Island Kisses: A Billionaire Love Story (The Kisses Series Book 9) (15 page)

A
fter storming
out of Gabe’s office, I went back to the bedroom and got dressed as quickly as possible. I was teeming with emotion, but I didn’t want to let out a single sob. I could save that for later, when I could enjoy a pint if ice cream and a few days of binge watching my favorite TV show. But for now, I needed to keep it together and act tough.

So once I was dressed, I gathered my makeup from his countertop in his bathroom and tossed everything into my overnight bag. To think, I was considering what it would be like to spend my life with the guy and now I was doing everything possible to speed up the process of leaving his house for good.

I can’t believe this. I should have known that it would only be a matter of time before something like this would happen to me,
I thought
. Why did I fool myself into thinking I could actually meet a decent guy?

I zipped up my bag and tossed it over my shoulder. Before leaving the bedroom, I took one last look at the bed, where the blankets were still messed up from us cuddling that morning. My heart hurt at the thought I’d never sleep next to him again and that everything I had considered to be “love” was nothing more than a bunch of hogwash.

There is no love,
I told myself.
Love is just a word used to sell advertising on dating websites. “Find Love” or “Let Love Find You” or however you want to say it to make it sound better, it still doesn’t mean a thing.

With all of my belongings in hand, I spun around and left the room, marching toward the front door. I didn’t hear Gabe talking upstairs on the phone any longer, which was fine. I had no intention of saying goodbye or explaining my reason for my leaving. My plan was to walk about that door and block his phone number and email. Basically, I was just going to cut him out of my life completely. I figured it would hurt a little less if I took control of the situation.

But when I got to the front door and opened it up, I heard Gabe call from the top of the stairs.

“Babe, where are you going? I’m off the call now,” he shouted down.

I couldn’t bear to turn around to look at him, so I just stepped outside and walked toward the sidewalk so I could call a cab. Gabe yelled out behind me and I heard him run down the stairs inside.

“Harper, hold up,” he said, as he followed me out the door. “Where are you headed? The day is just getting started, there’s no need to leave yet. I’m sorry about having to take that call.”

I continued to walk, setting my jaw and keeping my pace.

“Harper!” he shouted, as he ran up beside me. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I stated flatly.

“What’s going on?” Gabe asked, as he positioned himself in front of me, blocking my path.

“Let me go, Gabe,” I said.

“If you want to go, you can,” he said. “I’m just really confused right now. What’s going on? Are you mad that I took that phone call?”

This was my chance to confront him about what I had seen in his office, so I decided to take it. It seemed he wasn’t going to let me leave without an explanation anyway.

“The
phone call
? I don’t give a crap about this morning’s phone call, Gabe,” I snapped. “This has nothing to do with that.”

“Well then what is it?” He seemed legitimately concerned, but clearly confused about what had me upset.

“I can’t believe you were going to use our relationship as an advertisement for your stupid website,” I growled, my voice growing in volume with each word.

Gabe’s face turned ghostly pale and I watched as he drew in a nervous breath.

“Harper,” he began.

“Shut up, Gabe. I don’t want to hear it,” I told him. “Move, please.”

“Let me explain,” he said, holding out his hands.

“Explain what? You want to explain to me that you’re the creator of the website we met each other on? You want to hash out the details of your life a little bit, so that I actually know who you are. I feel like I’ve been dating a stranger,” I yelled at him. “I thought you were a computer guy or something. I didn’t know that you were the owner of the biggest online dating site in the world. You’d think that something like that would have been worth mentioning. Unless, of course, you were trying to hide it for some reason.”

Gabe opened his mouth and then closed it, took a deep breath and placed his hands onto his hips.

“I was going to tell you,” he replied.

“When? When were you going to tell me, Gabe?” I asked. “After you posted the advertisement online, the one that used the same photo of us that I cherished so much? Is that when? Or were you going to wait until I found out on my own? Why don’t you just tell me the truth and admit that you had no intention of
ever
telling me? You hoped I’d never find out and we both know it.”

My heart was racing now and I practically saw red. If it hadn’t been for the overnight bag in one hand and my cell phone in the other, I probably would have slapped the guy. He’d managed to break my heart in one fell swoop, all by deliberately hiding information from me.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he said, pacing his words to keep himself calm. “I was going to tell you and I planned on doing so sooner rather than later-”

“Stop. Just stop,” I interrupted him. “I only really want to know one thing. Why did you bother with it? Why make a profile on your own website? Was this whole thing between us just a set up so that you’d have good content for an ad?”

Gabe looked up, collecting his thoughts or maybe creating the lie he was about to spill out. I couldn’t be sure. I felt like I didn’t know him at all any more.

“I created a profile on the website to see what it was like to be on there. I’ve spent years developing it, but hadn’t ever put it to use,” he admitted.

“So I was market research?” I asked, wanting to scream and hit things.

“No, Harper. That’s not it at all!” He ran his hands through his dark hair in frustration. “I didn't plan for this.”

“You know what Gabe, go to hell. Go straight to hell.” I was vibrating I was so angry. I felt like I was about to explode like a nuclear bomb. “You and Bastian and your website and this mansion can all disappear for all I care. I’m gone.”

I pushed past him and continued my trek toward the sidewalk, opening up my phone to call a cab.

“If we’re going to be spilling out all our secrets, why don’t we talk about
your
little website too, Harper?” Gabe called after me. “Seems like that would only be fair.”

I stopped in my tracks and turned around to face Gabe once again. He stood at the top of his driveway with his arms crossed. His green eyes burned me like fire.

“I wasn’t the only one with a secret,” he said.

Jerk. Total jerk.

My emotion was now running my decisions. I marched back up the driveway and pushed his chest, causing him to take a step back.

“Yeah, I blogged about our dates,” I admitted. “But I
never
would have done something to sell you out. What you did to me was a hundred times worse.”

“You blogged with intent, Harper. Your intent was to get traffic to your website,” he shrugged, mocking me. “I don’t feel like it’s that much different than what I did.”

“No, my
intent
was to tell the
truth
. And the truth was that I was having the best time of my life with you and I was shocked that I had finally met someone worth investing my time in.
That’s
all I ever said to anybody,” I yelled at him. My voice cracked. “Clearly, though, everything I said was nothing more than a childish dream. To think, I thought this might actually go somewhere. Too bad it’s over now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, taking a step back. “Just like that? The time we’ve spent together means nothing?”

“It means absolutely nothing to me now,” I said, trying to convince myself more than him. “I’m done, Gabe. You broke my trust and because of that, you lost your chance. Your stupid little algorithms can’t help you with this one, can they, Mister
Computer Programmer.”

The last words came out with a snarky growl, just to emphasize once again how I felt about him in that moment.

Gabe's mouth fell open and then his eyes narrowed to glowing green slits.“You know what? Just leave, Harper. If you’re going to act like this, then get out of here.”

“My pleasure,” I said. “Maybe I’ll stop somewhere and order some real food that’s not burnt to a crisp. You know, you’re in your thirties, Gabe. If you weren’t such a spoiled little rich kid, maybe you’d have learned to cook freaking eggs by now. Seriously, get out more. Learn to do things like a regular human being. I’m not sure if you’ve realized this, but there are people in the world that can’t hire out every single aspect of their life. I’m surprised you can even go to the bathroom by yourself. Or do you have a secret bathroom attendant that you haven’t told me about? It wouldn’t surprise me if you did. It would just be one more thing you tried to hide from me.”

He didn’t say a word in response but the expression on his face showed that my words were making him angry. Silently, he lifted his hand and pointed toward the street, showing me away from the house. I turned around and walked off, moving quickly to get as far away from him as possible. My hand was shaking as I lifted my phone and called a cab to come pick me up.

What a freaking jerk. I can’t believe this,
I thought as I stomped down the street. I managed to make it to the end of the block where he couldn't see me anymore before I started to cry.

The tears I had managed to hold back during our argument finally made their way up to my eyes and overflowed down my cheeks. I wiped the first batch away with the back of my hand, but it didn’t do any good. More came to replace them and it was only a few seconds later that I couldn’t even slow them down. I sobbed hard, unable to keep my emotion at bay any longer.

The crushing pain in my chest only became more amplified with each step I took away from Gabe’s home. I felt like I had been deceived worse than any other time in my life. When I got to the end of the street I turned back around to take a final glance at his house. He wasn’t standing in the driveway any longer and the front door was closed once again.

“This isn’t fair,” I whispered.

I stepped around the corner and took a seat on the edge of the sidewalk while I waited for my cab. I wanted things to be different. A part of me really wished I hadn’t ever walked into his office to see that piece of paper. Ignorance would have been bliss. If my laptop had been charged and I hadn’t gone into his office, then I would have been cuddling with him right then, still happy out of my head with how things were going.

But things never seem to go my way,
I thought.

Gabe was the one person who I had finally opened my heart to. Sure, we had only been dating for two months, but it was long enough for me to wonder if I actually loved the guy and that was something that hadn’t happened in a long time. I thought he was different. I thought that somehow he’d be the one to change my mind about how awful relationships were and how much they can hurt. Apparently, I was wrong.

Luckily, it wasn’t too long before the cab pulled up. I stood up from my seat on the curb, dusted myself off and crawled into the backseat of the car.

“Good morning, ma’am,” the cabby said. “Where can I take you?”

I sniffled and attempted to wipe my tears away once again before responding. “Anywhere but here.”

“Is everything okay, ma’am?” he asked, as he turned around in his seat to get a look at me.

“I’m fine,” I replied. “Can we just drive?”

The last thing I needed was for Gabe to look out his window and see me just sitting in a cab. I didn’t want him thinking I was even debating whether or not I should leave.

“Sure thing, ma’am. I can drive,” he said. “But where are we going?”

I thought about it for a moment. I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to go. If I went home, I knew I’d be stuck with only my thoughts. That wasn’t something that would be good for me. I’d end up super depressed, wrapping myself in blankets, while crying my eyes out in despair. Plus, I’d likely end up calling Gabe at some point, just to try to ease the pain in my gut from the breakup. So home wasn’t a good option.

My mother’s?
I thought.
Wait, no, that’s a horrible idea.

It was already hard enough that I had just broken up with a man I thought I loved, but I knew I would also get an earful about it once the news reached my mom. I could already hear the “I told you so” coming from her mouth. I considered going to Rosie’s place, but I knew she was busy getting ready for the baby. Plus, she would likely hit me with the same grief as my mother. Both Rosie and my mom would have found some way to turn the situation against me, making it seem like my fault that things didn’t work out with Gabe.

“Ma’am?” the cabby asked again, starting to look more impatient instead of compassionate.

“Take me to the airport,” I suddenly said, as the idea flashed into my mind.

The cabby nodded and pulled away from the curb. My overnight bag was already packed and I even had an extra outfit, along with all of my makeup. I had no reason to go home, so I made the decision right then to fly to Orlando.

If there’s one person who can help me through this, it’s Cora. She’s the only one who can make me feel right now. The only one.

T
he plane ride
to Orlando only took less than an hour, but it felt like an eternity. I spent the entire trip trying to hide my sobs, but of course it was impossible. Luckily, I had sat in the window seat and was able to face away from everyone while I cried, but I still knew that people were looking at me. The older lady sitting next to me even asked if there was anything she could do to help. I responded with, “If you can make men honest, that would help.” She just laughed and said, “I don’t think there’s anything I can do about that one.”

My makeup was ruined, my hair was a mess and the clothes I had on were a day old. Needless to say, I wasn’t looking like I was ready to hit the town when I crawled off of the plane. It didn’t matter, though. Cora didn’t care what I looked like. She wouldn’t judge me. That was why I had come to see her in the first place.

I had only taken a few steps out of the front doors of the airport before I heard Cora calling out my name. I hadn’t even gotten to the parking lot yet.

“Harper!” she shouted, as she squealed her little Toyota next to the curb in front of me.

The ball of anxiety in my gut was relieved, even if only a little bit, just by the sight of her. She was the refuge that I needed in my moment of pain.

“Hi, Cora,” I said, walking over to her car. “Thank you for agreeing to get together.”

“Hey, Harp. You don’t have to thank me. I’m happy to do it,” she said, hoping out and giving me a quick hug. “I’ve been wanting to see you anyway and now I finally get to. See, things always end up working out.”

I tossed my bags into her trunk before walking around and getting in the passenger seat as Cora started up the engine. Cora smiled at me, pushing her curly black hair out of her eyes before leaning in for another hug.

“It’s good to see you, Harper,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” I assured her.

Before pulling away from the curb, she looked me in the eyes. “But I have to say. You look like you’ve been hit by a bus.”

Somehow her comment forced a smile out of me. I playfully pushed her shoulder. “Thanks, Cora. I knew I could count on you for support.”

“I’m just giving you a hard time,” she said, as she stepped on the gas. “But seriously, a bus. It looks like a bus hit you. Like head on, while you were walking through a parking lot.”

“Cora!” I said, as I laughed at her comment. “You’re so mean!”

“You know I love you, Harp.” She looked over at me, before patting the top of my knee. “And as soon as we get back to my place, you’re going to tell me everything that happened with Gabe. We’ll get through this together. It’s not going to be easy, but I’m here for you.”

“Thanks, Cora,” I said, as I closed my eyes and tried to relax during the short drive back to her place.

* * *

“
I
haven’t been here
in forever,” I said as Cora let me into her apartment. The small space was familiar, yet different. I could tell she'd replaced her couch and several other pieces of furniture, but at least the ocean artwork all over her walls was the same.

“Too long,” she agreed. “You remember Jack, though, right?”

For a fleeting second, I thought she was referring to some guy she was dating. That was, until, the black and white fur ball popped around the corner, mewing at me as he approached.

“Oh, Jack!” I squealed, as I knelt down to pet the cat. “How could I forget about you, Jack?”

He looked up at me, squinting his green eyes as though he were asking who the hell I was and what I was doing in his castle. But after a few pets, he seemed to be perfectly accepting of my presence. It wasn’t long before he was purring like crazy while digging his claws into the carpet. Cora had named him after her favorite billionaire, Jack Saunders, which I had told her was crazy, but she didn't care.

“So, Harp, what can I get you to drink?” Cora asked, walking into her kitchen.

“Maybe just a coffee and an orange juice,” I said. I didn't really feel like having anything.

“Coffee and orange juice is not going to make you feel any better,” she replied. “What do you want to
drink
? Like what kind of adult beverage would you like to help wash away the pain of your breakup?”

“It’s like eleven in the morning, Cora,” I said, with a smile. “Isn’t it kind of socially unacceptable to drink at this hour?”

“Well, when you go around labeling certain times of the day like that, then yes. I guess we’ll wait an hour before drinking, so as to appease the gods of social acceptance.” She spun around and stepped back into the kitchen. “In the meantime, though, I’ll get you your coffee and orange juice.”

“Thanks, lady,” I said, as I took a seat on the white leather lounger in the living room.

Jack jumped up onto my lap immediately and I resumed giving him pets. It wasn’t long before he curled up and fell asleep on top of me.

“At least
someone
loves me,” I joked.

Cora popped around the corner, carrying a mug of coffee and a glass of orange juice.

“
Two
people love you,” she corrected me. “Jack and myself. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“I wish it was,” I joked back, as I took the drinks from her and set them on the end table next to the lounge chair. “Unfortunately, Jack only loves me for the pets I give him.”

“Yeah, same here. And for the fact that I feed him.” She frowned and shrugged. “Maybe that’s all love is, though.”

“What? Feeding someone?” I asked. “That’s love?”

“Sure, why not?” Cora shrugged as she sat cross-legged on the love seat at the other side of the room. “It’s as good of an explanation as anything else I’ve heard.”

I sighed. Just talking about love caused a fresh stab of emotion to enter my heart as the image of Gabe flashed in my mind. Cora noticed my pain instantly.

“Tell me everything,” she said.

“It hurts too much to talk about it,” I replied as I held back the sobs threatening to burst out of me again. I thought I had gotten them all out on the plane, but apparently not.

“Look, Harper, sometimes you have to work through the pain by working through the pain,” Cora said softly. “There’s no other way around it.”

“I know, you’re right. It’s just hard,” I sniffled. “I just can’t believe this actually happened.”

“Can you tell me what exactly it was that happened?” she asked. “The only thing I gathered from your call this morning was that Gabe was a total jerk, you’re done with men and you’re coming to see me in Orlando. That’s all I’ve got to work with so far.”

“Gabe
is
a total jerk,” I agreed. “Cora, I really thought I knew him. He seemed so different than the others, you know? But then I found something in his office that was rather... embarassing.”

She scooted up to the edge of the love seat. “Don’t tell me he was seeing someone else. I’ll fly out there and kick his butt. Nobody does that to my Harper.”

“No, no.” I shook my head. “That’s not what it was.”

Cora’s eyes widened as she nodded. “Well…?”

“Kindling Dating,” I told her.

“What about it?”

“Gabe owns the site.” I waited for her reaction but she just looked confused.

“What do mean, he
owns
the site?” she asked. “Like he’s very prominent on there? He meets a lot of girls there?”

“No, Cora. Gabe literally
owns
the website. Kindling Dating is
his
creation. I didn’t know that until this morning, though. He had told me he was a computer programmer or something along those lines, but he was never specific,” I said. I felt so stupid saying it all out loud. “I should have known something was up, though, the first time that I saw his mansion. No cubicle-bound keyboard jockey would have been able to afford a place like his. The guy's a freaking billionaire.”

“You’re telling me that Gabe, the guy you’ve been dating, is the
owner
of Kindling Dating and he didn’t tell you?” She whistled softly. “Why would he hide something like that?”

I shrugged. “Maybe because he didn’t want me to know that he had probably rigged the algorithms to put himself in front of every hot girl on there,” I guessed. “Who knows how many other girls he was stringing along?”

Cora listened quietly, letting me vent. “I'm so sorry, Harper.”

“But you know what makes me more angry than the fact that he owns the site? The fact that he didn’t tell me.” My hands balled up into fists and I pressed them into my thighs to keep from hitting something. “If he had just been open with me, then I wouldn’t have been mad. I might have been upset at first, but not enough to leave him and never want to see him again.”

As the last sentence spilled from my lips, the tears began to flow once again. My heart still ached and talking about it almost seemed to make it worse. The truth of the situation felt more real by the second.

“How did you find out about this then?” she asked once I had stopped sobbing.. “I mean if Gabe didn’t tell you.”

“I found a piece of paper in his office. On it was a picture of us that he and I had taken on his front porch. Underneath it was some click bait slogan. It said something like 'If the mathematician who created Kindling Dating can meet the woman who writes for Never After, then what can it do for you?'” I started to tear up, thinking of that treasured photograph being used in such a cheap way. She handed me a tissue and I wiped at my face. “Basically, he was going to use our relationship to promote his site.”

“No freaking way,” she whispered.

“Yea,” I muttered. I grabbed another tissue.

“Why would he do something like that, especially without telling you?” Cora asked, shaking her head. “And how did he even find out about your blog?”

“The guy's got more money than anyone I've ever met. I'm sure it wasn't hard,” I said with a shrug. “All he’d have to do is a little searching around on the Internet and he could have found out everything he wanted to about me. Or he might have hired someone to make sure that the guy dating a billionaire isn't a total wackjob. I’m not sure when or how he found out, but he figured it out somehow.”

I wish that I had done the same thing with him. A simple Internet search could have given me all of the information that I needed to know about him,
I thought.

“I’m so sorry, Harper,” Cora said, as she got off of the love seat and came to sit next to me. She wrapped an arm around me and leaned her head against my shoulder. Her touch felt soothing and allowed even more of my emotion to vent. I began to cry. It wasn’t just the choking back of sobs like I had done on the airplane, though. I cried hard this time. I turned toward Cora and pressed my face into her shoulder, letting the tears flow. The dam had broken.

“It’s okay, lady, I’m here,” Cora said, as she stroked my hair. “Jack and I are here for you. Who needs Gabe anyway?”

Logically, I knew she was right. Why would I want to be with someone who hid the truth from me? But my heart didn’t care what my mind had to say about it. It didn’t matter what Gabe had done, I still found myself missing him.

“I guess so,” I said, between sobs. “Who needs him?”

After a few more minutes of crying, I finally pulled away from Cora’s shoulder. My tears had left a giant wet spot on the upper part of her shirt.

“I’m going to give you a choice,” Cora said. “There are a few things we can do that will make you feel better. I’ll let you decide which.”

I chuckled and wiped my cheeks with my sleeve. “Okay. Hit me.”

“The way I see it, the only real way to get through this initial heartbreak is by using humor, booze or throwing yourself into your work. So we can either go do something that will make us laugh, go get drunk, or work on the blog.”

The blog…
I thought.

It made me think of Gabe and how upset he was at me for blogging about our dates. Still, though, I refused to let myself feel guilty about it. What I had done was entirely different and not nearly as extreme. I had never even used Gabe’s full name in my writing. None of my readers actually knew who he was. They just saw that I was dating some guy named Gabe who I happened to really like. But what
he
had done to me, with the ads… it was far worse. My full name, picture and my blog was being used without my permission.

“Well, what are you thinking?” Cora said. “I gave you some options. Which do you want to do?”

“You mentioned booze in your list of choices, but I’m just afraid that there’s not enough alcohol in Orlando to get me through this one,” I said.

“Oh, I beg to differ,” Cora replied. “I just recently stocked up my liquor cabinet.”

Then she sat up on the lounge chair, placing her hands onto my shoulders. Her lips curled up into a smile and her eyes widened.

“I have an idea,” she said, with excitement.

Uh oh,
I thought with a little trepidation. This could either be really bad or really good. Although, regardless, it was sure to be interesting. Any idea of Cora’s would be crazy enough to be fun.

“What is it?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

“Disney World,” she stated, as matter-of-factly as if she had told me the sky was blue.