She shook her head slowly. “No, but you can’t escape her. I thought she was dating some billionaire?”
I polished off my water, then realized maybe I should have offered it to Melissa because she looked faint.
“Guilty as charged.”
4
****
I watched her out on the sand, her blonde hair whipping in the breeze. My stomach protested, the restaurant only a few feet away. Lunch was forgotten, as far as Melissa was concerned. When most women discovered I was worth billions, their whole demeanor changed. Their smiles grew wider. Hungry. Their eyes glittered like all the diamonds they saw in their crystal ball. Melissa’s demeanor changed too: her lips curdled and she recoiled in horror when I reached for her. Before I could get another word out, she said she needed air.
There she was, close, but so far from me. I couldn’t read her. I couldn’t get inside her head and it was driving me crazy. My ability to size up a person, know their motivations, what made them tick and what made them crack, was a skill I’d turned into an art. When I was a kid, wearing mismatched hand-me-down clothes and sneakers with holes, snickering was a part of my daily life. One particularly cruel kid liked to ask me where I went shopping. One day, my answer was, ‘Ask your mom’ (not my wittiest come back). My reply was met with shock, then rage. But I had a rage of my own. Something dark that had been nurtured since the first time a foster family sent me back. Every time I was passed around like a hot potato through the system, my mother’s words cut into me.
No one will ever want you.
I blacked out until someone pulled me off of the kid. When we went down, ‘Fight! Fight!’ chants echoed around us, roaring as loudly as the blood in my ears. But the whole world was silent, mute. I looked down and saw why. The boy’s face and my knuckles were covered in blood.
If people laughed or talked shit about my clothes after that fight, they did it out of earshot from then on.
Somehow, I channeled the anger, learned how to smile and say all the right things. Found a family that didn’t return me like damaged merchandise. All those years of pretending I was normal was the product of watching people, young and old, dissecting behaviors and mannerisms. I could read and interpret people like reading a book.
I situated my shades over my eyes, gazing at the woman I thought I had pegged. My little sub who refused to admit her desires. Fair enough; I’d been the first dominant to a fledgling submissive before. But I couldn’t put her in the same box as any of the others I’d taken to bed. It was easy to cut ties with them, to forget them as quickly as they swept into my life. Melissa Foster was different.
The wind combed over her white blonde strands, tugging the back of her T-shirt. She tilted her head like she could feel my eyes on her. Her eyes roped me in, her lips parted. She gave me the slightest of nods, then turned her attention back to the ocean. I didn’t know if it was an invitation or acquiescence. I decided to go with the latter.
I strode toward the place where the sand met concrete. I couldn’t read her from across a table, or deep inside her, but I’d put that aside for now and settle for just talking to her.
I kicked off my shoes and trekked through the warm sand. She glanced down at my feet when I stopped beside her. She turned her pretty blue eyes upward, shielding herself from the sun with her hand.
“Where are your shoes?”
“Back at the gate,” I answered slowly, not sure how the location of my shoes was relevant.
She craned her neck back toward the gate. “You just left them there? What if someone takes them?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Then I’ll buy another pair.”
She whipped back to the front so quickly my neck hurt. “Of course. Because you’re a billionaire.”
I lowered myself next to her, dusting sand from my hands. “And I don’t have appreciation for anything or anyone, right?”
“How could you, when you can have anything under the sun?”
“Because I know what it’s like to have nothing.”
She peered over at me, surprise rounding her gorgeous features. I saw the questions. I could answer them all, but my brief walk through my memories earlier was enough reminiscing for the moment.
“So you know some things about me, so I feel it’s only fair to balance the scales.”
Her cheeks reddened as she tucked wayward strands of gold hair behind her ears. “Nothing I have to say comes close to dating celebrities and the jetset life.”
“You’re much more interesting than you give yourself credit for, Melissa.”
Her cheeks darkened to the most arousing red, but she tossed her hair and folded her legs beneath her. “Alright. I was raised by my dad. Spent most of my life in Raleigh, until my dad moved his ad firm to Sacramento. Graduated from Sac State, and I worked at my dad’s firm...” She trailed off, watching her toes as she buried them in the sand.
“What is it?” I asked softly.
“Never realized how boring my life story was until I said it out loud.”
“Boring is subjective.” I smiled as she snorted and brought her knees closer to her chest. “What about your passions? Any great loves?”
I’d been trying to alleviate some of the pressure, but if she made herself any smaller, she’d disappear. The anger I’d felt in the car when she brought up her ex roared back to the surface. I’d kicked the wasp’s nest.
“I thought I had a great love,” she said, her voice low and cradled in hurt. She released a bitter chuckle that turned the salty air to frost. “Well, maybe not a great love, but it was love. I loved him all of my life. We were best friends for forever, and when my...” Her voice splintered and the urge to find this boy and beat him bloody returned with a vengeance.
She drew a lazy circle in the sand with her pointer finger, concentrating on its contours. I didn’t even have to break a sweat to know that whatever he’d done was the reason her reservation had changed from two tenants to one...and he was the last thing she wanted to discuss.
No problem. Any more talk of a man who brought my tiny gladiator to her knees would result in using my resources to make his life hell.
“How about you?” She broke the silence. “What happened with you and Delilah?”
I wanted to discuss Delilah James even less, but she’d opened up to me. Picked at a fresh wound; I could do the same. “First off, there was no me and Delilah.” I looked out at the water, blue and gray and crystal. I backtracked to the night I met the celebrity darling. “My company, Mason Acquisitions, was holding a charity benefit. My marketing coordinator had been teasing a special celebrity guest, and the room went wild when Delilah strutted onto the stage.”