Sugar Baby Beautiful(8)

That caught my attention. “What do you mean?”

“He isn’t a sugar daddy. But the women he’s been seen around are all the same: smart, pretty, successful,” Mark replied as he hopped onto the barstool.

“If that’s true, how do you know he’s…” I almost lifted my hands. Dear God, I’d been friends with them too long. “How do you know he’s blessed?”

“Thank you for asking.” Cleo grinned and raised her phone. On the screen was a grainy paparazzi photo of Theodore on the beach, and a rather large, thick bulge in his swim trunks had been circled and highlighted.

Holy… Don’t even, Felicity.

“Guys, I’m tired—”

“Are you really so afraid you’re going to enjoy yourself?” Mark frowned, his tone a lot more serious than it needed to be. “The reason we signed you up isn’t because we thought you needed a new purse or shoes.”

“Though….” Cleo started to say, but he gave her look.

“For years we’ve watched you work harder than anyone we’ve ever met, and honestly that makes no sense to me because you aren’t saving up for anything. It’s like you just like to work. You don’t go out unless we force you to. You don’t socialize unless we force you to. You work then come house, and when we’re gone, you do nothing but read. You’re twenty-four-years old, Felicity, not eighty-four. So tell me, what’s so wrong with having fun?”

“If you really didn’t want to do this,” Cleo whispered, placing her phone on the counter, “we wouldn’t force you. You know that, right? But it feels like part of you really wants to. So why stop yourself? There is a wild side to all of us. Why not indulge a little?”

Luckily, my phone rang before I could respond, and without checking the caller ID, I moved away from them to answer. “Hello?”

“I have a car waiting outside your place. The driver will bring you to me whenever you’re ready.”

“What?” I rushed to the balcony. The cool breeze felt refreshing on my skin when I looked down, and there he was, hat and all, in front of my building with a white Bentley behind him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I already told you I wasn’t, Felicity.”

“You didn’t—”

“Don’t make me wait long, Ms. Harper. Patience is not one of my virtues.” He hung up.

I stared at my phone, then at the man waiting for me like a statue downstairs. Mark whistled loudly, drawing the man’s attention, and pointed to me.

“Do you think you can wait, like, twenty minutes? Hell, just give us half an hour.”

I smacked his chest.

“Yes, sir,” the driver said.

“Sir,” Mark repeated in a snobby tone, liking the sound of it.

Cleo came back and held up the dress. “Are you going to stop fighting now? Because if you don’t get in that car, I sure as hell will.”

I grabbed it. Stupid mistake number three of the day.



9:25 p.m.

Black-and-gold ankle strap heels. Nude lipstick. A dress I could barely breathe in.

They were my only armor that night. I was going to do this. I was going to just have fun and let loose. Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself as the car carried me to him. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since I’d first met him. I didn’t know him, yet I had glammed myself up for him.

“Where are we going?” I asked when I noticed this wasn’t the way to the house Mark had driven us to yesterday.

“Mr. Darcy’s penthouse, ma’am.” He turned the car smoothly down West Hollywood.

“Oh, right. The penthouse,” I whispered to myself, gazing out the window. My hands shook slightly.

What’s wrong with you, Felicity? You’ve had sex before. You’ve had hot, great sex with hot guys before. Theodore Darcy is nothing. This will be nothing.

“We’re here, ma’am,” the driver said before he parked, stepped out, and walked around the car. But I opened the door myself and stepped out slowly.

Theodore Darcy is nothing, I told myself again, even as I looked up at the massive glass tower over my head.

“Welcome, Ms. Harper. Mr. Darcy is already waiting. The code is 4-2-1-3, or would you prefer if I escort you?” the doorman said, as if I had come here a million times before.

“No, thanks,” I uttered as I pushed open the glass doors and went straight over to the steel elevator.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped inside one and saw my reflection in the glass walls. Pressing the PH button, and entering the four-digit code on the keypad beside it, I gripped the small clutch Cleo had given to me before I’d left the house.