Banking the Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires Book 2) (5 page)

The direct sunshine moistened my eyes as it peeked over the eastern horizon, and her shadow stood leaning against one of the smallest cars ever created. I came to a stop at the end of the sidewalk and raised my voice across the three empty parking spaces between us. “You have
got
to be shitting me. I’m going to eat my knees in that fucking thing.”

“I know,” she said gleefully, spinning in a half circle to stare at the tiny red Fiat before turning to look over her shoulder at me. She wrinkled her nose as a smirk pulled one blue eye slightly higher than the other. “Let me know if you choke. I
might
pull over and try to clear your airway.”

Scratching at my beard with both hands, I shook my head and laughed.

“So I guess you’re not happy about the early morning phone call.” She raised a pointed eyebrow as I walked toward her. “Or at least the accompanying drive and circumstances.”

“Perceptive of you,” she murmured as I got close enough to see, for the first time today, the tiny freckle that lived just under her right ear. It wasn’t as big or obvious as a Cindy Crawford-style beauty mark, but I’d noticed it more than once. Maybe because I spent more time staring at her than anyone else.

As I analyzed her appearance for the benefit of more than my overeager cock, I realized she looked slightly disheveled, like she’d hopped right out of bed and come straight here. I hadn’t thought about it before, but from a quick calculation of the drive time alone, I knew that’s what she must’ve done.

Moving my gaze from the top of her wild-haired head down to meet her eyes, I tried to convey how thankful I was with two simple words. “I’m sorry.”

Her wildly expressive brows activated again, and their message was doubt.

“I am. Really,” I promised defensively. I hated to admit the embarrassing truth, but I owed her at least that much. “But a guy I know from high school said some things I should have ignored but didn’t, and I didn’t know who else to call. It’s my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary, and even if it wasn’t, there was no way I was calling them.”

“Kline?” she suggested as she looked down and noticed my hand for the first time, her eyes widening at the open, raw knuckles.

I rolled my eyes and avoided confessing her number was the only one I could remember. Cassie Phillips’s crazy ideas didn’t need that kind of substantiation or power.

“The last time I called Kline in the middle of the night he told me he was going to amputate my most loved appendage. I’ve got five inches and at least fifty pounds on the guy, but he’s clever, goddammit. He’d find a way.”

“Wes,” she pushed.

I shook my head. “On the West Coast. Some kind of recruiting trip.”

Her whole body seemed to perk up, and for the first time, I noticed her shirt. A completely ridiculous creation by a company I owned a forty percent stake in. I smothered a smile as she asked, “Where?”

“What?” I asked, confused. She wasn’t making sense, but if I was honest, I hadn’t exactly been giving all of my attention to the conversation.

“Who, how, why,” she rambled as she grew frustrated. “Where, as in what college, Numbnuts?”

It felt like a quiz, and I wasn’t sure she’d let me in the car if I didn’t come up with the right answer. And as much as I bitched, I wanted inside that fucking Fiat.

“Um, I don’t know?” I ventured cautiously with a mindless scratch to my scalp. A shower definitely wouldn’t be amiss at this point. “I think he was going a couple of places.”

She huffed, yanked the driver’s door open, climbed into the car, and slammed the door behind her, leaving me stunned in her wake.

Three seconds into the shock, I forced myself into motion, jumping toward and around the car, jerking open the door, and cramming my big body inside as quickly as possible like some form of origami. I had no doubt this crazy woman would drive all the way out here only to leave without me.

“What’d I do wrong?” I asked when she didn’t even glance in my direction. I wasn’t an expert, but I’d seen a woman pissed a time or two. Each time it happened I made an effort to log information so I could prevent it the next time. Unfortunately, I’d yet to establish a pattern.

“Called me in the middle of the night and talked me into driving to upstate New York!” she snapped.

“No,” I clarified. “I got that memo loud and clear. I mean when we were talking about Wes.”

“Would I have hit him?” she asked strangely.

I wasn’t having any fucking luck following our conversation today. It was like we were constantly having two completely different ones.

“Who? Wes?”

“No! The fucker you hit! Would
I
have hit him?”

I couldn’t help but laugh while I pictured it. Cassie was far from a heavyweight, but I imagined Johnny still would have ended up on the ground. “Long before I did.”

She nodded, resolute. “Then you’re forgiven for that.” She backed out of the spot with ease and turned out of the parking lot in the direction from which she’d come.

A smile lifted the corners of my lips at the gift of her forgiveness. I didn’t bother telling her I hadn’t asked for it.

“Now I just want to get back to the city and climb into my bed. I’m about eight hours short on sleep.”

“Um,” I mumbled as I cringed. “I actually need you to take me to the bar.”

“The bar?” The car swerved slightly as she took her eyes off the road to look at me. I fought the urge to grab on to the “Oh shit” handle.

“The scene of last night’s crime,” I explained with a slightly rough, self-deprecating laugh. “I’ve got a car there that needs to get returned to the Kelly residence.”

She moaned, but she ultimately turned where I pointed and didn’t say anything else. We rode in silence for two minutes before she took a hand off the wheel and ran it through her hair. Her mouth started to form a yawn, but she did her best to stop it. The result was a hideously unattractive facial contortion. My chest buzzed at the sight of it.

“Tired?”

She nodded for five straight seconds before speaking. “Yeah. You should know this by now, but in case you missed it, sleep and I are really fucking tight. Like, you know how people joke all the time about offering up their firstborn?”

I nodded and then realized it’d be hard for her to look at me. “Yeah.”

“Well, when I have kids, they will be a legitimate sacrifice before sleep.”

I laughed. “From what I hear, having kids is pretty much synonymous with no sleep.”

“Fuck. So maybe I can’t have kids.”

“Nah. You just need to have them with someone who can stand to go without. It’s all a trade-off.”

Surprised eyes sought mine, and the car swerved again. I carefully avoided pointing it out. Instead, I offered the only thing I could right then.

“Want me to drive?”

She shook her head and yawned again. This time, the yawn won.

“Last night was your parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary party?”

“Yep.”

“A lot of lonely women in that crowd?” she teased.

A dot of dried blood stained the fabric of my pants, and I wiped at it even though I knew it wouldn’t come out. My mind was sluggish as I processed her question, but the answer surprised me a little when it finally did. There might as well have been no women at the party for the amount I’d noticed them. “It wasn’t exactly lively, but my parents enjoyed it, and that’s all that matters to me.”

“And I guess a phone call from their son at the local prison would put a damper on that.”

I laughed because she had no fucking idea. “Yeah, I’ve already put them through enough for a lifetime.”

As we approached the parking lot for the bar, I directed her to turn in. “This is it.”

She leaned forward to get a better look out the windshield and let out a guffaw. “The Sticky Pickle?” A huge sign shot out of the earth and up about twenty feet, declaring it just that.

I smiled. “Yep.”

“Good God, Thatcher. Not only can’t you put your boner away, but now you’ve got it all sticky. Is this ever going to end?” she asked through humor-induced near-convulsions, two loose strands of hair falling down and around her frisky eyes. They seemed to turn up at the corners like an extension of her mouth. Moisture formed at the very center of her lips with an involuntary flick of her tongue.

My cock pulsed.

Oh, Jesus
.

As I watched every single page of her flipbook of motion with utter fascination, all I could do was answer her honestly. Put my boner away around her?

“Not fucking likely.”

After dropping my big-tire, 1964, sweet-as-
fuck
Chevy Nova SS off at my parents’ house, we were back on the road. I’d wanted her to come inside, but all it took was one self-scrutinizing glance at her T-shirt and the connotation of an early morning visit to make her refuse. “
No way am I meeting your parents in a shirt that talks about petting my kitty before you have the pleasure
,” she’d said. I’d started to ask if that meant there was a chance of it happening soon, but thought better of it.

I’d rather have her fall into my trap without realizing it.

And in the end, she’d made the right choice. After a night of way more excitement than they were used to, my parents were still in bed. A couple of quick kisses and apologetic good-byes from their bedside, and they were still none the wiser about my drama-filled night.

“Thank fuuuuuck,” Cassie moaned again as we crossed the Hudson River by way of the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Any other time, any other place, and her moan probably would have had my titty-attuned tail wagging wildly. But not right now.

I had a serious cramp in my left thigh and my knees were about to become a permanent fixture in my chest, and still, as I glanced at my watch, I knew I had no other option but to trick my beautiful chauffeur into making another detour in this tiny fucking clown car.

After a night in the slammer, I could and would skip out on almost anything but this. There was a little girl with big eyes and a bigger heart waiting for me, and I’d have to be dead or dying to break a commitment with her.

“Um, Cass?”

“What?” she snapped. Her eyes looked like an exact embodiment of the root of all of the world’s evil.

I sunk my teeth into my bottom lip to keep from laughing and looked out the passenger side window to conceal my smile. “I know you’re not exactly happy with me right now—”

“Understatement,” she emphasized.

“But I think I’ve got a cramp in my cock. Maybe you’re not all that fond of mine, but you like them in general, right?”

Her eyes narrowed as she considered my lead-in. She wanted to ignore me completely, but Cassie couldn’t deny her affinity for the D.

“What’s your boner want now, Thatcher?” she asked suspiciously.

Laughter no longer concealed, I told her a version of the truth, but I wrapped it in a multitude of flirting in an attempt to distract her.

“Oh, honey, I can assure you, it wants many, many things, a great number of them from you. But I’m actually not coming on to you right now, not trying to insult your intelligence, and not asking your tits to keep my boner company.”

“I don’t get it. What else is there from you?” she teased, and I laughed. Because for the first time ever, from maybe the least expected person ever, she didn’t sound serious when she said it. She sounded like she didn’t actually think my intelligence stopped at the head of my dick. That my titty talk and boner references were just a coating for everything underneath. It seemed like she could
see
it—without prodding or encouragement—and that wasn’t the norm. Most people never know more than a surface layer of each other’s personalities. They take the bolder characteristics of a first impression at face value because they’re lazy, and they carry those expectations and prejudices throughout the entire relationship. Maybe something about Cassie’s appetite for new experiences made her dig deeper than the rest.

“Please,” I begged, seeing the exit I needed approaching in the distance. “Just get off this exit and take me to the CVS a couple of blocks down.”

“I don’t know where I’m going—” she hedged, and I interrupted quickly so she didn’t have time to overthink it.

“I do. I come up here all the time. I’ll tell you where to go. Everybody wins. I’ll get to stretch my legs, and I’ll buy you a bag of Cheetos for your trouble.”

“And a Diet Mountain Dew.”

Bingo
. I’d found a momentary weakness in her defenses.

“Yes,” I agreed. “And a Mountain Dew.”

“Diet!” she corrected.

“Yes. Diet. I promise. As long as the weight loss doesn’t come from your tits.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Sorry, bud. But the boobs are always the first to go.”

Regular
, I thought.
Definitely getting the regular.

“Turn right,” I instructed as we crested the hill of the exit ramp and approached the bottom.

As we got closer and closer, I kept expecting the car to slow, but it never did. Cruising at what had to be fifty, Cassie flew right out into traffic without even slowing amidst my screams.

“Jesus Christmas! Are you fucking nuts? Why the hell didn’t you stop back there?” I yelled, looking back over my shoulder and grabbing the “Oh shit” handle without shame now.