.”

She may have capable hands, but she didn’t know the first thing about maintaining a home. And he was planning to use that to his advantage to show her how difficult it was to own a house this size. “Have you ever fixed a pipe?”

She raised an eyebrow as if she was on to him. “No. Have you?”

He thought back to his own childhood. His father wasn’t the type to show his sons how to fix a sink. He did teach them how to find the very best plumber in the area and make sure they’d come running on a minute’s notice day or night. “Not in a house, no. But it can’t be harder than fixing an exhaust pipe in my car.”

She cracked a smile. “I don’t think it’s as easy as you think. Maybe we should get some quotes for a contractor.”

“Trust me. No one is going to work on what we’re getting from Uncle Al’s estate. It’s barely enough to cover the supplies. No, if we want to have this house ready to sell in three months, we’ll have to do the work ourselves.”

“Except I don’t want to sell, and I’m not working on a deadline. I’m fixing it up for me, not for some unknown buyer.”

He gave her a quick glance. “Portia, how do you suppose you’re going to be able to buy out my half?”

“You seem like a decent guy.” Her hand squeezed his shoulder. “I’m sure we can come to some agreement. Some way to make us both satisfied.”

The low, raspy tone of her voice and the suggestiveness of her words sent his blood flow south. He knew exactly how to keep them both satisfied—nights spent sliding in and out of her tight, wet heat, bringing them to climax over and over. Unfortunately, he didn’t think that’s what she meant. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?” she crooned, her fingers brushing up and down his arm. If she didn’t stop, he’d run the car right off the road.

“Are you offering to sleep with me?”

She gasped. “What? No! What gave you that idea?”

“You said we’d come to an agreement where we’d both walk away satisfied.” He looked at her hand on his arm then up at her face. As realization sunk in, her face turned pink and she snatched back her hand. “What other message did you think I’d get from you touching me like that?” Shifting in his seat to make room in his jeans, he chuckled, amused by her discomfort. He shouldn’t be the only one uncomfortable.

She sat tall in her seat and pointed her feet straight ahead. “I didn’t . . . I would never offer sex as a form of payment. I just thought we’d come to some sort of payment arrangement, you know, like you’d hold the mortgage and I could pay monthly with a balloon payment at the end. How did you ever get sex from that?”

How had she lived in New York on her own and yet still be so naïve? He couldn’t help feeling protective of her—even though he was the one she needed protecting from. “You must not know men well, because we get sex out of everything. And for future reference, if you leave it to a man to come up with payment arrangements, don’t act surprised when he tries to collect it in your bed.” Although he tried to keep his gaze on the road, her movement that he caught out of the corner of his eye drew his attention.

Portia had lifted her leg and straightened it out in front of her.  

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Your leg looks as though it’s trying to detach itself from your body and make a clean getaway.”

“It does?” She glanced at her own leg and quickly lowered it, crossing it at her ankles. “I have a couple of nervous habits. One of them is to dance no matter if it’s appropriate or not. I’ve danced for so many years, my body doesn’t know how to stop. I’ll try to rein it in.”

“No, don’t,” he said a bit too enthusiastically. Her innocence was doing a number on him. He softened his voice. “I like it. It’s cute.”

She snorted. “Cute? No one has ever called me cute.”

He made a left into Braden’s neighborhood. “Then you’ve been hanging out with a bunch of idiots because you’re just about the cutest woman I’ve ever met. Not to mention sexy as hell.”

He didn’t know how a woman as beautiful as Portia could have such low self-esteem. He’d met hundreds of debutantes throughout the years and not one of them held a candle to her. What they did have, they accentuated and held their heads high with confidence. He decided right then he’d make it his mission to instill a bit of that into Portia over the next few months. It was the least he could do.

He took a peek at her. “You’re blushing.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “My other nervous habit. And don’t say it’s cute. It’s not. I turn into a lobster when I’m embarrassed and when I . . .”

His pants grew tight again as he let his imagination finish her sentence and visualize her head thrown back in climax. “When you . . . ?”

“I don’t want to say it.” She covered her face with her hands. “I don’t want to put that image in your head.”

“Now you’re putting all sorts of images in my head.” Naughty, dirty, sexy images of the two of them in positions only a flexible dancer could manage.

“Stop it.” She playfully punched his shoulder.

He shrugged. “It’s like those pop-ups on the Internet. I can’t prevent it.”

She shifted in her seat, giving him reason to believe he wasn’t the only one with a creative imagination. “Let’s change the subject.”

“Fine, but no talking about agreements. It will only keep my imagination running wild.”

The car filled with silence, and despite his good intentions, images of her sweaty and blushing naked body continued to run rampant through his brain. He didn’t know how to stop.

“It’s nice of Braden to let me borrow a car. Is he seeing anyone?”

Okay, that did it. Nothing like the name of his best friend on her lips to kill his libido. “He’s seeing lots of people. Why?”

“Just curious.” She drummed her fingers along the door handle. “So he owns the restaurant?”

“Yes, among other things,” he said slowly, wondering why she had such an interest and why it bothered him so much.

“What other things?”

“Why all the interest in Braden? You should know he’s not the kind of guy to settle down. He dates. A lot. Not that he’s not a good guy, he is. He’s the best. But he’s not your type.”

He might have only known her a day, but he already knew she deserved a lot more than what Braden could give her. Hell, she deserved a heck of a lot more than what
most
men could give her.

She threw back her head and laughed.

“What? Why are you laughing?”

“You think I’m interested in Braden?” She made it sound like Braden was the equivalent of a third-world dictator.

He instantly relaxed his shoulders which until now, he hadn’t even noticed had tensed. “Most women are.”

“Well, I’m not most women. I was asking because he and Viola acted strangely around each other. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t the type of guy to hurt her.”

He’d met Braden in grade school when they fought over who got to sit with Sally Marks on the tire swing. When she’d told them she didn’t want either one of them on the swing because boys had cooties, they’d discovered they’d both preferred to play in the woods behind the playground. They’d gotten in trouble together more times than he could count and Braden had always had his back, usually taking the fall for Ryan’s stupid mistakes. He trusted Braden with his life. That didn’t mean he wanted him with Portia. Viola on the other hand, not a problem.

He pulled into Braden’s driveway. “He’s not going to chop her up into little pieces if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not. I’m worried about her heart.”

“Viola seems like she can take care of herself.” She kind of scared him a bit with all her piercings and weird hair. He didn’t see one iota of resemblance between the sisters, although Viola was also beautiful in her own way. She wasn’t Braden’s type at all. Braden preferred women like Portia.

“I know she comes off as tough, but she’s a sensitive soul. Even more than me. She’s just able to hide it better.”

He shut off the car’s engine and pivoted in his seat to face her. “You two are really close, huh?”

She nodded. “We were once upon a time. Moving from school to school bound us together. The last few years, we’ve drifted apart. That’s why it’s so important to me to own a permanent home. My hope is it will convince her to stay in Detroit. She lives the same kind of life as my mother, which is fine for some people, but not Viola. We used to curl up together under the stars and dream about having a roof over our heads. She didn’t want to stay on the road. I guess I hoped if Braden and she had something going—”

“I wouldn’t count on that. If anything happens between them, it’s just fun and games. Braden doesn’t want anything serious. He’s maintained since we were kids that he’ll never get married or have children.”

She released her seat belt. “I can understand that.”

“You can?”

“Sure. I don’t think marriage and kids are for everyone. I’ve never met anyone I’d want to tie myself to for the rest of my life, and kids need stability, something I’m not sure I could give.”

Her statement shocked him. Not because of the words themselves, but that she actually seemed to believe what she was saying.

“I don’t believe that. You seem as though you’re pretty stable.”

Her hand rested on her chest. “Me? I grew up with a single mom who was convinced she was a Muse meant to inspire creativity in her male soul mates. Well, if my dad was her soul mate, how could he leave her to bring up a child on her own?”

All right, her mom sounded like a world class wackadoo. He didn’t believe in Muses any more than he believed in the Tooth Fairy, but Portia wasn’t anything like her mother and he sure as hell wasn’t anything like her father. He’d been close to his own father once upon a time, before Ryan had screwed it all up by refusing to come clean about how he’d lost millions of dollars.

He unbuckled his seatbelt and took her hand, entwining his fingers with hers. “Not all men are like that.”

She gave him a sad smile. “I know. But it’s not as though I had a great role model when it comes to being a mom.” She squeezed his hand and released their hold, as if she appreciated his comfort but didn’t require it any longer. “And look at me. I’m in my mid-twenties, and I’m both penniless and jobless.”

“But not homeless.”

“No, not now. But in three months? I could be sleeping on a cot in a homeless shelter.”

Raised with two loving parents in a mansion, he had no idea what it was like to be homeless. He’d never realized how much he took for granted. He tried not to feel guilty about his plan to sell their home. After all, once they each got a couple of million in their bank accounts, she wouldn’t ever have to worry about having a roof over her head again, and he’d be on his way to proving to his family that he could be trusted.

“I’d never let that happen to you.”

She reached out and patted his thigh. “That’s sweet of you to say. We’ll see what happens. For now we’re roomies. Marriage and children aren’t on either of our agendas. But sex? That’s an altogether different story.” She shot him a sly smile and opened her car door to greet an approaching Braden.