Yes, Mr. Van Der Wells (Not Another Billionaire Romance) (43 page)

“What do you want for dinner tonight?”

“Just you.”

“You don’t want me to cook?”

“I’ll pick us up something later on the way home.” Easing back, he drops down on his knees behind me, his hands parting my butt-cheek. “But for
now,
can I eat
you
?”

At the feel of his tongue swiping up my crack, stopping to swirl at my pucker, a finger reaching around to flick my clit, I breathlessly whisper, “Yes, please.”

T
WENTY-
T
HREE

M
IKE
D
ULL
B
OY IS
waiting for me
downstairs when Noah finally lets me leave the gym, weak-kneed and
thoroughly
screwed. He’s not looking so dull today, though. His shoulders are widened defensively, and his eyes are vivid and sharp on me. Something is always off about him. But today, something is
off
about him.

“Sorry you missed me earlier,” he apologizes, not really sounding sorry. “Had to make a bathroom run. Just bad timing you came while I was gone.”

“It’s cool.” I smile and wave my hands. “I still don’t understand why I need to be escorted on the elevator anyway.”

His lips peel up in a half smirk, half sneer. “If someone’s after you, every single precaution is necessary, sweet thing. No matter how small. You slip up and…”—He makes an explosive gesture with his ten fingers—“
boom
.”

His “sweet thing” makes me shiver, and not in a good way. “It’s Miss Cooley.”

He pauses as we’re about to push through the revolving doors. “What?”

“You called me sweet thing. Don’t call me that. For you, it’s Miss Cooley.”

He stares at me for a beat, clicks his tongue, and then drawls mockingly, “Yes, ma’am.”

When we’re outside, he heads for a black Jaguar, taking out a key fob.

“You’re taking me home?” I ask, hesitating. “Where’s Muscles?”

“
Muscles
is kinda tied up right now,” he says with open irritation. He stops walking and turns so abruptly I bump right into him. “Why? You got a problem with me? We all work for the same team,
Miss Cooley
. We’re all here to
protect
you.”

Yet, somehow, I get the feeling he doesn’t care to protect me. Maybe he feels I’m a nobody, unworthy of all the attention I’m receiving. Heck, my sentiments are as exact. Regardless, allowing his aversion toward me to come to the surface is unprofessional.

Opting out of a response, I sidestep him and round to the passenger side of the car.

The ride home is so gratingly quiet and irritatingly awkward, I couldn’t have chucked out of that car fast enough.

After those, ahem, eventful two hours with Noah Van Der Wells, I’m pleasurably beat. I have a class to check into at four, so I set my alarm and collapse in bed, sneakers and all.

It’s not my alarm that hijacks my siesta sometime later, but the bellowing of my name. Someone’s calling me.

I sit up in bed, heel of my palms rubbing the haziness from my eyes.

“Charlotte?”

A smile touches my lips as the voice registers. Only Dad and Gloriel Van Der Wells calls me by my proper name. For everyone else, it’s Lotty.

Although it feels as if I’ve slept for just two minutes and I’d much rather cover my head with a pillow and go right back to sleep, I clamber out of bed and follow her call.

I find her in the kitchen unpacking grocery bags.

A frown pinches her forehead. “Oh, you were sleeping? Sorry for waking you. I’m just dropping in to stock up and check in on you. How are you doing?”

A tall-dark-and-handsome in blue overalls—the same tall-dark-and-handsome who’d helped her with the groceries the last time—wheels out of the pantry with a trolley. Gloriel tips him a Ben Franklin and thanks him, touching the side of his face and calling him a “sweet boy.”

“I’m doing alright,” I say once the man is gone. “What about you? You were a bit touchy-feely with ‘sweet boy’ there.”

She shoots me a reprimanding look, but then ducks her head; smiling into the grocery bag she’s unpacking. “He’s
is
a sweet boy.”

Tall-dark-and-handsome appears to be no younger than twenty-eight, but I guess that’s a boy for her.

Rounding the counter, I join her in the unpacking, grinning. “I bet he is.”

“Oh,” she murmurs, snapping her fingers, an obvious attempt to change the subject. Dipping into her handbag, she comes up with a black gift box, wrapped with a neat red bow. “The concierge gave me this on my way up. He said it was delivered for you half-an-hour ago.”

“What is it?” I ask as I take it, suspicious. I know Gloriel
loves
to give. It’s probably her own doing.

“How should I know? Open it and see. I’m anxious to know what it is, too.”

As I untie the bow, I narrow my gaze at her, betting this is all her doing. But she appears as innocent as a nun.

Lifting the cover off the box, I discover a smaller black box inside. And when I untie the red bow and lift the lid off that box, I find another small box inside.

“Okayyyy?” I mumble through a nervous laugh.

I slide a glance to Gloriel, and the genuine curiosity in her green eyes that are fixed on the boxes ascertains she has nothing to do with this gift.

If it’s not her, then who? Noah?

I lift out the smaller box, and with a flick of my wrist knock the other two boxes aside. Repeating the process of untying a red bow and lifting the lid, I’m faced with
another
black box. Except this box is not a gift box, but a box bearing an emblem with the letters HW.

“Harry Winston,” Gloriel whispers, her hand pressed gently to her chest. “Charlotte, are yo…”

To my ears, Gloriel’s words fade, her voice sounding far, far away, wind-swept, echoed, as my heart drums a hurried rhythm and my blood whooshes, a noise like torrential rainfall flooding my head. I can no longer feel the ground beneath me, can no longer feel the box. Everything is numb, aerial. As if I’m having an out-of-body experience, I watch my own hand reach down and flip the lid.

The expensive diamond winks at me, grins, mocking me.
Gotcha!,
I can almost hear it exclaim.

It’s his ring.
My
ring. My engagement ring.

I can’t breathe
. He’s found me
. I can’t breathe.

A piece of folded paper sticks out from the slit that the ring is seated. Again, I watch my hand pluck the paper out, unfold it.

One word. Just one word, in bold black letters, printed across a clean white paper:
BOOM
!

And then, I know nothing, I see nothing, I hear nothing.

“…could you let him find her?! You promised her you’d protect her. You promised
me
!”

“Shorty, calm down. She’s here. Unharmed. He’s just trying to frighten her.”

“But…but he was
here
! And for the hundredth time stop calling me shorty. I’m not your shorty.”

“You are my shorty. And he wasn’t here. I was in Brooklyn myself, scoping. At the time this was delivered, her ex was in a bar playing pool.”

“So? What does that mean?”

“It means he has eyes on this side. Close eyes.” A brief pause. “I’m getting the feeling Andrew Jameson is a more than just a simple taxi driver with abuse issues.”

“Yeah. I think so, too. I mean, that ring isn’t Tiffany’s. It’s Harry Winston. How can he afford that?”

“Gonna have to dig a little deeper into his background. He’s not a fool rushing in. He’s smart. He wants her back, and he intends on it, at all costs.”

The voices drift into my head before I’m awake. When I
do
wake, Muscles and Kiera are standing over me in a face-off, Kiera pissed, Muscles placating. A couple of feet off in an armchair, Gloriel is sitting with a concerned frown and bouncing knees.

We’re in the living room, and I’m lying supine on the couch. Images of black boxes slam into me, reminding me, terrifying my heart.

Boom
. The word bounces around my head like a ticking bomb.

Boom
. Andrew’s favorite word. He’s uses it instead of words like “gotcha.” He uses it each time he wins a game; some as simple as pool or darts, or something as serious as a car race or a big-pot poker game.

This time, the game is
me.
Boom
means he’s already celebrating. He’s found me. Just like he always does. And he’s not afraid of my hefty security. He never was one to back down, and he never was one to rush in. He was just…Andrew.

Realizing I’m awake, Gloriel stands and hurries over with a waiting glass of OJ, ordering me to drink up. I sit up.

Kiera breathes out a relieved sigh and drops down beside me, her arms circling me.

Muscles, however, crosses his arms over his chest and glares down me. “You never told me you were
engaged
to the guy.”

“I—”

“He frickin’ proposed to her at a funeral” Kiera bites for me. “Right over her mother’s uncovered
grave
. That’s hardly an engagement!”

Gloriel looks aghast. Her mouth falls open but nothing comes out.

“Really?” Muscles ask, disbelieving, staring me down for confirmation. No surprise he needs one. Everyone who knows Kiera knows she’s an exaggerator. But she isn’t exaggerating this time.

I nod in affirmation, and Muscles grimaces. “Wow. This guy sounds like a nutcase.”

“Understatement of the year,” I mutter under my breath. My eyes sweep around the room again, searching for the face I most want to see right now. “Where’s Noah?”

“In a momentous meeting,” Muscles speaks up. “We can’t get through to him. But he’ll call once he gets the message. Mike’s downstairs checking the surveillance feed for the identity of Andrew’s delivery guy. We’ve also added extra security to the building. For now, I’m gonna head to the office and dig deeper into your guy’s past. Stay put. If you must leave, call me.” He then squats down so he’s eye to eye with me. “Hey, just breathe and relax, alright? Like I said, Andrew’s smart, he’s not gonna come here. So until we find out who’s working with him, try being more careful.”

With not much of anything to say, I simply nod. Words and promises and reassurances don’t matter right now. Not with Andrew. If he wants me back, he’s going to get me, no matter how many precautions we take.
That’s
what he wants me know, why he sent that ring: I’m his, and no amount of buff bodyguards and sky-scraping penthouses can stop that.

Maybe he’ll get to me, or maybe I’ll end up going back with him to end this, but for now, I just want Noah.

Muscles is hesitant to leave when he realizes I’m not verbalizing much, as he knows by now that my mouth is my weapon. Kiera assures him she’ll keep an eye on me, and he finally, reluctantly, leaves.

“Charlotte,” Gloriel begins, concern straddling her voice. But then she’s stuck, as if not sure exactly what to say. After a full minute of nothing, she settles on, “I’ll go make you a cup of chamomile tea.”

As her heels click out to the kitchen, I glance around, searching for my phone.

“Here,” Kiera says, withdrawing it from her pocket. “Muscles wanted to go through it. I didn’t let him.”

My eyebrows pinch together as I take it from her. “Why?”

She shrugs. “He never knew about the engagement, so I guess he thinks you’re hiding more important details from him or whatever.”

“Seriously. At the risk of my own peril?” I get to my feet, feeling a little lightheaded. “I have a class. You should go. Take Gloriel with you.”

Her phone beeps as she stubbornly returns, “I’m not leaving until Noah gets here and I know you’re alright.”

Having no energy to fight her on this, I head to my room. But as I’m there, an unnatural ache for Noah overwhelms me, rendering me restless and desperate. My room suddenly feels too small. Getting my laptop, I turn right back out of the room, heading for Noah’s room instead.

Kiera intersects me as I aim for the stairs, and without words, holds up her phone for me to see. A text message. From
him
. The bane of my existence.

Andrew
:
I admire your loyalty to my fiancé, Kiera. But she belongs to me, and there’s NOWHERE IN THIS WORLD she can hide from me. So let’s make a deal. If she comes back to me, I’ll forgive her and forget any of this ever happened. But if I have to come get her myself
…

Rage roils within me, and I grab the phone, about to launch it against a wall, but stop, knowing only Kiera’s phone will be destroyed, not Andrew.

Therefore, I tap out a reply instead.

Kiera
:
Sure thing. I’ll relay ur threat as soon she’s thru getting her brains banged out by her new man. Tho, 2b honest, I don’t think ur threat will do much 2 soil her mood. She’s been high on the clouds in luv with the billionaire
.
Happiest I’ve ever seen my gurl
.