Stranded with a Billionaire (Billionaire Boys Club #1)(62)

Funny how a day could put things into perspective. Fresh tears burned in her eyes, and she blinked them back. He hadn’t wanted her. Not really. He liked her in bed. It was just out of it that she was . . . lacking.

Oh, Logan, she thought sadly. Why did I have to fall for you? You’re going to be a hard one to get over.

But even as she said the words to herself, she knew. There were just some men you never got over, and she suspected that Logan Hawkings might be one of them.

***

Bront? woke up the next morning reaching for Logan. Her heart sank when the realization struck her—he wasn’t there.

Not the best way to wake up in the morning. She pushed the sadness away and got out of bed, heading to the kitchen. Maybe today she’d get out and explore the city. She needed a new focus to keep her mind off of Logan. Exploring would do the job just as well as anything else. Of course, she’d be alone, which was a little depressing, but there was nothing to do about that.

Gretchen sat eating a bowl of cereal in the tiny portion of the apartment designated as the kitchen. She was dressed in a white T-shirt and black pants. Unlike the night before, she now wore makeup and her hair was up in a ponytail. The oddly nak*d cat rubbed against the leg of her pants, begging for attention.

“Headed out this morning?” Bront? asked in a friendly voice.

“Yup.” Gretchen picked up her bowl and went to the sink. “Off to work.”

Bront? sat down at the small kitchen table. “Work? But I thought you were a ghostwriter.”

“I am. I have a friend who owns a coffee shop. I barista to supplement my income and help him out.”

Bront? smiled. “I wish your friend was hiring. I wouldn’t mind supplementing my own income.”

Gretchen snorted, dropping her spoon into the sink and placing her bowl on the floor. Igor ran over at it immediately and began to lap up the milk. “He’s always hiring. I have to warn you, though, he pays me off the books. He’d probably do the same for you.”

“I don’t mind. I need something to do.”

The other woman gave her a sympathetic look. “Trying to get your mind off your ex, huh?”

“Am I that obvious?”

“No, of course not,” Gretchen said. “I’m pretty good at figuring people out. Like I figured that since your eyes were all red and puffy from crying, you probably missed him.”

Bront? touched her face, blushing. “Gotcha. At any rate, if you’d like the company, I could use the money and the distraction.”

“Of course. Cooper’d love to have you. Do you have a white shirt to work in?”

“I think so.” It probably was Gucci or something equally expensive and ridiculous. She thought of Logan briefly. Wouldn’t he just hate that she was wearing the designer clothes he’d bought for her and serving drinks? “Give me ten minutes and I’ll get dressed.”

***

For a week straight, Logan had called the consultant that he’d left at the Kansas City diner. Every day, the answer was the same. Bront? hadn’t come back to work. She hadn’t called.

She certainly hadn’t called Logan. It was driving him crazy, too.

Logan rubbed a hand over his face wearily. He hadn’t slept as well without Bront? there. His empty bed just felt wrong, as if it were missing something vital. His apartment, too. He’d run across a stack of books she’d left in the library for him. Real books, not the fakes he’d had lining the shelves because he’d been too busy to bother. She’d cleared the false fronts out of one of his shelves and had begun to fill it with her favorites. He’d found a book on top of the stack with a yellow Post-it stuck to the dust jacket.

The Post-it had a smiley face on it. The book? Plato’s Collected Works.

Seeing that had made his chest ache. She’d clearly been thinking of him when she’d gone shopping. Thinking of him with love.

And he’d been the a**hole who doubted her. Even after everything they’d been through together on the island, he’d still not quite believed she liked him for him, not his money. When she’d gone, she’d left behind the necklace he’d bought her and taken only her clothes. He suspected that if she could have left those behind without going nak*d, she would have done that, too.

She truly didn’t want his money. Just him. Except now she didn’t want him at all. He felt like an ass. And he wanted her back, because he wanted to explain himself. To try to explain why he’d done something that was clearly so hurtful to her.

But she wasn’t anywhere.

Logan called his private investigator again. “Any leads?”

“Nothing. No tickets purchased at the airport. If she’s gone back to Kansas City, she hasn’t flown. Maybe she hitched a ride with a friend.”

But Bront? didn’t know anyone in the city other than him and his friends. Worry made him grit his teeth. If anything happened to her, he’d go mad.

He needed her back. She was the only thing that felt right in his life anymore.

***

One Week Later

“I am ready for the day to be over,” Bront? said with a smile at Cooper and Gretchen as she finished the whip on a soy mocha latte. “How’s our tip jar looking?”

Gretchen leaned over the counter and peered at the tip jar. “Fat enough to order a pizza tonight. We could watch some total chick movies. You in the mood?”