Tamed by the Billionaire (The BAD BOY BILLIONAIRES Series) (7 page)

He reached out and took it from her but did not bother to open it.  Instead, he continued to stare at her in silence until she began to look uncomfortable and averted her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter that I stayed behind to finish it,” she continued, seeming to want to fill the silence.  “It’s not like I’m rushing home to do anything special.  I’ll probably just go home and watch TV.”

“What?  No shopping at the mall?  No partying in the evenings?  I thought girls like you spent the evenings partying or hanging out with friends.”

“I don’t go out partying.”  Her tone was cold and he could see the anger flash in her eyes but then her shoulders drooped almost imperceptibly.  “And my best friends have both gone to Europe for the summer so I’m alone.”

“They can’t be all gone to Europe.  Don’t you have other friends around here?”

She shook her head.  “No, I don’t have many friends.”

“Why am I not surprised?”  Roman said dryly. 

Serena glared at him then said, “Well, you have your report.  If you don’t need me for anything else I’ll be leaving.”  Without waiting for his reply she turned and stalked out of the office, closing the door smartly behind her.

******

When Serena got home she flung herself into the sofa and turned on the television.  She was still smarting from Roman’s comment about not being surprised that she didn’t have lots of friends.  How dare he insinuate that she was unlikable?  She gritted her teeth and frowned at the television screen, her mind racing to find ways to make him pay for that comment. 

Maybe she could kidnap him and torture him by pulling out the hairs on his chest.  Strand by strand.   She smiled with mischief at the thought of watching him squirm then her heart jerked as she pictured her fingers caressing his torso.  She had no idea whether or not Roman had hair on his chest but he just seemed like the type of man who would.  She bit her lip and tried to concentrate on the news report of some flooding in Florida but her mind would not let go of the dark haired Adonis who made her heart thump.

Her mood finally lightened when America’s Funniest Videos came on.  She laughed out loud when a minister’s robe caught on fire and he had to rip it off in front of the congregation.  She was still chuckling when the television show went to a commercial break and she used the opportunity to get a drink of water from the kitchen.  She took a bottle from the fridge and was turning to head back to the living room when she saw the stack of mail she’d left on the counter.  She’d forgotten about that.  She picked them up and took them back to the couch with her then sat back down just in time to see a toddler swing a baseball bat at his father’s groin.  She shook her head and groaned in sympathy.  That must have hurt.

She began opening mail as she watched the show, separating them into two piles.  The one with junk mail was a lot bigger than the one with her real mail.  In fact, she’d received only two real pieces of mail, both of which were bills.  The first was for her cell phone.  Four hundred and ninety-two dollars.  She sighed.  Not exactly what she needed now that she was on a limited budget.

She sat up straight, however, when she opened the second envelope.  It was her credit card bill and it was a whole lot higher than she’d anticipated.  She was only two hundred and sixty-five dollars away from reaching her twenty thousand dollar limit.  Now where in the world was she going to get the money to pay off all of that?  With the allowance her father used to give her it had never been a problem.  In fact, she’d never had to worry about paying her own credit card bills before now.  This time, though, she had nothing to fall back on except for the measly salary that she would receive a whole two weeks from now.  Her credit card payment was due by the end of the month.  And she couldn’t get money from her other credit cards to pay this one.  The other two were all maxed out. 

Her mood swung back to depression.  There was no way she was going to survive for six months like this on the salary of an entry level management trainee.  The fact that her father was paying for this apartment was a big help but it still left her in a hole because, by the time she paid her phone bill, bought food and gas, visited a few restaurants and put away money for miscellaneous spending, she’d be broke.  And, of course, she had to do some shopping.  It was her only emotional outlet.

Serena looked at the phone then back at the television.  She was itching to call her father and plead with him to just forget this whole thing about her working.  She wanted her old life back.  She reached for the phone then pulled back her hand.  It irked her to have to go crawling back to him but she didn’t know what else to do.  Finally she decided to call.  Desperate times called for desperate measures, they said.  There was no way she was going to survive without any credit cards at all so she had no choice but to call.

But the conversation didn’t go as well as Serena had hoped.   In fact, it was a disaster.

“Why haven’t you returned my calls,” was her father’s first response to her greeting.  “I was planning to come over there just to see if you were alright.  The least you could do is call your dad once in a while.”  He sounded both annoyed and relieved.

“I’ve just been busy, Dad.  I don’t get home till late evening and by the time I get here, I’m beat.  I always plan to call you but then I fall asleep before I get a chance.”

“That’s no excuse.  You have a cell phone.  You can call me during the daytime.  And I’m sure Roman wouldn’t kill you if you called me from the office.”

“Okay,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll do that.”  She paused then before she could change her mind she blurted out, “Dad, why don’t we call this whole thing off?  It’s not working out for me.  I’ve got bills piling up and I don’t get paid for another two weeks.”

“What kinds of bills?  I pay for your apartment and that includes your utilities.  All you have to worry about is your food.”

“Yes,” she said slowly, “and my credit card bills.”

“I paid off all your credit card bills two months ago.  Even though you maxed them all out at the same time I made sure all your balances were paid up.  That’s almost thirty thousand dollars.  Have you maxed them out again in such a short time?”

Serena bit her lip.  “I guess I have,” she said, her voice soft and defeated.  Then she added quickly, “But it’s just because it was graduation time and I had to do a lot of shopping.  I had to go to the graduation ball and the ceremony looking good, didn’t I?”

“I guess so,” her father said, “but you didn’t have to shop at Prada for all your stuff.”

“But I didn’t,” she began to protest then stopped.  She decided to change her tone.  “Daddy, seeing that things are so tight for me, do you think I can start getting my allowance again?  I need to pay off some of these bills.”

“Serena,” he began in the tone he used when scolding, “you know our agreement.  No allowance for six months.  You have to learn to live on a budget and manage on your salary.  How do you expect to run this business when I’m gone if you can’t even run your own life?  This pampering has got to stop.  Spoiling you with hefty allowances and clearing off your credit card balance from shopping sprees is no way to prepare you for the world.”  He sighed heavily.  “I know it’s hard on you and I hate doing this but it’s for your own good.”

“So you’re not going to give me my allowance back?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well, will you at least pay part of the credit card bills?”

“I’m sorry.  I can’t.”

“This is so not fair,” Serena said bitterly.  “You’re my dad.  Why are you treating me like this?”

“You’re no longer a child, Serena.  You need to start accepting responsibility and taking charge of your own life.”

“But all I asked for was-“

“That’s enough.  I’m already helping you by paying for the apartment.  Your monthly salary is all you have to work with so start working on a budget.”

Serena slammed the phone down and slumped back in the couch in a huff.  She’d never been rude to her father before but this situation called for it.  She sat with her arms folded tightly across her chest, teeth biting into her bottom lip.  What did she know about budgets?  Where would she even start?  Her father was putting her through hell.  She would never forgive him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Serena bit her lower lip and frowned as she stared down at the framed portrait.  She lifted her index finger to her lips and began to nibble absently at the nail then, realizing what she was doing, she dropped her hand guiltily and slid it into the back pocket of her jeans.  When was she going to get rid of that awful childhood habit?  Whenever she was nervous or deep in thought she always reverted to that one habit she found so hard to break.  She was twenty-one, for goodness sake.  Time to put down such childish behavior.

She sighed and walked away from the bed then went to stare out the bedroom window of the apartment.  It was a hell of a thing, being broke.   For the first time in her life she knew what it was like to want something badly and not have the money to get it.  She’d seen an exquisite gold watch at Diamante’s and had wanted it for her grandmother’s seventy-fifth birthday but with a little over two hundred dollars available on her credit card how could she?  And there was that small matter of her personal expenses.  The little that was left on the card would have to serve her till pay day.  With gasoline prices skyrocketing she had no idea how she would make the money serve that long.

The long and short of it was she had no money to buy Grandma Sylvie a birthday present.  And so she’d turned to her long-time hobby.   Instead of buying a gift she’d dug through a box of old photos and found one of her grandmother when she was ten years younger, laughing and happy with her husband of over forty years.  Serena’s grandfather, still handsome in his senior years, was holding her in a tender embrace and he was smiling down at her with a love that was undeniable. 

Serena stared at that photo for a long time.  She knew the grief Grandma Sylvie had suffered when Grandpa Harris died of pneumonia at the age of sixty-seven.  She’d married her childhood sweetheart and had never returned the interest of any other man.  She missed him immensely, and she missed the love they shared.  Serena wanted to recapture that love for her grandma, even if only on paper.  And so she began to draw.

It took most of her Saturday morning but she didn’t mind.  Serena sketched the photo, creating an eighteen by twenty-four inch replica in charcoal, and then she pulled out the elegant gilt-edged picture frame she’d found at the discount store.  Gently, she placed the picture inside and as it lay on the bed in its frame she ran loving fingers over the faces of her grandparents.  Then she went to the closet to get wrapping paper and a bow.

After she’d wrapped the gift she propped it against the side of her mahogany chest of drawers then headed out to the kitchen to tackle the second half of her project.  Today she was going to bake a cake.  No matter that she’d never baked a thing in her life, she was going to do this for her beloved grandmother and nothing was going to stop her.  Now that she’d created one project with her own hands she was eager to do more.  She’d downloaded the recipe from the internet and it looked as easy as ever.

Smiling and humming to herself Serena laid the printed page on the kitchen counter and checked the list of items she’d need.  She opened the fridge and the cupboards and started gathering all the ingredients.  When everything was laid out she put on her frilly white apron and giggled.  She looked like Betty Crocker.  Now if only the look would enhance her skills as a baker.  No matter, she was ready to take the plunge.  Yellow sponge cake, here we come.

******

Roman shuffled through the papers on his desk.  Where the hell was it?  He could have sworn he’d left it on the pile in the middle of his desk.  He sat back in the chair and frowned, trying to remember.  Serena had handed him the file then slipped back out, spending less than ten seconds in his office.  After he’d stopped admiring her cute little tush in tailored black pants he’d dropped the file back onto the desk and he’d gone back to what he’d been working on.  Now where had it gone since then?

He got up and went over to the file cabinet, checked on top, checked inside.  All clear.  He walked over to the credenza and opened it to check all the files inside.  Had Serena come in later that day and taken the file back?  Beginning to get annoyed he walked out of his office and headed down to the sixth floor.  There he checked her desk and the cabinet in her cubicle.  No file.  And there was no one to ask.  It was Saturday and he was the only one working in the building.  He normally encouraged his employees to use weekends for family and relaxation.  He frowned on people working overtime unless absolutely necessary.  As far as he was concerned if you weren’t a good enough time manager to get your work done during the weekdays then some improvement was needed.