Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (157 page)

They
changed
topics and finished the meal with laughter and easy silences, while everyone
enjoyed their food.

When
it
was done, Kallie tried to help clean up, but Nicole wouldn’t hear of it. “You
go relax.
 
Watch some TV or
something.”

Kallie
thought
of the book she’d left at the Danvers’s house—actually, she’d left
everything she owned at the house—and felt a pang of loss.

“Please,
let
me help clean up, Nicole.
 
I feel
like I’m being a sponge.”

“You’ve had a rough day.
 
Red and I can take care of this.”

Red
nodded.
 
“Go hang out.
 
You can take a walk outside or you can
turn on the

TV.
There’s a whole library of books in the TV room, too.”

“Thanks.
I know I keep saying that word, but I
really, really mean it.”

“We
know
you do,” Nicole told her.
 
She was
carrying dishes and silverware to the sink and Red was starting to run the
water.

Kallie
felt
guilty and yet taken care of in a way that hadn’t happened since she was back
home at her parents’ house.
 
She
went to the TV room, which was the size of a football field, and surrounded on
all sides by bookshelves filled with books.

With
so
many books, she held out hope that maybe—just maybe—they’d have a
copy of Blue Horizon on the shelves.
 
But after twenty minutes of scouring every title, she came up empty.

***

Nicole
was
shocked when she woke up the next morning to the smell of bacon frying.
 
At first she thought it was Red’s doing,
but he was nowhere to be found.
 
It
was just Kallie in the kitchen, humming and smiling as she finished plating
some of the strips.

“Hey!”
Nicole
laughed, holding her stomach.
 
She
was hungry.
 
The baby kicked a few times,
as if to tell her that she was also quite hungry.
 
“You didn’t have to make a whole
production for us.”

“I
wanted
to thank you guys for letting me stay last night,” Kallie said, as Red came up
behind Nicole and kissed her neck, putting his arms around her middle.

“Where
did you get off to this morning?” Nicole
asked him.

“Me?
I
had some trouble sleeping—woke up early so I went to the office and
answered some emails.”
 
He kissed
her again and then straightened up.
 
“Wow, that smells amazing.”

“How
do you two like your eggs?” she asked
them, holding up a spatula.

They
told
her and she went to work like a short order cook, making their food fast and
efficiently and it tasted amazing.

She
was
still wearing the clothes Nicole had given her last night, and Nicole knew
they’d have to do something about that soon.
 
“How’d you sleep, Kallie?”

Kallie
finally sat down with her own
plate—a small portion of scrambled eggs

and
a couple strips of
bacon.
 
“I slept amazing.
 
I feel completely refreshed and
yesterday seems like a bad dream.”

“Good,”
Red
told her.
 
“Have you thought at all
about where you want to go next?”

Nicole
gave
him a little jab under the table.
 
She didn’t want to make Kallie feel unwanted, but he just ignored her.

Kallie
broke
a piece of bacon in half and wiped a strand of honey blond hair from her
face.
 
“I guess maybe I should go
back to Ohio.”

“Are
you sure that’s what you want?” Nicole
said.

Kallie
sighed.
 
“I’m not sure.
 
But I can’t really see any other
option.
 
I have some money, but not
enough to last more than a month or two.
 
And I’m pretty certain I won’t be able to work for my agency
anymore.
 
I still need to call them
and let them know what happened yesterday.”
 
She shook her head.
 
“What a disaster.”

Nicole
put
a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
 
“Don’t think about that just yet.
 
I’m going to talk to Red about a few things and then we’ll all put our
heads together and figure this out, okay?”

Kallie
smiled.
“You don’t have to do anything more than you’ve already done.
 
I

mean,
you don’t really know me and I’ve been a huge imposition on your
family.”

“It’s
no
big deal.
 
And besides, you evened
the score with this breakfast.
 
I
think you might have been a chef in your past life.”

They
finished
eating and Kallie insisted on cleaning up this time—a role reversal of
the previous evening’s activities.
 
Nicole took an opportunity to pull Red upstairs to the master bedroom so
they could talk in private.

She
closed
the door and lowered her voice so Kallie definitely wouldn’t be able to hear
their conversation.
 
“I think we
should invite her to stay for a few days or a week,” Nicole told him.

Red
sat
down on the edge of the bed and sighed deeply.
 
“What’s that going to accomplish?”

Nicole
stood
in the center of the bedroom with her hand on her stomach.
 
“Right now she sees no options.
 
But I think if she’s able to get her
bearings, talk to her agency and maybe make a few calls to friends in New York,
she might be able to figure out a way to stay.”

“Are
you
sure you’re not projecting your own stuff onto this girl?”

Nicole shook her head.
“In what way?”

Red
smiled
at her and held out his hand.
 
Nicole took it and he pulled her closer. “You’re identifying with her so
much.
 
A young girl, naïve, comes to
the big city and feels confused and taken advantage of by a rich, older man.”

“The
difference
is, in Kallie’s case she really was taken advantage of.
 
You seduced me fair and square.”

“But
you
think she’s like you and she’s not.
 
Kallie is a totally different person and she said she wanted to go back
to Ohio.”

Nicole
held
up a finger.
 
“No.
 
What she said was that she didn’t think
she’d have the money to stay in New York anymore.
 
I know what that feels like.
 
I want to help her.”

“Where
does it end?”

“Let’s
give
her a few days to get back on her feet and figure things out.
 
I can tell she’s a good kid, Red.
 
You’re not going to convince me that
she’s actually a serial killer.”

Red
nodded.
 
“I know.
 
I had my guys do a thorough background
check on her this morning.”

“You
what?”

“I
couldn’t
let some potential psycho stay at our house without having her vetted.
Everything came back cleaner than clean.
 
She’s a girl scout.”

Nicole
smiled and rolled her eyes.
 
“You really are nuts, Red Jameson.”

“Crazy
in
love.”
 
He pulled her even
closer.
 
“Come here.”
 
His voice lowered and he got a look in
his eyes that instantly made her warm all over.

And
then
the damn cell phone was ringing, at the worst possible time. It was
Danielle.
 
“Shit.
 
I’ll call her back,” Nicole said.

“It’s
fine,
take it,” Red laughed, moving away from her.
 
“I need to jump in the shower anyhow.”

Nicole
shook her head, sad for the missed
opportunity.
 
Once again, she had
that fleeting sensation that things had changed between them—but maybe she
really was just overreacting.

She
answered
the phone, trying to sound as chipper as an expecting mother should sound.
 
“Hey there, stranger.”

“Okay,
so
we’ve decided to have a party and we want you guys to come!” Danielle said,
obviously excited beyond reason.

“A
party, when?”

“Tonight.
I
know it’s super short notice but Kane is so impulsive sometimes…” Nicole
sighed.
 
She wasn’t really feeling
like getting dolled up (almost an impossibility
in her current state), but she hadn’t seen Danielle nearly as
much as she’d

expected
to lately.
 
After all, Danielle and Kane also had
gotten a place in the Hamptons (Red claimed that Kane was copying him as
usual), but the two couples couldn’t ever seem to manage to make their
schedules jive.

“I’m
not
sure about tonight,” Nicole told her, as Danielle groaned dramatically into the
phone.
 
“I’ll run it by Red.”

“Kane’s
texting
him right now, so he knows.
 
Please,
please, please.
 
It’s going to be
super casual and the weather’s improving.”

Then
Nicole considered their impromptu
houseguest, and suddenly the prospect

of
going wasn’t so
unreasonable.
 
After all, Kallie
deserved to get out and have some fun after what she’d been through.
 
Why not bring the girl along?

“Okay,
I’ll
see if I can talk Red into it.
 
And
is it okay if I bring along a friend?”

“Sure.
 
Anyone I know?”

“I
don’t
think so.
 
Just this nice girl I met
at the beach the other day.”

“Bring her along!
 
Just promise me you won’t back out.”

So
she
tried to promise, not sure if Red would be into it, and then she went
downstairs and found him texting with Kane.

He
glanced
up at her.
 
“This guy is such a
dick.”

“You’re practically BFF now, who are you
kidding?”

Red
laughed.
 
The truth was, after Red extended the olive
branch and invited Danielle and Kane to their wedding ceremony, Kane seemed to
have been truly moved by the gesture and completely changed his attitude.
 
As part of his “wedding gift” to the two
of them, Kane had forbidden The Rag to report on Red and Nicole’s
relationship.
 
Later,

he’d
even invited Red out with some
high-powered celebrity friends for a night on the town.

Since
then,
they seemed to have forged a grudging respect for one another. Stranger things
had happened, Nicole supposed, but she couldn’t think of many things
that were more surreal than watching Red
make plans with Kane Wright via text.

“You up for a party tonight?” Red asked her.

“I
think it would be fun for Kallie.”

“Kallie?
You want to bring her?” he asked, doubtful.

“And
I’m
going to tell her she’s invited to stay for a few more days if she likes.” Red
sighed.
 
“I don’t see this ending
well.”

“Why
not?”

“Just a feeling.”

Nicole
laughed
him off, going upstairs to the guest room to see if Kallie wanted to come to
the party with them.

As
she
was going upstairs, she felt a little surge of lightheadedness again and then
when she reached the second floor, a rapid heartbeat and shortness of
breath.
 
She

stopped
before the closed door to Kallie’s room
and tried to regain her equilibrium.

The
moment
passed and she was sweating but feeling normal again—probably just a
surge of hormones (this was her standard excuse for any strange feelings or
symptoms experienced while pregnant).

Nicole
knocked
and Kallie invited her in.
 
“Hey,”
Nicole said, coming inside. Kallie was lying on her bed, reading a magazine.

“How’s
it going?”