The Billionaire Dating Game: A Romance Novel Page 11

  My jaw dropped as I watched her flip the almonds expertly in the pan.

  “Hurry!” she said. “We only have an hour!”

  I nodded and spun away to the pantry. Shit. This was what I was competing against? I really didn’t have a chance.

  Oh, well. I had an idea for something that would make a good story, even if I lost. Especially if I lost.

  In the pantry, I grabbed oil and flour. Kneeling down, I found the rest of what I needed. A box of breadcrumbs. A few potatoes.

  “What dish are you planning to make?”

  I dropped the bowl, startled. A cloud of flour erupted into my face as the bag split open.

  “Jeez, Piers,” I said, frowning as I pinched together the bag of flour and gathered up the rest of the ingredients. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

  “What are you making?”

  “None of your beeswax,” I said.

  Piers grinned as I turned around and pointed to my head.

  “You have a little—uh—”

  I blew upwards onto my bangs, and a white puff of flour burst out of my hair and right into Piers’ grinning face.

  “Thanks, Piers,” I said. “You’re the best!”

  I ducked back out of the pantry before he could ask me again. I didn’t want to let him know what I was working on.

  Kate was already working on slicing thin strips of a vegetable I couldn’t recognize. She pulled the pan of almonds off of the stove.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I stole one of your burners. And do you mind if I use the oven?”

  “No problem,” I said, handing over the oil and flour. “I’m only using one burner anyway.”

  She eyed me incredulously, as though she couldn’t believe that I could make a dish with only one pan. But I’d lived with Emma in an apartment for a year where we only had a George Foreman grill to work with. A single pan was a luxury to me.

  We worked side by side for the next hour. As the clock ticked, I became more and more sure that Kate was going to win the first contest. She had three separate parts to her dish - a caramelized vegetable side, a butter pastry that she was filling with roasted persimmon, and a main dish of what I was pretty sure was going to be seared tuna. Both of our plates were finished at the last minute.

  “Is that—”

  “Yep,” I said, looking proudly down at my plate. “Chicken nuggets and french fries.”

  If I was going to lose this contest, I was going to lose doing what I knew how to do best. And so what if I had made finger food? I wasn’t going to change myself and pretend to be something I’m not. If I was going to date a billionaire, he would have to love me for who I am.

  At least, that was the angle I thought would make the best article for Moi. “I Got Dumped by a Snobby Billionaire.” I could see the headline now.

  “Your plate looks great,” I said, gesturing down to Kate’s dish. Her vegetables were julienned, her tuna was garnished, and the pastry she’d made glistened golden brown. “I think you’ll win for sure.”

  She twirled her hair around one finger nervously and looked around the kitchen.

  “Well, I don’t think I’ll lose.”

  Two of the girls were yelling at each other over a plate while behind them, a pan billowed out black smoke. Most of the dishes, though, looked nice, with pretty plating and sauces around the rim. My pulse was still racing from the adrenaline of the contest when Piers came into the middle of the room.

  “Congratulations on finishing your first contest!” he said. The camera crew circled him as he gestured back to the living room. “And now to introduce you to the man you’ve all been waiting to meet… billionaire Dylan Chase!”

  I had expected a suave billionaire to come sauntering through the room in a business suit and gold cufflinks. I’d pictured a Christian Grey, with perfectly styled hair and manicured nails. Someone who looked at home in a luxury yacht or a velvet smoking jacket. Someone with panache.

  The man who appeared in the doorway was none of that. He was dressed in ripped-up jeans and a T-shirt that said “Bacon Is My Favorite Vegetable.” He looked like an All-American quarterback, with a muss of blond hair and muscles so ripped that I could pick out the veins on his biceps from across the room.

  “Yo!” he said.

  I nearly burst out laughing. Yo? Nobody else seemed to find it funny, and Piers glared at me when I stifled my laugh into a cough.

  “Oh my God,” Kate whispered under her breath. “Dylan Chase. That’s his name. Dylan Chase.”

  “Of course it is,” I said.

  I looked around. Most of the girls were standing in front of their plates, posing like runway models at the end of a catwalk. Dylan Chase, suave billionaire, rubbed his hands together, ignoring all of the pouting lips pointing his way.

  “Let’s eat!” he said. “I’m starving!”

  He plopped down at the small table that had been set up in the middle of the room and grinned expectantly.

  My Lord. This was the man that we were all supposed to be impressing. This was the billionaire they had chosen. I suddenly felt glad that I would be kicked off the show early. I didn’t want to have any part of Dylan Chase, jock extraordinaire.

  “Our first competitor,” Piers said, “is a former Miss America contestant. Her name is Mia Firenze!”

  “Of course it is,” I mumbled.

  It was the girl in the gold skirt who had been screaming at her partner about caviar. She strutted forward with her plate and bent at the waist to set it down in front of Dylan. Her long black hair flowed silkily over her shoulders, and her cleavage nearly popped out of her bra as she leaned forward. Mia Firenze, everybody!

  “I hope you like it,” she said, smiling seductively at the billionaire in the bacon T-shirt.

  “Thank you very much!” Dylan said, staring all the while at her cleavage. “Is this…”

  “Caviar,” Mia said, making the word sound as exotic as possible.

  “Oh, I’ll just scrape it off, then” Dylan said, smiling at her. “I hate caviar.”

  Mia’s face fell. My laugh turned into a fit of coughing.

  He popped the bite of whatever it was in his mouth, then made a funny face. He turned away and not-so-discreetly spit the mouthful into a napkin. Mia’s eyes were so wide I thought her eyeballs would fall out of her head.

  “You… you don’t like it?”

  He grimaced.

  “It’s—what was that?”

  “Scallops,” Mia said, twisting her fingers together.

  “Shouldn’t have cooked them so long.” The soft whisper came from next to me. Kate was shaking her head. “They get rubbery if you cook them too long.”

  Mia retreated in shame, although she made sure to wiggle her butt as she walked away from the table. One by one, the other contestants brought up their plates. Before Dylan could comment on any of them, Kate had worked out what he would like or dislike, and predicted the parts of the dish that had gone wrong. One of the contestants had burned the garlic on her pasta dish. Another one had too much raw onion in her salad. Kate pointed out the uncooked sausage before Dylan had even cut into it.

  “How do you know all this stuff?” I whispered at her. I hadn’t been paying attention to anything but my dish, and I didn’t know how she had managed to keep an eye on anything. She shrugged.

  “I work in a kitchen,” she said, still twisting her hair nervously. “I’ve always wanted to have my own cooking show and be on TV.”

  I looked at her with dawning realization that she was more than just an airhead.

  “Lisa!”

  My head snapped forward.

  “Lisa Forrester,” Piers announced.

  I brought my plate forward to Dylan. He looked down at my pajamas and burst out laughing.

  “Ninja turtles!” he said. “I watch that cartoon all the time!”

  “Me too,” I said, smiling as I thought about how I only watched them with my two year old niece.

  Then he looked down at my plat
e. I wasn’t expecting to lose anymore…not with Mia Firenze’s scallops in the running. But I didn’t expect what happened next, either.

  “Chicken nuggets and french fries!” he cried out, digging in. “This is my favorite food ever!”

  “Of course it is,” was all I could say.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “How does it feel to win the first contest?”

  Piers was sitting across from me on the white leather couch in the living room, staring at me like I was the most ridiculous contestant he’d ever had to interview. The bright lights of the camera crew were so warm I could feel myself growing sticky in my flannel pajamas.

  All of the other girls had retreated to their rooms while Piers did the winner and loser interviews. Now he was smiling at me with that stupid fake smile I had come to know as his trademark TV host expression. I hated it. I hated his persona. It made me feel even worse that I had fallen for his charm.

  “It feels great!” I said, smiling, as fake as he was. “I’m so glad that Dylan liked my chicken nuggets!”

  Piers never stopped smiling, but I could see the wince in his eyes.

  “Plus, he thought my ninja turtle pajamas were super cute,” I gushed, false cheerfulness oozing out of every single one of my pores. “I’m so glad you didn’t let me change into a dress.”

  To be fair, Dylan hadn’t spent nearly as much time looking at my pajamas as he had spent ogling Mia Firenze’s dress. I was pretty sure that the only reason I won the cooking contest was that everyone else had either fucked up or cooked something that Dylan didn’t like.

  And he was so excited over chicken nuggets. Who knew that the billionaire was going to be such a man child?

  “You have immunity for the next competition,” Piers was saying.

  “What’s that?”

  “Immunity?” Piers quirked an eyebrow. “For the next competition. So you can’t lose. Even if you lose, you can’t lose.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “So I’m a shoo-in for the next contest? I’m going at least one more round?”

  “Yes—”

  “Whoo hoo! Take that, suckers!” I pumped my fists in the air. “Lisa Forrester is on a roll!”

  I hadn’t expected to last one round in this contest, let alone two. I was going to have a great article for Moi if I kept this up!

  “What did you think of Dylan Chase?” Piers asked. He put his chin in his hands and looked at me, all innocence and bright eyes. “Is he what you were expecting?”

  “No,” I said, seeing exactly where he was going with this. “He’s better than what I was expecting. Can you imagine? A billionaire who likes chicken nuggets? Maybe we are soulmates after all.”

  Piers pressed his lips together, his nostrils flaring.

  “I thought you wanted a mature man,” he said in a clipped tone. His fake smile was starting to slip.

  “What, you can’t be mature if you enjoy fried food?”

  “No, but—”

  “I think that he’s a big sweetheart,” I said, leaning over and patting Piers on the knee for emphasis. “And I can’t wait to date him!”

  Piers rolled his eyes.

  “You got that?” he asked the camera crew, waving one finger in the air. “Wrap it up.”

  The crew packed up quickly and headed to the door. Piers unclipped his microphone from his shirt lapel. His face had dropped all pretense of a smile, and he looked like he’d eaten a lemon.

  “I bet you never expected me to win the first contest,” I said, arching my eyebrow.

  “The producers didn’t, that’s for sure. You kind of upended the storyline there.”

  “What’s that’s supposed to mean?”

  Piers pulled out his phone and scrolled through a folder. He put the screen in my face.

  “This,” he said, “was the first edit of your dailies for Episode One.”

  It was a video of me wearing Piers’ jacket. I realized it was the day I’d stumbled into the auditions.

  “I’m totally in it for the jet ski vacations,” I heard myself saying. “He has to have a Ferrari.”

  The shots were interspersed with closeups of me scowling. Then a clip of Kate saying Let’s be partners and holding out her hand. The video cut to me turning away and rolling my eyes.

  “What?” I cried out, reaching out to take the phone. “I didn’t do that!”

  “Didn’t do what?” Piers said, turning off his phone. “Talk like an airhead throughout the audition?”

  “That was a joke,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “And they made me look like an asshole to Kate! I wasn’t an asshole!”

  “Tell that to the producers. They expected you to be kicked off the show today. Now you won, and we have to figure out another angle to work.”

  “Another… another angle?”

  “We can’t have the most awful contestant win the first competition. I mean, we could, but Dylan actually liked you, so—”

  “I’m not the most awful contestant!” I said. I paused. “What do you mean, Dylan liked me?”

  Piers’ eyelashes fluttered a bit as he looked down at me.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “What? What did he say?”

  “He thought you were cute,” Piers said, letting out a short sigh.

  “He did?” I flushed a bit.

  “Don’t get too cocky,” he said.

  “Oh, you’re one to talk.”

  “I’ve got to get going,” Piers said, not meeting my eyes. Then I realized what was actually happening here.

  “You’re jealous!” I said.

  His head snapped up quickly. And I knew that I was right. A smile curled across my lips. My God, he was jealous of Dylan. I loved it. I bet no woman had ever dumped Piers Letocci for another guy.

  He shook his head violently from side to side, as though he could hear my thoughts.

  “No. Uh-uh.”

  “You are totally jealous. Dylan liked my chicken nuggets, and now you’re jealous—”

  “Wow,” Piers said. “And I thought you were cocky before...”

  “I am now,” I said, feeling much cheerier. “Now that I have two sexy guys who want my hot bod.”

  “You can’t even see your hot bod under those pajamas.”

  “Go ahead and insult me,” I said. “I know it’s just because you’re jealous as hell. Of me and my awesome pajamas and my billionaire boyfriend-to-be.”

  “Do you really like him?”

  Piers was looking down at me, and for a moment I saw him. The real him. Not the suave TV host, but the guy I’d met outside of the coffeeshop, all passion and desire. I realized how close we were standing to each other. His face was only inches away from mine.

  I took a deep breath. Of course I didn’t like Dylan, but I wasn’t going to admit that out loud. I peered around to see if he had the camera crew around the corner, waiting to trap me in a confession.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “If you don’t want to answer a simple yes-or-no question—”

  “I just don’t want to give you an answer that’ll be cut out of context and used against me later.”

  “Do you see any cameras around?”

  “They said there were cameras in this whole apartment.”

  “Not in the entryway. So answer the question.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Seriously, do you like him?”

  “Seriously, why are you asking?”

  “You know why I’m asking!” he hissed.

  “No, I don’t. Remind me.”

  He leaned forward and kissed me, his arm encircling my waist. His hand cupped my cheek, tilting my chin up for better access.

  It felt so good, so right, that I almost forgot my promise to myself. Sparks ran down my nerves as his lips seized mine, melting me inside. God, he was a good kisser. Then I remembered what he’d done before. I shoved him back, breaking the kiss.

  “Piers, stop. What the hell are you trying
to do here?”

  “You said to remind you—”

  “Listen, mister,” I said, poking him in his chest. His hard, muscled chest. Oh, God. No, Lisa. Think. “You didn’t even so much as call me after we had our little…whatever it was in the elevator.”

  “You called it a mistake.”

  “That’s what it was! You never called, you never texted, you didn’t email. You didn’t care until I happened to start thinking about another guy. That’s how I know it was a mistake! And if you think you’re going to lure me away from Dylan Chase to soothe your bruised ego, you are sorely mistaken!”

  “It’s not like that—”

  “Hey there, are you done with the interview?”

  We both looked up to see that dark-haired woman in the hallway entrance. I hadn’t even heard her coming; she wasn’t wearing her heels anymore.

  “Mia,” Piers said.

  Right. That was her name. Mia Firenze. Mia BoobsInYourFace Firenze.

  “Yep!” I said, trying not to let my skin ignite with blushing. “All done here!”

  I shoved myself past Piers and walked down the hallway toward my room. He could work out his ego problem with little miss titties in the elevator if he wanted to. I didn’t care. I didn’t care at all.

  I slammed the door behind me. Kate looked up from her phone. Her eyes were rimmed red. She gave me a weak smile.

  “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “Oh, just about as well as any interview with a megalomaniac idiot would go,” I huffed, plopping down on my bed across from her.

  We’d all been assigned rooms with our cooking partners. I imagined it was to stir up maximum drama, since half of the teams had ended the competition screaming at each other.

  “That’s nice,” she said softly.

  “What’s up with you?”

  “Nothing,” she sniffed. I contemplated leaving her alone to deal with whatever it was that was eating at her. But she looked so sad that I couldn’t.

  “Come on. What is it?”

  Kate’s face crumpled and she burst into tears.

  “He didn’t like my tuna!” she sobbed.

  I came over to her side and pulled her into a half hug.