Page 10 of The Billionaire and His Driver
Tex directed her to stop in front of the main entrance where other chauffeurs were opening doors of limos and other fancy cars for their bosses too.
Brina didn’t have to be asked this time. She hopped out of the car as Tex was getting out too. His job was to look around and make sure there was nothing suspicious. Her job was to hurry around and open the back passenger door for the boss. Which she quickly did.
But Ronny remained in his seat. He dreaded meeting with Fallon or her father because he knew where the entire conversation was going to lead. Ring on finger. Standing at the altar. Marriage. It never failed.
But he’d agreed to meet. He was a man of his word. He got out of his car but stood still. “Never open my door,” he said to Brina, “unless I signal for you to do so.” Then he turned to her. But when he turned, his heart squeezed, as if just looking at her soft eyes and soft skin and inhaling her sweet scent did something to him. And that heavy feeling of concern for her overtook him again. Which angered him because he just couldn’t figure it out. He didn’t know this woman like that! “Understood?” he said to her.
Brina cleared her throat. She felt as if she couldn’t do anything right around this man. She couldn’t even tell if he was angry with her because those sunglasses covered his eyes, but his tone was harsh enough for her to know he wasn’t pleased. “Yes sir,” she said to him.
But as Ronny was buttoning his suit coat and looking beyond her at the other club members, many of whom appeared to be giving her a disapproving look, his jaw tightened. He knewwhy they were looking so hard. She did look ridiculous in that man’s chauffeur suit. It didn’t bother him. He didn’t give a damn what she wore. Why the hell was it bothering them?
But he still didn’t want her to be the brunt of anybody’s joke. “There are ladies’ shops over there,” he said to her, motioning toward the row of high-end clothing boutiques in the square. “Go find you an outfit to wear more befitting a young lady. This uniform will not do.”
Brina didn’t understand. She looked over at those boutiques with their fancy names at that fancy country club and then looked at him again. Even Tex found the boss’s request weird. Even Tex, who made way more money than Brina, couldn’t afford those kinds of stores.
“Did you hear me?” Ronny asked her.
“I heard you, yes sir, but I can’t afford to buy anything in stores like that.” Or in any other clothing store, she wanted to tell him. The little money he bothered to pay them was strictly reserved for food and shelter.
But Ronny took it the completely wrong way. He didn’t instinctively view her the way he viewed most money-grubbing women, but he could be wrong. To prove it, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a thick wad of cash, and then reached out to her with what appeared to be several hundred dollars. “Here. Now you have no excuse.”
But his tone made it seem as if she was some beggar looking for a handout. Even when she was hungry on the streets, didn’t have a dime to her name, she found her own way. “No thank you,” she said to him, refusing to even touch his money. “This is my uniform, and this is what I’m wearing.”
Tex looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Ronny looked at her the same. But he was stunned, not because she was disobeying a direct order from him, but because she didn’t accept his money. He’d never met a woman in his life that didn’tjump at the chance to take from him. That was the very reason they wanted to be with him. He continued to stare at Brina.
But Brina held her ground. She knew it could mean the end of her employment and put her at risk, once again, of being homeless. But it was a risk she had to take. She was poor, alright, but nobody was going to treat her like some beggar who didn’t want to work or stand on her own two feet. Not even a rich prick like her boss.
When Ronny realized the money was still outstretched in his hand, he put it away. She had managed to do something nobody else had ever done before: She stumped him. She was nothing like anybody he’d ever met, and he didn’t know what to make of it!
“Ronny Bradshaw? I thought you was still in New York.” It was the voice of one of his friends standing on the steps that led into the club’s entrance.
Ronny looked at Brina again. “I’ll probably be a couple hours at least,” he said, she said yes sir because she didn’t know what else to say, and he left the car.
“I haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays either,” Ronny said as he made his way up the steps and shook the hand of the man waiting. “Where the hell have you been?”
Brina was still reeling over the fact that she had to sit out there waiting for him for two long hours.At least, he said. And the fact that she had defied him. As Tex walked the boss, and the member he was conversing with, to the club’s entrance, Brina closed the door, walked back around to the driver’s side, and got in under the steering wheel. She hated this job. Absolutely despised it. Go buy new clothes, he told her, forcing her to admit she couldn’t. Forcing her to admit she was the statistic she said she’d never become: a poor black woman with a criminal record and no prospects of ever getting out of this hole she got herself into. It was one thing to inwardly know your situation was dire.It was a whole other thing to have to admit it out loud. She’d rather be a maid, making beds and scrubbing toilets and tucked away from all these uppity-mucks, any day of the week!
Tex got back in the car on the front passenger seat and looked at Brina. “Can I be honest with you?”
Brina looked at him. Bring it on, she thought. Why not? Everybody else seemed to be more than happy to dump on her. “Yes.”
“I’m amazed he didn’t fire you. And I mean on the spot. I’ve seen him do it countless times. But the day is still young,” he added with a grin as he pulled back out his phone and lost himself in his Facebook friends and his tweets and his Instagram posts.
Brina sunk down in her seat and folded her small arms. Because she knew Tex was right: It was just a matter of time.
But twenty minutes later, something remarkable happened. Brina was nearly dozing off, Tex was completely embedded in his phone, when a knock was heard on the front driver’s side window. Tex didn’t jump - he saw the guy coming, but Brina jumped. When she realized a waiter with a tray was standing at the door, she pressed down the window.
“Yes?”
“Here you are,” the waiter said as he handed the tray to her and a glass of orange juice in a covered cup.
Brina was confused. “For me?”
“Are you Mr. Bradshaw’s driver?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s for you. He ordered me to give it specifically to you.” Then the waiter smiled. “Bon Appetit,” he said, and walked back up the steps and into the club.
