ALL THAT HE WANTS (Volume 1 The Billionaire's Seduction) (26 page)

“Oh my God… do you think… oh, I wonder if he’ll want me to…”

“Sebastian?”

“Yes?”

“Call him.”

“Okaaaaay,”
he said, giddy as a thirteen-year-old girl in love.
“I’ll call you back as soon as I know something!”

“Please do,” Connor said. “Good luck.”

“Thank you! Goodbye, Lily!”

“Bye,” I said, then looked at Connor in amazement. “Were those two different people we just talked to? The guy at the beginning of the call, and the one who just hung up?”

“Eh, Sebastian’s like everybody else… he needs to get laid once in awhile, or he gets uptight as hell.”

I sauntered up to Connor and ran one finger across his chest. “Well,
you
should be feeling pretty relaxed, then.”

He gave me a huge grin. “Incredibly. And you?”

I stood up on my tiptoes and gave him a soft kiss on the lips. “Wonderfully.”

He chuckled. “Good. Now let’s go get something to eat before I get carried away and ‘relax’ you some more.”

“That wouldn’t be so bad…”

“No, it wouldn’t,” he agreed, taking me by the hand, “but we’d
never
leave the room – and we don’t want to disappoint Sebastian.”

“God forbid,” I said as I rolled my eyes.

Connor laughed. “Exactly. Especially with all that heaven-and-earth-moving he’s going to on our behalf with his beloved hairdresser.”

I laughed and let Connor lead me out the door.

“I am
not
happy about this,” Johnny glowered as he held the rear door to the Bentley open.

“So you’ve said a dozen times already,” Connor said as he helped me inside. “But I’m not going to turn into a hermit just because some thug from Central Casting lobbed a nondescript threat my way.”

“I still think – ”

“Yes, yes,” Connor said as he got in and closed the door in Johnny’s face.

“That was rude,” I frowned. “He’s just looking out for you.”

Connor groaned. “Not you, too.”

“You said earlier that you should remember why you hired him.”

“So what, you want to stay in the hotel room all night?”

“I can think of worse things.”

Connor grinned and put a hand on my leg.

I pointedly took it off and put it back on his knee. “But we’re not going to do any of them if you’re not nicer to the people trying to keep you safe.”

“Who died and made
you
Miss Manners?”

“I just remember a charming, wonderful man who made my boss apologize to me Friday night. I’d hate to think he’s not around anymore.”

“Yeah, but your boss was an asshole.”

I stared at him, my eyebrows raised, with just the barest hint of a smile on my lips.

Connor glared at me… paused, as though wondering how far he wanted to push it… then reached out and pushed a button on the console next to him. “Johnny?”

“What,”
the bodyguard’s voice grumbled over the intercom.

Connor glanced at me. I prodded him onward with my eyes.

“Sorry I closed the door on you, man. I know you’re just trying to keep me safe.”

I could hear the smile in Johnny’s voice.
“Lily made you say that, didn’t she.”

“Yes, she did.”

“She probably blackmailed you into it, didn’t she.”

“Extortion… blackmail… withholding of certain favors…”

I smacked Connor playfully on the arm.

“Mm-hm. So, does this mean we can go back upstairs?”

“Nope. Let’s roll.”

Johnny sighed, the intercom clicked off, and the Bentley slid into motion.

I squinted at Connor disapprovingly.

“What? You said to be nice, so I was.”

“Yeah, but – ”

“Do you want to stay locked away in a prison all weekend?”

“It’s a very nice prison.”

“It is, and you’re a
very
nice cellmate, but let’s go live a little.”

“You like making his life difficult, don’t you.”

“No,” Connor said, stretching his arm around my shoulders, “I just like making him earn his paycheck, that’s all.”

Then he leaned over and started nibbling at my neck, and all my objections were quickly forgotten.

The restaurant was amazing, recently opened by a young hotshot who had decided to get out from the shadow of a celebrity chef he had worked under for years. There was a large main room, full of candlelight and flowing tablecloths, where people obviously came to see and be seen. But there was also a twisty, maze-like ring around the main hall, with tiny little individual areas partitioned off from the other tables. Connor and I sat at one of these tables, isolated from the rest of the restaurant, in our own little world.

Of course, to get it, we had to go through a snobby maître-d’.

She was a beautiful redhead, tall, elegant and cool, like a young Nicole Kidman. I could tell she was affected by Connor’s good looks, but resented being affected. She was pleasant enough, but her smile was remote as she assured him, “I’m sorry, sir, but there’s absolutely no way I can fit you in this evening.”

Connor pulled out his wallet. “I’m so sorry… I was sure I’d had my assistant make reservations, but I guess something happened…”

He slipped three hundred-dollar bills out and placed them on the sleek podium behind which she stood.

“Is there
any
way you can possibly fit us in?”

My eyes bugged out. I know, after everything I’d seen – ten-thousand dollar a night hotel room, rack of designer clothes, Bentley limo – $300 shouldn’t have even registered on my radar anymore.

But since that was a few dollars more than was currently in my checking account, it still got my attention.

It got hers, too.

She moved her palm over the money, and it disappeared as smoothly as if she were a magician headlining in Vegas.

“You know, I think I do remember those reservations,” she said, warming right up. “Please, follow me. Did you want something in the main room, or something more… intimate?”

“Oh, the more intimate, the better,” he said, flashing her one of his panty-dropping smiles.

She actually stumbled when he did it, then led us back to the table with a red face.

I hate to admit it, but I felt a stab of jealousy. I know he was just turning on the charm for fun… or to help get a table… but it annoyed me that he could do it at the drop of a hat, and could affect other women so easily.

And it hurt a little that he was using it on somebody else but me.

Just a tiny little pinprick… but it was there.

I decided I was being silly, so I swallowed my annoyance and walked along with him, my hand in his.

And thus we found ourselves seated in a tiny alcove away from the rest of the world. Another hundred dollars had secured Johnny at a table down the way from us, where he could keep tabs without being too intrusive.

“That was interesting,” I said between sips of the most wonderful Chardonnay I’d ever tasted in my life.

“What?”

“The bribe to get in here.”

“Oh, that.” He laughed. “It’s amazing how cheaply some people can be bought.”

I arched an eyebrow. Now the flirting really
was
forgotten. “For some of us, $300 isn’t cheap.”

He shrugged diplomatically. “True.”

“And I wouldn’t say you were
buying
her.”

He grinned. “She has a certain amount of power. This is her domain… and $300 was her price.”

“You probably could have just told her who you were.”

“Maybe… but I hate people who say, ‘Do you know who I am?’ If they don’t immediately know who you are, you should never, ever say it.”

“
I
didn’t know who you were.”

“Yes, but… you’re rather slow,” he said in a sad, patronizing voice.

I kicked him under the table.

“Ow!” he laughed, and rubbed his shin. “Careful there, I need that leg.”

“Do you think she knows who you are?” I asked, the jealousy returning a little bit. I didn’t want the tall, elegant redhead showing me up any more than she already had.

“I hope not. I go to great lengths to keep my picture and my name out of the news.”

“Why?”

“You ever talked to anybody who’s famous? I mean,
really
famous? ‘Walk down the street and people come up to you’ famous?”

I gave him a look like
Puh-lease.
“Me? No.”

“Well, all the ones I know say it’s the worst part of the deal. Fame is only good for a couple of things: attracting attention to causes, and bedding beautiful women. I have enough money that I can hire other people to attract attention, and I already have a beautiful woman sitting across from me, so I’m fine.”

At first I blushed from the compliment – and then the jealousy hit me even stronger.

“Yeah, but you only met me yesterday. Surely you wanted to attract women before you met me.”

“Well, since the last one was eight months ago, you can see how high up on my to-do list
that
was.”

I averted my eyes. “Was she beautiful?”

“Who, the last woman I was with?”

I nodded without looking at him.

“She was my fiancée.”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach.

I looked up at him and stared.

“I… I didn’t know…” I whispered.

He smiled – but it was a polite smile that put distance between us. Sort of like what the redhead had used when she assured us she couldn’t possibly let us in. “How could you have?”

“I… did it end… amicably?”

His features turned to stone. “No. Not really.”

“What happened?”

For the first time since I’d met him, his blue eyes made me think of ice. Cold, arctic, glacial. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I dropped my gaze again. “I-I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

His voice thawed, as though he realized he’d been too harsh. “It’s alright… I just don’t want to talk about it.”

It made sense now. Why he hadn’t been with anybody else in eight months.

He’d had his heart broken.

And because of that, mine broke for him.

“Enough about me,” he said. “I’m sick and tired of me. Tell me about you. I hardly know anything about you.”

I looked back up at him. He was smiling again.

“Yeah, I guess we kind of skipped the chit chat, didn’t we?”

He laughed, back to his old self. “Yeah, we kind of did.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who you are. What makes you tick.”

“That’s not exactly something
I
have figured out yet.”

“Alright, let’s start with basics. Parents? Siblings?”

“My mom and dad still live in Charlotte, North Carolina. That’s where I grew up. I have an older brother. He’s at a software company down in Florida.”

“What was your major in college?”

“Business, with a psych minor.” I winced. “This is… kind of weird.”

“Too much like a job interview,” he agreed. “Alright, tell me this: what did five-year-old Lily want to be when she grew up?”

“Oh, that’s easy – a ballerina.”

“Really.”

“And six-year-old Lily wanted to be a scientist.”

“Those are kind of opposite ends of the spectrum.”

“They are. But it gets better. At eight, I wanted to be an astronaut. At nine, a psychologist. I guess that’s the one that stuck the most, what with the psych minor.”

“Why a business major?”

“My dad was paying for my education, and he wanted me to do something practical. So… I did.”

“Mm-hm.” Connor looked at me as though he were staring deep into my soul. “And what does the… how old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“My God, you’re a baby.”

I flushed. “No I’m not.”

Connor grinned. “You’re still wet behind the ears.”

“Yeah, whatever. How old are you?”

“Thirty next month.”

“Good Lord, you already have one foot in the grave.”

He shook his head with mock sadness. “And here I am in an early midlife crisis, robbing the cradle.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m going to come over there and smack you if you keep saying stuff like that.”

He arched an eyebrow and smiled seductively. “You like that, don’t you.”

“What?”

“Domination. Aggression. You’re very physical.”

“I’m just playing around!” I protested.

He put a finger up to his lips, as though he were pondering something. “Maybe we can do a little something about that later.”

My eyes widened. “Like what?”

“I don’t know… maybe a little spanking or something.”

I blushed. “What?! No.”

“Oh, I think so.”

“NO.”

“Have you tried it?”

“What?”

“Being spanked.”

I was flushing a deep crimson by now. “NO.”

“Oh. Pity.”

“You keep talking like that, I’ll come over there and spank
you,
” I snarled.

He arched the eyebrow again. “…promise?”

I gulped down some wine for something to do. “You were saying something before you got sidetracked into your
50 Shades Of Grey
moment.”

He laughed out loud, then tilted his eyes up to the ceiling as though thinking. “What was – oh yes. I asked you what little Lily wanted, and you told me about at seven, eight, nine years old… so what does twenty-four year-old Lily want?”

I looked at him for a couple of seconds, thinking.

“Twenty-four year-old Lily is still working on that,” I finally answered.

He nodded and smiled. “I’m sure she’ll figure it out.”

Our eyes locked, and I felt my heart speed up.

And then the waiter came with our food, and the moment passed.

My smoked salmon was incredible. Connor got pork tenderloin with some amazing kind of sauce made with puréed cherries. For the second time that day – the first being when I shaved him in the tub – I felt terribly intimate as we fed each other bites of food from each other’s plates.

I mean emotionally intimate; obviously we’d been closer… um,
physically.
But as I fed him bites of salmon from my fork, and he laughed at me when I freaked out about dropping some on his suit, there was a comfort there I usually only felt after months and months of dating somebody.