Billionaire With a Twist 2 (6 page)

I may have lost a lot of things
recently, but I was not going to lose this man’s vote.

#

“Ah, Ally, there you are! We’ve
been looking all over for you!”

Damn, damn, and triple damn. After all
my efforts to avoid them all evening, ducking and dodging and
assiduously avoiding eye contact so that we ended up on opposite
sides of the room, my sister and her boyfriend/my hook-up/my client
had still managed to track me down like a pair of socially awkward
bloodhounds.

Dammit, if only I didn’t have to
stump so hard for Hunter and my plan tonight. I could have hidden in
the kitchen, drowning my sorrows in champagne and savory canapés.

I gave what I hoped was a convincing
imitation of a smile. “Ah, hey guys. How’s it going?”

Hunter made some noises that were
probably words saying that it was going great, or poorly, or that
everything had exploded. I couldn’t tell, because my eyes were
too busy watching the way his arm curled possessively around Paige’s
waist, pulling her as close as physically possible, the way Paige was
leaning into him, two puzzle pieces fitting perfectly…

“—and that’s
basically the long and the short of it,” he finished.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s
interesting.”

Paige’s face was concerned. “Are
you all right, Ally? You’ve been on your feet for hours now,
are you sure you’re not getting tired? You look a bit pale.”

“I’m fine!” I said,
tossing off a laugh to prove just how fine I was. “Just need to
refuel.”

I snagged a glass of champagne from a
passing waiter and tossed it back, barely tasting the cloying, bubbly
sweetness I usually hated.

Hunter snagged a couple of glasses as
well, and offered one of them to Paige.

She shook her head. “I’m
afraid I’m not a fan. The bubbles go right up my nose.”

Hunter gave her a dazed little grin and
bopped her on the nose with his finger. “That is just too
adorable.”

Paige giggled.

Meanwhile, I felt like I might explode.
Did I say might? Would. Definitely would. Explosion imminent,
self-destructing countdown commencing, and I was powerless to stop
it.

“Well,” Hunter said, still
wearing that stupid love-struck smile, “let’s go find
something that won’t bubble up that little button nose of
yours. I think I saw a nice Merlot earlier…”

“My favorite!” Paige said
happily. She turned to me. “Ally, I wouldn’t abandon you
but I know you’ll do your work so much better without us around
to chat with you. We’ll catch you later, and try not to work
too
hard, okay? Have a little fun!”

“Sure, sure,” I said,
waving them off. The second they were out of sight, I grabbed another
champagne from a passing waiter who looked so fancy that anywhere
else he’d have people waiting on him like royalty.

I was still seething and unbalanced,
but I forced myself to sip this glass a little more slowly. I had to
be smart about this. I couldn’t get drunk tonight. So I had to
make this one last. See, I was feeling calmer and more in control
already.

I’d just sip this champagne until
I felt like I could head back out into the fray, and then—

“Was that Hunter Knox?”

The cultured voice, vowels sliding from
Virginia nobility straight into British aristocracy, was so close
that for a second I thought the woman was speaking to me, but then I
realized that I was close enough to a circle of wealthy society women
to overhear their conversation. Maybe there would be an in for me to
chat up the company?

I turned my back to them while subtly
edging closer, pretending to be interested solely in the contents of
my glass and the handsome oil painting to my right.

“Indeed it is,” another
voice, sounding equally made of money, responded. A mischievous tone
crept in. “And isn’t he looking handsome! Why, if I were
forty years younger…”

This was met with a series of polite
chuckles and murmurs. “Oh, behave yourself, Ethel!”

There was a sigh, presumably from
Ethel. “Well, if I had to lose out to the younger generation,
at least it’s to a nice young girl like that. Who’s her
family?”

My heart started, and I edged still
closer, my dress almost brushing against the tuxedo of the waiter
serving them miniature crab cakes.

Some hushed conversation that I
couldn’t quite make out followed, and then, “the
Bartletts, I believe…”

“Haven’t heard of them,”
said yet another voice, one full of the creaking iron of an old
battleship. Her tone turned musing. “Still, seems they’ve
raised her right. I asked after her earlier and she’s so
polite, so feminine, not like those young hussies you get nowadays.”

This was greeted with general sounds of
agreement, then the original speaker’s voice rose over the
others loud and clear. “Yes, those modern girls can intrigue a
man for a time, catch his eye with their wild ways, but if a man of
the world like Hunter Knox decides to settle down, you can bet it’ll
be with a sweet old-fashioned girl like that one.”

My hand was trembling on the champagne
flute.

My mother, lips pursed, shaking her
head at me as she tossed my goth-style prom picture into the garbage
can before sliding Paige’s pink princess one into a golden
frame, to hang on the wall—

My high school boyfriend the night I
brought him home for dinner, taking one look at Paige and instantly
forgetting I was there, his hand dropping from mine as his mouth fell
open—

Walking past the teacher’s
lounge and overhearing my favorite art teacher: “Well, of
course Ally’s got some raw talent, but nothing compared to what
Paige—”

Somehow my champagne glass had become
empty. I walked away as quickly as I could to keep from overhearing
anything else, and grabbed another glass off a tray without looking.
Had I been thinking something about taking it slow? What a stupid
idea, I needed to take it as fast as humanly possible. There was no
way I could do this event completely sober. I needed all the
champagne in the goddamn world.

My shoulder bumped into something, and
I backed up, already starting to apologize, “Sorry, sorry, so
sorry—”

It was Ben Minister. He eyed me with
concern. “Miss Bartlett, are you quite alright?”

I laughed, probably too shrilly. “I’m
fine! Just fine! Just—it’s a little stuffy in here, and
I—” Oh God, were those tears forming in my eyes? No, no,
no, this couldn’t be happening! “I just need to get some
air!”

I escaped as quickly as my high heels
and remaining dignity would let me, trying not to let myself remember
the dubious expression on Mr. Minister’s face before I’d
made my excuses. This wouldn’t come back to bite me—this
couldn’t come back to bite me—though it didn’t
matter if it did, because I couldn’t have stayed—

I stumbled up the stairs to the roof,
doing my best not to spill my champagne. By the third floor it got
too hard and I downed the rest of it before setting it on the
stairwell, an impressive feat considering that the whole world had
started spinning.

I spilled out onto the roof, which was
deserted, thank God. The evening air had barely a hint of a breeze,
mostly muggy and humid, making me feel even more tipsy than I
actually was. I felt like I was drowning in thick, wobbling Jell-O,
each breath I took choking me, weighing me further down.

I was fine. I was fine. I was not drunk
and seething with jealousy. I just needed to sit down for a bit.

Just sit. I wasn’t going to go to
sleep. Even though it would be so easy to go to sleep, to just sit
down and rest my aching feet and let all my problems melt away as I
drifted off into slumber…

I watched the sun set over the city,
the smog splintering its rays into paradoxically beautiful prisms of
color, red and purple and pink and gold, a sunset straight out of a
postcard from the board of tourism. I thought of the sunset over the
lake at Hunter’s plantation, just as beautiful but somehow less
showy, the colors deeper, more permanent.

Then I thought of Paige, some future
Paige, watching that beautiful sunset with Hunter. I thought of him
leaning in to kiss her, his eyes lit by that sweetly dying light. I
thought of Paige’s slight gasp, quickly smothered by those
soft, insistent lips, of her delight as she discovered those
intoxicating kisses I already knew all too well, that scrape of his
stubble, that taste that was him and only him.

A tear dripped down my cheek.

“Miss Bartlett?”

I hadn’t heard Chuck come up
behind me. I braced myself.

Chuck. Just the very last person I
wanted to see.

But he didn’t say a further word,
just offered me his handkerchief.

“Thanks.” I scrubbed
furiously at my face, then handed it back. “I’m fine.”

“Of course you are,” he
said, his voice low and soothing as a lullaby. “You’re a
strong young lady who can take on anything. You’ve really
impressed me with your tenacity.”

The words leapt out of my mouth before
I could stop them: “Glad I’m impressing someone.”

Oh, Ally, Ally, Ally,
I could
almost hear my mother saying.
When will you ever learn to think
before you speak?

It didn’t really matter that I
couldn’t recall the context of that memory. It could have been
any time within the past twenty-four years of my life.

“Hunter not appreciating you?”
Chuck’s voice held nothing but sympathy, and he waved away my
sound of protest. “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of prying
further. I’m sure I’ve heard this story before; he leaves
a string of hearts in his wake, young Hunter. He doesn’t
understand how deeply women feel things, particularly smart,
passionate, artistic young women like you.”

Flattery will get you everywhere with
me. Even if you’re a snake. “Well, I guess I am—”
But I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and Chuck plowed on.

“There’s nothing malicious
about it; it’s just that when you get right down to it, the
man’s rather shallow. He sees a pretty face and the women he
strings along hope he sees something more.” He shook his head,
mournful and earnest. “Don’t be embarrassed, Miss
Bartlett. I’ve seen it all from him at least a hundred times
before.”

“It’s not like that!”
I snapped, the tears threatening again, but I held them at bay with
an iron will. I couldn’t let him think I was some floozy,
sleeping her way to the top; not after all I’d sacrificed to
keep my good name. “Hunter and I—‘s not like that.
We’re just—I’m jus’ sick of Hunter being so
self-centered, is all. All ‘I’m Hunter Knox’ like
that—like that…”

I waved my hand, trying to convey what
I couldn’t with words. Some distant part of my brain noted that
my hand was unsteady and I tried to keep it from wavering. I couldn’t
let Chuck guess how much alcohol I’d consumed. I couldn’t
let him guess because—

Because—

It was really hard to remember the
reason. He was being so nice to me.

He patted my shoulder. “Oh,
really? Hunter may have his faults, but being egotistical in
business—well, frankly it doesn’t seem like him.”

His disbelief goaded me further. “Well,
it is! He can’t see how people are trying to help him, he just
wants to do it all himself, and all he can do is, is, is—insult
everyone, call them names, say they’ve wasted their life on the
job they love—I tried to…I mean, other people really
care about the company, but he jus’, just is all—”
I forgot my need to keep my gestures small, waved my hands like I was
conducting a large orchestra—“wanting to run everything
himself, gotta turn everything around all by himself and it’s
like the family name is freaking sacred or some shit—some ish,
some—” I blushed at my profane slip but more words kept
burbling out of my lubricated throat. “It’s more than
just a product to him, like—like—like he’s a
freaking mishin—mish—missionary or something!”

There was a grin in Chuck’s
voice, but my mind couldn’t quite put a reason to it. Reasons
were very far away and unimportant at the moment, unconnected to me
and my anger and the muggy night air.

“That sounds awful,” Chuck
sympathized. “Do tell me more, you poor thing.”

And God help me, I did.

#

“Well, I thought that went well,
don’t you?” Hunter said.

I did not think that had gone well. I
thought that had gone the opposite of well. It had, in fact, gone so
thoroughly not-well that in a crescendo of complete unwellness, the
evening was ending with me having to ride back to the plantation in a
car driven by an obscenely happy Hunter, who insisted on humming
happy songs under his breath, making random positive comments about
my sister, grilling me about how my efforts had gone and why he
hadn’t seen me for the last quarter, and touching my arm.

Like, maybe if he had just confined
himself to touching my arm, I would have been more kindly disposed
toward him. But probably not.

It didn’t help that my head was
already starting to hurt like a motherfucker.

“Whatever.” I purposely
didn’t look him in the eye as I said it.

“Somebody have a little too much
to drink again?” he teased, playful as a kitten.

“Don’t count on it,”
I snapped.

“Ooooh, did your mother call you
and offer comments on your dress? Is that why the long face?”

“Just keep your eyes on the damn
road,” I retorted.

“No need,” he said with a
grin so cheesy it could’ve been its own pizza topping. “We’re
already there.”

I looked out the window and saw the
white columns of the manor house rising in the darkness, the cicadas
singing a welcoming lullaby.

“Fucking finally,” I
muttered. I swung the door open and stomped out, slamming it behind
me. “You drive like my grandma. What, are you afraid Chuck’s
going to send a damn helicopter to survey your cautious driving ass?”