Plush Book 2: A Billionaire Romance (9 page)

Chapter Ten

I started my trip a little after seven the next morning and did my best to enjoy the long ride down the freeway but my mind kept going back to Cooper, remembering his eyes as he explored my naked body, lying in the soft folds of his shirt. His soft lips and how they ravished over every inch of my skin. His masculine hands as they teased and caressed me. But, then, the images shifted and I saw the coldness in his eyes when he told me he was leaving, the tight line to his lips that made them no longer seem like they could ever belong the same man who had pleasured me endlessly the night before, and the hands that no longer seemed interested in touching my body.

The conflicting version of Cooper was battling in my head and it took a lot of effort to remain focused on my driving.

Finally, over an hour later, I arrived at the huge gate that blocked the long driveway that led to Cooper’s house.

“Shit,” I whispered to myself. I had forgotten about the gate. I flipped up the visor on my helmet and leaned over to inspect it closer. There was a speaker button, and I pushed it quickly, not giving myself time to freak out over who would answer.

“How may I help you?”

It wasn’t Cooper’s voice that echoed from the tiny box.

“Um, yes, my name is Allie—Allison Rand. I was here yesterday and left some things behind.”

“I’m sorry, but Mr. Brighton is not here at the moment. You’ll have to come back another time.”

I scowled at the voice. “I don’t need to see Mr. Brighton. I need my stuff. That’s it, and then I’ll go.”

There was a pause and I turned my attention back to the gate, waiting for it to start opening.

“I’m sorry, I cannot let you in. You will have to come back.”

“What the fuck? I just told you, I don’t need to see Cooper. I just want my stuff. Can you call him? I’m sure he won’t mind.”

Silence.

“Hello?” I punched the speaker button again. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

I screamed to release my frustration. My brain scrambled to find a new plan. I had just ridden an hour to get here. There was no way I was going to leave without my money. I took my helmet off and balanced it between my legs as I grabbed my phone out of my pocket.

Thankfully, my cell phone bill had been paid, so I still had service.

For now, I reminded myself.

I shook the thought away and dialed Cooper’s number—thankful that I hadn’t deleted it after the last asshole thing he had done.

The phone rang and rang, and eventually went to his voicemail. I hung up and immediately dialed again.

I got the voicemail message again. “Cooper, it’s Allie. Please call your idiot assistant and tell him to let me into your house. I need my money from the club the other night.”

I hung up and hoped my bitchy demand would get me somewhere, and fast.

It was so quiet I could hear my own heart beating. I got tired of waiting and after a few minutes, I leaned over and pushed the button again.

“Ma’am, as previously stated, I cannot let you into Mr. Brighton’s home. I am very sorry.”

“I just called him and left a message. Can you call him, please? This is very, very important.”

“I will try. One moment.”

I sat back, my fingers tapping the top of my helmet that sat in between my legs.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. There was no answer. I will let him know you were here. Perhaps he can mail you the items. Let me take down your address.”

“He knows where I live,” I shouted back. I slammed my helmet back over my head, latched it tight, ripped around in a circle and flew down the driveway. I refused to be treated like some other whore he had lured back to his place and simply shipped back any personal effects in a UPS box so he didn’t have to actually see her again.

Disgusting
.

I made record time back to the city and cruised around a little, still trying to burn off my rage. I went by the bakery shop I had found Cooper at the last time he stopped answering my calls, but he wasn’t there. I didn’t have my laptop, so I couldn’t use the tracking program to locate his GPS signal.

Without planning it, I ended up retracing the route Cooper had taken me on when we left the pastry shop and before I knew it, I was staring up at the enormous tower, home of Brighton Enterprises. As I parked along the street, every fiber in my body rebelled against the idea of going inside, back to his office.

Logically, I knew that he wasn’t trying to steal the money from me. Truthfully, I should feel a little guilty even squabbling with him over a measly five hundred bucks, when he had just donated thousands to my own personal charity fund. But that wasn’t the point. Was it?

No, it wasn’t, I decided. I wanted to see him, face to face, and demand an explanation for his most recent surge of assholery. I wanted to make him feel as awkward and uncomfortable and stupid as I had when he had burst into
my
place of employment and had caused a scene. Deep down, I knew that Cooper wasn’t the type to feel awkward or embarrassed, but I was going to do my damnedest.

I abandoned Cherry Bomb and stalked towards his building.

I rode up the elevator and found his office. His assistant was sitting at her desk, typing on her computer, and didn’t even look up when I approached. I cleared my throat and she finally raised her head.

“Can I help you?”

“I need to see Cooper.”

She looked me up and down, a look of disapproval all over her bitchy face. “
Mr. Brighton
,” she corrected me, “is not in. Would you like to leave him a message?”

Before I could answer, she plopped a pack of sticky notes and a pen in front of me and then went back to typing.

It took a whole lot of restraint to keep my hand from writing “fuck you” on the top sticky. Instead, I wrote, “Call Allison,” and flipped it back to her, knowing the odds of him ever seeing the note were very slim.

“Thank you,” I said, making my voice as sweet as possible.

“I’ll see that Mr. Brighton gets this.”

I nodded and started to walk away, when she called after me. “And just a tip. If you’re trying to attract his attention, you should know he prefers a more…feminine look.”

I turned back, the muscles in my shoulder ready to cock back a fist and let her have it.

“Bye bye.” She waved, giving me a sickly sweet smile.

I couldn’t afford a public brawl on top of all my other problems, so I let my wrist relax and drop to my side as I turned and left the office. I kept my head high as I rode the elevator down and went back out to ride home. I walked down the street towards Cherry Bomb, and checked the windows of the surrounding businesses, hoping to see a glimpse of Cooper, wanting to bull rush him in some hoity-toity coffee shop and make a huge scene and embarrass him in front of “his people.” I reached my parking space without seeing him, so I climbed back on my bike, and ripped out of the city and back to my apartment to crash.

Chapter Eleven

Once home, I changed into some comfortable clothes, made a snack, and went to my laptop to see if I could track Cooper down. After spending nearly the whole day chasing his ghost around town, it was time to stop chasing my tail and go back to something a more accurate. Something I knew. I scarfed down my cup of ramen noodles as the computer powered up. I set the cup down and flexed my fingers in anticipation of the hunt.

I logged into the computer, slid to the floor, and used the coffee table as my desk. Within minutes, I had plugged into Cooper
’s cell phone and used his GPS to find his exact location. There was a blue dot on the move, so I waited and watched as it crossed the map, finally coming to a stop. I zoomed in, pulled up the address, and went to search. Seconds later, an image popped up showing a gigantic house up in the hills. I copied the address and went on a new search. It took some digging, but eventually I confirmed who the house belonged to:

Angela McKinnon

The name sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn’t figure out why. So, I searched the name and gasped when her picture came up. Angela McKinnon was a regular actress on one of the shows I used to watch. I scanned through her work history and there were a few other movies listed that I had seen that had her in them.

“What the fuck is he doing at her house?” I wondered out loud, getting up of the floor and going to the kitchen. I poured a glass of iced tea and started pacing the familiar route around my dining room table, my anger and frustration growing with each step.

“The obvious conclusion is that he either has dated or is dating her, and so tonight he was going to go out with me, probably sleep with me, but then ditched my ass when a better more suitable offer came along. Ugh!” I knew I looked like a crazy person, pacing and talking to myself, but Sam wouldn’t judge me, and for whatever reason, it was the only thing that I could do to think. “Okay, okay, let’s dial it back a notch. Maybe they are just friends? Hmmm…but then why would he cancel on me—ho he knows is a sure thing—to see a
friend
. Maybe she had an emergency? No, that doesn’t make sense.”

I paced and paced, wracking my brain for a plausible explanation that didn’t involve Cooper sleeping with this woman, but none of my ideas panned out and I was only getting angrier.
He was fucking her…And me.
Gross.

Eventually, I decided that the only thing to do to make myself feel better would be to go over there and check it out for myself.

The ride took about half an hour, but it felt good. The seat was still all torn up, but I had patched it up with some duct tape, which made it more or less rideable. I tried to ignore it as I rode through the city, my mind only focused on getting to Cooper and catching him in his lie. When I got to the house listed on the address, I parked across the street and dismounted from my bike. I kept my helmet on but flipped up the visor to get a better view, and sure enough, Cooper’s car was sitting in her driveway. I fought the urge to go and disconnect his spark plugs and leave him stranded like he had been the first day I met him. But I quickly dismissed the idea, not wanting to give him more of a reason to stay all night with his bougie-mama play toy.

I waited around outside for awhile, not really sure what I was waiting for, but I kept my eyes trained on the house, looking for any sign of movement. The longer I stood there, the more I felt uncomfortable, but I couldn’t figure out what to do next. I didn’t want to knock on the door, but I also didn’t want to stand here all night, waiting for him to leave.

My indecisiveness was driving me insane. There had been no movements, as far as I could tell, and standing in the street stewing over what was most likely happening inside the house was making things worse. I climbed back on my bike and rode back home. As soon as I stepped inside, I checked the little blue GPS dot and sighed. It was still at the house.

“Maybe he left his phone there,” I tried to rationalize to myself.

“Oh, Allie…get real,” I quickly scolded myself.

I sat on the couch and shut the laptop lid. Sitting around compulsively checking it wouldn’t do me any good. I did my best to distract myself for the rest of the day, but couldn’t fully resist the urge to periodically check Cooper’s status. Late that night, as I was falling asleep on the couch, I checked one last time and felt a final twist of despair to see the signal was still there.

Chapter Twelve

I woke up to the muffled chirping of my phone. I dug it out of the couch cushions and saw at least half a dozen text messages that all came in at one time. I stared at the screen, trying to process everything, my eyes squinting against the brightness. All of the messages were from Cooper.

“I’m taking you out to dinner tonight.”

“Dress nice…like you did for the Plush party.”

“I want you to make me hard, just seeing you.”

“Seven o’clock.”

“Don’t make me wait.”

“What the—? Ugh!” I threw the phone back onto the couch and shut my eyes. My body was rebelling, coming alive just reading his words, imagining him whispering into my ear, telling me what to do. But my heart was screaming “No!”

I forced myself to play the scenario all the way through. Would we have mind-blowing sex? Probably. Would he drive me to the absolute brink and satisfy me like never before. Yes. But then what? He’d find some lame-ass excuse to leave me alone, again, and make me feel like some disposable whore.

I refused to let myself get sucked back into his game.

I snatched the phone back up again and furiously typed at the screen.

“I am NOT going to dinner with you. I just want my money from the club the other night.”

I hit send.

My phone chirped again, not two seconds later.

“You’re going to dinner. Seven o’clock.”

“Cooper — I don’t want to have anything to do with you. All you do is mess with my heart and make me feel like an idiot.”

I backspaced the message…it was a little too raw.

“No — not going. Please send me the cash. I need it to fix my bike.”

He didn’t answer.

I waited another ten minutes, no answer.

I rolled over on the couch and screamed into a pillow, releasing all the pent-up rage that had been building inside of me from the moment I met Cooper Brighton.

Finally exhausted, I heaved myself up off the couch and went to make myself a cup of coffee. I did my best to pretend everything was fine. Everything was normal. But panic was starting to seep in. I knew Cooper well enough to know that he’d show up at my door, promptly at seven o’clock and that he was more than capable of dragging me out, kicking and screaming if needed.

If I was going to be forced to go out to dinner with him, then the only thing I could do to get a sliver of revenge would be to look as hot as fucking possible, and then not let him have me, no matter how hard he begged. He had to learn that there were some things he couldn’t have, no matter how much money or charm he had.

I finished making my coffee and went back to the couch to drink my first cup. My laptop was still open from the night before, and I noticed the little blue dot on the screen. I was still tapped into Cooper’s phone. Currently, he was back at Brighton Enterprises. I vaguely wondered what his bitchy receptionist had told him about me—if she had mentioned me at all.