Mr. Black's Proposal (Part Two: A Billionaire Erotic Romance) (6 page)

I put on the lens cap and reached for the clipboard. I looked over the invoice, pretending to read it thoroughly.

“What do you think about marriage?” I asked, in what I hoped was a nonchalant way.

“Marriage?”

Steph cocked her head and looked at me like I was crazy.

“You know. As an institution.”

“Um. I think it’s fine. Why? Is this about Jake?”

“Just curious.” I flipped to the second page of the invoice and changed the subject quickly. “Do you dye your hair?”

“No.”

“It looks great on camera.”

“Thanks.” She peered at me with a suspicious glint in her eyes. The door to the studio opened, and Steph turned away quickly to button up the top of her blouse. I couldn’t help but grin at the adorable blush on her cheeks.

“Lucas?”

We both looked over at the door. It wasn’t the model I’d been photographing.

It was Belle.

Chapter Five

Steph

I felt my face grow hot as Belle walked forward. Her hair was perfectly coiffed, and I couldn’t help smoothing down my teased-out strands with one hand. God, I must look like I had just been rolling around on the tiger skin rug for Lucas’s pleasure.

Hadn’t I? Here I thought I would be in and out with a signed invoice. And how had it ended up? With Lucas taking pictures of my ass and trying to unbutton my blouse. Honestly, had I thought it would go any different?

Belle brushed right by me on her way to Lucas. She handed him a manila folder.

“Jake mentioned you would be here today,” she told him. “Here are all the receipts for the Paris trip.”

“Belle, you know Steph,” Lucas said. He sounded awkward, like he’d been caught with his pants around his ankles. Was he embarrassed to be seen with me? Ugh. I wish I hadn’t come here. I should have sent Andy, I knew it.

Belle looked at me with narrow eyes. Her eyebrows were shaped perfectly, and they drew together like dark daggers on her forehead.

“I hope you’re having fun,” she said pointedly.

“Oh, we’re having a blast,” I said, in as sarcastic a tone as I could muster. “Signing invoices is
so
much fun.”

“I’m sure it is,” she said. Her gaze was poisonous. “Your blouse is coming undone.”

I looked down. I’d buttoned my shirt up hastily. I flushed.

“Bye, Lucas,” she purred. “See you at Mariam’s party later.”

“Yeah, see you,” Lucas said.

She turned on her heel and left. I waited until the door had slammed shut to speak again.

“That woman hates me.”

Lucas shrugged.

“She hates everyone. That’s Belle’s thing. Don’t take it personally.”

“I wouldn’t, if she wasn’t making it personal.”

“Come on. You act like she’s an evil villain.”

Anger flared up in my chest. How could Lucas act like she was some kind of harmless friend?

“You don’t have any idea what she said to me,” I said.

“When? Now?”

“At Jake’s party.”

“What did she say?”

I clamped my lips shut. She’d told me not to go after Lucas. She’d told me to keep my hands off. And I’d told her that I was going to be professional. My throat stung. I would disappear, and she would have Lucas all to herself. That’s how it should be.

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s all my fault. Would you sign the invoice?”

“Sure. Hey, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Thank you for the deposit check. We’ll be ready for the party.”

“Oh come on, don’t start acting all cold around me.”

I pinched my lips together and shook my head. Belle was right. I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t anything like the girls that Lucas Black spent time with all day. I wasn’t a supermodel. All of this…him taking pictures of me… it was all just pretend. There was no way I could be a part of this.

It might have been the lack of sleep combined with the sudden blast of self-pity, but tears welled up in my eyes. I turned away.

Lucas grabbed my arm.

“Steph—”

“Let
go,”
I said.

His fingers dropped away in an instant, but his eyes stayed fixed on my face.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m… I’m not in the mood right now.”

“Okay,” Lucas said. “As long as that’s all it is.”

I smiled a pinched smile and turned away from him.

That wasn’t all it was. But how could I tell him that I needed to stay at a comfortable distance from his life? I wanted to be near him, but I felt so completely out of place when I was in his world.

Walking quickly, almost running, I exited the sleek office building. I wasn’t running away from Lucas, I told myself.

Then why did it feel like exactly that?

Chapter Six

Lucas

I went for a walk with Otis in Central Park. My mom ambushed me on the way out of my apartment building.

“Mom!”

“Lucas,” she said. “I was in the area having coffee with Jill, and thought I’d stop by to chat.”

Sure you did.
But I didn’t say anything. She was my mom, after all. I was used to having her stop by for chats. The first time, she’d convinced Alex to let her into the apartment, and she’d been surprised when a naked girl walked out into the kitchen.

Ever since then, she’d hovered around the street exit if she wanted to see me. Now, she hooked her arm around mine.

“Where are we going today?” she asked brightly.

“I was actually going to go on a run with Otis,” I said, hoping she would get the hint.

“Oh, we can’t run. I’m in heels. Let’s walk to the lake with the rowboats, that’s always nice.”

I sighed and let her lead me across the street. She waved at the impatient drivers who honked at us for jaywalking. We walked along the lake and Otis yanked at the leash with every squirrel we came across.

“So, Lucas, do you have anything to tell me?”

“Tell you?” I stared at my mom. “No?”

“Who’s the new girl?” she insisted.

“What do you mean?”

She pulled out a tabloid from her purse. It had a paparazzi shot of me dancing with Stephanie under the Eiffel Tower. The photo cropped out everybody else—Jake and Lacey, all of the family. It looked like we were dancing alone.

“Is that your new girl?”

I took the tabloid. Steph looked so beautiful in that cream dress. Like an angel. I remembered that night, our first night together.

“She looks pretty enough,” my mom said.

“She’s beautiful,” I said.

“Well, I suppose that’s enough to hold your attention for an hour or two.”

I frowned and folded the tabloid in half.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re flighty.”

“Flighty?”

“In my day you’d have been called out as a shameless flirt. Now girls fawn over you for a day’s worth of attention.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, mom. Sheesh.”

“When are you going to settle down?”

Oh, God.
We were going to have this conversation again. I should have broken free with Otis and made a run for it. Now I was stuck.

“Mom…”

“Don’t tell me I’m being too pushy. Jill’s boy has a wedding set for this fall.”

“Good for him.”

“And he’s two years younger than you.”

“Sounds like a great son. Maybe you should adopt him.”

“Lucas, I only want to know when I can expect to see you hold onto a girl long enough for me to meet her.”

“When I find the one, I’ll let you know,” I said. I didn’t say anything about Steph. Steph didn’t want anything to do with me. Was this how all women saw me? Maybe that’s why she was pushing back against my advances. She thought that I would use her up and dump her, and she was the only woman strong enough to even try to resist it. Well, that was the last thing I wanted to do.

An idea flashed into my mind. At first, I thought that it was crazy. But as I mulled it over, I realized that it might just be the perfect answer to the problem I was facing here.

“Don’t worry, mom,” I said, patting her hand calmly. “You’ll see. I’ll settle down soon enough.”

“Is that right? What, with some French floozy girl you dance with in Paris? Be serious.”

I laughed at the idea of Steph being a French floozy. My mom didn’t know that I was already planning on being serious. I’d never been serious before, of course. But Steph was changing all that.

“I told you before. I’m going to bring my own little surprise to the party.”

“What surprise?”

“You’ll see.” I smiled.

Steph was going to see exactly how serious I could be. Alex was already downtown, putting together the last touches on my plan for tomorrow’s party. I’d given him orders to keep everything perfectly secret. Strange. I’d never felt nervous before a party before. This one, though, would be something very, very special.

I called Steph.

“Hi,” she said. No
Lucas.
No
Mr. Black.
Just
hi
. In that one word, I could hear how frazzled she was. It was adorable.

“I wanted to make sure everything was okay,” I said.

“Okay?”

“You know, for the party tomorrow and everything.”

“Oh. Right. Of course. Everything will be perfect. I’m finishing up the cakes tonight.”

I imagined her in the bakery, her hair pulled back in a loose bun, dusted with flour, her ass when she stood on tiptoe to reach the top shelf…

“Do you want to come over tonight?” I asked. My cock was throbbing, had been ever since she’d left me to finish the photo shoot, and I dreamt of taking her to bed again.

“I wish I could, but I’m backlogged on an order of sheet cakes.”

I sighed. My dreams would have to be put on hold. After tonight, though, she would understand.

“Man, you’re busy.”

“Yup. Can’t wait until I can hire someone and expand.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. It would cut down on a lot of the stress.”

I grabbed up a pen and jotted down:

Possible expand/employee.

Maybe I could figure out some way to help her with her business. I couldn’t wait to introduce her to my mother tomorrow. She loved jump-starting young businesses, getting grants and donors set up for expanding small companies. I hoped that my mom liked Steph enough to help her.

That wasn’t the only reason. I hoped my mom liked Steph, because… well, because
I
liked Steph.

“Hello? Lucas?”

“What?”

“Look, I’m really busy right now, so if there’s nothing else—”

“I’m sorry. Thanks, Steph.”

The fucking weirdest impulse—to say
I love you—
sprang to my mind. I clamped my mouth shut on the words before I said them.

“Okay. See you tomorrow.”

“Thanks.”

I shook my head at Otis. He tilted his head, his ears flopping sideways.

“That’s right, Otis. It was just a checkup call for the party. That’s a normal thing to do, right?”

Otis heard the inflection in my voice. He tilted his head the other way.

“Exactly. And so what if I love her? It’s fine to love someone, isn’t it?”

Otis, realizing that I wasn’t going to give him a snack, lay down at my feet. His eyes still looked up hopefully as I gestured.

“And the stupid thing is, she loves me back! I can tell! I always know when girls are falling in love with me. And Steph definitely is.”

I sat down on the floor next to Otis and scratched his nose.

“So why not make a move? Sure, she says she wants to be professional. And she says I’m not serious. But I can tell she doesn’t mean it. Every time we’re together, it’s like a switch gets flipped, and she lights up. Like turning on the sunshine.”

Next to me, Otis yawned.

“I’m going to prove that I’m serious. And when the party’s over, she won’t need to be professional. It’ll be perfect. Won’t it, Otis?”

I looked down at Otis, but he had fallen asleep and was drooling on my shoes.

Chapter Seven

Steph

Everything was perfect, until it wasn’t.

I hadn’t changed into my dress yet for the party. There was plenty of time before I had to leave, so I just did my makeup and then went down to the bakery to get ahead on a couple of things for tomorrow. I was in the middle of baking a half-dozen vanilla bases for the coffee shop in my yoga outfit when my phone rang.