Billionaire With a Twist 3 Read online

  Billionaire With A Twist 3

  By L I L A M O N R O E

  Copyright © 2015 by Lila Monroe

  Billionaire With A Twist 3

  Cover Design: British Empire Designs

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including emailing, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  ONE

  I knew I needed to get off the couch.

  It was just that getting off the couch seemed to require about a thousand more muscles than I had ever possessed.

  Not to mention motivation.

  I slumped back into the cushions and stared up at the dingy grey ceiling. It was a slightly less depressing sight than the melting, half-eaten carton of dulce de leche ice cream on the coffee table, or the many used tissues at my feet, or the tearstained face that would greet me if I sat up high enough to see myself in the mirror over the mantel.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Hunter.

  His face when we had last spoken, so cold, so uncaring, so carved from stone as he told me that he never wanted to see me again—

  No, no, no! I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to wallow. Maybe I couldn’t summon the emotional energy to get off this damn couch, but I could damn well make myself forget about Hunter Knox and my stupid, stupid mistake.

  Somehow.

  Alcohol was right out of the question; even the shittiest liquor just conjured up the taste of Knox bourbon in my memory, and the taste of Hunter’s lips following that. Sugar wasn’t doing such a hot job either, not that I hadn’t tried several variations on that: in addition to the ice cream that was rapidly turning to soup, my fridge sported stale donuts, brownies, a mostly-empty tub of chocolate chip cookie dough (don’t judge), and a churro I’d bought last week that was now so tough that I probably could have repurposed it as a chew toy for a pit bull.

  I should probably throw it all away.

  But that would mean getting off this couch.

  And what use were ‘should’s, anyway? I should have never gotten drunk at that party. I should never have spoken to Chuck. I should have told Hunter right away, so he wouldn’t be blindsided, so he would have had time to forgive me.

  Should, should, should.

  It was all so fucking useless. Like me.

  After the failure of alcohol and sugar, my next step had been to buy a handful of the supermarket tabloids with the silliest headlines I could find. WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO BAT-APE HYBRID and ALIEN ARTIFACT REAWAKENS ELVIS and all that; Paige and I used to steal these from the local Publix and laugh ourselves silly. Mom would’ve died if she’d found out.

  I picked up one of them half-heartedly, but its headlines were all celebrity hook-ups and break-ups—MADONNA SPOTTED IN SIZZLING ROMANCE WITH MEMBER OF SICILIAN MAFIA??, THE PRESIDENT’S SHOCKING SECRET, JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT TEARFULLY ADMITS HER HOARDING PROBLEM CAUSED WRECK OF HER MARRIAGE—and all they did to my stupid brain was remind me of my own hook-up and break-up, and how no one would ever really care about it the way millions of people apparently cared about these ones. No one would care about it except me.

  Hunter would never care.

  I let the magazine fall to the floor, to settle in with the rest of the debris of my life.

  I picked up the phone, partly out of unthinking habit, partly on the off chance that somehow its ring tone had been turned off and Hunter had called me back fourteen times, finally ready to hear my explanations and apologies.

  He had not.

  In the two weeks since he’d told me to pack my things and leave, he hadn’t called me once. And he certainly hadn’t been taking any of my calls. And I had made calls. Sober calls, drunk calls, tearful calls, angry calls. Nothing had garnered a response.

  I dug my spoon back into the melting mess of dulce de leche ice cream and glomped it into my mouth. It tasted like nothing at all, but it settled low and hard in my stomach, like a stone, like defeat.

  Ring, ring!

  My heart leapt in agonized joy, then fell again with a nearly audible thud as I looked at the caller ID. It wasn’t Hunter.

  Of course it wasn’t Hunter. He’d made it clear he wasn’t interested in hearing from me again. Stupid, stupid, stupid to have imagined that he might have missed me, that he might have changed his mind.

  Worse, the call wasn’t even from Paige or Martha, who had been checking in with me once every few days, trying to sound offhand and casual before inviting me out to ladies’ nights at local bars, or picnics with the historical society, or brunch with just the two of us—trying to pry me out of my protective shell and get me back into the real world, offers which I had all politely—and in a few more persistent cases, not so politely—declined. Couldn’t a girl just wallow in peace anymore?

  But like I said, the phone call wasn’t from them.

  It was from my boss.

  Letting it go through to voicemail would probably lose me my job at this point, so I picked up the phone and tried to sound like I had been doing something marginally more professional than lying around on my couch crying and eating ice cream.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I know you’ve taken another sick day—” there was a contemptuous emphasis on the ‘another’—“but I need you to come in today, in an hour. Marianne is out with the flu and somebody’s got to cover her workload.”

  My heart leapt again before I could remember that Marianne was the name of the other woman in the department, and she didn’t get any great jobs either. Still, there was a tiny strand of hope left: “And the Knox account?”

  He laughed, a hard hacking sound that was only barely recognizable as mirth. “Don’t kid yourself, Allison. After the hash you made of it last time, there’s no way I’m letting you more than forty miles near that one.”

  I felt the sinking sensation of worthlessness in my stomach as he spoke. He was right. I ruined everything I touched—no! No, I couldn’t let myself think things like that. I had to fight.

  I tried to rally. “Well, I could work on the Jefferson accounts, or pitch for the Insignia deal, I’ve done a lot of research on—”

  “Stick to what you know,” he sneered. “You’re lucky you did moderately well with the hygiene products last year, or you’d be out on your ass right now. There’s a new tampon line to work on, and with Marianne out with the flu you can come in and look it over, see if you can manage something simple.”

  And then he hung up on me.

  He’d never done that before. He’d been dismissive, sure, but he’d coated it in polite phrases and sweet-sounding sentiments. This…contempt…that was new.

  It probably meant he was getting ready to fire me.

  I tried to make myself feel something about this as I slowly stood, trying to remember where I’d last seen my purse and keys and everything else I’d need to make it into work. All my hopes and dreams were about to go up in smoke. I should have felt crushed.

  But I already felt crushed.

  This…this was just a grain of sand on top of the mountain that was already crushing me.

  I thought about Hunter. I couldn’t help
it; it just came to me in one painful flash: his smiling face, his strong arms, the partial glimpses of his past and the silence that hadn’t shut me out but had invited me in, invited me to really open up and let someone else in for the first time.

  But now it was all over.

  My career was on its way to being all over too.

  And I had absolutely no idea how to turn any of it around.

  TWO

  I was having trouble following the plot of this reality TV show—there was something about someone cheating on somebody who had maybe cheated on them before, and also something about a car that somebody was supposed to have bought for someone else, and also some sort of competition based on putting together a ridiculously expensive birthday—but it was okay that the plots were labyrinthine and endlessly embroiled, because the more energy I expended trying to trace complicated plotlines and digest my rubbery General Tso’s chicken, the less time I was spending wallowing in the spectacular blow up of my relationship with Hunter, and the subsequent slow, painful disintegration of my career.

  Well, in theory, anyway.

  My phone shrilled on the coffee table, and I jumped up, simultaneously muting the TV as I check the caller ID, cruel hope twisting my heart into pieces.

  It wasn’t Hunter.

  But it wasn’t my boss, either, which I tried to feel grateful for.

  It was Paige.

  I wasn’t exactly up for a feelings share with my big sister—my feelings felt too big and spiky and painfully sharp for sharing, or for anything that wasn’t locking them up tight inside me where I could be the only one who was hurt by them. I still answered the phone, though, because the last time I didn’t answer she showed up on my doorstep with a dozen cupcakes and a first aid kit.

  “Hey, Paigey, how’s it hanging?”

  I sounded horribly fake even to me. There was no way I would ever have phrased things like that if I were doing half as well as I wanted to be. And there was no way that Paige would be fooled, either.

  And she wasn’t; I could tell by the cheerfully brittle tone of her voice. It made her sound frighteningly like our mother. “Oh, nothing. Just missed you, thought we could chat.”

  I sighed. “I’m fine, Paige.”

  A pause. “Are you, though?”

  I blinked back my tears. Damn that woman for knowing me so well. Damn her for loving me. Damn her for not letting things lie, for not letting me lie to myself.

  “People get broken up with every day. It sucks and it sucks and it sucks and then it starts to suck a little less and eventually it doesn’t suck at all anymore. I can’t skip the initial suckage, though.”

  Paige gave a half-hearted little laugh. “I wish I could help you skip it, though.”

  “Dream on, dreamer.” There was a lump in my throat; I tried to talk past it like it wasn’t there. “And don’t worry so much about me.”

  “I’m your big sister. It’s in the contract.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “Of course. And if you ever do want to talk about anything, absolutely anything, you know I’m right here…”

  Oh, I wanted to talk to her so badly it hurt. I wanted to open up my mouth and spill out every toxic, horrible thing I was feeling until they were all gone and I felt scraped clean of my betrayal of Hunter—and it had been a betrayal, even if it hadn’t been on purpose, even if I had felt terrible afterward.

  Even if I still felt terrible.

  But I couldn’t do that to my big sister. I’d already vented so much to her; I couldn’t pile more things up on her shoulders. Not when she was already working so hard getting out from under the weight of my mother’s neuroticism.

  I couldn’t let Paige take on even part of my burden.

  Instead I asked, “Have you seen him?”

  It was the exact wrong thing to say to keep Paige from worrying about me, and still it slipped out of my mouth.

  Paige was reluctant. “Ally, I don’t know if this is the best—”

  I couldn’t let it go now. “Come on, Paige, I’m not stalking him or anything. I’m not going to show up naked declaring my undying love. I just…I just want to know how he’s doing.”

  I must have sounded really pathetic, because Paige admitted, “Well, I did run into him at a charity auction. It was the one for the victims of hurricanes, to raise money for housing.”

  “He looked—” My voice nearly cracked. “He looked okay?”

  “He looked fine,” Paige said quickly. Too quickly.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing!” Too quickly again. Then, “Almost nothing. It’s not important, honestly it’s not. Can you just trust me on that, Ally?”

  Visions of Hunter looking lost, his clothes worn, his frame wasted, dashed through my head. What if he was drinking? What if he wasn’t eating? What if he was—

  “Paige,” I warned.

  “It’s nothing.” She sighed. “It’s just—he had a date with him.”

  Had I felt crushed before? I felt now like all the air had been forced out of my lungs in a single punch. I felt smashed as flat as a sheet of paper.

  I was going through hell, but apparently losing me wasn’t even a blip on Hunter’s radar, not if he was carousing around town with a beauty on his arm. “Oh.”

  I’d meant it to come out noncommittal or even disinterested, but apparently my cracked and bleeding heart showed right through, because Paige backpedaled quicker than a cyclist coming across an alligator dozing on a bike trail.

  “Maybe it was a work friend,” she offered quickly, in a voice so bright and chipper she might have stolen it from a Stepford wife. “Or he might have been putting on a brave face. You know how guys are. They can’t admit when they’re hurt. Especially when they’re business hotshots, they think the tiniest scratch will have the sharks circling.”

  “Yeah, sure.” It sounded reasonable. But I knew it wasn’t the truth. “Thanks anyway.”

  Then we shared an awkward silence just long enough for me to look around my apartment and reflect on how quickly and effortlessly my entire life had gone to shit.

  “Mom finally broke the news to Dad that both daughters ruined their chance with the most eligible bachelor below the Mason-Dixon Line,” Paige said finally. I could tell by her voice she was trying to lighten the mood. “I think he was mostly disappointed that he wasn’t going to be getting a discount on bourbon anytime soon.”

  Great. Now I was disappointing even more people. Just perfect.

  I changed the subject. “So, how’s Sergei? Is he still in the picture?”

  Paige hesitated just long enough for me to intuit that she was debating letting me switch the focus of our conversation, but eventually the bait of being able to talk about her own life pulled her in.

  “No, not really. We’ve been chatting, meeting up for coffee, that kind of thing. And we kissed a few times. But, well—” I heard the rustle of her long blonde locks as she shook her head, and I could just see that pensive sad expression I knew she’d be wearing. “I’ve realized that Sergei is what I really wanted when I was twenty-four, but now that I’m older I feel like…like I just can’t be looking back at the past like that. I want something real. Something that’s going to last.”

  That was Paige, smart and sensible even in her rebellion.

  “So, what’s the future hold?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted, “but I’ve been getting awfully restless lately. New York, maybe. The art scene there has always been amazing. And if my party planning ever gets off the ground, who knows? I might have to city-hop for a while, go where the work is.”

  “Well, if you need a stepping stone, there’s always room on my couch.”

  Paige made grateful noises, but I knew she wouldn’t be taking me up on my offer.

  Paige had seen my couch, and she knew that there was only room on it for me and my self-pity.

  #

  The reality show had ended hours ago and there was never anything r
emotely interesting on at this time of night, but I knew that turning the TV off would only fill the apartment with a terrible silence that I couldn’t face. So I was flipping through channels, trying to find something that wasn’t a congressional hearing or an infomercial for a food processor that sliced, diced, and also organized your socks or some shit.

  And then the Douchebros’ ad came on.

  “Oh, baby, oh—” Creaking springs and lustful moans gave way to the sight of a barely clad, barely legal blonde sucking eagerly at the neck of a Knox bourbon bottle, held directly at the crotch line of a smirking male model.

  I wasn’t sure what I was more disgusted with: the objectification, or how insultingly unsubtle it was.

  “Yeah, swallow it,” the man urged. “You know you like the taste.”

  She murmured happy agreement, but then there came a whimper of pure need from the floor beside the bed, where multiple near-nude supermodels lay entwined. “When’s my turn?”

  The man looked straight into the camera and winked.

  KNOX BOURBON, said the letters slapped up over his face as the audio cut to a poorly sampled hip hop track. EVEN GOOD GIRLS SWALLOW IT.

  I let the remote fall out of my hands, horrified. Distantly, I heard the sound as it hit the floor.

  This was how Chuck wanted the company represented to the world?

  Hunter had to be tearing out his hair right now.

  Hunter—

  I grabbed for my cell phone and punched in his number. I had to hear his voice, had to know he was okay, had to let him know that this wasn’t me, I had never wanted this—

  “This is Hunter Knox.”

  “Hunter, I—” I began.

  “Leave a message after the beep, and don’t forget your number if it’s blocked.”

  Frustrated tears filled my eyes. Damn. Voicemail again, and I’d let it fool me. I’d heard it over and over these past few weeks until I had every cadence of every syllable memorized, and I still let it fool me because I was so desperate for his forgiveness.