Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (3 page)

Tapas sounds great! When?

Dammit! Now she sounded too eager. And then he waited. And waited. No
reply. Shit! Maybe he was having second thoughts. Or she sounded like a moron.
Or he realized he didn’t like tapas after all. Or he really was gay. Or this
was his cat impersonating him. She began to pace, willing the chat bar to ping.
If she stared hard enough, maybe it would come – now! No, now! Or…now!

Finally:

Uh, this might seem too eager, but I don’t care. I am free tonight. I
work a 24 tomorrow, so this is my last chance for a few days. I don’t mean to
be rude, asking you on short notice, but…please tell me you’re free tonight.

Yes!
Yes, yes, yes, she wanted to write. But she needed to play
that stupid game, the dance of meeting someone new. Her turn to wait. She
reread his message. What was a 24? She puzzled over that one as she chewed on
her cuticle, pulling on it until it bled. Brilliant! Screw up your manicure when
you have a hot date tonight, Laura.

Might have. Might have. Don’t put the cart before the horse.

I am free. Prince William is now taken and so I have an opening in my
busy social schedule.

She hit “Send” before she could change her mind. Too cheesy?

LOL. Sounds great. Meet me at Tempo Bistro after work. At 6?

Tempo Bistro? The most expensive, chi-chi restaurant in town? Not
tapas, either – something she couldn’t quite remember. Asian fusion? How
on earth could a firefighter afford that?
Not your problem, Laura
. And
she was making terrible assumptions. She needed to assume they were going
dutch. Good thing she was a careful saver.

’lo?

The chat window pinged. Geez, Laura. Get out of your head. She typed
furiously:

Sounds even better. I’ll see you there and you know what I look like.

And he replied,

Oh, yes. :P

What was that supposed to mean? Her eyes swept over the clock –
now she had eight minutes to shower. Damn! Laura just shook her head and walked
to the bathroom, stripping naked by the time she crossed the threshold and
turned on the hot water.

Sliding under the spray was bliss, the beads of water trailing their
way down her body, her hair wet and ropy within seconds, the curl relaxed and
the strands stretching long enough to tickle the top of her sacrum. Eh –
why not leave the ad up? Who knew. Maybe she’d attract a better breed of guy.
Or, at least, a different kind. She eyed the shower head – did she have
time? Eight minutes?

More than enough for the last guy she dated.

Just enough time for some intimate attention from Mr. Showerhead,
though. Josie was wrong. It wasn’t her battery bill that was getting expensive.
Her water bill, on the other hand…

Good thing her vibrator was waterproof. As she soaped up she was
cognizant of the time, knowing she had minutes to finish. Pulling up the old
standby fantasy always worked. Two men, luscious and thickly-muscled, both in
the shower with her.
Mmmm…

The extra tip of her vibrator slid along the soft, sensitive skin of
her clit as she perched one foot on the tub, opening up for access to slide in
her fantasy lover, who was soaping her body with his sculpted, large hands,
hands that smoothed over her curves, cupping her ass to pull him toward her,
sliding his enormous cock in her while the other nameless, faceless lover
kissed her, hard, his tongue lashing against her and exploring as the spray
rolled down in rivulets between them, gathering at her folds and adding to the
tease on her clit.

Her passage tightened as she imagined him bending down, on his knees,
his tongue now lapping where the vibrator’s little antennae tweaked her, not
her own hands moving the thick shaft in and out but the lovers’, four hands at
once on her as one mouth descended on her eager, red nub, the other man
thrusting her up against the shower’s wall, her body ready for more.

She tensed, knowing she was so close, craving all these hands, more
than enough for two men who wanted and needed her, the familiar muscled
cresting of her climax so innate she barely cried out, the release perfunctory
but oh, so welcome.

And, now, the guilt. Because how could a “normal” woman really want two
men at once? As she absent-mindedly rushed through the rest of the shower,
quickly washing off her trusty toy, a persistent voice said, You, Laura.
You.

She really did. Some wishes were never meant to be, she sighed
inwardly, drying her hair and rushing to get dressed.

Just a fantasy that got her off.

***

It didn’t help that she felt like there was a huge discrepancy between
what she saw in herself, and what she saw in the pictures of Dylan, and what
she saw when she did a search for him online. This guy was a catch; not just a
catch, but a catch. Like, the difference between catching a good-sized bass in
a great lake versus catching a giant, enormous marlin. He was outstanding.
There was no other term for it.

He looked like something that was sculpted by an artist and the more
that she thought about it and the more that she mulled over it, the more that
she was excited about it – the more it turned her into a quivering,
uncharacteristically nervous pile of goo.

“I don’t think I can do this, Josie,” she said that night as she
prepared for the actual date. Dylan had picked out a rather nice restaurant in
a part of town that was above her pay grade, and she wondered how on earth he
could afford it on a firefighter’s salary. But she wasn’t going to question it
because maybe, just maybe, she had finally found somebody who was going to
treat her properly. The way she had always dreamed of being treated, and not
treated like a booty call or a person you’d settle for when you really want
something more but settle for good enough.

“You’re more than ready and you know it, Laura. It’s about time you
found some guy who…” Josie looked at the screen again. “Oh, dear, I don’t
think I remember what I was about to say because I’m about to burst into flames
if I look at that guy one more time.”

“He’s mine,” said Laura, baring her teeth in a fake show of
territoriality. It wasn’t that fake, though. Some part of her meant it.

“I can look. I know I can’t touch, but I know I
can
look,” Josie
joked.

Laura had picked out three different sets of clothes, being as
meticulous as possible today, trying so hard to cover what she felt were
definitely deficits. Big, enormous deficits. Calling her a fluffy woman would
be a perfectly nice euphemism, if you didn’t prefer the term fat. Not fat in a
derogatory way. Just fat as a practical, pragmatic way of describing how she
was. It’s not like you get to be a size eighteen by meticulously eating 700 calories
a day and never, ever doing anything wrong in terms of what you put in your
mouth. She couldn’t stand it when people would claim that they’re fat because
of their genes, they’re fat because they have a thyroid problem, they’re fat
because –
because, because, because
.

She owned it. She was fat because she put too much unhealthy stuff in
her mouth, and even of the healthy stuff she put in her mouth, she put in too
much. And she didn’t really mind it – she liked food. She really,
really
liked food. Enjoyed it. Savored it. Pleasured it. Found it to be a joy in her
life.

And she paid the price with the extra pounds, the padding – what
a lovely euphemism that was, too. She liked her curves; the curves made her
feel normal, gentle, open, emotional –
bare
. You couldn’t hide
from a curve; you couldn’t hide from a love handle or from a padded hip or from
a booty that made enough men blush and drool. She knew it was an asset (pun
intended) to some guys.

What she hoped, what she
deeply
hoped, was that to a guy like Dylan,
maybe, just maybe, she could beat the odds and find in him someone who really
valued someone like her. So far that hadn’t been the case. Online dating had
turned out to be a giant nightmare of electrons that didn’t line up exactly the
way that anybody had planned. She seemed to photograph well because she got an
awful lot of come-ons and she figured maybe there was something to that.

She was blonde, with a healthy glow in her face and a pretty decent
smile with two dimples that appeared when she laughed hard enough. Her
shoulders carried some of her weight, but it just made her look bosomy and big
chested, and if she picked the right formfitting sweater she could come across
a good twenty pounds lighter than she really was. That may have been part of
the problem, though, because it was always that look that the guys gave her
when she walked into the bar, the coffee shop, the plaza, the restaurant
– whatever public place that they had planned to meet.

It was that look, that fucking
look
.

It was a look of surprise – and not of good surprise. It was the
look of, oh, you’re not what I was looking for. Oh, you’re not what you look
like in your picture. Oh, you’re a fat chick.

Oh.

Sometimes they had the decency to tell her the truth and to actually
say those things aloud. Yeah, really – the decency. Because it was better
to hear it up front, to her face, in her face even, than to sit down with that
type of guy, to try to read the signals, the tilt of the face, the grin, the
look in his eyes, the
lack
of a look in his eyes if he glanced away. All
of the little tells, the way he held his hand, the way he fidgeted, the way he
reached for his phone for a text that didn’t really exist. All of those sights
and sounds and movements that added up to one thing.

Rejection.

So far, she had had a few one night stands, a few guys who were willing
to fuck the fat chick. She didn’t turn them down because the offers were few
and far between and because it wasn’t obvious that these were pity fucks
– until it was glaringly, painfully, heartbreakingly obvious. Most
recently, like she had told Josie, she was sick of it. Just sick of it. So this
last ditch attempt at online dating really was the final attempt.

Dylan seemed too good to be true. Here she stood in front of Tempo
Bistro at 6 p.m. sharp wearing a pencil skirt, really nice high heels, and a
mohair sweater, the same one she had worn in the dating site picture, just so
she could – in her own head, in her own internal thoughts – not
consider herself to have been falsely advertising. What he would see in a
minute was exactly what she had shown online.

No less.

No more.

Her hair was pulled back in the same funny little ponytail and her eyes
were sparkling with hope that she dredged up from deep, deep inside, and
plunked down in front of him, ready to try once more.

***

Getting ready for this first date with Laura had turned out to be a
hell of a lot more complicated than it had any right to be. First of all, it
turned out he got his dates wrong. His 24-hour shift was actually
that
night. Tonight. So he had to change shifts with Murphy, and Murphy, who wasn’t
know for granting favors easily, not only extracted another 24-hour shift out
of him, but also convinced him to give up his beloved Red Sox tickets for the
next game. Dylan reluctantly gave it up, hoping like hell that this date was
really going to be worth it, hating the sly grin on Murphy’s face.

Hey, he was taking a chance that maybe it really was worth it. Four
different clothing changes later, he finally settled on something that he hoped
resembled “business casual” in the corporate world. She worked as a business
analyst for some large nameless, faceless corporation and that meant that she
probably had an expectation about what a guy would look like. Dylan’s general
preferred state of dress was some old concert t-shirt from the 90’s, a pair of
ripped up jeans and whatever pair of shoes were comfortable enough to pass
muster.

Wearing business casual pants, a buttoned-down shirt, and – tie
or no tie? He had finally settled on no tie. He felt like a fraud. If he just
added some penny loafers and a loose cotton V-neck that showed the top of his
chest he would look like something out of a Macy’s ad, which actually would’ve
been possible ten years ago when he dipped his toe in the world of modeling
before realizing that most of the people in that business were douche bags and
he couldn’t stand it.

“Hey, who died? You look like you’re going to a funeral, man,” said
Mike, walking into the room looking pretty natty himself in a similar outfit,
just without the black pants. Mike was wearing khakis and some kind of boat
shoes that Dylan thought had gone out of fashion back in the 80’s, when he was
a kid. The guy managed to make Superman look puny. He could have been a stunt
man for The Avengers, minus the confidence. For whatever reason, Mike was a man
without swagger. He just
was
, a steady presence that made Dylan feel
complete.

“What about you, man?” he challenged. “Why are you all dressed up? You
got a hot date, too?” He narrowed his eyes and peered at his roommate,
wondering. Nah, no way – he didn’t. Mike hadn’t gone out in eighteen
months, not since Jill died.

Mike grinned. “I wish. Meeting at the ski resort.”

“It’s July!”

“I know, but we start getting ready now, believe it or not. Some people
actually plan out processes and don’t always fly by the seat of their pants.”
He muttered the last sentence under his breath but clearly meant for Dylan to
hear every word.

Dylan just shook his head and said, “I like being a pantser.” Big grin.
“Have fun.”

“I’d rather be doing what you’re doing,” Mike replied, then paused,
seeming to think over what he’d just said.

“Me too,” Dylan laughed, grabbing his keys. “Don’t wait up for me.”

“I’m staying overnight at my cabin, so no worries. You have the place
to yourself. I hope things work out with Laura. That,” he paused, brow
furrowed, “that could really benefit everybody, huh?” Mike winked and the two
hugged, Dylan forced to reach up to the only person in his life taller than
himself. And broader.