Yes, Mr. Van Der Wells (Not Another Billionaire Romance) (24 page)

“I’m afraid you will have to seek the reason for my continued presence from Mr. Van Der Wells himself, Miss
Sullivan
.” I emphasize her surname to remind her she isn’t Mrs. Van Der Wells anymore.

A finger, pretty, slender, and delicate, flickers at the shopping bags. “He gave you his card to play with? Bought you a makeover?”

“What can I say,” I smile and shrug, “I give
fantastic
head.”

Before I can see her expression or get embroiled in another verbal war and lose my job, I spin on my heels and head for my room. With more force than necessary, I dump the bags on the bed and then pace the length of my room in a fit of pique, buying time before going to get the rest of my bags. Hoping Sienna will be gone by the time I get back out there.

Why the hell is my blood even boiling? Noah made it clear this morning he doesn’t want me, so why does it bother me so much that he was here screwing her while I was out? It shouldn’t bother me,
it should not
, but, dear God, it does. On an intense level. Why does he keep going back to her? The new him can have any woman he wants, a good woman, someone worthy. Yet he’s still hung up on that icy slut!

Grabbing a pillow from the bed, I press it to my face and scream, letting all the rage out, then calmly place it back beside its companions, gently fluffing and smoothing it out.

Irritation and jealously in check, I start out of the room to go get the rest of my stuff, but crash right into a warm, solid wall of male. Unable to help myself, I sniff him.

Huh.
No trace of ex-marital sex. Maybe it was a little skirt-hike, panties-to-the-side quickie?

Stepping back, I turn my face up at him. While he looks down his perfect Roman nose at me, one eyebrow tugged up.

He jerks his hands, and the rustling of shopping bags brings to my attention the reason he’s outside my door. He’s brought the rest of my stuff for me. 

“
This
is what you and Mom have been doing all day?”

Taking the bags from him, I pad into the room and dump the stuff on the bed. “Nate, um…Noah, please know I’m not taking advantage of your mother or anything like that. I tried to refuse, but then she got upset, and Kiki made me feel bad about it. She planned it. She just didn’t tell you her plan.”

He studies me for three heartbeats. “You think…” He shakes his head and rubs his eyes. “I know my mother. You don’t have to defend yourself.” He pauses. “How was she today? Was she happy?”

A little caught off guard by the question, it takes me some time to answer with a bit of a stutter. “I-she—she seemed so. I think, doing this for me made her happy. Yes. Why do you ask? Has she not been?”

Emitting a wearied sigh, he slips his hands in his pockets, leaning against the doorjamb. “She puts on a front. But, like I said, I know my mother. She hasn’t been
Gloriel
since Dad died. I know she feels useless. Thinks no one needs her. I worry a lot about her. Loneliness is not a feeling, and it’s not an emotion. It’s an insidious and parasitic pain that feeds on what little contentment you have until you’re empty, so deathly silent, that you don’t even know you’re a victim until you realize your heart doesn’t remember what it feels like to beat. The last thing I want is to find my mother cold and lifeless with a half-empty bottle of anti-depressants in her grip.”

The back of my knees hit the bed, and I slowly sit. “I had no idea, Noah. If I can help in anyway at all, just say the word and I will.”

He stares over my head in thought, chomping his bottom lip like a youngster. “You remember how she used to enjoy cooking big on Sundays?”

With a smile, I nod. Gloriel might be a classy billionaire momma, but she
loves
the kitchen. She used to go big in the kitchen every other Sunday, rotated invitees. Dad and I got invited a handful of Sundays, but not as much as the Sullivans and the Noels. All that ended after Mr. Van Der Wells had his first heart-attack scare. She blamed herself for not having made healthier food choices for her family. The second time Mr. Van Der Wells had a heart attack, he succumbed.

“Well,” Noah continues, “I was thinking we could have her come over on Sundays and host dinner. Invite Kiera and Q, close friends, nothing too big like she used to do it. But, you know, something for her to look forward to each week. What do you think?”

My response is delayed as I’m still stuck on his use of the pronoun “we,” as if there isn’t an employer/employee dynamic here. “We,” as if we’re a couple, on a normal Monday night, making this decision
together
.

He’s my boss, owner of the residence. He should be
telling
me that this is what
will
be happening on Sundays from now on, and I should prepare for it. 

I wonder if he realizes the error he’s just made.

He’s staring at me, expectant, waiting for my take.
Apparently not
. “Yeah,” I finally agree. “I think that’s a terrific idea.”

He nods, and his eyes fall to the floor as pensiveness cloaks him again.

Pushing to my feet, I begin emptying the shopping bags and gathering hangers from the closet. Kiera pushed
a lot
of stuff on me today, and Gloriel was no better, often encouraging me to get two of the same thing in different colors. I now have brand new, brand name handbags, shoes, dresses, jeans, sweaters, underwear, sleepwear, tons of accessories…

The outfit I’d left the house in this morning along with the safety-pinned handbag? In a trashcan outside the first store we’d gone into. Kiera saw to it.

Can’t lie though, it does feel good to have nice things again. Yet it doesn’t make me feel like any less of a charity case.

“She wasn’t here for the reason you think she was,” comes Noah’s voice from my doorway, surprising me.

Is that assurance I detect? Why does he think he needs to assure me? Why does he think he even owes me an explanation for her presence? His place, his dick, his business.

“In spite of everything,” he trundles on, “she’s smart and intelligent and has damn near perfect business sense. I never lose whenever I do what she suggests, business-wise. She’s been my business consultant from day one. Yeah, we got a divorce, but she’s the best at what she does, so she remained my consultant.”

‘
Wah wah wah
,’ Reckless Lotty mocks with a roll of her eyes. ‘
Sienna is oh so, oh so perfect
.
Boo
!’

‘
What I wanna know is: why did they need to ‘consult’ in his bedroom, with his shirt undone?
’ Rational Lotty poses. ‘
Doesn’t he have an office? Does he not have working hours that he adheres by? Why consult at this hour in the evening?”

Back to him, I fold a pair of jeans and place it on the short stack of five in the center of the bed. That one makes six. Six. Half-a-dozen pairs of jeans. “Your house, your guests, Mr. Van Der Wells. It’s none of my business what they’re here for.” 

“Cut it,” he grunts with a bite of irritation, and I jump from the nearness of his voice, the hot blow of breath down the back of my neck. Somewhere during my jeans counting and spout of bullshit, he’d come up behind me. “I know what you think of me, still being with her.”

I don’t turn, don’t give him the satisfaction of moving. “You make the mistake, Mr. Van Der Wells, of convincing yourself that I think of you
at all
.”

His chuckle down my nape, the patternless jerk of it, sends electric waves through me. Goddammit, even the man’s chuckle is arousing. “Did you visit the bullshit pastry today?” he asks. “Because your breath reeks of it.”

Mid-folding a sweater, I throw it down and whirl around to…
Oh.

Ohhh,
he is a lot closer than I anticipated. The tip of my nose is touching his clavicle, and my breasts, my now hard-as-diamond nipples under my sweater are
just
brushing against his chest.

My lips part, and air rushes in and dries out every bit of moisture, though there is plenty,
plenty
of moisture rushing, swirling, pooling between my thighs.

In the face of his chest, in the face of his ineffable scent, in the face of his unbearable heat, I forget my retort. It escapes me like an afternoon dream. And all I can think about is how much I want to stick my tongue out and lick that pulsing dip at his clavicle.
Damn, damn, damn
. My clit is throbbing so hard it might explode.

Maybe the desire is refulgent in my eyes, blinding him, or maybe it’s seeping from my pores in intoxicating spurts, I don’t know, I don’t know what it is that warns him of my raging hunger, of my filthy intentions, but just as I’m about to leap up his body, lock my legs around his waist, my arms around his neck, and suck my craving out of him like a vampire to a jugular, he steps to the left, out of my reach, and pushes a pile of my clothes across the bed, making space for himself to sit down.

Closing my eyes, I count to ten to cool down. Be still my heart. Be still my swollen, throbbing, clitoris. 

As my arousal and flaming desire wanes, I turn around and resume tending to my new garments, avoiding his eyes.

I’ve never been ashamed of my urges before, never been ashamed of being so turned on I can’t think straight. I embrace my sexuality. Use it as a weapon when necessary. But being repeatedly rejected makes me embarrassed. Sure, I know he’s probably just uncomfortable with our age difference, because he’s obviously attracted to me, but that doesn’t make his rejection sting any less.

“I don’t know,” he confesses, eyes fixed down on his socked feet. “I don’t know why I still hold on to her.”

Why is he telling me this
? Wanting to have sex with him and wanting to get on a heart-to-heart level with him are two different wants. Yes, I loathe Sienna. But this kind of talk is one he should save for the woman he marries and has kids with. The woman who has reasons for being jealous of his ex-wife. Not
me
.

“I’m positive I don’t love her anymore,” he continues. “I don’t think I even like her. I’m pretty sure I hate her, to be honest. But, after, when I became
me
, and she saw all the women, even her friends, throwing themselves at me, she started looking at me the way I used to wish she would look at me. She started giving me her attention the way I used to crave she would give it to me. It meant something to me at the time, something huge, because I used to be so blind in love with that woman. So, I went back, soaked it all up. All of which I’d beg for as her husband and she’d refuse, now she’s giving those things willingly. I made her fall in love with me. Because, my whole life, it was all I’d ever wanted from her. Her love.”

From my peripheral vision, I see him raise his head and pin his gaze on me. But I keep my attention on my task, avoiding that soul-stripping stare.

“And when she finally did, finally gave me all of her,” he continues in a still, quiet voice, “I
hated
her. I hate her with such passion that I’ve pulled her closer instead of kicking her out of my life. You might think that doesn’t make any sense, but it does to me. I like knowing she’s ignorant of how I truly feel about her, just like I’d been ignorant of how she truly felt about our marriage. I like being the one with the bone this time, having her clutch at my heel, begging me for scraps, just the way she used to have me. I like knowing I have the power to hurt her, break her, ruin her, rip her heart to pieces, and that I feel so much
nothing
for her, that I wouldn’t have an ounce of remorse.” A long pause, then, “Lotty?”

“Hmm?” To escape the hot stare piercing the side of my face, I pick up the stack of jeans and start to make off for the closet, but his firm fingers clamp around my wrist, keeping me planted.

“Lotty,”—his voice is so quiet—“look at me.”

I take a breath, and then I do. His expression is so unusually passive, it’s alarming.

“Does that make me an asshole?”

“What does it matter what I think?”

“Because you’re real,” he answers without thought. “Your words are real. Your actions are real. It’s your biggest attraction.”

No, I don’t blush. Well, not on the outside.

Expelling a sigh, I spin to face him again, and he releases his grip on me, waiting for my response with genuine interest. 

“Your words make up the bars to a revenge song. And all who has ever been wronged has a secret revenge song. Revenge isn’t right, but it’s natural. So, no, it doesn’t make you an asshole.” Pausing, I dip my chin and look him straight in the eyes. “What
does
make you an asshole, however, is helping her do to another man the same thing that she did to you.” His shoulders tense up, but I don’t let it deter me. He wants real, so I’m giving him real. “You were once her victim. You know what it feels like to be betrayed, deceived, and cheated on. Yet, in your blind revenge, you aid in her next victim’s imminent heartbreak. And that just makes me respect you a little less.”

By the time I’m done, the passivity has vanished and a shield has settled in place. Pushing to his feet, he doesn’t let his stare waver as he utters, “Thank you for your honesty.” And then he strides past me, his socked footfalls as silent as feathers.

Trekking into the walk-in closet, I rest crisp, new jeans next to my last washed-to-death pair, whispering a silent “thank you” to the Big Man above. As I walk back into the room, I’m startled to see Noah standing in my doorway. Didn’t he leave earlier?

His eyes, with a repressed heat, sweep over me, head to toe and back up. “I keep debating whether I should tell you or not, but I think you deserve to know: You look absolutely beautiful,” he says, voice thick.

Turning, he starts to leave, but then stops again, hand bracing on the doorjamb. With a cocked glance over his shoulder and an arresting curve to his lips, his sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, scans me once more, before saying, “Welcome back, Lotty.”

And then he leaves for good.

T
HIRTEEN