Billionaire Romance Boxed Set 2(24)

“Trust me,” he said. “It’ll look odd if you don’t have it. You’d better get used to carrying it now.”

The ride home seemed to take ages. I answered the driver’s questions perfunctorily; yes, the date was very nice, yes, the food was excellent. Yes, the Inn had a lovely atmosphere. Yes, Mr. Thorne’s apartment was gorgeous.

Just being back at home was a relief in and of itself, but I didn’t truly relax until after I’d stripped out of the unfamiliar clothes and spent a little quality time with my removable massaging shower head. It was one of the few luxuries I allowed myself in life, and once I was finally sated, leaning against the shower wall with cheeks flushed and my legs turned to jelly, I prayed it would act as a sort of exorcism for my inconvenient desires. I’d been afraid to give in, even in this small way, but after this morning it was clear there was no turning back.

Once I was dried off and wearing my own clothes again, I spread the dress out on my bed and smoothed the wrinkles. It would probably need to be dry-cleaned. I laid the necklace and earrings next to it, straightening each little strand until they looked ready for a photo shoot.

They were beautiful things, to be sure, but they still didn’t feel like mine. I wasn’t sure I could ever truly immerse myself in a lifestyle where buying things like this was commonplace. It was so incredibly strange to me. The idea of money being some constantly renewable resource; technically finite, but the idea of spending all of it was incomprehensible. You’d have to buy a fleet of space shuttles, or an actual planet, to even begin spending it all.

I had to smile a little to myself at the idea of Daniel going to NASA and picking out shuttles as casually as if he were in a grocery store.

It was strange, though. For someone who’d been rich for as long as he had, he didn’t seem to wear it too comfortably. It was rather curious, wasn’t it?

But I couldn’t worry about that now. Now, I had to focus on how on earth I was going to survive living with the 24/7 temptation that would be life with Daniel.





Chapter Six



It became normal for me and Daniel to eat lunch together at work. It reached the point where he no longer had to call me; I’d habitually get up and walk to his office every day at eleven-thirty, and a subtly scowling Alice would take our orders. He must have eaten at every place in a ten-mile radius. He always had recommendations, and they were always good. Before long, he would greet me with a kiss on the cheek, right in front of Alice. I could practically feel her trying to strangle me with her mind. Oddly enough, all I felt was triumph.

“You know,” I said to him one day, over a plate of falafel and shawarma, “all the women in the office absolutely hate me now.” He looked up. “And some of the men.”

He just laughed. “Well, that’s not very charitable of them.”

“I can’t wait for the reactions once we get…engaged.” I still had a hard time spitting the word out. “I’m going to need a police escort just to get to the copy machine.”

“Eye daggers aren’t actually deadly, you know.” He tore off a piece of pita bread and dipped it into a little pool of hummus. “No matter how sharp.”

“I guess.”

“Are you going to tell your parents?”

There it was. I’d kept pushing that question to the back of my mind, but I was going to have to confront it eventually. “I’m not sure,” I admitted, pushing some lettuce around on my plate. “We haven’t really talked in a while. If I just call them out of the blue, and tell them I’m engaged…”

“They’ll find out eventually, won’t they? One way or another. Isn’t it best that they hear it from you directly?”

He was right. The contract did stipulate that I had to change my relationship status on any social networking sites - which was only reasonable - and I was online “friends” with quite a few people who knew my parents. There was no chance I’d be able to skate by on that one.

Truth was, I’d kept most of my relationships secret from my parents. They were so probing and critical of most things I did, and I never wanted to go through all the hassle of trying to introduce them to someone, only to turn around later and inform them that we’d broken up. “But why? What happened? What did you do? Did you say something that scared him off? Maybe if you lost a few pounds…I mean, you’re an attractive girl, but competition is fierce out there…”

I shuddered a little. The idea of telling them I was going to marry a billionaire only to tell them in a year that we were getting divorced…it was horrifying. But I had no choice, if I wanted to through with this. Surely two million dollars was worth enduring a few awkward phone calls.