Page 109 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

He’s silent. Then, “I won’t show you any more real estate.”

I meet him out at hotels during the day a lot. He always sends a car unless it’s within walking distance of where I am. What with these fancy hotels, I feel a little bit like a cross between a princess and a call girl, which I can report is a highly sexy combo.

Our sexy games never get old; they just get more exciting. We do endless variations on stern boss and impudent employee. Sometimes it’s angry client and wake-up-call girl. Other times it’s suit-on-the-street driven crazy by my hotness and sassy tone. Or “what the hell are you doing in my hotel room?”

I sometimes wear my prairie dresses, like offerings to the savage dress-ripping god. Sometimes I wear lingerie. We have hot sex. Outrageous sex. Wild sex.

The one thing we never have is sweet sex as ourselves. Like that’s just too bold—for me, at least. Because I’m not ready for a relationship like that, and I’m leaving, anyway.

Theo would go for it. He sometimes does, but I always pull us back to the sassy game.

Maybe I’m a coward. It’s just that sweet sex is a boundary I can’t cross with him. It’s too much risk, too much heartache.

So we keep meeting in strange hotels, sexy thieves, stealing what isn’t ours.

I think about him alone in bed at night. I think about him when I’m waiting for the subway, or interviewing possible subletters.

I think about him when I’m waiting for something to come to a boil at the catering gig. Sometimes I’ll slide a finger over my arm, my cheek, and I’m back with him. Or I’ll remember a conversation. I’ll smile at something he said.

I thought he was so oblivious, so antisocial.

I was so wrong.

When it’s nice out, Theo and I walk around together outside the hotels where we meet before going back to our lives. Now and then, he asks me to come to his place, but I always say no, because that’s a line in the sand for me. The hotels keep everything out of reality.

But reality does creep in.

Like the afternoon we’re stuck in the back of Theo’s town car on the Third Avenue Bridge. We’re going back from a hotel, and his whole demeanor changes. I think it’s the traffic that’s getting him down, but then he lowers the privacy partition.

“I’m sorry,” Derek says. “There was construction over on…”

Theo’s voice is calm. Too calm. “Ask next time.”

“I really am sorry.”

“It’s fine. Next time...”

“Absolutely,” Derek says.

Theo raises the shield.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

He gazes away, bitterly, almost. “That would be out of the fuck buddies purview.”

“Theo,” I say.

He shakes his head. Says nothing.

That’s when I know. This isthebridge.

It’s not just something I know, it’s as if I can feel his heart, still raw about it, twisted in on itself. I reach over and take his hand. I squeeze it, sensing his pain so acutely.

What’s happening to me? I vowed to myself not to get close to a man, especially not one as personally powerful and consuming as Theo. But here I am. So close.

After a long while, he squeezes mine back.

Traffic moves at a crawl.

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