Breaking the Billionaire's Rules(50)

My heart skips a beat. Max kisses my finger.

“You turned all cynical after,” I say. “So sullen and cynical.”

“I suppose it was my natural state,” he says. “It was how I was before that, so…” he shrugs. “It was my default. Except for that summer. It had been a hard few years.”

I sense worlds in his pause. A story—something sad. A place he doesn’t want to go, and I want to respect that. I give him a smile. “And you are still ruining my dates.”

He seems to snap back from wherever he went. “I hated you walking in there with him. I hated him putting his hands on you.”

I probably shouldn’t love that. I definitely shouldn’t want to climb all over him for it. “Your shirt has no buttons,” I say.

“I have an extra here.”

“Do you have extra women’s underwear.”

He kisses my cheek. “Sorry.”

“I don’t know how this works where we’re not enemies,” I say.

He slides his hands to my heart, resting it there on my chest. It’s the most intimate thing he’s done to me yet, because I know he can feel my heart pounding. And there’s no fucking to take away the attention. I feel naked to him, bare to him. “How it works is that I’m in your corner,” he says, “and I always have been.”





18




The last thing you want is a woman you can’t walk away from.

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





* * *



Mia

Kelsey’s still sleeping when I wake up the next morning, which I’m relieved about, because I don’t know what I’m going to say to her.

But I need to say something.

What happened between Max and me feels beyond words, but he still wrote that book that screwed up Kelsey’s life.

I shower and make coffee and scroll through my phone. There are texts from Ryan from last night. I read through them thinking about what Max and I were doing at 10:10 when Ryan wanted to know if we found any clues, at 10:50 when Ryan sent a shot of him and the intern in front of a double hydrant.

Max and I went back to the party a little later. Max had an avalanche of duties, and I found Ryan and thanked him for bringing me. Ryan was only slightly disappointed that I was leaving; he was having fun with the intern.

I find a New Year’s Day yoga class. All the coffee in my belly hasn’t helped me figure out what to say to Kelsey, but maybe yoga will center me, and the teacher today is a hard one.

I pull my winter coat over my yoga outfit and head out with my mat, walking the three blocks to class.

The teacher instructs us to leave the world behind and be on the four corners of our mats, but it’s not easy. Every inch of me feels suffused with Max. I slide my finger over my bottom lip between poses, remembering how it felt when he nipped me there. The heaviness of his hands on my thighs. How he sounded when he came.

How it works is that I’m in your corner.

I lie on my mat after class, energized and serene. I want to see him. I feel like a stowaway on a forbidden ship, but I just do want to see him. I text him on the way home, and a second later, it rings.

“Max,” I say. “You’re up.”

“I’ve been up for hours,” he says.

“I forgot what an overachiever you are.”

“So how fast can you get ready to go out?” he asks. He wants to go to New Year’s tea at The Plaza.

“I’ve never been to The Plaza,” I say. “I’m more of a hoagies and Dunkin’ Donuts gal.”

“You’ll love it. They have lots of tiny sandwiches for you to apply your expert opinion to.” There’s a smile in his voice, and of course I say yes.

I pop back home to face Kelsey. Instead I find a note.

Where are you? DETAILS! BBL.

I write, out to lunch! And I scribble a heart. I’m so afraid to tell her about Max. I tell myself I’m going to talk to him about the book. Do my due diligence.

I Google the dress code at The Plaza. It says smart casual, but elsewhere I see a suggestion for party dress, and I’m all about that. I pull a pink party dress out of my closet and some fun black shoes with pink around the edges, and I’m walking onto the street at 11 sharp in my fuzzy short coat.

My belly flip-flops when catch sight of Max in a black overcoat, next to his even blacker town car. He smiles the half smile, opens his arms, and I go to him, a magnet to a lamppost.

He holds me and kisses the top of my head. “Hi,” he says into my hair.

I crane my neck up at him. “Hi.”

He opens the door for me and I slide in. He slides in after me and closes us into the dark, warm back seat.

“How are you?” I say as the car starts moving. “Actually, did you notice we hadn’t seen each other in ten years that day I delivered the sandwich, and we didn’t ask each other how we were?”

He touches my hair. “You want a rewind?”

“There’s stuff I’d replay. From last night,” I say.

“What parts?”

I slide in closer. I never had such an irresistible need to be close to somebody. “Oh, you know what parts.”

He smiles. A small crinkle around the edges of his eyes—how did I never notice that?