Bad Boy of Wall Street: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance (24 page)

"Well, you could stay with me?" Even two weeks ago, I never would have imagined making such a bold suggestion - but considering how Rob and I had shared the same bed for the last couple of days, I figured that it wouldn't be as big of a leap as it might have been previously.

"You'll have room for me?" he asked.

I shrugged. "It might be a little cramped, but I'm sure that we can make do, and you can handle me hitting you with an elbow a couple times while I'm sleeping."

He just grinned back at me. "As long as you let me poke at you with other things, I'll endure any number of elbow bumps. I'll go upstairs and pack."

Sure enough, Sandy ended up pushing my story up to the cover of the next issue. The story went viral, of course, and I greeted my landlady, Hilda, with a nice big check that covered all of my back rent. I basked in the envious congratulations that I received from my coworkers - up until they started asking me about what I had in mind for my next challenge. Suddenly, going back to writing little fluff pieces about sex moves didn't seem like the right choice.

"Well, what else are you passionate about?" Rob asked me when I relayed this new and unsettling question to him over dinner. He smiled at me across from my little dining table before taking a sip of the bottle of red wine he'd picked up to go with the pasta dish he'd cooked up.

I frowned. "I don't really know, though! I only chose this article because it was one where I saw a connection, not because I have a deep interest in finance. Heck, I'd much rather write about buried treasure!"

"So why not do that?"

My forkful of pasta, halfway to my mouth, paused. "Do what?"

"Write about buried treasure," Rob insisted. "That seems like it would be really interesting - and after the buzz from your last article, I'm sure that a lot of people would want to read about it! You could even mention the gold that we found."

Ah, yes, the gold. After a lot of debate, Rob finally convinced me that we needed to do the right thing and turn it back over to the federal government. I was very sad to see those millions of dollars of gold bullion leave Rob's garage, where we stashed them, but in the end I did agree with him that it was the right thing to do.

When asked about providing a finder's fee back to us as a reward for doing the right thing, the SEC investigators scoffed and told us that they'd "get back to us." We hadn't heard anything since then, and Rob warned me that, even if they did approve something, it would take months to get through all the different layers of bureaucracy.

Oh well. At least Rob had found a job!

That's right! It turns out that, after my article came out and showed that he was totally innocent in the whole Cartmann Securities scandal, several other trading firms came calling with job offers. Rob talked politely with all the firms, but in the end, he ended up taking an offer that, although not the highest pay of all his opportunities, came with the most free time and flexibility.

He didn't tell me why he wanted to have more time off, but since he didn't appear to be in any hurry to move out of my apartment, I couldn't find myself to object.

But a few days later, I got home to find him sitting on my couch waiting for me, wearing a big grin on his face that told me that he had something exciting to tell me.

"What's going on?" I asked, coming inside and dropping my purse down on the little table beside the entrance before sitting down beside him. "Why are you smiling like the cat that just swallowed the canary?"

"Because I've got a present for you," Rob replied, still beaming back at me.

"Okay..." My words died away, however, as he reached back behind him and withdrew a small, square box. Suddenly, my breath froze in my throat, and I felt like a weight had just settled on my chest, keeping me from taking a full gulp of air.

"Oh my god." My voice sounded faint, which about matched how the rest of me felt. "That's not - you're not - no, Rob, what are you doing?"

A dozen thoughts swirled confusingly in my head and fought with each other. What in the world was he thinking? Sure, we'd totally moved a lot faster than I had in any other relationship, at least up until this point. We spent every night in bed together, and usually we didn't fall asleep right away until we'd tired each other out to the point of happy, sweaty, exhausted bliss. Amazingly, we settled into a sort of domestic balance without any problems, and coming home to Rob was the highest, brightest point of my entire day.

But could he really be thinking of jumping in like this?

"April, open it," Rob said, but it sounded like his voice came from a thousand miles away, barely audible over the pounding of blood in my ears. I just stared down at it, still frozen in place.

Could I bring myself to say yes? We'd only even been together for a month - that felt like way too short of a time to be in a relationship before committing to it for the rest of our lives. But I did care about Rob, more deeply and fully than I'd cared about anyone else. But we still had more milestones to come before marriage - I hadn't even told him that I truly loved him!

But at the same time, if I couldn't make a marriage work with someone like Rob, someone who seemed totally perfect for me, could I make it work with anyone?

"April." Rob's voice softly slipped into my confused thoughts, and he reached out and laid his hand gently on my wrist. "Stop panicking and just open the box, please. Do you trust me?"

I looked up into his still jaw-droppingly handsome face, those blue eyes that seemed to sparkle even more whenever he looked over at me. This man had, in just a few weeks, become a part of my life that I clung to, that I needed. Even though I'd survived without him, I now felt like I needed him, couldn't get by without him there to light up my life and make me happier than I could remember feeling at any time before he came along.

"Yes," I whispered back to him.

He smiled, gently rubbing my wrist. "Then just open the box."

I took one last, deep breath - and then opened the little ring box that he'd placed in my hands. I closed my eyes for a moment as it opened, trying to mentally prepare myself for the sparkling diamond ring that would surely be nestled inside.

After a moment, I opened my eyes up again, and frowned.

"A key?" I asked, reaching in and pulling out the little silver key that had been slipped inside the box.

Rob nodded, watching me. "Yeah. My bonus came through for signing with my new job, and I figured that I should put it to use. So I found a great deal on a two-bedroom apartment that's downtown, closer both to my workplace and also to the Grit offices - and it even comes with an underground garage, so that you can park your car! I impulsively put in an offer, but then I thought that maybe I should ask you before I jumped in and went ahead..."

His voice trailed off as he looked into my face, trying to read my reaction. "April, you know that I love you, don't you?" he asked softly, and the words melted the ice around my frozen, paralyzed brain.

"I love you too, you jerk," I managed to reply before bursting into tears and throwing my arms around him, clinging to him.

He held me, strong and comforting, my bad boy who turned out to be the best man I'd ever met. "Good. Then move in with me, and keep on making me happier than I've ever been, as long as I can remember."

I pulled back, still blinking away tears. "You ass, you made me think that there was a ring in here! I was trying to figure out what I'd say if you were asking me to marry you right here and now!"

"What would you have said?" he asked me.

My mouth was halfway around the word "yes" before I paused. "You know, I'm not really sure," I demurred instead, smiling at him even as the last tears sparkled at the corners of my eyes. "I mean, you do have a tendency to do jerk things, like tricking me into thinking that you're proposing. Maybe I'd say no."

I almost wondered if Rob would get mad at me for saying that. But instead, his eyes just crinkled at me as he pulled me closer.

"Then I'll just have to work to charm you over and convince you to say yes," he whispered in my ear.

"Shouldn't we go see this new place?"

His hands had already burrowed into what I strongly suspected had become their favorite spots on my body. "We're not in any rush," he replied back, his voice a throaty, hungry growl as he eased me back onto the couch beneath his body.

"Yes, but-" Rob's hands moved, and he kissed me, and I stopped thinking. "Well, okay."

Eventually, we did manage to make it over to the new apartment, and it turned out to be every bit as nice as he'd promised. We moved in, and soon turned the second bedroom into an office for Rob to work from home. He'd still go into the office during the day, but he was often home in the afternoons, there to greet me when I got home. We even spent a couple weekends back up in the Hamptons, helping Diana clear the last of the old papers and files out of her study and trying to choke down the biscuits she pressed on us.

Now, as I leafed through the latest copy of Grit to find my article, Rob paused to consider his own visage, looking back at him from the cover and frowning with an intense, dark-eyed smoky expression. Rob hadn't been thrilled with the photographer's photos, but I felt that the camera perfectly captured Rob's presence, his strength of character that helped him keep fighting to defend his innocence - and find the real culprit.

"Well, I suppose that I can't complain about the photograph now," he said, coming over to sit beside me on the couch. "But in any case, congratulations! Your first cover story - and I'm sure that it won't be your last."

I smiled as I leaned against him, content and warm and happy. "I'm just glad that you're here with me to see it," I whispered back to him.

Rob just put his arm around me and held me close. "I love you, April," he whispered down to me, planting a soft kiss on the side of my head.

"I love you too, my Wall Street Bad Boy," I murmured back, leaning in against him and closing my eyes. The two of us relaxed there on the couch, and I couldn't think of any possible way that my life could get any better.

The End - but there's another story if you keep reading!

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A Billion Little Clues

Melinda Gaines, overworked personal assistant, is cursed with permanently bad luck. Her boss keeps making unreasonable demands, and no guy has seen the inside of her apartment in 
months
.

But when Melinda is sent to a party at the CEO's house, she ends up on a romantic, moonlit balcony with an unnervingly handsome stranger. Melinda is convinced that her run of bad luck is over.

That is, until she finds that her latest crush is being accused of murder...

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