The Billionaire's Alibi: The Proposition (2 page)

“Will!” she cried, and he could tell she had just orgasmed again. The sensations were overwhelming her, but he kept fucking her, slowly, then quickly, pulsing over her, knowing that she liked it—knowing that even though she’d already orgasmed, she wanted at least one more before he came inside her. So many women were ruined by lesser lovers who didn’t know how to get results. But he had perfected the art of the one night stand; the only thing that would keep Jaycee from hating herself in the morning was giving her one incredible night with the billionaire’s son.

On her third cry, like a charm, he released himself, shuddering as he came inside her. When the sensations died down, he rolled off of her and onto his back, breathing heavily beside her.

“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked between breaths.

He turned to look at her. Her entire body twitched, and he could tell she was feeling the aftereffects of the orgasms he’d given her.

“Shh.” He climbed out of bed, switched off all the lights, and got back under the sheets, wrapping his arms around her bare body. It was his least favorite part of the night, but he knew it made women happy. After everything they gave him, this was his way of giving back.

“Goodnight,” he whispered, subtly encouraging her to skip any pillow talk. Cuddling was where he drew the line. The moon peeking between the curtains lit up her mascara-laden eyes before they fluttered shut. He closed his eyes and fell asleep in minutes.

When he woke up the next morning, he slid out of bed and dressed quietly so as not to wake her. In his suit pocket was a sapphire necklace he’d been saving for her, and he pooled the strand onto the bar counter. He gave the same necklace to many of the women he slept with—a simple white gold chain with twelve sapphire studs adorning it. It was his signature, her prize for landing a night with him—something to show off while gossiping about him to her friends over mimosas.

Then, with barely a look back at the sleeping form, he scrawled a note and placed it beside the necklace before disappearing into the dewey, silent, 5am hour.

Jaycee,

Thank you for the incredible night.

Yours,

WHH

ALEXA

ALEXA rushed through the grocery store’s doors, a hastily scribbled list in hand. She had just dropped off Matt and Monica at a soccer game and voice lesson, and now she had to pick up a long list of snacks for the barbecue Frannie was hosting later that day.

She wasn’t completely sure how running errands ended up under her nanny job description, but Frannie had money, so job descriptions didn’t matter. From the time Alexa had dropped the kids off at their activities a half an hour ago to finding a parking spot and entering the store, Frannie had already texted her with three more items to add to her list. Alexa grabbed a cart, still not completely believing that catering to the whim of a very wealthy family was her life now.

She trekked down the aisles, reminding herself that the nanny job—which was actually more of a nanny-plus-housekeeper-plus-errand-runner-plus personal-assistant-plus-house-manager job—wasn’t the end of her career in corporate America. After all, she had graduated from Northwestern at the top of her class, and she could do better than this once she figured out exactly what went wrong.

Alexa walked through the aisles, plucking item after item off the shelves. A year earlier, she had been plucking number after number from spreadsheets and databases at McKinsey—but after a year of service, they’d unexpectedly laid her off. Ever since then, she had jumped from job to job, never settling into anything substantial, barely able to get the big firms to even interview her. Desperate, she’d widened her prospects to searching for positions in several other industries, but nothing had come through so far.

Until something did, she was a slave to the rich, earning a mere $15 an hour in a city where the cost of living exceeded her means while struggling to come up with another excuse to defer her student loans.

Technically, she wasn't even qualified for her current nanny job. She had lied on her resume to get it and had never particularly liked being around kids. Frannie had quickly figured out that she had never so much as babysat before, and after the incident in which Alexa let Monica buy an inappropriate outfit at the mall, Frannie was operating on the last of her goodwill. She had told Alexa earlier that week that if she messed up again, she’d be finished.

Alexa grabbed a bag of potato chips, checking the label to make sure they were the fat free kind that Frannie requested before moving onto the freezer aisle.

Her hand fell to the door handle, the reflection in the glass case startling her. Did she really look that bad? She knew her hair was gross and stringy, as she was running too late for a shower that morning, and in her frazzled state, she had put on a shirt she’d found strewn across her dresser—one that was stained and at least two seasons out of style.

But she didn't realize that the bags under her eyes were so dark and heavy. She looked like crap, which wasn't surprising, because she felt like crap, and had for awhile.

“Watch it!” a woman shouted. Alexa pulled back her cart, just as she was about to ram another shopper.

“Sorry!”

Even the little boy in the child’s seat seemed to glare at her as the mom wheeled her cart away.

Alexa sighed and grabbed a tub of ice cream and tossed it into the cart.

She knew she shouldn’t be mad at Frannie—she was just trying to find a good nanny who could take care of her kids, run errands, clean her house, and come running at the snap of a finger. But a part of Alexa felt like the world owed her something, something better than the life she was currently living.

All throughout high school, she had been so sure that her life was on the right track. She had made all the right moves, doing everything she was told to supposedly get a good job. Yet, here she was, checking items off a grocery list like a stay-at-home mom—only Alexa didn’t even have kids or a husband to justify how far she had fallen.

She scanned the rest of her list, noticing that her cart was beginning to fill up. All that was left to grab were the steaks for that night’s barbecue, which she probably should’ve gotten before the ice cream, now that she thought about it. She pushed her cart toward the meats section at the back of the store in a hurry.

There was only one other shopper standing in line, a guy wearing a navy, zipped up hoodie. He was tall from the back, and he had that adorable light brown hair that made her think he was always in the sun. He shifted from one foot to the other, arms crossed uneasily. She wondered what he could possibly be anxious about?

As she pulled her cart up beside him, his profile surprised her—he was unexpectedly handsome, with high cheekbones and dangerous, dagger-like eyes. He was the type of guy who dressed too nice to be a real-life version of Grand Theft Auto, but he had that edge, a wildness about him, like an animal that wouldn’t be tamed. He was the fantasy without all the trappings of a harsh reality—no drug addiction, no running from the law, no heists or murders.

She took a step closer to get a better look at him, pretending to study the kebabs in the display case, but her phone buzzed in her pocket, distracting her—another text from Vivian, her college roommate from Northwestern. She was in town for a few days and was begging Alexa to meet her at a club that she had never even heard of.

She didn’t want to see Vivian. She didn’t think she could face her past, not yet. Vivian was one of the few people who knew her before the big breakup with her boyfriend, before the cycle of unemployment, before the rejection from Northwestern’s MBA program, despite her 3.8 GPA as an undergrad. She was the vivacious friend who had encouraged Alexa to party instead of study, who had maintained a rotating door of men in and out of their dorm room, who had stayed out until four in the morning even when she had a test the next day, who had nurtured dozens of best friends who each adored her.

Vivian had blown off everything during college, but now she was the one who had the posh job in Washington, DC. Vivian was where she should have been, and she didn’t think she could handle the unfairness of it all after everything that had happened in recent months.

She shoved the phone back in her pocket, text unanswered. Besides, she reasoned, she had been looking forward to having the apartment to herself for the entire night. Her ex-boyfriend had a date, or at least she assumed—he had added a woman’s name and dinner reservation to his calendar on the fridge—and if Chase was being Chase, he would try to sleep with her, thankfully at her place instead of the apartment they were forced to share.

Alexa glanced up as the butcher handed the tall, handsome man his order. The man gave her a sidelong look before grabbing the plainly wrapped packages and neatly folding them under his elbow. He ducked his head as he turned away, but he hadn’t secured his purchases well enough—one of the packages slipped and fell to the floor in his hurry. The tape securing the wrapping had come loose, causing a gap between the paper and its contents.

“Sir?” Alexa immediately bent down to pick it up. “Sir, you dropped something.” The man backtracked toward her in a matter of seconds, panic reaching his eyes.

“I’ll take that,” he said, reaching out to grab his purchase from her—but not before Alexa’s eyes fell on the transfer between their hands, giving her a closer look at the package’s contents. A bag of white powder.

Her smile faded as her mind registered what she was seeing. The package fell from her grasp and she stepped back. Behind the counter, the butcher’s eyes widened, and he mumbled something nervously before fleeing to the back office.

“Oh my God,” she said, avoiding the man’s eyes. She turned and walked back to her cart as calmly as possible, hearing him snatch the package off the ground.

She spun around. “I won’t say anything,” she whispered. “I swear. Everything is fine.” So much for the fantasy. She had been wrong—her tall, handsome man was into drugs, and God knew what else. The last thing she needed today was to be a witness in a drug bust, especially because she had to pay for all her groceries and pick up the kids in less than an hour.

She gripped the handles of her cart and pushed it toward the front of the store, hoping the man would ignore her as she wanted to ignore him.

And hoping she could forget what she saw.

WILL

“WAIT!” Will cursed to himself and ran after the girl who had, out of pure dumb luck, been a witness to his transaction.

When he reached her, he grabbed her elbow.

She flipped around, her eyes wide. The words flew from her mouth in a hushed voice. “You don’t have to worry about me. I won’t tell anyone, I didn’t see anything, nothing happened.”

“At least let me buy your groceries.” He tried to remain collected, like buying illegal drugs in a grocery store was just like picking up a bag of chips or 6-pack of soda. He had wanted to get in and out of the store unnoticed, but this new complication changed his plans.

“That’s unnecessary,” she said, finally regaining her composure. “They’re not for me anyway, so you wouldn’t be doing me a favor. My employer would just ask questions.”

“Who’s your employer?”

“Does it matter?”

He followed after her, not letting her out of his sight. She didn’t seem to know who he was, but he couldn’t take any chances. He was one of the one-percenters, and everyone loved to see a rich kid get what was coming to him.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m just trying to make conversation. Will you at least tell me your name, so I can thank you properly?”

She brought her cart to a halt, turning to look him in the eyes for the first time, though they were narrowed suspiciously. “Alexa,” she said. “And you are?”

“You don’t know?” Will laughed a little, knowing that women fell hard for his soft chuckle.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Ryan Gosling! I totally didn’t recognize you in that hoodie.” She rolled her eyes and pushed her cart forward again. It took him a moment to realize she was being sarcastic.

“Ha. Ha. Ha.” he said mockingly. “No, really—you have no idea who am?”

She made a face. “I know that every time you open your mouth, your charm dissipates just a
little
bit more.” She raised her hand, pinching together two fingers to make a point. “I already told you, I’m not interested in your secrets, and I’m not interested in your money.”

She made her way to the checkout, so he grabbed a pack of Twizzlers off the shelf and lined up behind her, adding several packs of gum to his purchases to distract from the meat packages.

“Come on,” he said. “I’m trying to be friendly.”

She laughed, but it wasn’t the cute laugh that he normally coaxed out of women. This laugh was aimed at him. “Typically when people are trying to be friendly they start by introducing themselves, not by offering up a bribe.”

She unloaded her cart onto the conveyer belt. Will watched the young cashier slowly scan every item, one by one. He needed a game plan—if she didn’t want him, and she didn’t want his money, what did she want? He didn’t believe that she could just let this go. At some point in the future, she was going to see a picture of him on a gossip site like Zoey Fromme, and she was going to remember him.