Yours Truly (Billionaires and Brides #2) (7 page)

K
at

T
he presentation was
tomorrow and Kat felt like she needed an IV drip-line of coffee to make it. There was still so much to do, despite having worked her ass off for the last two weeks. Her normal work hours were long over, but she still had to put the final finishing touches on her presentation to the CEO of the company.

If the presentation went as well as she thought it should, she’d be glad she’d done all this work.

“Oh and when you go to Hawaii, you have to try the malasadas,” Renee told her, spinning in her desk chair and oblivious to the concentration Kat was putting in on her computer.

“Mmm hmm...” Kat replied, not really listening. She had started out paying attention, but at the two hour mark of Renee going on about how amazing and expensive her Hawaii vacation was, Kat had zoned out.

“They’re like donuts only better,” Renee said. “I wish we could have stayed longer, but Bob had to get back to work.”

“Is he working right now?” Kat asked, hoping that he wasn’t. Maybe that would mean Renee would go home and leave her alone to finish. Despite being a part of this project, Renee hadn’t been terribly helpful the last few hours.

“He is,” Renee pouted. “He has to work late this week to make up for us being gone. But, that means I get to stay here and help you!”

“Help me, right.” Kat wasn’t sure how Renee telling her three times about malasadas was helping. “Did you finish that spreadsheet I asked you for? I need it for page three of the report.”

“I think so,” Renee replied. She stopped spinning in her chair and focused on her computer for what felt like the first time in ages. “I thought I already sent it to you. I replied to one of your silly emails that you signed ‘Yours Truly, E. Ryder.’”

Kat sighed. “I didn’t get it.”

“Well, it’s around here somewhere. Let me send it to you again.”

Kat took a deep breath. This project was her best idea yet. Shoesy, Inc. was the largest online retailer of designer shoes, handbags, and clothing. The company was booming, yet there was always left over merchandise sitting in the warehouses. Kat’s idea made that idle merchandise profitable.

She wanted to rent out the unused merchandise. For a small fee, a customer could rent a thousand dollar pair of shoes or a dress. If they wanted to keep their item, they could purchase it. If not, they could return it. She’d even found a system of shoe inserts that made the shoe basically new for each patron, even in strappy heels. She’d done months of research to find out how to rent these items so that every person got “new” items. She had it all together.

And as long as she got to present it tomorrow, she knew Shoesy would only grow in market share. This could even combat the negative press going on with the current sex scandal. It not only utilized the company’s excess warehouse space, it created a new revenue stream and marketing opportunities.

Kat knew the problem with designer shoes was that most people didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars on a pair of shoes. Even with her employee discount, Kat still hated spending that much money on something she only wore occasionally.

This would change that. Women and men could use this and get designer label things at a fraction of the cost, and it would negate some of the warehouse issues the company was currently facing. It was perfect.

Thinking of designer shoes reminded Kat of her silver Louboutins. She was missing one. Her beautiful, perfect shoes were short one. She knew she had to have left it in AJ’s suite, but when she had called to ask if the staff had found it, the room was empty.

The shoe, and the man she had left it with, were gone.

“Oh, did you see that Andrew Jacobson came to the wedding?” Renee asked, pulling her back into reality.

“You mean the CEO of the company?” Kat asked, surprised. “The one I’m meeting with as long as you get me my spreadsheet?”

“I just sent it to you, and yes, that CEO,” Renee said, rolling her eyes as she clicked a button on her computer. “Can you believe it? How many people get to say that a billionaire came to their wedding?”

“Not very many, I imagine,” Kat replied, letting Renee revel in the moment. Renee’s world was all about status. To her, having a billionaire at the wedding was probably as big a highlight as the actual getting married part.

“It was so wonderful that he came,” Renee continued, starting to spin in her chair again as she played with the giant diamond on her finger. “Especially when he’s so busy with all the sexual harassment lawsuit stuff.”

“Yes it was,” Kat agreed. “Although, he isn’t the one with the lawsuit. It’s his business partner. From what I’ve read, Jacobson wants to stay out of the papers and actually seems like a fairly normal guy. They usually don’t even have a picture of him in the articles. It’s always the other guy.”

“A fairly normal guy?” Renee set her feet down hard on the floor to stop her spin. “Katy, he’s a billionaire. He’s practically royalty. I would have married
him
if I had known he was there.”

“I’m sure Bob would have appreciated that.” Kat smiled at her friend and was rewarded with another exasperated eye roll that just made Kat laugh. “I hope he gave you a nice present.”

“Oh, he did,” Renee assured her. “I wish I would have known, though! I mean, I sent him an invitation but I never expected him to show up! I guess my wedding was a bigger deal than I thought.”

“So you didn’t get to talk to him at all?”

“I saw him in the receiving line, but I didn’t know it was him at the time,” Renee explained. “It wasn’t until Bess told me that he was there and refused to dance with her, because he was too busy with some other girl, that I even put it together.”

“Bess? Steve’s daughter? The one who teaches tennis at your country club?” Kat asked. Steve was one of the managers in a different department, always speaking glowingly about his daughter at the water cooler. Kat had never met her, but Renee was always talking about how pushy the woman was during lessons.

Renee nodded. “He apparently looked smitten.”

“Well, it certainly was a beautiful and romantic wedding,” Kat replied, thinking of her own handsome date. “It was an affair to remember.”

“Thanks.” Renee beamed. “It was perfect, wasn’t it?”

Kat murmured something that sounded like a yes, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She pulled out her phone and checked it. No messages. No calls. She set her phone back down on her desk. She wasn’t really expecting her mystery man to call her right this moment, but she had been hoping he would call her sometime.

But she hadn’t heard a word since she’d left him the note.

Her phone chirped and she nearly shouted with joy. It had to be him!

“You’ve won a free burrito!”

The fact that she had a free burrito was the only reason she didn’t chuck her phone at the wall right then. She didn’t want a burrito. She wanted him to call her. Even if it was two weeks late.

“You’ve checked that phone five times in the last twenty minutes. I’ve never seen you look so hopeful and then deflated.” Renee watched her for a moment, still fiddling with the ring on her finger. “Who’s the guy?”

“There is no guy,” Kat said, putting the phone away in her purse. There was no guy and that was the problem.

“Oh, come on. There’s a guy. No one gets as obsessive about their phone unless there’s a guy.” Renee inched her chair a little closer to Kat’s desk. “Spill.”

“Renee, really…”

“Spill it, Kat,” Renee cut her off. “You know I won’t let this go. Save yourself the pain and just tell me now.”

Kat sighed. When Renee had gossip in her grasp, there was no escape. “I met a guy at the wedding.”

Renee let out a squeaky, happy noise. “That’s so exciting! Who was he?”

“He said his name was AJ,” Kat told her.

“AJ?” Renee looked thoughtful, her perfect pink lips pulled puckered in thought. “I don’t remember an AJ... but there were so many people there. Probably one of Bob’s friends, since I don’t recognize the name. Good for you!”

“Thanks. He was amazing,” Kat said with a shrug. “I thought we had a connection.”

“But, I’m guessing from the look of disappointment on your face that he hasn’t called?” Renee frowned. “You’re still waiting for him to call? Two weeks later?”

Kat’s shoulders sank. When Renee said it that way, it sounded pretty pathetic. Two weeks was a long time to wait for a call.

“I’m sorry, sweetie.” Renee leaned forward, reaching out a hand toward Kat in a sympathetic gesture. “Not every guy is a winner. If he doesn’t call someone like you back in a week, then he’s probably married or something.”

“Married?” The thought had been skittering on the edge of Kat’s mind, but she’d purposefully been ignoring it. The last thing she wanted to be was ‘the other woman.’

“Can you think of a better reason why he wouldn’t call?” Renee sat back in her chair. “Especially if you two had a connection?”

“Maybe he lost my number?” Kat asked hopefully.

“Maybe you got played.”

Kat slumped in her chair. She hated it, but Renee was probably right. Just because she’d felt something didn’t mean he had felt it, too.

“I’m sorry, Katy,” Renee said.

“You’re probably right,” Kat admitted, taking a deep breath. It was foolish to think otherwise.

“I’m always right,” Renee assured her. “How about this? Bob has this great friend I can set you up with. He goes to the club with us.”

“That’s really not necessary,” Kat told her. She just wanted to go back to work and forget about all of this.

“He’s a great guy, really. Not quite as cute as Bob, but then I’m a little biased.” Renee flashed her flirtatious smile, the one that made guys buy her drinks. But Kat was immune to her charms.

“Thanks, but I’m good.” Kat wasn’t about to take Renee’s charity match-making.

“You sure?” Renee batted her eyelashes as a backup move. “He’d be great for you.”

“I’m sure, thanks,” Kat told her.
I can find my own dates
, she wanted to add but kept her mouth shut. No need to start a fight with her friend.

I don’t need a date
, Kat silently told herself, turning back to the computer. The truth was she didn’t just want
a
date. She wanted AJ. She wanted that connection again. The fun and the magic that the two of them had together. No random friend of Bob’s was going to give her that.

“Can you get me the spreadsheet for the quarterly projected incomes?” Kat asked Renee, changing the subject back to work. “I think if we add it to page seventeen with another graph, we can make the profit margin more clear.”

“Sure, sweetie,” Renee replied, her mind obviously still on Kat’s love life.

Kat did her best not to sigh. It was time to work. She turned her cell phone to silent and reluctantly tucked it into her desk drawer. It was time to work without distractions and try to forget entirely about a guy that wouldn’t call.

A
J

A
J rubbed
his temples and considered getting another cup of coffee. He had spent the morning trying to find information on Kat again, and it had gone nowhere. He knew he needed to just accept the fact that he wasn’t going to find her. He had done everything in his power to find the woman, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

He figured that, if he didn’t let this go, it would eventually drive him mad. AJ was a billionaire CEO. He had built a company from the ground up. Now that he was at the top, he was used to getting what he wanted. And he wanted her. Or at least her phone number. There wasn’t a problem that he couldn’t find a solution for, especially now that he had basically unlimited funds.

The fact that he couldn’t even figure out who this girl was seemed to make all of his money and power feel worthless.

The intercom on his desk buzzed, breaking his train of thought.

“Sir, your first appointment is here,” his secretary informed him over the speaker.

AJ scrubbed his face with his hands and tried to clear his thoughts. It was time for work.

“Give me three minutes and then send him in,” he replied, hitting the intercom button with more force than he was intending.

He chugged down half the cup of coffee as he logged into his computer and pulled up the proposal. Usually, he would have already looked over the information on the meeting by now, but he had been up late dealing with lawsuit issues and had never gone back to the email after getting distracted by the ‘Yours Truly.’”

Luckily, his secretary had left him a summary of what the meeting would be about. He made a mental note to give her a raise as he looked over her report. E. Ryder from one of the logistics divisions had a plan to utilize inventory more effectively by renting out items that weren’t selling.

It was a great idea. For the first time in weeks, AJ felt his energy for work coming back. He set his coffee down and re-read the summary. He’d need to actually hear the proposal and have some questions answered, but if it was half as good as he suspected it could be, he’d be happy to have it put in motion.

His brain started coming up with questions regarding pricing, shipping, contingencies and all the other details that would need to be in place before approving a program like this. It felt amazing to be working on something other than the legal issues of his company. If nothing else, this would be a great distraction from the things in his life he couldn’t control.

Excited energy infused him. He stood from the desk and went to the big window looking out over the city. He wasn’t looking at the waterfront or the tall buildings, rather letting his mind come up with questions to ask E. Ryder and ways to make this idea come to life.

His lips twitched into a smile at a knock on the door. AJ could tell a lot about a person by the way they knocked on his door. This one was strong and confident. AJ found himself liking this E. Ryder a little bit more.

The door opened and AJ turned to greet the person who would hopefully give him a fantastic business proposal.

Except it was
her
.

E. Ryder was Kat.

The woman he’d spent the last two weeks searching for just walked into his office with an appointment.