Mr. Big: A Billionaire Romance (13 page)

Chapter9

Cocktails at Carly’s had three of the four friends talking about their latest romantic escapades as usual, and though Mia was doing her best to keep her head in the conversation, she struggled with thoughts of Alexander, and did her best to keep anyone from seeing it, but her friends all saw through it.

Ava sighed and tipped her head a little. “Still worrying about him? Mia, I met a guy a couple of days ago that you might like. His name is Brian. He’s super hot looking, and a terrible flirt. I think he’d be fun for you to play with for a little while. Would you like his number?” she asked. “He’s really charming.”

Mia shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said offhandedly. She wasn’t feeling quite up to dating strangers, though she knew she had told them that she would.

Ava frowned. “Honey, you can’t keep letting this Mr. Big guy put you in a funk. Seriously. He’s gone. It’s over. He found out and he was mad and it’s over. You’re still here with us, you’re still a gorgeous successful businesswoman and you are still one plane ride away from going to Italy. Your life is not terrible right now. You just had a big bump in your road, and you need to get past it. You can’t hold on to it. So, let it go. No good can possibly come from you holding on to any of what has already passed, especially that whole thing. So let go and find some hot guy to have a fling with, get some good sex, have a few laughs, and enjoy yourself. Life is too short to spend any time being miserable. You need to put some good positive things back into your life.”

Mia looked up at her and realized that she was right. Ava didn’t often have a good point to make, but she certainly did at that moment and Mia was struck by it. “You know what, Ava? You’re right. There isn’t anything good that can come of holding on to any of it. I have been miserable, and I don’t have to be. I don’t even know why I’m holding on to it… I guess I just feel so bad… so miserable about what I did.” She lowered her voice a little at the end.

Maddie gave her head a shake. “What good is that guilt doing? Does he even know how you feel? Does he know you’re wallowing in it? Does he care? No. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. The only one here who is being affected by it is you, and it’s not doing you a damn bit of good, and it’s not fixing anything or making you a better person, so just let it go. Now, I know that you chose to accept the challenge, but we are all three the ones who put you up to it, so we’re just as much to blame for acting below the morality line, aren’t we? You weren’t the only one in that whole mess. Ava’s right. Let it go. Go do what makes you happy and move on. Move forward. Don’t carry this crap around with you everywhere. Okay?” She looked at Mia pointedly.

Mia nodded and gave the first genuine smile she’d had since Alexander walked out of her office. “Okay. I’ll do that. I’m going to do it. Thank you… all of you, for being so strong and supportive of me. I love you,” she told them, looking around at all of them. She promised herself that she would not carry the guilt with her any longer; it wasn’t doing her a bit of good, and Alexander wasn’t even around to appreciate that she was wallowing in guilt, so there was no point in doing it whatsoever.

She went home that night feeling a lot better, though she was still sad that he was gone. She slipped into a hot bubble bath, and though she tried to talk herself out of it, she wound up listening to his old messages on her voicemail. There were three of them, and she had listened to them countless times in the week that had passed since he’d left. She knew every moment of them, and as she listened over and over, she closed her eyes and soaked in his voice; his deep happy sweet voice, asking her for her time and company.

The messages took her back to a time when everything was all right; when he wanted to be with her and talk with her, when he wanted to kiss her and hold her, before everything was ruined. She finally sighed and ended the call to her voicemail, knowing that she would have to delete the messages if she was going to move on, but still allowing herself one more night with them before she wiped them from her phone.

As she laid there amidst mountains of bubbles with her eyes closed and her mind on various moments that she had shared with him, she promised herself that she would change what he was doing, and she would let him go.

Her phone rang and she was so startled she turned too swiftly and slid in the bathtub, sinking down beneath the hot water and bubbles, and she came up blinking and spluttering, grabbing the towel to wipe her face and ears off before she reached for her phone.

“Hello?” she asked, not bothering to look to see who it was.

“Mia? Hey there lady. This is Logan! I’m glad that I caught you. Are you busy?” he asked with a flirtatious tone.

She blinked some more and pushed herself up in the bathtub. Logan. Her newest client and last date before Alexander. She had ignored him so much that she was certain he would have given up completely. Maddie had warned her that he could be clingy, but she wasn’t really in a position to say no to any man that might be able to get Alexander off of her mind.

“Logan! My goodness, what a surprise to hear from you. How are you doing?” she asked distractedly as she toweled her head off some more and dried both of her hands better.

“Oh, I’m good! I’ve just been working. I wanted to let you know that I implemented all of the suggestions you made for my business, and things are already improving,” he stated happily and she thought she could detect a note of nervousness in him.

“Well that’s wonderful to hear! I’m so pleased to know that things are going well for you. Thank you for making those changes!” she replied pleasantly.

“Mia…” he paused and she knew that she had pegged his nervousness correctly, “I have been thinking about you a lot lately. I know things might have gone a little fast at first, but I wanted to give you a call and ask you to come to dinner with me again. The date we had a few weeks back was one of the most fun nights I’ve had in a long time, and you’re really an amazing lady. I’d just like to see if we could give it another try. What do you think? Would that be all right? I promise not to mix business and pleasure. We’ll keep it all pleasure while we are out!” he gave a thin laugh, and then he waited quietly for her to respond.

She sighed. Logan was not her first choice of men to get back in the game with, but he was a good man, a sweet man, and even Maddie had told her that he was an amazing lover. She bit her lower lip thinking about it and closed her eyes.

“Okay, Logan. I guess if we are going to keep business and pleasure separate, we can give it a try. What were you thinking for us?” she wondered aloud. She also wondered what she was doing, and reminded herself that she was moving forward. Just like she had promised her friends and herself that she would do.

His voice grew excited. “Oh! Well, I was thinking we could go to dinner again! What do you think? Is there some place that you’d like to go? We could go tomorrow night if you want to.”

She could hear him waiting again, almost holding his breath. She gave her head a shake and tried to get Alexander from the back of her mind and her thoughts. “…um, how about Hastings?” she asked suddenly and then immediately squeezed her eyes shut in regret. She silently berated herself for choosing that restaurant. She couldn’t imagine why she would have chosen it, except that Alexander had told her that it was his favorite. He had promised to take her there one day and it hadn’t happened. She sighed quietly and rolled her eyes. That’s what she got for thinking of him.

Logan jumped on it. “Oh! I’ve heard really good things about that place. We can go there. I’ll call them to make reservations right away. Can I pick you up at say… six?” he asked hopefully. She let out a long slow breath and agreed, giving him the address of her apartment. They said goodbye and she shook her head as she hung up. He sounded almost giddy about seeing her.

Setting her phone on the small table near the bathtub, she closed her eyes and sank back down low into the water, wishing she’d thought before she had spoken. She wondered how she was ever going to keep Alexander off of her mind by going on a date with another man to his favorite restaurant; a restaurant he had told her all about and promised to take her to.

Groaning, she laid a warm wet washcloth over her face and closed her eyes, wishing her thoughts had not betrayed her like they had just done. Taking a deep breath, she decided to focus on Logan and try to have the best time with him that she could. She was going to dress her best, look her best, and she was going to give her date with him all that she could. It was going to be a fun and wonderful night for them, she told herself with complete determination; it was going to be incredible, come hell or high water, by god.

***

Mia was less enthused about her date with Logan than she was for any of her dates with Alexander, but she continued to tell herself that they were going to have a night to remember, and she spent a fair amount of time making sure that she looked beautiful.

She put her hair up at the back of her head, she took extra time and care doing her makeup, and she was careful about selecting a dress that showed off her figure without showing off too much skin. It was form fitting and white with wide straps and a V-neck that offered a partial view of her cleavage. It hugged her waist and hips and then fell loosely to the floor from there. There was a slit in the material that went straight up the middle of the front of the dress to just above her knees, and when she sat, the material fell away from her legs.

She felt sexy in it, she decided, giving herself a few turns in front of the mirror. She thought she would see how she felt with Logan at the end of the night. She had no doubt in her mind that if she decided that she wanted to spend the night with him, he would be more than happy to be with her.

Logan arrived at her door on time, and when she opened it to him, he stared at her and grinned, shaking his head.

“My goodness, you look so beautiful tonight! Look at you! That dress is… well… it fits you perfectly. It’s really beautiful, but then of course, I expected no less. I just didn’t know you would look this good!” he gushed over her and for a moment she liked hearing it, it gave her some confidence, but then he kept going and it made her feel like he was overdoing it just a bit too much.

“You look nice too,” she told him, glancing over his jacket and button up shirt with a tie. She hadn’t been to Hastings herself yet, but she was fairly certain that he was just a little bit underdressed. He seemed not to have noticed, and she thought it best that she didn’t say anything.

She picked up her handbag and walked out of the door, closing it behind her. Logan reached for her hand and for a split second, she wanted to pull her hand away from his, but then she realized that she ought to give him a chance; give him every chance, at making their date a good one, so she gave him her hand and he smiled down at her happily.

She watched the city out of the window as he turned out of the parking garage for her building. She genuinely hoped that it would be a good night for them.

“I saw that it’s a little warmer right now than it normally is for this time of year,” he said casually, glancing at her with a smile.

She blinked and paused as she turned to look back at him while he drove. “Yes, it has been a bit warmer. I like it, but I’m concerned about global climate change. I wonder about the effects of what unseasonable weather will do to the planet. Do you worry about that?”

He shrugged. “Oh, I think about it here locally. I’m not going to have to wear winter clothes as far into the spring as I usually do. That’s about all the thinking I’ve done on it.” He chuckled and drove and she frowned slightly and looked back out of the window.

It was quiet for a long moment and he looked around and sighed. “There’s so much traffic tonight.”

She looked out of the front window and sighed quietly. “It looks like it,” she said in agreement.

“I thought about taking the train, but I just can’t stand public transportation if I don’t have to use it, plus, I didn’t think you’d be too impressed if we did. I like to make a good impression.” He gave her a wink.

She tried not to frown again. “Well, actually, the public transportation system in this city is one of the best in the world; I mean, there are sometimes delays with the trains, but it’s certainly a lot better for the environment to take public transportation when the opportunity is there. I wouldn’t have minded,” she said as lightly as she could.

He shrugged. “That’s all right. I don’t like it. Besides, what is my one vehicle going to do to the environment? Nothing. It’s just one vehicle. Mine isn’t going to tip the scale.”

She bit her tongue. She wanted to tell him that if everyone thought the way he did, it would be so much worse for the environment, but if everyone who thought that way realized how much of a difference it would make, they would understand that each single drop of rain makes the rainstorm. Each drop counts. She looked out of the window instead and folded her arms over her chest.

There was another long silence that he decided to break. “I went to lunch at a café today. I haven’t been there before. I don’t think I’m going to go back. The food was all right, but the service was not what I would have wanted it to be.”

She drew in a long deep breath and let it out slowly. “Where was it?” she asked, trying to be conversational.

“Oh, it was over on 72
nd
street. Just some little hole in the wall. I probably won’t go back.” He didn’t say anymore after that and she wondered what his point was. She forced herself to remember that he might just be being nervous around her, and perhaps he didn’t know what else to say. She found herself comparing him to Alexander, and she knew she shouldn’t, but Alexander and she had shared long conversations on several topics, and not once was any of them ever mundane.