Beautiful Bitch (Beautiful Bastard, #1.5)(17)



“There was that one time you only needed two minutes to come. You’re telling me you don’t have two minutes?”

“Morning sex is never only two minutes,” I reminded her. “Not when you’re all sleepy and rumpled and warm.” I rolled out of bed and walked into my bathroom to the sound of her groan muffled by my stolen pillow.

When I emerged, clean and dressed, she sat up in bed, still hugging my pillow and sort-of-pretending she wasn’t upset that we had to fly separately to France.

“Don’t pout,” I murmured, bending to kiss the corner of her mouth. “You’ll just confirm what I’ve always suspected: you can’t function without me.”

I expected her to roll her eyes or pinch me playfully but she blinked down to my tie and reached to needlessly adjust it. “I can function without you. But I don’t like being away from you. It feels like you take my home with you when you go.”

Well, f*ck.

I laid my garment bag across the bed and took her face in my hands until she looked up, and could see the effect her words had on me. She smiled, tongue slipping out to wet her lips.

With one final kiss, I whispered, “I’ll see you in France.”



I would lose a day in transit, arriving on Saturday. Chloe’s flight was only twelve hours after mine, but because she couldn’t go direct she had to red-eye it to New York and then leave for Paris the following day, getting into Marseille on Monday. It would give me time to prepare for her arrival, but, knowing Max, the house would be spotless and stocked with food and drink and I would have nothing to do.

An idle Bennett . . . and all that.

I settled into the first class cabin, declining the champagne, and pulled out my phone to text Chloe.

Boarded. See you across the pond.

My phone buzzed several seconds later. Rethinking this whole trip. There’s a shoe sale at Dillons this weekend.

I laughed, choosing to ignore this one and slipping my phone back into my jacket pocket. Closing my eyes as the other passengers filed in past me, I remembered our past trips. We’d only traveled together a handful of times, but nothing ever went according to plan. Had I incurred some sort of vacation voodoo I wasn’t aware of? It seemed we were destined to be plagued by trips that went terribly off course, were taken separately, were colored by miserable arguments . . . or were canceled altogether.

My stomach turned when I remembered our attempt at a vacation last Thanksgiving. On impulse one weekend we’d purchased tickets to St. Bart’s and rented a house on the water. It was meant to be perfect but instead it led to the first time Chloe stopped speaking to me since our reconciliation.



“Motherf*cking cocksucking son of a whore.”

I looked up from my desk, my eyebrows inching to my hairline as Chloe slammed my door and stormed to my desk.

“Did the gimp escape the dungeon again, Miss Mills?”

“Close enough. Papadakis is pushing up launch.”

I stood so abruptly my chair skidded back and banged into the wall. “What?”

“January is the new March, apparently. The first press blast is set to go out January seventh.”

“That’s a horrible time to pitch something like this! Everyone is still drunk or cleaning up the holiday mess. No one is buying fancy apartments.”

“That’s what I told Big George.”

“Did you also tell him he needs to stick to counting his Benjamins and leave the marketing to us?”

She laughed, crossing her arms across her chest. “I may have actually used those words. With a few other gangster terms thrown in.”

I sat back down, rubbing my hands over my face. Our flight was scheduled to leave in the morning, on Thanksgiving Day, and there was no way we could leave work now. “You told him this was okay?”

Across the desk, I could sense that she grew completely still. “What was my option?”

“To tell him we’re not going to be ready!”

“But that’s a lie. We can be ready.”

I dropped my hands, gaping at her. “Yes, but only if we work fifteen-hour days through the holidays—and all to accommodate his shitty timing for a launch.”

She threw her hands up, eyes on fire. “He’s paying us a million dollars for basic marketing and we’re inking a deal for another ten-million-dollar media campaign. You think fifteen-hour days are unreasonable to keep our biggest client?”

“Of course not! But he’s also not your only client! Rule number one in business is to not ever let the big dog know how small the other dogs are.”

“Damnit, Bennett. I’m not going to tell him we can’t deliver.”

“Sometimes a little pushback is a good thing. You’re being green, Mills. If you weren’t sure, you should have sent the call to me.”

I immediately wanted to pull the words back into my mouth. Her eyes went wide, her mouth dropped, and f*ck, her hands curled into fists at her sides. I reached down to cover my balls.

“Are you f*cking serious right now? Are you going to cut my f*cking steak at dinner, too, you egomaniacal asshat?”

I couldn’t help myself. “Only if I can feed it to you and help you chew.”

Her face smoothed and I could see her calculate how much effort she wanted to put into kicking my ass. “We’re skipping St. Bart’s,” she said, flatly.

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