One Hell of a Guy: The Cambion Trilogy, Book 1 (6 page)

Lily thought about arguing, but since the alternative was sitting alone crying about her job and wondering how she was going to pay the bills, it actually sounded like a fabulous plan.

Her toes went away after the third mudslide but she drank another just to be sure. Somewhere along the way, Miri heated up a frozen pizza and they ate that plus an entire bag of salt-and-vinegar chips — and most of the cake, which was triple chocolate — but the food didn’t do a whole lot to soak up the alcohol. Miri matched her drink for drink, so by ten o’clock they were both truly and completely tanked.

“Do you want me to stay the night?” Miri asked, boozily.

“What? No.” Lily used the remote to switch off the TV and rolled her head to the left to look at Miri. Some time between mudslides three and four her best friend had become two best friends — which was awesome, if you thought about it. “Matthew would hate that.”

“Matthew is, as I said, a big boy,” Miri said, then giggled. “And I mean that in every possible sense.”

Lily giggled, too. “Stop it!” she said, flapping her hand weakly to ward off the information. “I have to be able to look him in the face and talk to him, you know, and I can’t do that if I’m thinking about —”

“I can hardly think about anything else, sometimes,” Miri confessed, then laughed even harder.

“Tramp,” Lily said affectionately.

“Look who’s talking,” Miri said, then, immediately: “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean —”

Lily waved her concern away. “I know you
didn’t mean
. And anyway, you’re kind of right. I mean, what the hell, Miri? When have I ever acted like that?”

Miri shrugged. “That guy — I don’t know. He’s … exceptionally hot, yeah. But it’s not like you’re a manatee, Lily. You’ve dated hot guys. What’s the deal with this one?”

“I don’t know,” she said, miserably.

Neither of them said anything for a minute, then Miri broke the silence.

“Listen … and this is just a thought, okay? But when I told Matthew what had happened, he said … well, he asked me if I kept a good eye on your drink.”

Lily looked at her, shook her head. “That’s crazy. No way.”

“Maybe,” Miri said. “Maybe it is. I just — you know, I can’t swear I had my eyes on your drink the whole time we were there. And yesterday — I mean, did he give you anything then?”

She thought about her bottle of water, how she’d wandered away and left it on the bar. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, he did, and yes he had access to it when I wasn’t around.”

Miri shrugged again. “I can’t say, I mean what do I know? But it’s something to think about. Because it wasn’t like you, that’s for sure. You were practically humping him on the dance floor, and then —”

Lily closed her eyes and held up a hand. “Yeah, I know.”

“Maybe we’re way off base,” Miri said.

“And maybe you’re not.”

But she couldn’t think about it right now; she had to think about updating her resume and how to spin getting fired. She bundled Miri into a cab, with promises to call tomorrow as soon as she was done at the unemployment office, then drank an enormous glass of water in the hopes of staving off a hangover and tucked herself into bed.

But sleep wouldn’t come. She laid there going over the events of the day in her mind until she wanted to scream from the sheer repetition. She’d already lived it once and revisited it a dozen times; did she really need to have it on repeat play when all she wanted was the sweet oblivion of sleep?

Her thoughts drifted to Sebastian. Had he actually drugged her? It was crazy; that was a story that happened to people on TV. It wasn’t something that happened to people she knew. To her.

Even if he had, what could she do about it?

Somehow, though, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it of him. A guy like that didn’t need to slip something in a girl’s drink to get some play; hadn’t she overheard him and the bartender talking about how he could have about any girl he wanted?

And he’d wanted her.

When she finally did slip into sleep, he was waiting for her. And her dreams were very sweet indeed.

Chapter 8

THE RINGING OF her cell phone at 9:30 pulled Lily out of a shallow doze — the closest she’d gotten to sleep since her now-customary 4 a.m. catfight wakeup call, actually, so even though it wasn’t great she was annoyed to have it interrupted. What the hell had she been thinking, anyway, setting an obnoxious, old-fashioned bell sound as her ringtone? Wasn’t it one of the marvels of modern technology that she could have some pleasant, wonderful sound waking her up? Instead … this.

She rolled over and groped on the bedside table, pulled the phone under the covers with her. “What?” she snarled. She was unemployed. She shouldn’t have to wake up and she didn’t have to worry about offending anyone.

“Lily?” That voice. “It’s Sebastian Batiste.”

She almost hung up on him. He had some goddamned nerve. “What do you want?” She said instead, making sure her voice was no less snarly. “How did you get my number?”

There was a momentary pause. “I had hoped you’d be happier to hear from me.”

“Oh, really?” she said.

“Yes, really,” he replied, and his patient tone was kind of infuriating. “I know what happened yesterday was a little embarrassing —”

“It was a lot more than embarrassing,” she said, trying not to sound like she was going to cry, which, she was unsurprised to discover, she was. “I got fired.”

There was another pause, longer this time. “You got fired?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Because of what happened?”

“Duh,” she said.

It was by no means the most eloquent response but it got the point across. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “That’s … unfortunate.”

“I confess, I’m stunned by your mastery of the fine art of understatement, Sebastian,” she said tartly, blinking furiously to keep the tears at bay. “It’s a disaster, is what it is.”

“Of course,” he said. “Of course it is.”

“I needed my job,” she said. “More important, I
liked
my job.”

Another pause, the longest one yet. Then he said, “You’ll have to find something else you like as well. Come to my office? I’m in midtown. How soon can you be here?”

“Why on earth should I come to your office?”

“So I can make you an offer you can’t refuse,” he said, sounding like someone who hadn’t taken complete leave of his senses, even though that was what he had to be, saying something like that to her, now.

“I just bet,” she said. “No thanks.”

“Seriously, Lily. Come see me.” She could hear the smile in his voice; for whatever reason, it made his request more compelling than it ought to have been, given the consequences last time she’d let him talk her into something. Not that he’d had to talk much. “I will absolutely make it worth your while.”

“I just bet,” she said again.

“And it’s not like you have anything else to do today,” he added, and he had the audacity to add a little chuckle.

“That’s an insufferable thing to say,” she said, bristling.

“I know,” he said. “You should definitely come up here and teach me a lesson. ASAP.”

And just like that, a lance of desire shot from her scalp to her toes, spreading warmly through every cell in between. How did he
do
that?

“Fine,” she said. “But ASAP is not all that S. I have to get ready, and eat, and then I’ll take the train. No cabs for this girl, not while she’s unemployed.”

“Oh, you won’t be unemployed for long,” he said. “See you soon.”

She’d been trying to jab at him a little bit about costing her her job, and maybe angling for him to send a car for her, but apparently it hadn’t even affected him because he hung up without saying anything further.

***

Generally any one building in midtown Manhattan looked much the same as the others, but the Batiste Building was different. It speared up into the sky a dozen floors higher than the buildings surrounding it, and the windows, rather than reflecting the light like mirrors, seemed to absorb it, giving them an almost tinted appearance she knew was a trick of the light.

The woman at the reception desk on the first floor directed her to take the nearest elevator to the 40
^th
floor sky lobby, where she switched to another elevator to get to the 60
^th
floor. Despite its size, everything was pretty standard for a midtown office building — and then she stepped off the elevator into the Batiste Enterprises offices.

Immediately, she was ankle-deep in plush navy blue carpeting, which she imagined was an absolute bitch to keep clean — and it was clean, with not a speck of stray dust or dirt anywhere in the entire expanse of it.

There was an enormous mahogany desk situated in the center of the room, and the woman sitting at it looked up from her computer screen and gave Lily a quick once-over. She was gorgeous, with an asymmetrical bob and
 
severe black bangs over intense almond-shaped green eyes.

“Can I help you?” she asked coolly.

“Yeah,” Lily said, crossing to stand in front of her. “I guess I have an appointment with Sebastian.”

The woman tapped a few keys on the keyboard in front of her and frowned. “I’m sorry; Mr. Batiste doesn’t have anything scheduled —”

“He called me,” Lily interrupted, in no mood for any kind of runaround.

Before they had a chance to get into it, though, the door behind the desk opened and another young woman came out — equally as stunning as the first, this one blonde instead of brunette, long-haired rather than short.

“Are you Ms. Randall?” she asked.

Lily nodded.

“It’s okay, Pamela,” the blonde said, “Sebastian sent me out to get her.”

The brunette nodded and the blonde woman gestured that Lily should follow her.

The door opened into a long hallway; there were several doors on either side, all closed, and a glass wall at the end through which Lily could see another enormous desk, currently unmanned.

Once they were in the hallway, the blonde held out her hand and Lily shook it.

“I’m Renee,” she said, and her tone was warm and friendly. “Sorry for the trouble. Sebastian got caught on an international call and didn’t have time to let Pamela know you were coming. He only just sent me a message to come see if you’d arrived.”

She led the way down the hall, passing all the doors without slowing, and pushed open a nearly-invisible door in the glass wall at the end. Crossing to the desk, she leaned over and pushed a button on the phone. “She’s here,” she said without preamble, and Sebastian’s voice replied, “Send her in, please.”

Renee pointed to the only other door in the room and took a seat behind the desk. Lily approached the door and pushed it open, feeling a little strange despite having been invited in. Every light fixture, every piece of furniture, was subtly opulent in a way that made her feel like a bit of a country bumpkin even though she’d been in some of the most expensive places in the city for her job.

Her job that she didn’t have anymore, thanks to Mr. Sebastian Batiste.

Okay, thanks to Mr. Sebastian Batiste and her own wayward, uncontrollable libido.

Unless Miri and Matthew were on to something, in which case her libido had very little to do with it.

Sebastian was standing in front of his desk rather than sitting behind it, looking delectable in a charcoal-gray suit that probably cost half a year's rent.

She shut the door behind her and just looked at him.

“Lily,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she asked, warily, staying by the door rather than let him get near her again.

“For whatever part I played in this situation,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out if there was a way I could help you —”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. It skirted close enough to the edge of lying that she felt a little twinge of nausea.
Damn it
, she thought,
 
I will be fine. Just because I don’t know how yet, doesn’t make it untrue.

“I’m sure that, one way or another, you will,” he said. “But come, sit down. I have a proposal.”

He moved behind the desk, and she came forward and sat on the edge of a visitor’s chair. Once she was seated, he took his own seat and leaned back in his chair, looking at her appraisingly.

“Are you familiar with Luxury Lifestyles?” he asked her.

She nodded. Luxury Lifestyles was a magazine that consisted entirely of photoessays chronicling the lifestyles of the extraordinarily rich.
 
From the Kardashians to the Saudi oil barons, if you had more money than you knew what to do with, the readers of Luxury Lifestyles wanted to know what you were doing with it. Word in the magazine world was they couldn’t get Sebastian Batiste to give them the time of day.

“They have been, for some time now, aggressively pursuing the chance to feature me in their magazine.” He smiled. “I have turned them down, every time.”

“You have a reputation for being … private,” she said, choosing the word carefully.

“And I am,” he said. “For good reason.”

She wondered what that meant, but he didn’t elaborate. Maybe he just meant the usual:
I’m richer than Midas and don’t want people bothering me.

“However, I feel terrible about what happened — about the part where you got in trouble for it, anyway.” He smiled, slow and lazy, and she thought about how those lips had felt on her skin, and flushed. “So I called their creative director, who has been calling me once a week for at least a year now, and told her I would be willing to let them do a feature on me …
if
I could pick the photographer.”

Lily shook her head a little, too stunned to say anything. Was he saying what she thought he was saying?

“And she was agreeable, provided she was allowed to approve the final shots. I told her you would be fine with that?”

She nodded dumbly.

“Well, then,” he said. “She suggested a sort of day-in-the-life photoessay. I told her I was flying to Vegas tonight, as there’s a Heavyweight Championship fight tomorrow that I’m supposed to attend. One of my smaller companies is a corporate sponsor.”