Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (185 page)

Kenley had cried all the way home out of shock
and shame, and then drown her sorrows in two Whoppers with cheese, a vanilla
milkshake, and two large fries.
 
Her
reaction was completely ridiculous, since she hadn’t even
liked
her job that much.
 
The customers were annoying, her boss was a prick, and the commute was
horrible.
 
But it was a job.
 
A
paying
job.
 
And no one was hiring mortgage
brokers right now, because no one was getting mortgages anymore.
 
People weren’t out buying expensive
houses, they were doing their best just to survive.
 
It was all horribly sad when you thought
about it.
 
No wonder she was
depressed.

Number
two,
she wrote,
broke up with Jeremy.
 
She wasn’t sure what to do about this
one.
 
What was the solution when
your boyfriend of two years dumped you out of the blue?
 
Were you supposed to go out and have
lots of one-night stands?
 
Sign up
for internet dating?
 
Find a new
relationship?
 
She sighed.
 
Shit.
 
Her list was only two items long, and
she was already more upset than when she started.

“Here you go,” the bartender said, setting a
fresh pina colada down in front of her.

Kenley paid for the drink and added a five
dollar tip, even though she couldn’t afford it.
 
She was using all her severance and her
savings on this trip to Florida.
 
(Florida!
 
It wasn’t even
somewhere cool, like Europe or the Bahamas.
 
Fucking Florida was all she could
afford!) But she didn’t want the bartender to think that he’d gotten to her,
that she was a bitter old lady who wasn’t going to tip him well because he was
young and she wasn’t.

“You’re welcome.”
 
He looked down at the napkin in front of
her.
 
“What are you writing?”

“None of your business.”
 
She moved the napkin toward her
protectively and put her hand down on top of it, covering the writing.
 
But she wasn’t fast enough.

“You lost your job?”
 
the bartender asked, obviously having
some uncanny ability to speed-read upside down.

“No,” she lied.

He looked at her skeptically.
 
“Then why did you just write down that
you lost your job?”

“You know, you’re pretty nosy,” Kenley
said.
 
She took another big sip of
her pina colada.
 
The kid might be
young, but he made a damn good drink.

“So are you,” the bartender pointed out.
 
“You asked me how old I was.”

Kenley sighed.
 
“Whatever.”
 
She twirled the little paper umbrella
around in her drink.
 
“Fine, I lost
my job.
 
And I got dumped.
 
I’m a loser.”

“Aww,” the bartender said,
 
“don’t be so hard on yourself.
 
You’re not a loser.”
 
He reached down under the bar and pulled
out a navy blue folder.
 
“Here,” he
said and slid it toward her, looking proud of himself.
 

“What’s this?”

“Some guys left it here earlier.”
 
He shrugged.
 
“They had suits on.
 
They seemed rich, you know, like
bigwigs.
 
Maybe their company is
hiring.
 
They’re here for some
important meeting.”

“Thanks,” Kenley said.
 
She couldn’t even muster up the energy
to be mad at him for being so young and deluded that he thought it was that
easy to get a job, that you could just find some discarded folder somewhere and
decide you wanted to work for whomever had left it lying around.

“You’re welcome.”
 
He gave her a satisfied smile, like he
thought he was single-handedly responsible for preventing her from falling into
some kind of depressive spiral.
 
Then he walked to the other side of the bar, where he immediately began
flirting with two college girls wearing grass skirts and coconut bikini tops.

Expera
Footwear,
the folder said.
 
Kenley traced her fingers over the
embossed silver letters on the front, took another sip of her drink, and
decided she’d give herself ten more minutes of feeling sorry for herself.
 
And then she really was going to make a
plan.

***

Chad Parnell walked into the bar at the
St.Pierre Siesta Key wearing three days of stubble, a pair of ratty jeans, and
a navy blue sweatshirt.
 
He was
trying to fly under the radar, but as first basemen for the Brooklyn Heat, one
of the best major league baseball teams in America, there was a good chance
that despite his best efforts, he’d be recognized.

Of course, if some of the girls in here wanted
to go all crazy and ask him for autographs and pictures, he wasn’t going to
complain.
 
He might be here for a work
trip, but who said you couldn’t mix business with pleasure?
 
He scanned the bar for any intriguing
possibilities.

A couple of college girls in grass skirts and
coconut bikini tops were sitting at the bar, drinking pink-colored cocktails
and flirting with the bartender.
 
He
wrote them off immediately.
 
College
girls were the worst.
 
They never
knew what they were doing in bed, and they’d be the first to sell you out in
the tabloids for some ridiculous amount of money that wasn’t even enough to
make it worth it.

At the other end of the bar, a surly-looking
girl sat on a stool, writing something down on a napkin.
 
Chad sighed.
 
Apparently he’d be going home alone
tonight.
 
It was just as well.
 
He needed to be fresh for his meeting
tomorrow with Expera Footwear.
 
Chad
was hoping to get an endorsement deal out of them, and he needed to be well
rested so that he could turn on the charm.
 

He headed toward the bar and pulled his
baseball hat down over his eyes, hoping that the bartender wouldn’t recognize
him.
 
He chose a seat halfway
between the giggling college girls and the cranky-looking woman.
 
And that’s when he noticed the
folder.
 
It said Expera across the
front, and it was sitting in front of the crazy scribbler.
 
She must work for them.
 

Chad grinned. Talk about a perfect
situation!
 
He could slide down to
the other end of the bar, charm this woman a little, and make sure to get a leg
up for tomorrow’s meeting. He studied her, trying to figure out his approach.
 
Long blonde hair fell into her face, and
she bit her lip as she wrote.
 

He motioned to the bartender.

“What’s she drinking?” Chad asked.

“Who?”
 
The bartender glanced at the college girls and then his eyes flicked
back to Chad nervously, like he was afraid Chad might want to steal one of them
away.
 
Chad resisted the urge to
make a smart remark.
 
He wasn’t
interested in college girls – at least, not tonight – and if he
was, all he’d have to do was snap his fingers and those girls would be all over
him.

“Her,” Chad said, motioning to the woman at the
end of the bar.
 
She pushed her hair
back from her face, and Chad got his first good look at her.
 
She was pretty, in an average kind of
way – nice complexion, high cheekbones.
 
Nothing fancy about her, including her
clothes -- an oversized long-sleeved cream t-shirt and a pair of black yoga
pants.

“Her?” The bartender seemed surprised, like he
couldn’t fathom that anyone would be interested in the scribbler.

“Yes, her,” Chad said.
 
He was getting a little annoyed
now.
 
No one had the right to critique
his choice in women, especially when the bartender was getting all excited over
girls wearing fruit shells over their breasts.

“She’s having pina coladas,” the bartender
said.
 
He leaned forward and lowered
his voice to a whisper.
 
“And just
fyi?
 
She’s kind of pissy.”

“Just send her a drink from me, okay?” Chad
said. His plan was to make it seem like he didn’t know she worked at
Expera.
 
Then, when she admitted it,
he’d dazzle her with the facts he’d gleaned about the company from the five
minutes he’d spent googling.
 
And
then?
 
Then
he’d go in for the kill.
 
The kill, of course, being that he’d take her back to his hotel
room.
 
And then tomorrow, during the
meeting, she’d be sure to go to bat for him.

But when the bartender brought over the drink
Chad had sent her, the woman reached out, grabbed it, and took a sip without
even looking up.
 
The bartender
started walking back down toward the college girls.
 
What the hell?
 
Wasn’t he going to at least
tell
the girl that Chad was the one
who’d sent the drink?
 
What was
wrong with youth these days?
 

It was the internet, Chad decided.
 
Kids weren’t used to having to go out
and pick up women, to put in some effort, to strike up a conversation or buy a
woman a drink.
 
No, they just logged
onto some website and set up a profile using some ridiculous photoshopped
picture that didn’t even look anything like them, and then waited to have
cybersex all night long.
 
Or start
sexting.
 
Or whatever it was that
teenagers were doing these days.

He thought about calling the bartender over and
demanding he let the girl know that drink was from him.
 
But what was the point?
 
Chad could do much better on his own.
 
He got up and walked over to the other
end of the bar.
 
She was still
scribbling away on that damn napkin.
 
He tried to sneak a glance at it, wondering if maybe it was notes for
the meeting tomorrow morning.
 
But
all he caught was the word
“change.”

“Excuse me,” he said, giving her a sheepish
grin.
 
“Is this seat taken?”
 

“Yes,” she said immediately, not looking up from
her napkin “It is.”

 
“Oh,” he said.
 
“Okay.
 
I’m sorry.”
 
He waited a beat, hoping she’d look up.
 
When she did, she’d realize he was Chad
Parnell, famous baseball player and that he had a very cute, very wounded look
on his face.
 
He knew it was very cute
and very wounded because he’d practiced it in front of the mirror.
 
A lot.

But when the woman looked up, her eyes flicked
over him and then back down to the napkin she was writing on.
 
There was no spark of recognition on her
face, no surprise in her expression.
 
He frowned.
 
Was it possible
she didn’t know who he was?
 
It had
happened before, especially if he wasn’t in New York. Not everyone followed
baseball.
 
But you’d think someone
who was about to have a meeting with him would have at least taken the time to
google him.
 
His Wikipedia page had
a very nice picture of him on it.
 
It was taken last year, at some charity golf event he’d done.
 
Chad was smiling broadly for the camera,
his arm wrapped around a disadvantaged youth.

“Um, I think maybe you dropped this,” Chad
said, and picked up a random straw wrapper that had fallen on the floor.

The woman looked up again.
 
And this time, Chad knew he had her.