Bait: Alpha Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (10 page)

“Oh, you can live in a castle,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “But becoming a princess is overrated. All those balls you have to attend, the fairy godmother’s strict rules and midnight curfews. Glass slippers are highly uncomfortable. Jimmy Choo told me that himself.”

Charlie narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin. “Let’s be serious, Nolan. How long can we keep up the charade? I have to admit. Your mother completely terrifies me.” She gave a shiver and gooseflesh spread across her bare arms.

“This isn’t a prison sentence, Charlie,” I said as I smoothed away the bumps with my hot palms. “And you don’t have to worry about my mother.”

“Christ, Nolan,” she spat as she skidded away from my touch again. I had to stop that from happening. It made me feel empty. “Don’t patronize me. Or play me for a fool. I may be a lot of things that your mother would never approve of but stupid isn’t one of them.”

“We’ll stay engaged long enough for the real estate deal to close with The Godfather,” I soothed and then raised my eyebrows at the cinematic reference to Raminsky. No need to tell her now that I had zero intention of ever letting her go. Not when she’d never believe me. “I’ll build my office building. You can lead the low-income housing project you’re so passionate about. Piece of cake.”

“I have a feeling that being engaged to you will be anything but simple,” Charlie muttered into my shoulder. “I fear it might kill me. I can’t get lost in you, Nolan. We can’t have sex anymore.”

What the fuck was she talking about? I needed to touch her. Hold her. I needed to sink in to her body over and over. If I couldn’t, then I didn’t want to breathe.

I hooked my finger under her chin and brought up her soft, supple lips for a kiss. I covered her mouth with mine, trying to say with my body what words couldn’t. It was tender and sweet. Full of feeling and promise. I didn’t expect for her to respond. But she did.

Charlie deepened the kiss, her mouth greedy as I pulled her onto my lap. Her breasts pressed against my chest as her tongue explored. I gripped her hips, feeling myself harden as she wiggled on my lap to stabilize her position.

When the kiss ended, I pulled away from her. “Isn’t it better when we communicate like this? Don’t tell me we need to be celibate, Charlie. There’s no reason why we can’t enjoy each other’s company. Inside and outside of work.”

Charlie put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me back against the seat. Putting up her fake barriers again. Didn’t she understand that with the electric connection we shared, the simplest touch, just a taste would open the floodgates?

“You seem to be forgetting,” she said as she put up a finger, thinking the single digit would stay me. Keep me from launching myself across the seat to devour her. I’d let her think she had control. For now. “This is a business deal. Nothing more, nothing less. Just business.”

“That’s not what I want.” A statement. A declaration.

An admission.

“I’m serious, Nolan,” she pressed her already rigid back even deeper in to the leather seat. I was sure if she could disappear, she would have. Zapped herself right out of my town car and into her dingy apartment. I’d hung the brass ring right in front of her. Why wasn’t she grabbing it with both hands? “We have to stay on top of things if you want your deal to go through.”

And you want your low-income project to go through
. She didn’t have to speak the words. I knew why she was still here. And it wasn’t because of me.

“I can think of other things I’d like you to stay on,” I said, my smile widening. If I couldn’t reach her with words, I’d reach her with my body. My sex appeal. That had never let me down.

I sidled closer to her. Close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off her fevered skin. Smell her. She tried to wiggle free but I held firm.

“You think we can keep this strictly business?” I reached up to stroke her cheek and she shivered. “If you say so, Charlie.”

“Let’s just stop talking about this for now,” she said. “I’m getting a killer headache from all that champagne.”

“If you insist,” I replied, planting my lips on hers again. I couldn’t wait to see how long she held out. Kept up the ridiculous charade of not wanting me. I had to figure out why. It certainly wasn’t because of a lack of passion on her end. No. There had to be something else. Something from her checkered past.

She slapped me away. “Nolan! I’m serious. No more.” She climbed off my lap.

Poking out my lower lip, I pouted like a little boy who had his favorite toy taken away. But there was another card. My ace in the hole. And I’d play it right now because my cock felt like it might explode. “You aren’t playing nice. Is that how you treat someone who just put a hundred-thousand-dollar diamond ring on your finger?”

“Might as well be Monopoly money,” she hissed. “Then we could honeymoon at Park Place. It would fit the theme for our fake engagement.” She sighed deeply and her head fell back against the seat, her eyes fluttering closed. “Therefore, your marriage proposal was invalid. Null and void just like the legal contracts I draw up for Banks Realty.”

“Don’t use your legal bullshit on me, Charlie.” Sexual frustration caused me to resort to surliness. I shifted in my seat, trying to adjust myself without my hands and ease the horrendous ache. “I know a few hundred people who would disagree with that remark.”

“Yeah, well, screw them,” Charlie said.

Seems two could play at the sexual frustration game. Why was she denying herself? Denying me? Nolan Banks was never denied. And I didn’t like it.

Not. One. Bit.

“I’d rather screw you,” I said bluntly, running my hands through my hair and doubling over. In pain. The pain of denial. “Although if you’d prefer to wait for our honeymoon, we might want to consider moving up the wedding date. I don’t know how long I can hold out.”

“Call a trick.”

Did she fucking just say that to me? I’m Nolan-God-Damn-Banks. As if.

Charlie used my open mouthed shock to press her case. How lawyerly of her. But I had to admit it. Charlene de Monaco was a worthy adversary. And that was why I respected her. Why I wanted her.
And I always get what I want.

“Now that you’ve mentioned it,” she said, peering at me through hooded lids. “There is the matter of the wedding details. Your mother will expect us to have some kind of arrangements when she throws that lavish engagement party. Have you thought this through?”

Before I could admit that I fucking had not thought this through, the limo came to a full stop in front of Charlie’s apartment. Instead of speaking, I leaned over and gave her a lingering kiss. I moved to deepen the kiss, but she pulled away and opened her door.

As she scooted out, I said, “We can talk about this tomorrow over brunch. I’ll pick you up at ten.”

Charlie checked her watch. “Five minutes until midnight. I’ll need to hurry inside before your limo turns into an orange vegetable.” She blew me a kiss as she leapt out. “See you in the morning, Prince Charming.”

“Fruit.”

“Huh?”

She stopped cold and glanced over her shoulder. The sight of her rounded ass and her gorgeous hair falling out of its messy bun to fall in wisps around her bare shoulders could have been my undoing. I wanted to reach my hand out and snatch her back in the car. I slapped it down on my knee and gripped my leg to keep it still.

“Pumpkin, miss smarty pants,” I said as I raised my eyebrows, “is technically a fruit. Didn’t they teach you that in the Ivy League?”

Charlie didn’t respond. She ran to the door of her building as fast as her stiletto clad feet could carry her. Fleeing.

Chapter Two

I awoke with a bad all-boy band going full swing in my temples, singing a well-known diddy I liked to call “What the fuck was I thinking for drinking so much champagne last night?”  I could piss out a bottle of Dom and repackage it for sale. It was a chart topper back in the late nineties when I went to college. Every so often, it tried to make a comeback. Like this morning. Only strong coffee and a Xanax would make it all go away.

“Fuck me,” I groaned and rolled over to check the time on my watch. The blurry numerals informed me that it was nine o’clock. My heart stopped for a second. What day was it? I never slept in this late. There was something I had to do today. Work? I was caught in a moment of panic before I realized it was the weekend. I could go back to sleep.

My head eased gently back on the pillow
and I tried to think of a way I could summon a cup of coffee without getting out of bed. Remembering there was a bottle of aspirin in my night stand, I reached over to get the medicine. Thunderbolts of lightning ripped through my head. That had definitely been too much champagne last night. God, I hated that shit. Whiskey. Strait. Maybe a little hair of the dog that bit me?

I wondered if it was possible to actually die of a champagne hangover. Clasping the bottle of aspirin, I shook out a few of the small white tablets. With no coffee or water, I dry swallowed them, trying to quell that endless drumming sound that just keep playing in my head.

Wham, bam, wham, bam.

Over and over.

Wait a minute.

That sound wasn’t The Backstreet Boys playing an encore in my sore head. It was coming from my front door.

Bang!

Whoever thought it was a bright idea to stop by my apartment this early on a Sunday morning without calling first would be told to get the fuck lost.

“Give me a damn minute!” I yelled, immediately regretting it. My own voice crashing through my head almost brought me to my knees. Cursing, I stood up and made my way to the pounding at the door.

“This better be an emergency,” I muttered as I shuffled to the door. “Somebody better be dead or dying. With their goddamn hair on fire.”

I pressed the intercom button, “Who the hell is it?”

“It’s Chase! Open the damn door, Nolan.” I heard my best friend’s voice shrill through the intercom. I winced at his incessantly loud tone. “Come on, bud. Open the door. Right now.”

“Heard of calling?” I asked in a whisper. I couldn’t bring myself to raise my voice any higher.

“Check your cell, dipshit,” he yelled again and I thought I might puke all over the intercom.

I buzzed him in and prepared for the grating third degree. Chase Bradenton had been my best friend since boarding school. There was a pact. A man pact. We’d hung out and partied all through college and business school. But when I’d gone off in an attempt to make my cold assed father proud, Chase had chosen to live off his trust fund and fuck his way across all seven continents. Last I’d heard, he was holed up with a hot blonde in Amsterdam, hitting the bong. Despite his world travels, we still remained close friends. Most days, he was my only friend.

My hand had just unlocked the door when Chase barreled through like a hurricane tearing up the coastline. He had an armload of magazines and newspapers that he promptly dumped on the floor in front of the couch. The New York Daily, the STAR magazine, the New York Weekly, the NYC HOT NOW Newspaper, plus dozens of others. Shit. We could’ve lined the whole Upper East Side’s birdcages and cat litter boxes with all the paper.

I closed the door and walked over to the couch where Chase had made himself comfortable. He kicked off his expensive Italian loafers and placed his bare feet on the glass coffee table. I poked the mound of offensive paper with my toe and asked, “What the hell is all this, Chase? Killed a whole forest today, I see.”

Chase laughed. “Don’t play coy with me, shithead. Like a bad episode of
I Love Lucy
, you’ve got some ‘splaining to do. Who doesn’t give their best friend a heads up when they’re getting
engaged
?”

He pulled out another copy of the Daily from his back pocket, held up the front page and poked it with his pointer finger. The sound of the crispy paper made me grab my head again.

“Seriously, keep the noise level down to one decibel, dude.”

Chase just laughed. “Imbibed a little too much champagne last night toasting the blessed event, huh? You know better than to drink that gut rot. It’s worse than Boone’s Farm.”

I glanced up and opened my dry eyes to small slits. Splashed in full color was a photo of me in my black tuxedo with Charlie on my arm. She looked gorgeous in her white and gold designer dress, flashing a big smile at the camera. Then I saw it. The engagement ring perched on her finger made of recyclable paper. The biggest diamond New York City had probably ever seen.

Chase’s eyes followed mine, landing on the ring finger of my fiancée. “Is there something that you forgot to tell me? Maybe you could’ve mentioned the other night when we spoke on the phone that you were planning on taking one of your cheap fucks and making her your wife? Is she currently expecting a little Nolan bambino?”

I punched Chase on the shoulder and then swiped the paper out of his hands. “Have you been talking with my mother?” I accused him. “She said the same damn thing. Charlie’s not like that. Do I have to knock up a girl to get her to marry me? Maybe I’m actually in love for once, asshole!”

“First off, I have my doubts about you getting engaged so quickly to someone that I have never met let alone heard about,” Chase leaned back in my leather sofa with a smirk. “Secondly, she is one hot piece of ass. So I can see the attraction there. But what the fuck, dude? I’m your best friend and I feel like a dick being in the dark on an important life event.”

Where the hell to even begin? How do I explain to my best friend that I tricked the greatest woman I’d ever known by dangling a carrot in front of her? I’d promised Charlie that I wouldn’t tell anyone the truth. But I couldn’t deny the photos splashed across the pages of the mound of magazines and newspapers littering the floor.

Charlie gazed into my eyes in adoration as she flashed the engagement ring to the well-wishers at the party last night. Another photo with my arm slung around her shoulder, whispering in her ear. Then yet another photo, yikes, this one of my mother with daggers in her eyes, looking at Charlie and me. Like she wanted to kill us with sharp icicles and hang us by our ankles to freeze in a meat locker. But it was the headlines that made my sphincter tighten up:

NEW YORK CITY’S FAVORITE PLAYBOY POPS THE QUESTION TO MYSTERY WOMAN

THE WINTER BALL THAT WE WON’T FORGET ANYTIME SOON

NOLAN BANKS ENGAGED TO LAWYER FROM WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS

The last one made me nauseated like a punch to the gut. My protective instincts went into high gear. How dare they do a background check on Charlie! She hadn’t asked for any of this. “Where the hell did you get all these papers? Did you rob a newsstand?”

“Quit trying to change the subject,” Chase said as he leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees. And glare. At me. “But if you must know, the airport has a nice newspaper stand that has an impressive media selection. When I got off the plane, I checked my voice mail and my mailbox was full. Full, Nolan. All about my best friend’s engagement. Imagine my surprise? How did I not know that Nolan Banks had stuck his dick in a mystery woman so alluring he’d put a ring on it? As soon as I got off the plane, I bought every paper that had your pretty little face on it. Yet, you never said one freaking word during our brief conversation the other night. Not. One. Word.”

Despite teasing me and throwing all these papers at me to try and prove a point, I could tell that Chase’s smug comments were driven by hurt. Hurt that I’d caused. Seems I littered pain wherever I went, leaving it behind me in my wake.

“Seriously, though, why couldn’t you tell your best friend? Even a phone call last night after you’d done the deed would’ve been appropriate. Or a text. Or a homing pigeon.”

I blew out a long breath. I couldn’t break my promise to Charlie. Even to my best friend. “It was kinda a last minute thing. You know me, always acting on my baser impulses.”

“Wow.” Chase studied my face while he processed my answer. “She must be the best fuck ever. You’ve always been impulsive but to ask a girl to marry you? I don’t know if I buy that. What’s really going on, Nolan? Are you in trouble?”

Anger seared through me like a flashbulb. Blame it on the alcohol or lack of sleep. But damn, when did I have to answer to someone? “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that I had to ask your permission before getting engaged. No, I’m not in trouble nor is Charlie pregnant. She’s an attorney for my firm. A smart, talented, Ivy League educated attorney. We just met a few weeks ago. I happened to fall in love with her. We have a lot in common. I bought the ring yesterday right before the gala. Yes, it was an impromptu performance. I may not have thought it through, but I certainly don’t regret it. I love her.”

And I did.

Chase patted me on the back. “Then I guess congratulations are in order. I’m happy for you, bro.”

I looked at Chase, suddenly contrite. I’d never intended to hurt anyone. Chase. Charlie. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I should’ve called you on the way to the gala…”

“Apology accepted. On to bigger and better things… do I get to serve as your best man? By the looks of Charlene, I could probably get some excellent tail out of that deal.”

I laughed, eyeing all the headlines on the papers strewn over the floor. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I still need to get through…”

Oh shit.

“What time is it?” I frantically looked around for a clock.

“Nine-thirty? Ten? I don’t know. Do you have other proposals to make today?” Chase teased me.

“Nine forty-five!” I called out after seeing the fuzzy green numbers on the stove’s clock. I ran to my bathroom to take a quick shower and get dressed as I called over my shoulder. “I forgot I have to have brunch with my mother!”

Chase
followed me to the bathroom. “Oh, joy. Can I go? I wanna watch this train wreck in person.”

“See if you can find a clean pair of jeans and a decent shirt for me to wear,” I called out while dousing myself with shampoo. I would have to brush my teeth in the limo so I wasn’t too late. My mother was going to kill me. She didn’t like tardiness.

“What time was brunch?” Chase called back to me.

“Ten.”

I heard him laughing. “Man, your mother’s gonna be pissed. She’s gonna be wearing that look like she hasn’t shit for days.”

“Did you find a clean shirt for me?” I ignored his statement, getting out of the shower. I hastily dried off and slipped on the clothes Chase threw at me.

“You’re lucky I showed up here this morning,” Chase muttered, grabbing my wallet and cell phone. He tossed it all to me, including my keys. I added a toothbrush and toothpaste and stuffed it in my front pocket.

“Stick around, okay? There’s some leftover Italian food in the fridge. Pop on the game, I’ll be home later. We’ll have some beers.” I slammed the door and ran for the elevator. I still had to pick up Charlie and then beat feet across town to meet my mother. I was surprised Charlie hadn’t been blowing up my phone.

Well, I reminded myself, I’d already disappointed my mother last night by my surprise proposal. Being late to brunch should be no big deal. That was a blatant self-lie. I’d never hear the end of it via her passive aggressive rancor.