Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (192 page)

He hesitated for a second, and Kenley saw his
eyes flick down to her cleavage.
 
She was wearing a long-sleeved navy blue top from Old Navy.
 
It was one of those shirts that cost
five dollars, and was
made
like it
cost five dollars.
 
She felt
suddenly vulnerable and exposed in the thin material, and quickly realized that
crossing her arms over her chest just made it worse.
 
Her breasts were pushed up and out,
making her already ample cleavage even bigger.

“How much do you know about baseball?” Chad
asked, his gaze reluctantly returning to meet hers.

“What?”

“Baseball,” Chad said.
 
“How much do you know about it?”

“You hit the ball and run around the bases.”
She shrugged.
 
“The Red Sox hate the
Yankees.
 
That’s about it.”

“Okay.”
 
He thought about it.
 
“What
do you know about endorsement deals?”

“Endorsement deals?
 
Nothing.”

“Okay, well, the thing is, for an athlete,
endorsement deals are a pretty major thing.
 
A baseball player’s always worried about
getting injured, or having enough money when his career’s over.”

Kenley snorted.
 
She was wearing an Old Navy t-shirt, and
this guy had on a Rolex.
 
She didn’t
know much about men’s fashion, but she was pretty sure the suit he was wearing
hadn’t come from Men’s Warehouse.

“Fine,” Chad said.
 
“That’s fair.”

“What’s fair?”

“You think I’m a rich asshole.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No.”

“You’re not rich?”

“I am.”

“And you already admitted you’re an
asshole.
 
So wouldn’t that make you
a rich asshole?”

“No,” he said.
 

“Why not?”

“I was speaking metaphorically.”
 

She gave him a blank look.
 

“I meant rich asshole in the metaphorical
sense,” he explained.

“I thought you failed English.
 
Now you’re using metaphors?”

He grinned, then scooped up another fry.
 
“Anyway,” he said,
 
“the point is that something happened at
the meeting I had with Expera today.”
 
He lowered his voice.
 
“Something that has to do with you.”

“With me?
 
Why would it have something to do with me?”

“Well,” Chad said.
 
“You remember how – ”

The waitress came over then and put Kenley’s
Diet Coke down on the table.
 
“One
Diet Coke,” she said, sounding annoyed and exasperated.
 
She turned to Chad.
 
“Do you want a drink too?
 
A water perhaps?”
  
And then she realized who she was
talking to, and her whole face changed
 
“Ohmigod.
 
You’re… I mean,
um, can I get you anything?”

“No thanks,” Chad said, giving the waitress a
huge smile.
 
“I’m just going to
share these fries.”
 

Kenley fought down the wave of jealousy that
flared up inside of her.
 
What was
there to be jealous about?
 
Did she
really think she was the only one he was going to smile at like that?
 
Twelve hours ago he’d been trying to
sleep with her simply because he thought she worked for a company she’d never
even heard of.
 
He was a charmer,
plain and simple.

The waitress scurried away, probably to
formulate some kind of plan about what to do in order to get Chad Parnell to
notice her.

“Listen,” Chad said, reaching into his
pocket.
 
He pulled out a money clip
and threw a fifty-dollar bill down on the table.
 
“Can we get out of here?
 
Go somewhere a little more private?”

“Like your hotel room?” Kenley scoffed.

“No, just… somewhere we can talk.
 
I have a car waiting outside.”

She shrugged, like she couldn’t care less what
he was talking about.
 
But the truth
was, she was intrigued – he’d been about to say something about his
endorsement deal, something that supposedly had to do with her, and she wanted
to hear it.

“It’s important,” Chad said.
 
His joking demeanor was gone now, and
his voice was serious.
 

A nervous feeling settled in Kenley’s
stomach.
 
What the hell had happened
at that meeting?
 
“Okay.”
 
She nodded.
 
“I’ll go with you.”

“Good,” Chad stood up.
 
He glanced nervously over at the
waitress.
 
She was standing at the
condiment station, whispering and pointing at him with two of her co-workers.

“Go,” Kenley said.
 
“I’ll meet you outside.”

He nodded, turned on his heel, and was gone.

Kenley took a deep breath and closed her
laptop.
 
What the hell was she about
to do?
 
The guy was trouble.
 
Anything he was going to tell her
couldn’t be good.
  
She didn’t
have anything to do with his endorsement deal. Not to mention that every time
he was around her, she couldn’t keep her hormones under control.
 

“You’re leaving already?” the waitress asked,
coming up to the table and sounding panicked.
 
“Where did your friend go?”

 
“He
went to get the car.”

The waitress’s mouth dropped open.
 

Kenley smiled.
 
“Here you go,” she said, picking up the
fifty and slipping it into the waitress’s pocket.
 
“Keep the change.”

***

The air inside the limo was warm, and Chad sank
into the backseat, closing the door behind him.
 
He looked back at the restaurant,
waiting for Kenley to come out.
  
After a few moments went by, he started to get nervous.
 
He knew he shouldn’t have left her in
there by herself.
 
Too much time for
her to think about how it wasn’t a good idea to go with him, too much time for
her to second guess, too much time for her to decide it wasn’t worth it.
 

Chad was no stranger to women deciding he
wasn’t worth it.
 
His mother had
left him and his father when Chad was seven.
 
He still remembered coming home from
school one day to find his father sitting at the kitchen table, his head in his
hands.
 
He told Chad his mother
wouldn’t be living with them anymore.
 
Chad cried for a few minutes and then asked for a grilled cheese sandwich.
 
His father had burned it.

Of course, to be completely fair, his mother
hadn’t completely disappeared from the picture.
 
She’d show up a couple of times a year
-- Christmas, birthdays, maybe a random summer vacation -- never seeming to think
there was anything wrong with the fact that she’d been MIA for most of her
son’s life.
 

Eventually Chad’s father got remarried to a
woman named Noelle.
 
Chad’s
stepmother had basically ignored him, seeing him as an extension of his mother,
the woman her new husband would never really get over.
  
Noelle had never been
intentionally cruel, but she was dismissive, never really treating Chad like
her son.
 
And after Chad’s half-sister
Jenna had been born, the rift between them had only widened.

Come on,
Chad thought, looking at the door of the
restaurant.
 
Come out.

As if she’d heard him, the door to the
restaurant opened and Kenley stepped outside.
 
Chad let out the breath he’d been
holding, realizing just how much he’d been hoping she’d keep her word.
 
Of course, he was about to propose
something to her that was completely and totally crazy, so it actually might
have been better if she’d blown him off.
 

Now that she was here, though, he had to do
everything in his power to make sure she went along with his scheme.
 
There was no way he could have predicted
what had happened at that meeting today – but now that it had, his
endorsement deal depended on Kenley.
 
And so he needed to get her not only to like him, but to trust him
enough to go along with his plan.
 
It was going to be a huge challenge.
 
But Chad Parnell had never shied away
from a challenge.
 
He rolled down
the window of the limo and waved her over.

Kenley stopped before getting in, looking at
him through the window.
 
She bent
down, hesitating, and strands of her long blonde hair blew against her
face.
 
“We’re going in a limo?” she
asked.

“Sorry,” Chad said.
 
He usually loved to show off all the
perks of being a major league baseball player, but he could tell Kenley wasn’t
going to be impressed by that stuff.
 
And besides, the last thing he needed was for her to think he was trying
to get one over on her.
 
If she
thought he was a bullshitter, there was no way this was going to work.
 

Kenley hesitated again, and Chad smiled at
her.
 
“It’s a company car,” he said,
and then shrugged his shoulders as if he had no choice but to be driven around
in it.
 
The company car part, at
least, was true.
 
After his cab ride
this morning, he’d called back to Brooklyn and had the team send him a limo for
the day.

Kenley bit her lip, then finally nodded and got
in.

“So, where are we going?” she asked once she
was sitting next to him.

“We’re going,” Chad said, “to my house.”
 
The limo started to move, and he saw the
look of panic that washed over Kenley’s face.
 
“You okay?”
 
he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“If you’re nervous about going somewhere with
me, you can just say it.”

“I’m not nervous about going somewhere with
you.”

“So you don’t think I’m a stalker anymore?”

“Are you?”

“I told you I’m not,” he said.
 
“Only NFL players are stalkers or
murderers.”

“Well, whatever.”
 
She pulled her phone out of her
purse.
 
“What’s the address of your
house?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to text it to my sister,”
Kenley said, her hand poised over the keypad.
 
“That way, at least someone will know
where I am.”

“How do I know your sister isn’t going to post
the address to facebook so that all kinds of crazy deranged fans show up and
start pounding on my windows?”
 

Kenley put her phone back in her purse and
leaned over the top of the seat.
 
“Excuse me, driver,” she said.
 
“Could you pull over, please? I need to get out.”

“Okay, okay,” Chad said.
 
He recited the address.
 
He couldn’t believe he was doing
that.
 
He hardly knew this girl, not
to mention her sister.
 
Visions of
psychotic girls in Brooklyn Heat jerseys showing up and breaking down his door
danced through his head.

“Thank you,” Kenley said, sounding
satisfied.
  
“So if you have a
house in Florida, then why were you staying at a hotel?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”
 
He reached into the lighted cooler next
to him and pulled out a bottle of water.
 
“Would you like a drink?” he asked.

“Of alcohol?”

“Of whatever you’d like.”
 
He’d been thinking more along the lines
of a soda or juice, but now that he thought about it, alcohol might not be that
bad of an idea.
 
He could get her a
little loose, let her relax.
 
“There’s wine, vodka…”

“I’ll have a Diet Coke,” she said.
 
Damn.
 
He pulled a glass out from the tiny bar,
opened a can of soda, and poured the drink for her.
 
“Thank you.”
 

“So you never told me why you’re in Siesta
Key,” Chad said.