The Billionaire Dating Game: A Romance Novel Read online

  “Mmmmmmm!” I closed my eyes, twisting as the last burst of electric ecstasy arced through my body. My hips spasmed wildly against his mouth, against his hot, hot tongue.

  Then it was over, and all that was left was a dark warm feeling in my core and small shallow breaths shivering my body.

  I wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep for an hour. I wanted to lay there, in the middle of the rose petals, and let my nerves thread themselves back together after having been ripped apart. I needed to rest.

  “Come on,” Piers said. “Time to get up.”

  “Mmmm?”

  I opened one eye. He bent down and picked me up, setting me on my feet. I slumped against the side of the elevator. I couldn’t stand in heels. Not now.

  CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

  Oh, shit. I opened both eyes. I was topless. I couldn’t be topless when the security guy came in.

  “Here, take this,” Piers said, fumbling with my blouse. “Quick, put it on!”

  “It’s inside out,” I said, moving as though in slow motion. “Why did you put it inside out?”

  “It’s confusing, okay!”

  “I was under the impression you were an intelligent man,” I mumbled, taking the blouse.

  “Just put it on,” he said. I blinked and stared into my reflection in the back wall. Dang, that was the wrong button. I started to unbutton the blouse again.

  “What are you—just wear this!” Piers threw his jacket on over me and tugged the front shut. He picked up the now-mangled bouquet of roses and thrust them into my hands. I was still dizzy, catching my breath.

  “How do I look—oh, God.” I had caught sight of my face in the mirror. My hair was a rumpled mess, my cheeks were flushed red, and my lipstick was smeared terribly. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

  “Come here.” Piers spun me around to face him. His eyes were sparkling, and he looked classy as ever, his lips a bit pinker than before, his hair a bit darker at the roots. He smoothed my hair down quickly with his hands. Then he cupped my chin in his hands, his thumbs wiping off my lipstick around the edges.

  “Do I look okay?” I asked.

  Piers smiled, a slow smile that made my insides curl up. He bent his head and gave me one last quick, hard kiss. Then another swipe of his thumb on my lips.

  “You look perfect,” he said, dropping his hands away from me just in time for the elevator doors to open.

  Chapter Eleven

  “You can’t tell me nothing happened.”

  “Nothing happened. Now help me decide what I should wear on day one.” I shoved the last hanger back into my closet. “The gray cardigan? Or the brown one?”

  “Neither!” Jessica crossed her arms, sitting back on my couch recliner. “Emma, did she tell you what happened with Piers?”

  “Nope,” Emma said, bouncing Arlen on her knee. “I still can’t believe my sister got to meet Piers Letocci.”

  “She didn’t just meet Piers Letocci, if you know what I mean,” Jessica said. “Even if she won’t tell me exactly what happened in that elevator.”

  “How do you know something happened?”

  “Nothing happened!” I cried. I crumpled up the gray cardigan and threw it at Jessica’s head.

  “Sure,” Jessica said, rolling her eyes and flipping her blonde ponytail. “Nothing happened. That’s why when you came back to the office, you had rose petals in your hair—”

  “—I told you. I swatted him with that bouquet—”

  “—and you were wearing his jacket—”

  “—it was cold inside the elevator!—”

  “—and you had his cologne all over you, and your lipstick was almost completely gone.”

  “No!” Emma said, her eyes wide.

  “Lah!” Arlen shouted.

  “Thank you, Arlen,” I said. “You’re right, it is an invasion of privacy.”

  “Great,” Jessica said, waving her hands in the air. “Be like that. Keep all the juicy details to yourself. But don’t ask me to help dress you for television if you’re not going to share things with me.”

  “Fine,” I said. “You want to know what happened? Piers Letocci mauled me in the elevator. He tore off my shirt and panties and licked me all over and threw me on the floor and made me orgasm three times in a row. That’s what happened.”

  Jessica rolled her eyes.

  “Get real,” she said. “If you’re not willing to tell us what went on between you two, just forget it.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “I—I—”

  “You don’t have anything in here to wear,” Jessica said, jumping up from the couch and throwing my cardigan back at me. “We have to go shopping.”

  “Yay!” Emma said. “Shopping!”

  “Yay!” Arlen shouted, waving her tiny fists in the air. “Yay!”

  Jessica tugged me to the door as Emma got Arlen’s stroller out of the closet.

  “You have to help me with this stroller,” Emma said. “The elevator is broken again.”

  I was still speechless. I’d told the truth, and neither one of them believed me. It was incredible.

  “Don’t worry,” Jessica said, mistaking my expression for nervousness. “We’ll find you the perfect outfit to date a billionaire.”

  “Look, I really don’t have money to waste on clothes,” I mumbled, realizing that she was dropping the subject of Piers Letocci. Well, fine. I wasn’t going to bring it up again. As far as I was concerned, that fiasco in the elevator was a mistake I couldn’t wait to forget. A wonderful, toe-curling mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. Now that I was away from his mesmerizing influence, I could see clearly. And I was never going to do anything like that again with Piers Letocci, especially not when I was going to be on his show.

  Especially since he hadn’t called or texted me since that afternoon.

  I wondered if he slept with all of the contestants. I couldn’t help but imagine him with the girls I’d seen in the studio. Of course he did. He could sleep with anyone he wanted to. Obviously.

  “Hello? Lisa?” Emma jangled the front door keys. “Let’s go.”

  I swallowed the lump that was in my throat and shambled out the door of the apartment. As Emma locked up, Jessica hooked her arm in mine.

  “Think of it as an investment,” Jessica said, patting my hand. “A hundred dollar dress now will land you a billionaire next Tuesday. Right?”

  Arlen squealed happily as she scooted underneath the clothing racks in H&M. I struggled to squeeze into the tight dress Jessica had picked out for me. The billionaire-catcher, that’s what she called it.

  A billionaire. Right. That’s who I was going on the show to date. I didn’t have to worry about Piers at all. I wasn’t there for him. I was there for the billionaire. Whoever the hell that was.

  “This is the wrong size,” I called back out over the curtain. “Can we try one on that’s a size bigger than this?”

  “No,” Jessica called back. “You always wear clothes that are too baggy for you.”

  “I do not!”

  “Emma, back me up on this.”

  “Don’t you dare back her up on this, Emma!” I cried, tugging on the hem of the dress. “I’ll disown you as a sister!”

  “I am Switzerland-neutral,” Emma said. “I take no side in this until I’ve seen the dress.”

  “Thank you!”

  “But it’s true that clothes are more fitted now,” Emma said. “It’s definitely more fashionable.”

  “What happened to Switzerland?” I yelled, adjusting the fabric. No matter how I pulled it, it bunched up somewhere on my body. “Anyway, I would rather be unfashionable and comfortable than fashionable and unable to breathe.”

  “Breathing is overrated,” Jessica said. “Do you think the other girls are going to care about breathing?”

  I tried not to inhale too hard as I thought of all the other contestants. All the younger, skinnier, more beautiful contestants.

  Who was I kidding? I didn’t have a shot in hell at w
inning the love of a billionaire who could pick and choose from so many pretty girls. It didn’t matter what dress I wore. It wouldn’t matter if I paraded around naked. In fact, it might make my chances even worse.

  “Get out here!” Jessica called into the dressing room.

  “Uh, I don’t think this is going to work.”

  “I don’t care! Let us see!”

  “Argh! Fine!” I walked out timidly, smoothing the hem of the dress down. The dress was made from a super-shiny fabric, and it clung to my body super tightly from my neck down to my thighs.

  Arlen peeked out from a row of jackets. She looked at me and let out a high pitched squeal.

  “That bad, huh?” I said.

  “Oh, Lisa.” Emma put one hand to her mouth. “You look like…”

  “Like I’m being slowly strangled by an aluminum foil anaconda.”

  “Hmm.” Jessica tilted her head to the side, pressing her lips together.

  “Right,” I said. “That’s all you need to say.” I turned and went back into the dressing room. Behind me, Arlen was still squealing at the top of her lungs, and Emma was trying to catch her as she ran under the clothing racks.

  “I didn’t say anything!”

  “You looked at me with that look that says I’m going to try not to hurt your feelings right now, but…”

  “I didn’t even look at you like that!”

  I poked my head back out of the curtains.

  “It’s alright,” I said. “Don’t mollycoddle me. I know I look hideous.”

  “I don’t even know what mollycoddle means,” Jessica said. “You and your writerly intelligent words. Is that what you and Piers were doing in the elevator? Mollycoddling?”

  “That’s exactly right,” I said, pulling the dress over my head. It was so tight I couldn’t breathe. I turned to try and get my arm out, but then I really couldn’t breathe.

  “Uh, Jessica?”

  “What?”

  I twisted to try and extricate my arm, but I heard something start to rip. I quickly put my arm back inside the dress.

  “Uh, I’m stuck.”

  “How can you be stuck?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. The dress was already over my head, and I was starting to panic. “Get in here? Please?” I twisted, but the dress was completely stuck on my head.

  Great. This was how I would die. Suffocated to death by a dress that didn’t even look good on me. It would be an open coffin, I decided. They would leave the dress on my head as a warning to every woman there: don’t ever try on a dress that’s one size too small. It could kill you.

  I heard the curtain swish open.

  “Help!” I squeaked.

  “Oh, honey,” Jessica said. “And here I thought you were the smart one.”

  “That’s what everyone thinks,” I said, my voice muffled through shiny satin. “I’ll prove them all wrong.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I woke up at five in the morning to Arlen wailing.

  “Oh, baby, baby,” Emma said, patting her back as she paced back and forth in front of the couch recliners. “What’s the matter, baby?”

  “She wants to eat,” I said, pulling a pillow over my head.

  “Not everybody screams when they want to eat,” Emma said, kicking my ankle. “Just you. Can you get up?”

  “Today’s the first day of the show,” I moaned.

  “Lisa, I think she has a fever.”

  I tossed the pillow aside and stood up sleepily.

  “Let me get the thermometer. It’s alright, baby girl.” I put my hand on Arlen’s forehead. “You’re right, she does feel hot.”

  “If she’s sick again…”

  I stumbled to the bathroom and found the thermometer under a pile of Emma’s hair products. When I came out, Arlen’s wails had turned to full on shrieks. There was a knock on the door. I tossed the thermometer to Emma and cracked the door open.

  “Can you keep that screaming down?” the guy from next door asked. His gray eyebrows knotted together angrily.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll just smother the baby with a pillow. That’ll stop it.”

  “I don’t appreciate your sarcasm. Some of us are trying to sleep!”

  “And we’re not,” I snapped. “We don’t need sleep at all. We absolutely love having a screaming baby in the apartment. It’s our favorite thing.”

  “Who is it?” Emma called.

  “Some asshole who doesn’t understand how babies work,” I called back.

  “I’m going to complain to the landlord,” the man huffed. “This is completely unnecessary—”

  “I’m sure you never got sick when you were a baby. Is that right?”

  “He’s always sick! He’s always crying!”

  “She isn’t always sick,” I said. “What do you want me to do? Yell at her until she stops crying?”

  “What do you want me to do?” the man yelled. “I need to sleep!”

  Another door opened from across the hall.

  “Can you quit yelling?” the lady hissed at us. She was wearing a terrycloth bathrobe and she had circles under her eyes. “It’s five in the morning.”

  “Lisa, her temperature is over a hundred.” I turned to see Emma pulling on her jacket. “And her lymph nodes feel swollen. I’m going to take her to urgent care.”

  “Happy now?” I asked the man. “We’re leaving.”

  He sniffed at me and went back to his apartment. The lady across the hall slammed her door. Arlen was still wailing when I came back inside.

  “You don’t have to come to urgent care,” Emma said. “I’ll take her myself.”

  “But—”

  “It was five hours of waiting last time,” she said. “You have your thing today. Go back to sleep. We’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure?” I said uncertainly.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Here, I’ll get the stroller.”

  “I’ll just take her in the baby wrap. The elevator’s broken, remember?”

  “Right, right.”

  There was a loud knock on the ceiling from another person who obviously hated us. I could hear a muffled Shut up! come through.

  “We have to move,” I grumbled. “This building is the worst.”

  “I’ll see you later,” Emma said.

  “Alright.” I bent and kissed Arlen’s feverish forehead. “Get better, princess.” Arlen sniffed once, then started crying again.

  “Love you, lamebutt,” Emma said.

  “Love you too, dorkface.” I swatted her butt as she went out the door with her crying baby.

  I woke up to a loud banging. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I slouched over to the door and swung it open.

  “Listen, asshole—” I said, and stopped right there.

  It was Piers.

  No. It wasn’t just Piers. It was Piers and his camera crew. One of the cameramen looked winded. I gulped back my surprise.

  “Good morning to you, too, sweetheart,” he said, beaming at me. “Love the outfit.”

  I looked down. I was still wearing my ninja turtle flannel pajama pants and a white tank top. With no bra. I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “I—I must have overslept,” I said, my brain still waking up. “Give me a minute to change.”

  “No time, love,” Piers said. His eyes swept down over my body again and I felt his gaze like a physical thing running over my skin. It made me shiver. “We have to go. Car is double parked downstairs.”

  I scowled at him for calling me love.

  “Great. Let me at least put on a bra.”

  “I will generously agree to let you put on a bra,” Piers said. “Even though it will hurt the show’s ratings.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said. How had I fallen for this guy? All he was concerned about was his stupid show.

  “Where’s your luggage?” he asked, once I’d popped back out of the bathroom.

  “Just this,” I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder. I shoved the d
ress that I was supposed to be wearing in the side pocket of the bag. It would have to wait.

  “Allow me,” Piers said.

  “I’m good,” I said, hefting the bag higher on my arm as we shuffled back down the stairs.

  “Just trying to be a gentleman,” Piers said, acting miffed.

  “Oh? Is that a first for you?”

  “That elevator, is it always broken?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “Every other Tuesday. Also when the moon is full. Also on grocery days. Always on grocery days.”

  “Hm.”

  “I have really bad luck with elevators,” I said, giving him a meaningful look.

  Piers hadn’t spoken to me after our little encounter at my office. I hadn’t expected him to, I guess. It would have been nice if he had at least texted, though. But I suppose you don’t text one-afternoon stands.

  It didn’t surprise me. But it was a bit disappointing. He seemed not to want to even mention it. His face was blank as he responded.

  “So sorry to hear that.”

  “Whatever. It’s good exercise,” I said, gritting my teeth as we went down the last set of stairs and exited out onto the sidewalk. I didn’t look back at Piers. I knew that if I did, I would go into a full-on flush. Just thinking about what he’d done to me in that elevator—

  Piers stopped me with one hand on my arm. Immediately, he pulled his hand back, but it was too late for me. Heat rushed through my body. I bit my lip and steeled myself, telling myself that I shouldn’t be so sensitive. Piers didn’t seem like he’d even noticed my reaction.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “This is us,” Piers said, gesturing. I looked down at the car.

  “A—a limo?”

  It was a white stretch limo that took up most of the block. I whistled through my teeth. I’d never ridden in a limo before.

  “Oh my God, is that Piers Letocci?” a woman squealed. A security guard stepped in front of her.

  Piers opened the door and waved me in quickly.

  “After you, Lisa.”

  “Such a gentleman,” I said.

  Piers stepped in after me. The camera crew was piling in on the front half of the limo. I slid into the seat. It was eggplant-colored leather, with cream trim all around the interior. In the front, the lady was banging on the window and trying to look in.