Because He Takes Me (Because He Owns Me, Book Two) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (9 page)

My heart leapt into my chest.
 
Something was wrong.
 
It had to be.
 
You didn’t get phone calls at four
o’clock in the morning unless something was wrong.

I pulled the sheets tighter around me,
wondering what I should do.
 
Maybe
it was a business call.
 
Maybe it
was nine in the morning in some foreign country where Callum had business to
attend to, and something had come up that needed to be taken care of immediately.

I told myself it was none of my business.
 
Callum wasn’t my boyfriend.
 
If something was wrong in his life,
there was nothing I could do about it.

But it was impossible not to eavesdrop.
 
He was right there, out on the balcony,
and his voice drifted into the room.

“Please,” he was saying.
 
“Please, you need to stop crying.
 
I’ll be back in the morning.
 
Stay at my place for the night.
 
Samuel will let you in.”

There was pause.

“Honey, you need to stop this.
 
You cannot keep doing this to yourself…
 
I’ll take care of that, and anything
else, but just -- please, you need to sleep at my place tonight.”

His tone was soft, gentle, like he was talking
to a girlfriend.

Was Callum in a relationship?
 
Was that why he insisted on only one
night?
 
Was that why he’d made me
sign a paper saying that I wouldn’t attempt to contact him again?
 
So his girlfriend wouldn’t find
out?
 
Or did the two of them have
some kind of arrangement, the kind of arrangement where he was free to have sex
with whomever he wanted, as long as that was all it was?

Rage seared my veins.
 

How dare he.

Yet I knew I had no right to be upset.
 
He’d been honest with me every step of
the way, asking me if I was okay with this, telling me I could leave at any
time.
 
I’d been a willing
participant in his game of deception.

Callum ended his call and returned to the room.

He saw me sitting up in bed, and he looked
startled.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said.

“That’s okay.”
 
I swallowed.
 
“Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.”
 
His voice was
gruff, any trace of the gentleness he’d shown on the phone with
whoever
it was he’d been talking to completely gone.

He slid into bed next to me, and I
laid
back down.
 
This time, he didn’t reach for me.
 
Instead, he turned away, onto his side, his back to me.

I remembered what the rules had stipulated,
about not asking him any personal questions.
 
But what if something really was
wrong?
 

I put my hand on his back.
 
“Callum…” I started.

“Go to sleep, Adriana.”
 
His tone was hard, making it clear that
the matter wasn’t up for discussion.

Hot tears stung the back of my eyes at the
coldness in his tone, but I blinked them away.

Then I turned over and tried to fall back
asleep.

***

When I felt him get out of bed, it was six in
the morning.
 
I stayed still,
listening to the sounds of the
shower
as Callum got
ready and dressed.
 
Once he’d gone
downstairs, I waited a couple of minutes before I got up too, dragging my
suitcase from the bedroom into the bathroom.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth, wincing
as I pulled on a pair of jeans and a light sweater.
 
The cheeks of my ass were flaming red,
even worse than I’d expected.
 

What he hell were you thinking, Adriana,
letting him hit you like that?

I brushed my hair and scraped it back into a
ponytail, then walked downstairs to the kitchen.

Callum was sitting at the table, fresh from the
shower, wearing a perfectly pressed black suit, his jaw absent of the stubble
that had been there last night.

A cup of coffee sat in front of him.

“Good morning, Adriana,” he said, turning the
page of his Wall Street Journal.

“Good morning.”
 

“There’s coffee if you’d like it.”
 
His eyes never left the paper, and he
didn’t make a move to get it for me or offer me anything else.
 
The kind, accommodating man who’d
brought me ice cream in bed was gone, replaced with the man who’d brought me to
a business lunch and told me he wanted to own me for one night.

“I’m fine,” I lied, even though I wanted a
coffee more than anything.
 
There
was something about refusing his offer that gave me some kind of sick
satisfaction, however small.

He folded his paper and drained the rest of his
own coffee, then stood up
and
 
brought
his cup to the sink.
 
“The plane is ready to take us back to
the city whenever we’re ready.”

My heart fumbled inside my chest as I waited a
long beat, hoping he would say more.
 
But when he didn’t, I raised my chin in the air.
 
“I’m ready now.”

He nodded.
 
“I’ll call the car.”

***

We drove to the airport in relative silence,
and the plane ride was just as awkward.
 
Callum sat in a seat by the window, and I picked one on the other side
of the jet.

I made sure not to react to the takeoff, even
though it seemed bumpier than usual, just in case Callum was watching me.
 
I stared out the window as the shininess
of Florida, the shades of deep oranges and bright greens and blues faded away,
replaced with the muted tones of the Northeast.

As we touched down at Teterboro, it began to
rain, the mist clinging to the windows of the plane.
 
I’d gotten out of my seat and had pulled
down my suitcase before Callum could even stand up.

I waited impatiently to disembark, acutely
aware of him behind me, gathering his stuff, walking down the steps after me.

There were two town cars waiting on the tarmac,
one black and one white, and I paused, not sure what to do.

Don’t look at him,
I told myself.
 
Do not
look at him.
 
If you look at him,
you’re going to fall apart.

“The white car will take you to your
apartment,” Callum said.
 

“Thank you.”
 
My self- control gave out, and I turned
to look at him, tumbling into his blue eyes as my breath snagged in my chest.

We stood there for a moment, just staring at
each other, and I felt a misplaced sense of hope, like maybe if I could just
say the right thing, if I could just make him realize that this didn’t have to
be the end, that maybe he’d want to see me again.

For a moment, I thought I saw his blue eyes soften.

But then they hardened again.

“It was nice to meet you, Adriana.”
 
His voice was devoid of emotion, the
kind of voice I imagined him using at the end of a business meeting.

I wanted to turn my back on him, to walk away
and just leave.
 
But then I thought
doing that would give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’d broke me, that
he’d gotten to me on some level, that even though he’d told me exactly what the
situation was, I still hadn’t been mature enough to handle it.

Tell him it was nice to meet him, too.

But then I thought,
fuck it.

If he thought having a great time with someone
and wanting to see
them
again was weak, then that was
his problem.
 
Why should I be
ashamed of my feelings?

So I bit back the urge to return his
pleasantries and instead, turned my back on him before getting into the car and
slamming the door.
 
If that made me
a baby, I didn’t care.

The rage returned, pulsing through me bright
and strong.

But by the time the town car had pulled onto the
highway, my anger had been replaced by an aching sadness.

I leaned my forehead against the window,
watching the rain pour down as we entered the city.

And then I started to cry.

***

I spent the day in bed, watching Netflix on my
laptop and dodging Nessa’s questions.

But the next morning, I work up early and made
a pact with myself that I was done wallowing.

It was Monday.
 

A new start to the week.

A new day to get things done.

I was a grown, mature woman, who had made the
decision to have random sex with a beautiful man.
 
I’d thought I could handle it, but it
was now blatantly obvious that I couldn’t.
 
I wouldn’t be as reckless with my heart next time.
 
There was nothing wrong with random sex,
but there also wasn’t anything wrong with knowing you weren’t the type of
person who did well with that kind of arrangement.

If I did it again, I would think about it
logically, and I would make sure it wasn’t with someone as intoxicating and
gorgeous as Callum Wilder.

I pulled on a pair of running capris and a
t-shirt,
then
headed for the small gym in my apartment
complex, ready to take my anger and sadness out on the treadmill.
 
I ran at a slow pace and intermixed it
with intervals of sprinting any time Callum popped into my head.

Just as I was finishing my workout, my phone
began to ring, vibrating on the shelf of the treadmill where I’d set it down.

It flashed an unfamiliar 212 number, and my
heart thrummed against my ribs.

Callum.

“Hello?”

“Hello, may I speak with Adriana O’Connor
please?”
 
The voice on the other end
was female, young, professional and precise.

“This is Adriana,” I said.

“Hello, Adriana.
 
My name is Michelle Nichols and I work
in HR at Archway Publishing.
 
We
have your resume here, and we’d like to invite you in to interview for the
position you applied for in our publicity department.”

My stomach twisted into a ball.
 
It was a job call!
 
My first call back, my first bite on
anything.

“Thank you so much for getting back to me,” I
said.
 
“I’d love to be considered
for that position.”

“Wonderful.
 
Can you come in today at ten to meet
with us?”

“Yes, of course.”
 
Crap.
 
It was already eight am.
 
I was going to have to shower and do
something about my hair.

“Great.
 
We’re on Avenue of the Americas, in the Cleaver Building.
 
You can come up to the sixth floor.”

“Thank you,” I said.
 
“I’ll see you then.”

I ended the call and immediately opened my
email, scrolling through so I could find the job description and see exactly
what the position entailed.
 
I
frowned.
 
I hadn’t applied for
anything in publicity.
 
In fact, I
hadn’t even applied for anything at Archway.

But maybe they’d gotten my application from
another publishing house, or maybe they’d seen my resume posted on one of the
countless jobs sites I’d sent it to.

Who cared?
I thought as I skipped back to my apartment and into the shower.

I had an interview!

At Archway.

Take that, Callum Wilder
, I thought.
 
You
can’t keep this girl down for long.

***

At 9:45 sharp, I was sitting in the waiting
area outside of human resources at Archway, waiting for Michelle to meet with
me.
 
I smoothed down my grey skirt
and blazer, and took a deep breath in an effort to calm myself.

This is just your first interview,
I told myself.
 
You’ve only been in
the city a few days.
 
Don’t put so
much pressure on yourself.

But damn, I wanted this job.