Yes, Mr. Van Der Wells (Not Another Billionaire Romance) (45 page)

VDW doesn’t do risks. Grandad, Dad, they’ve always played it safe. Stayed within the yellows lines. Ever since Dad died and the company was turned over to me, though, Trevillo has been knocking on my door, pitching me ideas. Big ideas. He’s the one who got Qwesie and me to team up and branch out to hotels. The Nelson brothers are known for doing everything on their own; they don’t do partnerships. Ever. And this, mostly, is why I’m baffled, hesitant and suspicious of Trevillo pushing me to take all these risks. I can’t tell whether his motives are good or bad.

Although, to be honest, knowing the straight shooter that Trevillo Nelson is, it’s hard to believe the latter.

“Hey, don’t you go groaning on me, VDW. I haven’t even greased your pucker yet, let alone thrust in. Man up, don’t tense up.”

“
Christ
,” I mutter, and I hear his wife giggle in the background. You can always count on Trevillo to be uncomfortably lewd, or eye-watering hilarious.

“Alright,” I give in, all because I’m nuts about Lotty. “Get us a section at the concert and you have yourself a meeting.”

Before he can say something else to make me cringe, I hang up.

Day after tomorrow is Lotty’s birthday. She hasn’t mentioned it, not once. I’m beginning to wonder if she’s even aware of what month or day it is because it doesn’t seem like it.  It’s as if she’s just shuffling from one day to the next, living in her head, in her fears.

“Sure she’s gonna be up for traveling after what happened, boss?” Muscles asks out of the blue.

Is he serious? Seems he hasn’t been paying attention to her as closely as I thought. “
Because
of what happened, she’ll jump at the first opportunity she gets to get on a plane and leave.”

“I was talking about the video,” he returns. “But now I’m guessing you plan on showing her after she gets back?”

Or not at all
, I think.
Dammit
. I almost forgot about the video. It’s true, she might not want to travel. Or leave the house for that matter.

Goddamn Andrew Jameson
. I’m going to ruin him.

An unfamiliar emotion suddenly hits me, and I’m consumed with an immediate and pressing need to hold her, kiss her, make love her. Never let her go. Lock her up so that reprobate can’t get to her.

My thumb slides across my phone screen and navigates to her text messages, opening the last received. The one that came in hours ago and I’ve read about ten times but have yet to reply. Simply because I don’t know
how
to. 

Lotty:
Hey. How long is ur meeting gonna last? I know this is gonna sound creepy but…I kinda miss u? Weird, right? It’s kinda freaking me out
.

Not weird at all.

Hours, mere
hours
since I last saw her, but I miss her like it’s been years.

I wonder what that means
.

T
WENTY-
F
OUR

S
OMEONE IS TRYING
to pry my phone from my hand.

No. No. Don’t take my phone. Noah hasn’t replied yet
.

Eyes snapping open, I jerk my hand back, fingers tightening around the phone.

Noah. He’s standing by the bed with a blanket over his arm. Unbuttoned shirt hanging out of his pants, sleeves shoved up to his elbows, face uninviting.

“I was trying to make you comfortable,” he explains. “Because this position you’re in looks…not comfortable.

True, I’m still in a half-sitting position up against the headboard, feet drawn up to my chest, cheek pressed to my knees, phone lodged in my fist. 

“Oh,” I mumble, stretching out of the crooked position, opting not to divulge why I’m like this, with the phone, because I was waiting for his call or text.

Before setting the phone down on the nightstand, I light up the screen to check the time. Almost midnight. I remember taking a shower in Noah’s bathroom after class, dwarfing myself in one of his T-shirts and climbing back onto his high bed to watch re-runs of
Two and a Half Men
. I remember Gloriel knocking on the door, poking her head in to tell me dinner was ready, and me insisting I wasn’t hungry. I remember hearing commotion downstairs, Sienna’s voice tangled with Gloriel’s and Kiera’s. I remember Muscles calling to check on me, and Kiera insisting she was sleeping over. I remember being annoyed with both her and Gloriel for acting as if I had a heart attack, when all I did was faint. Everyone faints. Even goats.

I remember checking my phone about 68726200546881.8787 times for a call-back or text message from Noah.

Now here he stands at a quarter to midnight, rumpled, that inimitable scent still clinging to him. “Why were you out so late?” And before he can answer, I remember.
Sienna
. “You slept with her, didn’t you? You slept with Sienna? She came here earlier. Did you two meet up?”

Noah stares at me, the skin around his eyes tightening. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, I—”

“I got news you collapsed after seeing an
engagement ring
your scumbag of an ex had delivered to
my
building, and you think I met up and had
sex
with my ex-wife?”

“You own the building?” I suspected he owned it, but hadn’t known for sure.

This makes his jaw pop. “
Yes
, I was with Sienna. I pounded her breathless. Just the way she likes it. Rough and limitless.” He throws the blanket to the bed, the thick material hitting me on the hip, and stalks off to his en suite bathroom.

For a long time, I stare at the spot he’s been in, hot, stinging tears slowly blurring my vision. Until I hear the shower come on.

‘
You’re an idiot
,’ Reckless Lotty murmurs, rolling her eyes at me.

‘
No. He’s an asshole
,’ Rational Lotty defends me. ‘
All of them. The sharp suits and the rugged, biker-boot-wearing bad boys. They’re all assholes
.’

‘
And you’re a bucket of chicken
!’ Reckless Lotty fires back.

‘
Real mature
, Reckless.’ Rational Lotty mumbles. ‘
Real mature
.’

Blinking up at the ceiling so my tears don’t fall, I toss the blanket off me and clamber out of his stupid so-comfortable-you-don’t-want-to-get-out bed. Snatching up my belongings, I stomp out of his bedroom, down the stairs, through the dark, quiet house, and straight into my room.

All day.
All day
I waited for him. Made a fool of myself admitting I missed him. Fell asleep with the goddamn phone in my hand like a pimply, brace-faced thirteen-year-old with a senseless crush. And then he shows up, face all grim and tight, acting like a world-class asshat! I change my mind. I don’t love him anymore. I hate him. I hate his stupid face and his stupid smell and his stupid love-making endurance and his stupid touch and his stupid kiss and his stupid everything.

How can he not care about what happened today? How can he not ask me how I’m doing? How can he not
reply to my freaking text
? I suppose I should be glad he showed his true colors early on before I made the mistake of confessing how I feel about him.

He might be Noah today, but the Nate in him will always be in love with Sienna Sullivan. I can hate her until I’m blue in the face, but it won’t change the fact that he gave her his heart first.  And by the looks of things, he doesn’t intend on taking it back from her. Does he have anything at all left to give to
me
, then?

My phone pings and I quickly snatch it up.

Noah
: Come back here. We’re sleeping in my bed tonight.

Me
: Go 2 hell!

Noah
: Been there. Not all it’s cracked up to be. Vastly overrated.

Me
: Well then, climb right back into Sienna’s greatly overused tomb she calls a vagina.

Noah
: After being inside you, I find that “tomb” immensely overrated, too. Come back to bed.

Me
: I’m already in bed.

Noah
: MY bed.

Me
: NO, Mr. Van Der Wells. I refuse 2 share my pillow with an insensitive jerkhole.

Noah
: Correction. *I’ll* be sharing MY pillow with an infuriatingly stubborn, pepper-tongued she-demon.

Me
: Keep at it & I’ll set ur useless dick on fire.

Noah
: Come back to bed, Lotty.

Me
: Go. To. Hell.

A full sixty seconds passes without a reply. I get to my feet, suddenly aware of how deafeningly quiet the house is. He’s coming for me. I just know it.

Taking preemptive action, I storm out of the room in fake rage, this way it will appear as if
I’m
the one who’s going for him.

We meet halfway in the living room, stopping five feet apart. We stare.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were engaged to him?” he breaks the silence first, his tone straddling the line of the emotion I’m feigning. Let’s face it, I’ve been over my rage the second I read his text, his words flat-out confirming my vajayjay is better than Sienna’s.

“Because I
wasn’t
engaged,” I grit out. “I only said yes because I know I didn’t have the option to say no.”

“Yes means yes. You were engaged to that tool.”

“Hey, don’t give me hell about a simple omission of truth! You’re the one who’s still wrapped around your ex-wife’s pinky finger.”

The bastard actually laughs at this. “You’ve got it so wrong.” He takes two steps closer. “Lotty, I’ve been through with Sienna since that night you walked out of your cab, and I
saw
you and realized I found you.”

“Liar!” I jab a finger through the air at him. “The same evening I moved in, you had sex with her.
She slept over
! What, do you have short-term memory or are you bipolar?”

“I didn’t have sex with her. She was here that night along with Q. We were discussing business. She was jet-lagged, and she drank on top of it, so she fell asleep on us in the middle of the meeting.
Q
took her up to my room to let her rest. When we wrapped up and he left, I came to
your
room. I spent the rest of night in your bed, and you didn’t even know it. You were out like you haven’t slept in weeks. It’s like you were drugged.” He shakes his head at me. “That night I slept with
you
, Lotty. Not Sienna.”

What a load of bull cracker! Does he really expect me to believe that? “Guess what?” I say, taking a step closer. “
I don’t believe you
.”

An insouciant shrug. “You do or you don’t, you’re still sleeping with me tonight.”

And I want to sleep with him. Of course, I do. Not just because his bed is so much more comfortable than mine, but because I miss him, and I feel safe with him, and I won’t think about Andrew.

Eyes dropping to the floor, to our bare feet, I wrap my arms around myself. “You didn’t even call to ask how I was doing.”

Another step in from him. “That’s because I couldn’t think straight enough to call or text, Lotty. So I let Muscles do it. Ask Kiera how many times I made Muscles call her to find out how you were doing.” He rubs a hand down his face. “More than the engagement ring delivery happened today, okay? My mood was shit long before I got the news about the ring.”

My head sweeps up. “What? What happened?”

Uncertainty shadows over his face for a moment, and he shakes his head. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Right now, I need some sleep, and in order for me to get that, I need you in my bed.”

One eyebrow cocks up at him. “What, I’m your sleep-aid now?”

Two additional steps from him completely seals the gap, and one big but tender palm cups the side of my face, the pad of his thumb passing over my bottom lip. “You’re paranoid and cynical of me only because you have no idea how deep under my skin you’ve wormed. Only because you have no idea how I feel for you.”

“You never tell me.”

“That’s because I’m a man of action, not of words.”

“But you never show me, either.”

“That’s because
you won’t let me
.”

“What if I fell in love with you, and you fell in love with me?”

“What of it?”

“I don’t know. I…what if…”

“It’s not a matter of
if
, Lotty.” A smile tugs at his lips. “Come to be bed with me?”

My bosom lifts and plummets as I heave out a sigh. “Only because you
asked
this time. You were being bossy before, and you know I
hate
that.”

He sweeps me up mid-way through my reply, as though it wouldn’t have mattered if I said yes or no. “Let me make it up to you?”

“How? Your money can’t buy you out of this, hot shot.”

Me in his arms, he heads for the stairs. “By making love to you. Slow, sweet, and long.”

I let out a dramatic gasp. “You can do
slow and sweet
? This I’ve
got
to see.”

“No,” he corrects, “this you will
experience
.”

With that, he takes me to his room. Lays me down gently on his bed. Strips me. Kisses me. Teases me.

And I part my legs for him, like I’ve wanted to do from day numero uno.