Page 27 of Dating the Billionaire
CHAPTER NINE
NOTHINGMATTEORINALDIdid should have surprised her. But still the news struck Blair like a hard slap to the face, and that was already uncomfortably chafed from the glue she had to use to hold the beard in place. She’d just taken off the damn thing after getting to her hotel room in Milan.
She spent too much time wearing the beard and the padding and the sunglasses—too much time flying Matteo back and forth between Madrid and Milan. She was beginning to get dizzy from those flights and from her infatuation with him. Apparently that had been all on her side, though.
“He did what?” she asked Miranda to repeat what she’d just been told—because she didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to believe that he’d done that.
“You heard me.” Her friend called her on her crap, as Miranda always had.
Sure, she’d heard her, but she’d been hoping she hadn’t. “He really asked you to set him up with someone else?” Had that night not meant as much to him as it had to her? Was she that replaceable? And why did that bother her so much?
“Hey, he left all those messages for you that you refused to return,” Miranda pointed out.
“True...” she murmured with a pang of regret now. Maybe she should have returned those messages, should have seen him just one more time...as Savannah. Then maybe she could have put that night behind her, could have gotten a clear perspective instead of the one she’d probably romanticized. It—and he—could not have been as amazing as she remembered.
“You have to realize he willingly joined the dating service,” Miranda said. “When one willingly joins a dating service, it’s because one wants to actually date.”
Blair snorted in derision. “He only joined Liaisons International because he wanted to take a date to the opening of his sister’s gallery,” she said. “He was just using that date to save him from his sister’s amateur matchmaking.”
Miranda gasped. “You should have told me that. I would have canceled his membership for his dishonesty.”
“I was relieved,” Blair admitted. “He wasn’t looking for anything serious any more than I am.”
“So why didn’t you call him back?” Miranda asked.
Because the feelings she’d had for him could have become serious.
But now that she’d gotten to know more about him, she wasn’t so sure that risk was real. She was not about to fall for a sexist jerk who refused to have a woman pilot.
“I didn’t want to see him again,” she admitted. But she had—even before she’d donned her male pilot disguise. She’d seen him every time she’d closed her eyes—she’d seen him naked, with that soft dark hair covering the sculpted muscles of his chest. His thighs and arms had been all sculpted muscle, too, and his...
Heat rushed through her, making her tingle everywhere—like he had that night. She shifted against the mattress on which she lay. These sheets weren’t silky like the ones she’d torn up that night with him. The bed wasn’t as soft, and except for her, it was empty—like she’d felt inside since she’d left him. She should have called him back, should have seen him once more...to get the desire for him out of her system.
“You saiddidn’t,” Miranda pointed out. Of course she would have picked up on Blair’s slip. “So you do want to see him again now?”
“You said he’s going out with someone else,” Blair reminded her. “That he didn’t ask for me.”
“No, he didn’t,” Miranda admitted. “He’s clearly given up on seeingSavannahagain. So meet him asBlair. Tell him the truth.”
A twinge of panic struck her heart. If she told him the truth about her name, then he might realize she was part owner of Private Flights and he might put it together that she was actually the pilot flying him.
If he realized she had donned that disguise to fool him, he would undoubtedly—and maybe deservedly so—be furious with her.
She had been mad at him ever since he’d requested a male pilot, though. Now she was even angrier that he’d requested another date. Not that she expected him to pine for her like she was pining for him.
God, had she been pining for him? Was that what this hollow ache inside her was? Was she actually beginning to care about him?
Maybe, if she was with him one more time, he would fill that hollowness, and she would be able to think again. She’d be able to figure a way out of the mess she’d created with her subterfuge...if she wanted to keep seeing him.
“Blair?” Miranda called out from the cell phone speaker. “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” she said. “And I need a favor.”
“Blair—”
“You owe me,” she reminded her friend. “For all the favors I’ve done you over the years, all the things I let you talk me into.”
“You wouldn’t have done any of those things if you hadn’t really wanted to,” Miranda pointed out. Rightfully so.
