Breaking the Billionaire's Rules(14)

I decide I’ll say meow, and I’ll say it the best ever.

I put my queen-of-the-delivery-cats attitude back on. Tears prick at my eyes, but I smile through them and whip around, chest lifted, shoulders back, so happy and sure of things. I’m channeling the love I have for my girlfriends and for my sweet, hapless cousin, and for Beyoncé and Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes and when I nail a monologue so hard I feel magic, and that’s what I load into it. “Meowwwww!”

He looks up, features formed into an expression I can’t read. What? Did I disturb him? Had he returned to his important business, thinking I’d left, only to be interrupted by my silly antics?

“That’ll be all, Mia.”

The breath goes out of me. That’ll be all. As though I’m a ridiculous creature, scrabbling at his feet.

My hands grab onto my cart handle, seemingly of their own will. It’s like my hands are saying, let’s get out of here! And my feet agree. Go, go, goooo! They’re moving, ferrying me away with whatever shreds of dignity I have left. Somehow I get my servile cart out through the door. I push it down the hallway and all the way down to the elevator. Into the elevator.

I don’t remember getting down to the street, but eventually I’m there, grateful for the bracing winter breeze.

One thought and one thought only races through my mind: never again.

I can never go back there again. They can fire me, take my apartment, strip me of my insurance. They can send me back to south Jersey to run-down Sadler with its bars and sad little Dollar Store and boarded-up movie theater.

And my mom will be so sweet to me. She’ll totally understand, because that’s the Corelli family curse. Chase your goals and get knocked flat. My folks started so many crazy businesses when my brother and I were coming up, but they’re playing it safe now, working at the Foot Locker at the mall. “The higher you shoot, the harder you fall,” Dad warned me when I took off.

I walk down the block, trying to keep a spring in my step in case he’s watching. And then I go around the corner and cry.





4




Remember, you’re the alpha. You’re the pursued. Let your reality be stronger than hers.

~The Max Hilton Playbook: Ten Golden Rules for Landing the Hottest Girl in the Room





* * *



Mia

Kelsey, Antonio, and Jada are waiting for me when I get back home, along with a redhead who rises from the couch with the poise of a dancer. She rushes up and shakes my hand before I can even take off my coat.

“I want you to know that I dated a guy off that capricious-god-escalation move,” she says with confidential urgency. “And I found half the things he ever told me in the back of that book. I kept giving him chances because of those stories and it was all Max Hilton material!”

“Oh, no,” I say.

“This is Francine,” Kelsey calls from the couch, dimples on full flare. “Francine is in.”

Francine says, “I’m putting a hundred toward buying your heels because you are so amazing for doing this, and here’s another hundred from my sister, who fell for half the lines in there. Kelsey told us to read that book, and we’ve been freaking out.”

“Thank you,” I say, “but I don’t know…this whole thing...” I give Kelsey a desperate look.

“Are you gonna have him on his grovelly knees soon?” Jada asks excitedly, not picking up on my distress.

Kelsey gets it, though. She’s on her feet. “What?”

“It was harder than I thought it would be,” I say. “It might be a little ambitious, thinking I’m going to put Max Hilton on his knees. After today, I’d settle for retaining a shred of dignity. It could not have been more demeaning.”

“Demeaning the woman who inspires my dreams?” Antonio growls from the couch. “Perhaps my character needs to teach this man a lesson he won’t forget.”

“Don’t,” I say, not sure whether I want to laugh or cry. “It’s not funny.”

Kelsey wraps me in a big long hug. “You got this.” She gives me one final squeeze, then lets me go. “You got it.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” I say.

“What happened?”

I peel off my coat and sink into the couch next to Antonio, who’s studying his phone now. “It was just the worst experience of my life.”

“So, you wore the ears?” Jada asks softly. “Did he notice?”

“Hard to say. Max is a man with a carefully curated surface. I know in his pictures he looks all natural and warm and friendly with his enchanting smile, but he’s a cold, calculating metal robot. He gives you nothing. Though he did try to act like he was surprised that I was there, and then he got off on ordering me around. It was just…uhhh.” I tell them about the chips array thing.

“I would die,” Francine says unhelpfully.

“I wanted to,” I say.

Jada scowls. The silver glitter headband that holds back her thick blonde hair seems almost to sparkle in sympathetic anger. “Why is he such an asshole to you?”

“Because we’re natural enemies in the wild. Why is the lion an asshole to the antelope?”

“I think that’s a negative way of framing it,” Kelsey says. “It positions you as the prey of the lion. You’re more like the giraffe.”