Banking Her: A Billionaire Bad Boys Novella (Book 2.5) (Bad Boy Billionaires) (6 page)

“What the hell?” I muttered when the blinding lights of the bathroom had me covering my eyes with both hands.

“Sorry, honey, but you have to get moving if you want to make your flight.” Thatch set me down on the bathroom counter and left his warm hands at my hips.

I groaned again. “I’ll catch the next flight.”

He laughed and reached up slowly, moving my hands away from my eyes with a gentleness I never personally possessed. “Here,” he said as he placed a hot mug into my hands. “It’s half-caf so you can drink another cup of coffee on the plane.”

I lifted the cup to my nose and inhaled my favorite morning aroma while Thatch turned on the shower.

“It’s a long way to San Diego. Can I drink two more cups on the plane?”

He turned to me with narrowed eyes. That was his way of saying no without actually saying no. Apparently, I responded better to indirect orders.

I scrunched my nose, but otherwise, put up no more fight. I knew I didn’t need to have more than one more cup, and he knew I knew it. I couldn’t even throw it in his face that he got to eat and drink whatever he wanted because it wasn’t true. Sure, he could have, but he didn’t. When I couldn’t have something, he didn’t have it either. Sometimes I wondered if he was real.

Steam wisped and weaved above the glass doors, signaling the water was nice and warm. He made his way back to the counter and took the mug from my hands, setting it down and lifting me to my feet. His hands made quick work of my sleep shirt and panties, and before I knew it, he was helping me into the shower.

But when I turned back to put my lips to his, he wasn’t there.

“What do you want for breakfast, honey? Eggs and bacon sound good?” he asked, moving toward the bathroom closet.

I just stared at him through the glass and watched him set a towel out for me.

His head tilted to the side. “You okay?”

I opened the shower door and gripped him by the boxer briefs, yanking him off-balance and into the shower with me.

“What the—?”

I wrapped both arms around him and held him tight. “I love you.”

His hands found their way into my wet hair, gripping the strands and gently tilting my head back to meet his eyes. He searched my gaze with warmth and love. “I love you too, honey.”

Tears pricked my eyes as I buried my face into his chest. “Thank you for being so goddamn sweet.”

He chuckled softly. “I’d do anything for you.”

I lifted my head. He showed me every fucking day that the words he spoke were true, but I asked anyway. “Anything?”

He nodded, and the little flecks of gold in the center of his chocolate brown eyes bounced and glittered under the bathroom lights. “Anything.”

“Fuck me in the shower?”

“I don’t want to make you late for your flight, honey, and the things I’m picturing take a whole lot of time.” His words said no, but his cock was definitely saying
hell yes
against my belly.

“I guess you better speed them up, then,” I responded as I pushed his wet boxer briefs down his legs and started stroking him with my hand.

He smirked, but he didn’t resist, lifting me up by my ass and wrapping my legs around his waist. My back was pressed against the tile, and his cock was inside of me between one breath and the next.

The memory of this would stay with me, almost as clear as if he were with me himself, all the way to San Diego and back.

“W
here are you?” Kline asked, without prompting or greeting, as I put the phone to my ear.

“Your mom’s house.”

The answer came on instinct and without any planning. Jokes and jabs were where I really excelled, and amiable insults sometimes felt easier than breathing. But my mind wasn’t really there, on the unexpected phone call with one of my best friends.

In reality, I could feel the cheap Berber of hotel carpet under my feet, and the sun reflected just slightly off the building across the street. The tinted floor-to-ceiling windows of my room kept it from piercing my eyes like it would have if I’d been outside in it directly, though, and my beard was longer than I’d ever let it get. It was like I was one of those Special Forces guys, highly trained to blend into my surroundings even if it meant acclimating to a completely different culture and becoming a
longhair
. Except, it was actually nothing like that, and the fact that my brain even came up with that analogy just proved how motherfucking insane I was becoming.

“Maureen would be nothing less than disgusted with you right now.”

I shook off my self-loathing and focused on the voice in my ear.

“Hey, I didn’t mean Maur any disrespect, and I think she knows me well enough to understand that.”

He laughed a little, but it was more than an auditory display of mirth. Sort of,
Ha-ha, that Thatch, what a ridiculous fuck
. And really, right now, I agreed with him.

“Trust me, she doesn’t.”

“Well, fuck. Do I need to worry about Bob hunting me down?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.

Kline breathed the sigh of the beleaguered. “I was calling to see if you wanted to have lunch. But now I don’t think I want to have lunch with you.”

“Well, then,” I said through a laugh. “I guess it’s a good thing I’m not in town then, huh?”

“You’re not in town?” I could practically see his eyebrows snapping together in my head. No statement was simple where he was concerned, and frankly, he was right. There was always deeper meaning. He was just better at mining for it than anyone else I knew. “Where the hell are you?”

“Business,” I answered as I lifted the binoculars to my eyes and trained them on the building across the street. Then I shook my eyes to clear them when I realized I was too close to need binoculars and set them back on the table to my right.

“Business?” Kline asked, skeptical. “How incredibly fucking vague. I was actually after a location. You know, a state, a country, maybe even a city on Planet Earth.”

“I’m busy, okay?” I told him honestly. I didn’t plan to tell him much else since I’d pretty much lost my goddamn mind, but I liked Kline. He deserved at least a little tiny crumb of truth.

“Busy doing what?” he pushed, and then I sighed.

My impatience was about to peak in an all-out musical crescendo.

She was supposed to have been there by now. I’d wanted to follow her the whole way. From her hotel to the supply pickup to the actual shoot, but I’d managed to talk myself out of going full-on paparazzi. That’s what made celebrities get into car accidents all the time, and well, that would completely defeat the entire point of everything I’d sunk so low to do.

“I have to go,” I told him, and I did. I didn’t particularly feel like weeping while I was on the phone with him, and the longer it took Cassie to arrive, the more scenarios of death and carnage and blood passed through my not-well mind. Seriously, this was probably the early stages of a psychotic break, and not at all in keeping with everything I hoped I’d be as a father.

Namely, not a fucking stalker.

Yes, stalking. I’m stalking the soon-to-be mother of my child.

Don’t say a goddamn word. I know, okay? I know.

“What’s going on?” Kline asked again, in that annoying as fuck voice that said he knew everything, and anything he didn’t know, he’d find out.
Goddammit
. The cliff above Lose-Your-Fucking-Mind-Burg was already steep, my huge tree-trunk legs walking right along the edge, and he wasn’t helping.

“It’s nothing, okay?”

“What’s nothing? You said it was business,” the clever bastard continued, chipping away at me one clue at a time. Next thing I knew, he’d be telling me it was Colonel Thatcher, in the hotel room, with the binoculars.

People shuffled along the busy sidewalk, but I knew she was supposed to arrive by car, and I knew she was supposed to text me upon her arrival. I’d managed to ask her the details of her shoot and convince her to give me that peace of mind without tipping my hand. Because, trust me, when she got a load of my crazy fucking cards, she wasn’t going to be happy. That’s why I needed to make sure she never figured it out.

You know, like an honest to God stalker.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“It
is
business,” I lied.

His voice was a growl when he asked, “You’re not cheating on Cassie, are you? Because I’ll fucking kill you with my bare hands.”

Yeah, right
. Maybe with a cleverly crafted tool and the element of surprise, but not his bare hands. Still.

“No!” Jesus. “No, I’m not cheating on her, okay? I promise, I am
not
cheating on Cassie. I love her.” I lowered my voice and muttered under my breath, “Obviously, too much.”

“Then, what the hell is—”

My vision tunneled and my ears completely closed to all conversation as a car with Cassie’s beautiful dark locks behind the wheel came to a screeching stop across the street.

“Gotta go!” I managed to snap out before hitting the end button and tossing my phone to the love seat off to my left.

Pressing myself to the windows like a leech, I watched closely as Cassie climbed from the car, a smile on her face and fire in her pretty blue eyes. I couldn’t actually see them from this distance, but just from the plump of her cheek, I could tell. I knew everything there was to know about every expression in her arsenal, and this one was all Cassie—sassy, happy, sarcastic as fuck, and everything I’d fallen so hard for in one appealing package.

“God, you fucking animal,” I muttered to myself as I watched her lazy fuck of an assistant get out of the car on the other side without a single thing in hand. She’d had to get a new one after firing that cunt, Olivia. Cassie didn’t look like she was struggling as she lifted the camera bag over her shoulder, but that didn’t matter. I was point five seconds away from homicide. And in my opinion, it was justified.

Cassie spoke highly of the guy, and sure, he looked innocent enough with his button-up shirt and glasses and alarmingly friendly smile, but he wasn’t helping a pregnant woman carry shit. So, basically, he was right up there with Lee Harvey Oswald, if you asked me.

Leaning down, Cassie reached into the car, and I caught a glimpse of heaven—or the top swells of her sweet breasts. To me, the two were interchangeable, both mystical wonders created for good little boys by God himself.

But I couldn’t concentrate on that like I wanted to because she was reaching into the car for even more things to carry, and it took everything I had not to shoot some sort of Spiderman web out of my hand and bust through the fucking hotel window to swing my way down there.

It’s only, like, twenty-five pounds of stuff, max,
I tried to remind myself.
She’s not going to drop dead on the sidewalk from lifting less than thirty pounds of camera gear. The baby’s fine, she’s fine, everyone is fucking fine except for you because you’re a goddamn psychopath who can’t shake this pessimistic doomsday outlook about Cassie’s completely healthy pregnancy.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I’d been shot up with all kinds of hormones of my own. I wasn’t sure which ones, but they were the kind that made you ripe with paranoia, I guess.

As she disappeared inside the building, I shoved my feet in my shoes sans socks, grabbed my keycard off the table and my phone off the love seat, and jogged for the door.

I’d have to get creative, now that she was actually inside the shoot. Thanks to some careful investigation, done primarily during the middle of sex so her mind would be on other, more cock-like things, I knew the majority of the pictures were to be taken in an outdoor pool. And since I’d scouted the location earlier, I knew there was a restaurant around the back, a block over, with a rooftop deck where said pool was visible. Sure, I wouldn’t be in range to do more than dial 911 if she slipped and hit her head and fell into the water and started drowning, but at least I would know.