The Billionaire's Proposal Page 13

  “Easy,” he said without missing a beat, “dinner and a movie.”

  I laughed again. No doubt he had googled ‘normal person date’ right before asking, and was thoroughly pleased with himself. Then my smile faded, as I looked up at him once more.

  A date with Nicholas Hunter?

  Yeah...I could do that.

  “Pick me up at seven?”

  His eyes twinkled.

  “Seven it is.”

  And with those words, our normal day came to a close.

  The two of us bid each other a hasty goodnight, and disappeared to separate corners of the house. Our heads spinning from the last twelve hours. Our bodies bracing for the next twelve.

  The room I’d selected to be my own, had been a longtime favorite of mine. The adjoining bathroom featured one of those walk-in showers I adored, and a tub as big as the entire living room at my old apartment. An enormous bay window opened out onto a balcony with a beautiful view of the park, and everything from the canopy bed to the high silk curtains made me feel like I was playing the part of a princess for the night.

  It was also right down the hall from Nick.

  This was a fact that I tried my best to keep from dwelling on as I brushed my teeth, combed out my hair, and quickly went through the rest of my nighttime routine. Although all my new clothes and toiletries wouldn’t arrive until late tomorrow, the room was already stocked with anything and everything I might need. Much nicer stuff than what I’d bought, actually.

  I found a sapphire silk bathrobe in the closet, and slipped it over my shoulders as I headed out onto the balcony. The sounds of the city swirled up around me, like a comforting cloud—a home that carried with you no matter what side of the bridge you were on. But unlike my old apartment, we were high enough up that instead of coming at you from all sides, it was reduced to a pleasant background noise. A gentle hum, providing a context and meditative ambiance to your thoughts.

  I closed my eyes and leaned over as far as I could, dangling down my long hair as I wrapped my hands firmly around the rail. We were so high! High enough to look out over the entire city. I could easily see how someone could get used to this. If I actually did live here full time, I think I might spend a portion of every night doing this exact same thing.

  Then a sudden movement caught my eye, and I ducked behind the granite wall.

  It seems I’m not the only one who needs to clear my head...

  Just a stone’s throw away, Nick had wandered out onto his own balcony. It was a nicer day, about sixty four degrees. We didn’t get many nice days like these too often at this time of season. And there he was... Tall, handsome, and topless—wearing only a pair of low hanging pants. As his eyes roved out over the cityscape, he leaned forward to rest his chin on his hands—lost in thought.

  A melancholy prince, alone in his castle.

  For a moment, I couldn’t help but stare. He hadn’t seen me yet, and given my position behind the wall, I was completely hidden from sight. I could stare to my heart’s content, soaking in all the intoxicating details without judgement or shame.

  There was a reason why Nick was one of the most desirable men in the world. There was a reason that everyone from pop stars to eastern European royalty would stop what they were doing at the drop of a hat, and fly out to meet him at a single call.

  The man was beautiful. There simply wasn’t another way to put it.

  He had one of those faces you saw on the cover of books growing up as a child. The face of the hero or the adventurer. The poet or the pirate. The guy who always beat the bad guy, got the girl, and was still always looking out toward the horizon.

  It was the eyes. You could see entire worlds in those eyes.

  Everything else was just icing on the cake.

  The glowing skin. The sculpted body. The golden hair and careless grin. Twice, he had been made a six-figure offer for the movie rights to his life. Twice, he had turned it down.

  Everyone wanted him. Everyone wanted to be him.

  And yet...what struck me most tonight was the look on his face.

  There was a faint crease running down the center of his forehead, and a protective tension to the way he was holding his hands. Like he was trying to literally hold himself together. To self-soothe. His lips, always on the constant verge of smiling, had thinned to a thoughtful line, and as the wind danced his hair across his forehead, I could have sworn I heard him sigh.

  With a stab of concern, I leaned an inch or two forward. I was on the verge of calling out to him. On the verge of running from my room to his, just to find out what was wrong.

  But the next second, he straightened suddenly and walked back inside. The lights turned off in his room just a second after that, then all was quiet.

  ...what was that about?

  Chapter 15

  An hour later, I had yet to fall asleep. I had gone inside not long after Nick—my pensive city mood vanished abruptly upon seeing that sad look on his face. Instead, I tossed and turned in my brand new bed. Staring up at the draping canopy. Wondering, after our seemingly perfect day, what the hell had gone wrong?

  Then the sound of splashing water caught my ear.

  ...what the fuck?

  I sat bolt upright in bed, cupping a hand over my ear as I craned my neck toward the doorway. It was soft, but I was certain. It was water alright. And from the sounds of it, it was coming from the middle of the house.

  For a split second, I was completely baffled. Then I suddenly remembered my client’s latest winter purchase, and instantly understood.

  I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get to sleep...

  Quiet as a mouse, I padded down the stairs and into the living room. Sure enough, Nick was back in the hot tub. Leaning back. Eyes closed. Wet hair dripping down his neck. As a precaution, he was wearing some sort of black swim trunks, but at this point, it hardly made a difference. The man looked like sex. Nothing he could do about that now.

  “Back in the hot tub, then?”

  His eyes shot open, and he gazed up at me with a steamy smile.

  “I’ve grown ridiculously attached to it. I’m thinking of getting one for every room.”

  I giggled and shook my head. That sounded like Nick.

  “You could start a trend...”

  His grin faded slightly as he looked me up and down.

  “I didn’t wake you, did I? Sorry—I tried to be really quiet.”

  “No, no—I was up,” I reassured him, perching on the edge. “I have no idea why. That is hands down the greatest bed I’ve ever slept in...I just can’t turn off my brain.”

  He glanced up at me, as if he was well familiar with the problem, then cocked his head invitingly toward the water. “Care to join me? It’ll help you relax.”

  Somehow, I sincerely doubted that. I stared for a second at the gorgeous, dripping man in front of me, then glanced down self-consciously.

  “I don’t have a bathing suit...”

  He reached down beneath the waves, and the next second, his dripping black swim trunks were in a puddle on the floor. “There. Neither do I.”

  My breath caught in my chest, and I said a silent prayer of thanks that he’d turned on the foaming jets before I’d come down. Otherwise, there would be no way I could string together a coherent thought. Let alone force it into a sentence.

  I opened my mouth to automatically refuse, prepared to go back upstairs and plant myself firmly on the right side of the line the two of us kept blurring. So it was as much of a surprise to me as to anyone when I heard myself saying, “Okay.”

  Well aware that his eyes were watching every move, I slipped the silk bathrobe off my shoulders. Then the tiny nightgown beneath. Without a single stitch of clothing on my body, I slowly reached up and let loose my hair. It tumbled in dark waves down my shoulders as I stepped into the tub. At once, my face steamed up and I flashed him a grin.

  “It’s hotter than I thought.”

  He nodded slowly, but didn’t respond. His eyes
had dilated almost completely black during my little strip tease, and he seemed no more capable of speech now, than I was when I’d first come down and seen him.

  Finally, when he could manage, he patted the seat beside him with a little smile. I waded slowly into the water, but took a seat on the far side instead. Somewhere just slightly out of the man’s reach. Somewhere that I could look at him to my heart’s content.

  He followed every movement, tracing my hair’s spiraling journey down my chest before looking back up with a twinkle in his eye.

  “So...what’s the verdict?”

  “We’ll buy ten of them in the morning,” I announced. “Then another for the plane.”

  He chuckled softly, and nodded his head.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  The chuckle made me smile. Then I remembered that look on his face.

  “Nick?” I asked softly.

  He looked up swiftly, picking up on the change in my tone.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is everything...” I paused, wondering how to phrase it. It’s not like I could admit that I’d been spying on him from the balcony. “Are you...upset about something?”

  “Upset?” he repeated in surprise. It was an admirable performance. If I hadn’t been there for the first one, I might have believed it myself. “No—why would I be upset?”

  I shrugged, dropping my eyes to the foamy waves. “I just thought...I don’t know. I just thought you looked like something was bothering you when we went upstairs for the night.”

  Only someone who knew him well could have caught it. The way the muscles in his face froze—betraying just the slightest hint of guilt. The way his eyes tightened ever so slightly. The involuntary twitch of his hand.

  For a second, it looked like he was going to deny it all anyway, then he bowed his head with an almost imperceptible sigh.

  “Sometimes I forget.”

  I shook my head, trying to follow along.

  “Forget what?”

  He glanced up with a wry grin.

  “That you’re you.”

  I blinked quickly, and looked back down at the water. It was a rather strange way to start a discussion, but on the other hand, I didn’t think there was any greater compliment he could have given me.

  I didn’t know what to say. Instead, I simply looked up—waiting for him to begin.

  “When you asked about the press,” he began uncertainly, “when you asked if I’d like you to leak it to the press about our date...”

  He trailed off, then lifted his eyes slowly to meet mine.

  “This is never going to be real to you, is it?”

  A cool chill washed down my spine, despite the hot water. So this was it then. We were laying all our cards down on the table. And as usual, Nick had made the first move.

  Just as intently as I’d been staring at him, he stared at me now. Watching me flounder as I tried to sort through my thoughts. Interpret my feelings. Find a single moment of clarity amidst the fucking catastrophe that had become this ‘fake’ relationship.

  Don’t think, Abby. Just talk. You know what to say.

  And somehow...I did.

  “Do you remember that night in the bar, when you asked me why I picked Ella?” He nodded silently, and I took a deep breath. “I picked her not because I knew you wouldn’t like her...but because I didn’t want you to.”

  His lips parted as a cloud of steam wafted up between us, hiding my blushing cheeks and sticking my wet hair to my shoulders. By the time it cleared, he was standing right in front of me.

  “Nick—”

  “Enough.” He pressed a soft finger over my lips, then tilted my face up toward his. “I don’t want to talk anymore, Abby. We’ve talked enough.”

  Without another word—I was in his arms.

  My legs wrapped around his waist, and our lips came together like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like we’d been designed specifically for each other—cut from that same magical cloth. Nick was right. We were finally alone, with all our cards out on the table. And we’d waited long enough.

  While one hand wound through my hair—anchoring my face to his—the other wrapped around my legs and carried me out of the tub and up to his bedroom. At least, I think that’s where we were headed. I couldn’t stop kissing him long enough to open my eyes.

  He navigated his way blindly through the door, and kicked it shut behind him. A second later, he was laying me down on the bed.

  My skin was alive and ready. A trail of little chills followed his hand it ran slowly down the contours of my stomach before vanishing between my legs. My body twitched and writhed beneath him, but before I could even catch my breath, that same hand forced my legs apart.

  The next second, he was slamming into me.

  “Fuck,” I gasped, dropping my head back against the mattress.

  It was almost too much. Very close to too much.

  It was fucking perfect.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, dropping his lips down to my ear, “are you okay? I could—”

  My eyes snapped shut, and my back arched up to meet him.

  “Don’t you dare fucking stop.”

  A breathless grin spread up the side of his face, and he picked up the speed. Soon, the air was filled with the sound of frantic gasps and moans as the two of us clung to each other with all our might. His hands balled into fists on the pillow beside me, as my fingernails raked long streaks down his back. He let out a sharp cry, then hitched my legs up even higher, thrusting his hips with an impossible force and speed.

  I have no idea how long we went at it. I was trapped in one of those ‘floating above your own body’ moments where time ceased to matter.

  But just as the pressure inside me was getting almost unbearable, he let out a wild cry and threw back his head. Just the sight of him sent me right over the edge as well, but his lips came down over mine to stifle my scream. Absorbing it into himself instead.

  We stayed there for a moment—kissing, frozen, and shivering in the aftershocks—before he rolled off of me and landed beside me on his back.

  “That was...worth the wait.”

  I had to commend him for even talking. I could hardly catch my breath.

  “Abby?” He rolled onto his side, beaming uncontrollably as he trailed a finger in a casual figure eight around my breasts. “I’m going to need to do that from now on, alright?”

  A peal of breathless giggles erupted out of me, and I pressed a pillow over my face.

  “Part of your daily routine?”

  He pulled down the pillow with a grin, kissing the tip of my nose.

  “Between cups of coffee, I think. I might need to power up with coffee.”

  I bit my lip and grinned back at him.

  “Nick...you drink a lot of coffee.”

  He nodded firmly.

  “That’s the point. Between every single cup.”

  My heart soared just thinking about it. Then, with an impulse I couldn’t control, I wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, and pulled him down for a sudden kiss.

  Then another. Then another.

  When I was finally satisfied, I released him—leaving him breathless and confused. He pulled back in surprise, looking me over with a little half-smile.

  “What was that for?”

  “...because I can.”

  I beamed back with unadulterated joy, realizing, even as I said them, that the words were true. That for however long a time, this beautiful, charismatic, golden god of a man was mine.

  An expression I’d never seen before froze Nick’s face for the briefest of moments, before his eyes lit up with a euphoric glow.

  “You shouldn’t have said that...”

  Just like that—he was out of bed in a flash. Flipping on a pair of lamps as he left me on the bed and headed out into the hall. I propped up on my elbows and stared after him in shock.

  “Where are you going?”

  He glanced over his shoulder with a wink.

  “I’m
going to get some coffee...”

  * * *

  You know that moment that comes right in between having an amazing dream and waking up? That suspended moment where you vaguely know things are too good to be true, but for the time being, you can’t bring yourself to care? Like if you close your eyes for just a second more, you can find your way back. Extend it just a little longer. Find a way to make it last.

  ...then you open your eyes, and the whole world comes crashing down?

  Yeah. That was happening to me.

  For the second time in my life, I opened my eyes to see Mitchell Hunter standing over me. Arms folded. Jaw clenched. Towering over the foot of the bed.

  I jerked awake with a gasp, pulling the sheets up to my chin in the same motion. While I had fallen asleep on my back, Nick was passed out on his stomach. When he felt me move, his arm tightened automatically around my waist in his sleep.

  It was then that I realized Mitchell was staring at me.

  “Nick,” I whispered, trying desperately to pull myself to a sitting position while keeping my sheet at the same time, “Nick—wake up.”

  Much to my horror, he mumbled in his sleep.

  “You know the rules...coffee first.”

  I blushed as red as a fire engine, while Mitchell painfully closed his eyes. A second later, and after several sharp kicks from me, Nick finally blinked open his eyes.

  “Good morning.” He gave me a sleepy smile, still not registering much of anything around him. “You know, I could have sworn that—DAD!”

  He jumped in his skin like someone had shocked him—reaching automatically for the sheets just as I’d done. Then, for the first time in his life, he did something that neither I nor his father had ever seen him do before.

  “Turn around!” he demanded, throwing a protective arm in front of me. “Have you lost your fucking mind—she needs clothes!”

  I froze, staring at him in shock.

  How many times had I walked in on him and some girl in exactly this state? How many times had his father? How many nude pictures were plastered all over the internet of him and some random woman in the throes?

  And yet...did he just defend my honor?