Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (173 page)

“What?”
 
He leaned back
on the bed, stretching his long legs out across the comforter.
 
God, he was tall.
 
Alyssa was tall herself, five foot
eight, but next to him, she felt tiny.

“Get out,” she said.
 
“Unless you have a reason for being here.”

“I do.”

“What is it?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“You already said that.”
 
She crossed her arms and waited.

“Look,” he said, sitting up.
 
He flashed her a smile, and then got up off the bed, crossing the room
toward her.
 
“I think we got off on
the wrong foot.
 
I’d like to start
over.”
 

He held his hand out, and Alyssa hesitated, then took it.
 
His grip was warm and firm, and his hand
was huge, enveloping hers until it disappeared.
 
A bolt of electricity shot up her
fingers and moved through her body.
 
It threw her for a loop, and it was all she could do not to take a step
back.
 

“Anyway,” Jay said.
 
“I
wanted to see if maybe you wanted to go out for dinner in Manhattan.
 
I could show you around New York.”

“No thank you,” she said, still thrown by the way her body was
reacting to his closeness.
 
“I
already have important dinner plans.”

He looked surprised, and raised his eyebrows.
 
“You do?
 
What kind?”

There was a knock on the door, and then a waiter yelled, “Room
service!”
 

“Those are your important plans?”

“Yes,” Alyssa said, crossing the room to the door.
 
She opened it, and the waiter wheeled
the cart into the room.
 
Alyssa
signed for it, and thanked him.
 
When the waiter saw Jay sitting there, his eyes widened.
 

“Oh my God,” he said.
 
“Jay Havens!”

“In the flesh,” Jay said, flashing his grin.
 
“What’s your name, man?”

“Carlos,” the man said.
 
“I’m a huge fan.”
 
So then
Alyssa had to wait while Jay made a big production of signing an autograph for
Carlos’s son, and then Carlos admitted that the autograph was really for him,
so then Jay insisted that he sign another one for the son.
 
The whole thing was very jovial and
ridiculous, and once Carlos was gone, Alyssa turned around and glared at Jay.

“So that’s how it works, huh?
 
You’re a jerk in real life, but then when the fans come around, you turn
into Mr. Nice Guy?”

“I haven’t been a jerk to you,” Jay said easily.
 
He picked up the metal dome on the cart
and looked down at the mac and cheese.
 
“Mac and cheese?” he asked incredulously.
 
“What are you, twelve?”

“That,” Alyssa said,
 
“is why you’re a jerk.”
 
She
took the dome out of his hand and slammed it back down on the plate.
 

“I’m a jerk because I don’t like mac and cheese?”

“You’re a jerk because you questioned my choice of food,” Alyssa
said.
 
“And also yes, because you
don’t like mac and cheese. Who doesn’t like mac and cheese?”

“Me,” Jay said.
 
“I
prefer mashed potatoes, or maybe like a chicken pot pie.”
 
Alyssa watched incredulously as he
picked up the hotel room phone and pushed zero.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Ordering room service,” he said.
 
“I can’t eat that, I don’t like
it.”
 
He frowned at her.
 
“You really should have asked me what I
wanted.
 
I mean, it was kind of
rude.”

“I didn’t know you were coming!
 
You barged in here with no
warning!”
 

Jay held a finger to his lips to shush her while he waited for the
person on the other end of the line to answer.
 
Alyssa walked over and pushed down the
button, hanging the phone up.
 
“Hey!” Jay said.
 
“Why’d you
do that?”

“Because you’re leaving.”
 

“No, I’m not.”
 
He
pushed the zero.
 
She hung up.
 
He pushed the zero.
 
She hung up.
 
He pushed the zero, and this time,
Alyssa went to take the phone out of his hand.
 
He grabbed her wrist playfully, and that
same shot of heat flew through her body, only this time, she felt it hit
between her legs.

She went to pull her hands away, but he grinned and pulled her
closer, down onto the bed on top of him.
 

“Do you say uncle?” he said gruffly.

“No,” she replied, determined not to let some cocky baseball player
get the best of her.
 
Even if he was
hot.
 
She rolled over and grabbed
the cord of the receiver out of the phone, then stuffed it down her pants and
sat up, backing across the hotel room.

“Now, now,” Jay said, leaning back and giving her another slow
grin. “Don’t make me come and get that.”
 

Alyssa swallowed, suddenly aware of the thin t-shirt she was
wearing, with no bra on underneath.
 
She felt her nipples harden at the thought of Jay crossing the room and
wrestling with her some more.
 

“Don’t even try it,” she said.

“Okay, fine.”
 
Jay was
sitting up now, and he picked up the fork that was on the room service tray and
took a bite of mac and cheese.
 
He
grimaced.
 
“That’s it,” he
said.
 
“Come on, we’re
leaving.”
 
He looked at Alyssa.
 
“Actually, no, don’t come on, at least
until you get dressed.
 
You can’t go
out looking like that.”

“Where are we going?”

“Out,” he said.
 
“I’m
taking you to dinner.
 
A real
dinner, not this hotel food crap.”

Alyssa was about to say no again, but then she thought about
it.
 
He was probably expecting her
to say no, and she figured he would love that.
 
Then he could talk all about how he
tried to get to know her, how he even offered to take her to dinner, but that
she wouldn’t budge.
 
The stubborn
reporter didn’t even want to hang out with him, he would say, she didn’t care
about the real story, she just wanted to write what she thought would get web
hits, and so she didn’t give him a fair chance.

In the end, it was her job that made the decision for her.
 
The bottom line was that this was her
first real assignment, the first time she’d been given a chance to prove
herself.
 
She’d wanted to be a
writer ever since she was a little girl, and she was damned if some conceited
jerk like Jay Havens was going to jeopardize that.

“Give me ten minutes,” she said, heading into the bathroom.
 
Jay was right about one thing –
she couldn’t go out looking the way she did.
 
She just hoped the hotel had a hair
dryer.

***

Jay sat back on the bed, waiting for Alyssa, and tried not to think
about the way his body had reacted when they’d been wrestling over the
phone.
 
He’d seen her nipples get
hard through her tiny t-shirt, and he’d felt himself getting aroused.
 
But why?
 
She was definitely not his normal
type.
 
He liked blonde hair, skimpy
clothes, and women he knew weren’t going to be much of a challenge.
 
Keep it simple, no attachments, that
kind of thing.

He probably just needed to get laid.
 
It must have been way too long if he was
thinking about going after a reporter from upstate New York.

His theory was confirmed when Alyssa came out of the bathroom in a
pair of jeans and a black sweater, her hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail.
 
“Ready?” she asked.

“Yup.”
 
She seemed a
little wary, which Jay had to admit he liked.
 
But he also knew he had to be nice to
her.

He led her downstairs to the underground parking garage in the
hotel.
 

Alyssa stared when she saw his car.
 
“You drive?”

“Yes,” he said, “Jay drives.”

“Ugh.”
 
She opened the
passenger door before he could do it for her.
 
“Please don’t refer to yourself in the
third person.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s annoying.”

“If you find that annoying,” Jay said, “you’re probably going to find
a million other things about me annoying as well.”

“Duly noted.”
 
She
settled into the passenger seat, then pulled a notepad out and started writing
something down.

“What are you writing?”

“I’m making a note that you talk about yourself in the third person.”

Jay frowned as he navigated the car out of the garage and onto the
streets of Brooklyn.
 
“Why are you
writing that?”
 

Something about the idea of people knowing he talked about himself
in the third person bothered him.
 
The truth was, even though it was causing him a career headache, he kind
of liked the fact that people thought he was a badass.
 
There was a certain cache to it, a
certain power that he liked.
 

“I’m writing it because it’s the kind of thing that I think readers
would be interested in reading.”

“Why, though?”

“Look,” Alyssa said.
 
“Your boss hired me to follow the team around, and then write about my
experience.
 
And that’s what I’m
going to do.
 
If you don’t want me
to write about something, then don’t do it.”

“I don’t give a shit what you write about,” Jay lied, then reached
over and turned the satellite radio to the rap station.

“You seem like you do.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Fine,” she said, shrugging.
 
“Then there won’t be any problems.”

Jay looked at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering why she
was suddenly being so feisty.
 
It
was in contrast to the way she’d been this morning in the elevator, and in the
hotel room.
 
Then she’d been a little
spitfire, yeah, but it had seemed like more of an act.
 
Now Jay felt like she had taken back
some of in control, even though she was in
his
car, at
his
mercy, going where
he
wanted to go.
 

He glanced over at her again.
 
She was scribbling away in her notebook, biting her lip in
concentration.
 
His eyes traveled
down to the sweater she was wearing.
 
It was a V-neck, and since he was so tall, he had a perfect view.
 
He could see the top of a lacy black
bra, and he thought about those pert little nipples that were under there, the
nipples he’d seen earlier popping through her thin t-shirt.
 
He quickly averted his eyes as he felt
himself becoming aroused.

“So where are we going?” she asked.

“Don’t worry,” Jay said.
 
“You’ll like it.”

***

He took her to dinner at Koi, his favorite sushi restaurant, mostly
because he wanted to impress her.
 
He wasn’t sure why, but for some reason, their car ride had thrown him
off.
 
There’d been a small but
perceptible shift in the dynamic.
 
Once she had that damn notebook out, she’d gotten confident, like she
knew he had to be on his best behavior.
 
And for some reason, he felt like he
wanted
to be on his best behavior.
 
Well, except for when it came to her breasts, which he couldn’t stop
thinking about.

“Hello, Mr. Havens,” the maitre’d said as they walked in.

“Hey, Walter,” Jay said, shaking the man’s hand.
 
“How’s it goin’?”

“Excellent,” he said.
 
“Would you like your regular table?”

“That’d be great,” Jay said.
 
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a hundred dollar bill, and
handed it to Walter.
 
Usually these
things were done secretly, so that no one could see, but Jay wanted Alyssa to
notice.
 
He wanted her to be
impressed.
 
But she didn’t seem
impressed, and she seemed even less impressed when Walter led them to a
secluded table in the back of the restaurant, behind a privacy curtain.