Page 84 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

“Thousand a night, two guys per. Eight nights. It’s a good deal,” he says.

“She’s not even thinking about it.” Mia drags me out of there. “You’re not even thinking about it,” she instructs me.

We catch a train back home. Mia’s cutting it close to get to her workshop.

“You’re not thinking about it, are you?”

“You’re a good friend,” I say softly.

She grips the overhead strap and puts her free arm around me. “Oh my god, it’s after six. He’s at the restaurant right now,” she says.

“Oh, right,” I say. Like it hadn’t crossed my mind.

“Sitting there alone. I hope he feels like an idiot.”

“I hope so,” I say.

“You can’t always get what you want, asshole,” she says.

“He wants what he can’t have. He wants to win,” I say. “Just like Mason. Mason was always jealous of the bakery. And now Mr. Drummond is ruining my life because why? Just because he can? So done with jerky guys!”

“You’ll get through this, and you’ll find a non-jerky guy. Not that you even need one.”

I sigh. I liked when Mr. Drummond was jerky during phone sex, but I didn’t want him to be an actual jerk. Is it so impossible to have one without the other?

“Here’s what’s amazing to me,” she says. “They always show loan sharks on TV having an unnatural ability to count money just from flipping through the corner of the stack. And it turns out that that’s a real thing? Did you notice that?”

“I know, right?” I say, glad she noticed it, too.

“Do they make them practice? Is it part of an initiation? Do they have to demonstrate that they have skills in accurately counting a stack of bills just by flipping through the corner and shooting somebody in the face?”

“And what if a guy has really good skills in shooting somebody in the face, but he can’t count the money like that? Is he disqualified?”

“So weird,” she says.

“I’m glad I at least got to wear it.”

“It looked beautiful on you.”

Twenty-Four

Theo

I give her forty-five minutes.In that time, I drink two scotches and go through the bread basket. I’m about to close out the tab when I see the email come through. A return processed. Iggy Miyaki on West 31st.

Returned the damn dress.

It was the most personal, most non-oblivious gift I could come up with. It took two personal shoppers working round the clock to find it. I thought she’d love it.

Hoped she’d love it.

Apparently not.

If she’s trying to drive me insane, she’s succeeding.

I throw down my napkin, pay the bill, and get out of there.

We had a connection. I wasn’t imagining it. Something happened.

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