Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (5 page)

How in the hell was she still single? Why hadn’t someone snatched her
up?

“It’s this whole Asian fusion thing. My friend told me it would be a
good idea to bring a first date here and it might be a place to impress
somebody.”
And the food is supposed to be amazing, but that’s secondary
.
She seemed so nervous, those glittering eyes wary, already on guard from his
lame attempt at humor on the phone.

He felt like an ass, could sense he was losing her, and his charm
system went into overdrive, not the shallow Dylan so used to getting a woman to
step out of her pants within an hour of their first drink in a bar, but the
slower burning Dylan who stumbled across Jill in college years ago and who felt
sucker punched and euphoric all at once.

“So impressing me is more important than the food?” Laura laughed and
looked at him with an uncertain caution in her eyes, a caution that he actually
did not like but that spoke of something he couldn’t put his finger on.

“Yeah,” he said, a slow grin stretching over his face, the word more a
promise than an answer.

“I don’t think you have to worry about someone like me,” she replied,
looking away with a bashful smile, her blond ponytail sliding down the side of
her creamy neck as if guarding her, creating a safe barrier and holding her in
place.

He cocked his head, looked her over again and wondered what on earth
was she was talking about. Standing outside the restaurant babbling like an
idiot wasn’t exactly his idea of a good date, though, so he just motioned her
toward the door and said “Shall we?”

As she walked past him impulse took over and he put one hand on the
small of her back as the maitre d’ held the door open. The feeling was so
electrifying, his hand on her body, that he grew harder, which he didn’t think
was possible. This was already more promising than he had ever expected.

Even if this dinner was going to cost him half of an entire paycheck,
he did not care. Oh – that’s right. He was not really relying on his
paycheck anyhow these days, he reminded himself. Finances had changed radically
months ago, a surprise that he and Mike still tried to assimilate.
Stop it,
Dylan. Stop thinking about Jill
, he told himself. None of that should enter
into the calculation of the emotional side of this.
Tonight is about Laura.

As they were led to their table in a smoky-grey environment, with a
giant twenty-foot golden Buddha lit up in the corner and a small fountain
bubbling at its feet, all he could do was stare at her ass, trying to to figure
out how not to sound like another one of those guys who is desperate enough to
go on an online dating site and find somebody to fuck.

Neither one of them seemed to know what to say, so he figured, being
the guy, he would take the lead. That’s how it would work in bed…and then his
mind went blank at the flash of a vision of his face buried between Laura’s
soft thighs. He practically threw the folded napkin in his lap to hide what he
thought must be the tallest raging hard-on ever.

He coughed. “Your profile said you’re from Los Angeles, but you moved
here to the east coast. Who do you work for?” Just then, the waitress
interrupted as if on cue and asked them if they wanted a drink. Laura ordered a
sake.

“Make it two,” he added. If she was going to go for the harder stuff,
so would he. Boy, this could end up being a much more interesting date than he
ever expected.

***

She felt like she had lost her entire vocabulary all in the past three
minutes. This guy was incredible. He had taken her to the hottest place in
town. Granted, his friend had recommended it, but who cared if that was the
main reason why?

Dylan seemed to care, to take the time to make a good first impression,
and she loved his sense of humor even if it did nearly lead to her early demise
from a heart attack via misunderstanding. She had never been taken anywhere so
nice. Of course she could never tell him that. Most of the guys who dated her
took her to a restaurant that had 50-inch plasma televisions blasting five
different sporting events all at once, and the most gourmet item on the menu
was fried mozzarella sticks.

She blanked when the waitress asked her what she wanted to drink, so
she blurted out sake, because it was the one drink she had ever had in an Asian
restaurant years ago, when her mother had taken her to a Hibachi place for her
twenty-first birthday. Well, hey, sake it was. She figured one shot would
loosen her up and then she could show more of herself. With Dylan joining her,
she knew she’d ordered appropriately for this type of restaurant and began to
let herself unclench a little.

She glanced at the table and saw that she was revealing more of herself
already. Her sweater had dipped down a little too much to show the black lace
of her bra and when she looked up, she found that she did not meet Dylan’s eyes
with her own, but that he, in fact, was staring at the same spot she had just
been looking at.

Apparently he was not enough of a gentleman to pretend that he wasn’t
staring – until he cut his eyes away abruptly. He threw his napkin in his
lap, looked down at the menu, and said “I have no idea what any of this stuff
is.” Then he turned and craned his head to watch one of the servers take a tray
over to a nearby table. “Whatever it is, though, it smells incredible.”

That loosened her up more, her nervous laughter shifting into something
more genuine. These startlingly special few minutes felt like they had already
altered reality for her and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but was
trying very,
very
hard not to make more meaning out of these few perfect
moments with Dylan.

A giddiness, unfamiliar and
not
fleeting (to her utter shock),
filled her skin and her thoughts as she shyly caught his eye and let it settle,
not looking away. Their stare deepened into something more primal, more
knowing, and her insecurity faded as they communicated without words.

Interrupted by the waitress, she pulled her eyes away with regret as
the woman brought their drinks. Dylan held his up in a toast and said,
“To…business analyzing!”

She nodded acknowledgment, and answered, “To firefighting,” clinking
glasses before they drank and put down the empty shot glasses. She fingered the
rim of her glass and then they both leaned forward on the table with great
expectation.

Finally, she realized he expected her to answer the question he had
asked what felt like hours ago, and she said, “Oh, oh, I work for Stohlman
Industries.”

“Stohlman?” His expression showed he was impressed. That pleased Laura
– it
was
impressive. Stohlman was known for being very, very
competitive for jobs, and it had been hard to break in to the world’s third
largest media company.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve been there well, since I graduated college.”

“Really? What is your degree, then?”

“IT – Information Technology.”

“But you’re a business analyst?”

“Yeah, I work with the tech side of things.”

He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, clearly making himself
comfortable, and gave her a mirthful look. “So what do you
do
?”

And she laughed, her face relaxing, her cheeks spreading and matching
his mirth. “Do you really want to know? ‘Cause it’s awfully technical.”

He leaned forward on his elbows, propped his chin in one hand and said,
“Yeah, I do want to know.”

She studied his eyes. He meant it – he really
meant
it.
Oh, man, was this really the whole package? Did she really get a gorgeous,
ripped firefighter who gave a shit about what she did for a living as a
business analyst for some nameless, faceless, mega corporation? If so, she
didn’t want to pinch herself cause this might be a dream. Then again, there
were parts of her that she certainly wanted him to pinch.
Whoa there, Laura
.

“Well, I work in healthcare IT, and what I do right now is work on a
large project for one of the state governments, making sure that their old
medical records program for children who get health insurance is compliant with
new federal guidelines.”

He nodded. Made an expression with his mouth that indicated that it was
interesting and then said, “You lost me at children’s health insurance…” and
he grinned.

She said, “Enough about my job. What do you do? You’re a firefighter,
right? So you pretty much save damsels in distress from burning buildings and
rescue cats out of trees. I don’t have to really know more than that,” she
teased.

He laughed, bright teeth gleaming, straight and perfect, speaking to
orthodontia decades ago. His eyes twinkled a bit as he fingered his empty sake
glass and said “It’s a little more complicated than that, but you got the gist
of it.”

“Aw, come on. Tell me more. How is it more complicated? Are there,
like, different levels of fire fighting?” The words came out of her mouth and
she felt a slow, electric feeling creep up her spine as his fingers crossed the
table and reached for hers, his fingers clasping hers, the warmth shaking her,
going all the way up her neck, through her hips, into her belly.

Rendering her completely speechless once again.

“Well,” he said, peering down at her hands and then looking at her with
raised eyebrows that asked an obvious question. She grinned back. He softened
and clinched her hand just slightly more, and the added pressure was like
having her hand turn into one big giant throbbing clitoris.

“I do plenty of shifts where I rescue cats from burning buildings and
help damsels in distress out of trees,” he joked, “but mostly, these days, I am
in charge of fire management safety protocols for large corporations like
yours.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, pretty much. After 9/11, we had to really tighten up on how you
empty out a thirty or forty floor building, especially in the face of a
disaster, or in the face of massive, multi-level, widespread fires.”

She could feel the blood drain out of her face. He had just, without
knowing, dredged up her biggest fear. Something in his face said that he knew
it. “Oh, no, I am so sorry, really, I did not mean to upset you. Did you lose
someone in 9/11?”

She shook her head. “No, no, actually I, it’s just that…” She took a
deep breath.
In through the nose, out through the mouth.
“It’s just that
it is one of my biggest fears. I’ve always been afraid of a fire in my
building, and I work on the thirty-second floor of Stohlman Industries.”

He took his hand away from hers and whacked his forehead repeatedly,
shaking his head now, saying “I pretty much just picked the worst possible
thing I could bring up during a first date, didn’t I?”

Her heart rate resumed a normal beat. She took a risk now and reached
across the table to retrieve his hand and said, “No, it’s ok, really, if
nothing else, it’s interesting that you managed to tap into that about me,
after having only known me for…” she glanced at her smart phone “…for
fifteen minutes.”

“It’s amazing what Google will help you figure out.”

If she had had a drink in her mouth, she would have spit it all over
him. Oh, my God, did he Google her? It’s only fair – she had Googled him.
Did he know that she had Googled him? Was there some way he could have known?

“Laura?” He reached out and touched her chin, tipping it up to catch
her eyes. “That was a joke.”

***

By the time the waitress brought his meal, which was something that he
could not only
not
pronounce properly, but, by the looks of it, couldn’t
even guess at about half the ingredients in it, he felt like he was losing her.
Idiot, idiot, idiot!
How could he have brought up the burning building
scenario on a first date? Within fifteen minutes, no less? God, the look on her
face! It was like something collapsed. There was more to it than she was
telling; he could see that and it left him with too many questions, inquiries
he couldn’t make right now because he was being too stupid for words.

Yet here he was, babbling on about it like it was no big deal, and
that’s what he did for a living, and
ha ha ha
, and here she was, you
know, in charge of saving little kids’ health insurance.

She began to eat her food. He dug into his. Even though he didn’t like
it, he welcomed the silence, perplexed by the contradiction, but lately his
entire life seemed to be one big steaming pile of complexity. He watched her.
He took the dinner as an opportunity to just keep an eye on her. To see what
she was like. To see what her body language would give away.

She kept pulling on the shoulder of her sweater, correcting everything so
that the edge of her black silk bra wouldn’t show, and every time she did it, a
little part of him tugged. Mostly in the crotch area. But also in his heart.
Because, man, was he
lovin’
that little piece of black lace right now.

He forced a mouthful of something that he was afraid might still be
half alive in between his teeth. And then, “
Mmmm!”
he groaned. “This is
incredible.”

“Yeah, mine’s luscious.”

So are you
, he thought, spearing a piece of fish and holding out
his fork. “Do you want a bite of mine?”

He held the fork out for her and she looked at him in a certain way,
eyes narrowing a bit while cocking her head, one little curl floating out of
her ponytail as she tucked it behind her ear and leaned forward. Her lips
enveloped the fork, her mouth tugging at the piece of food as he reluctantly
pulled the fork away, those lips,
those lips
, closing over the fork.
Right now, he wanted part of him to be that fork. A very big, throbbing part of
him that no napkin was capable of covering now.

Chewing, she groaned; it was the sound he wanted to hear later at night
in his bed or in hers or on somebody’s couch or hell – in the alley by
the parking lot at this point. Dylan’s cock strained against his trousers, more
aroused then he ever imagined possible, just from watching her eat that
scrumptious piece of God knows what.